Balancing Being Effective AND Trusting Our Intution

It is the balance between intuition - something that is innately quite human - with effectiveness - getting done what you have chosen to focus on - that makes us successful. Especially if we define success as more than how much money we have in the bank. Success for you is more likely defined in 'richer' terms....balance, happiness, a sense of peace, contribution....you know...how YOU really think of success, deeply and with consciousness.

I've found, especially in working with yogis, yoginis and generally folks who have a deep intentionality to live a balanced, heart centered (and ofttimes spiritual) life, they allow the balance we learn on the mat to be ignored in our work lives.

Balance is just that - allowing for effectiveness AND including your heart. Remaining cognizant of your intuition even as you track your time.

I've often notices over the years that folks who are well intentioned caring beings, who want very much to accomplish regrettably resist the tools that work. Here's a great article by Melissa Raffoni about how to use your time effectively. Apparently she works only with CEOs, a group who value their time highly, so we might learn something what she has to say. She quotes some material from Warren Blank in The 108 Skills of Natural Born Leaders

1. Break your responsibilities into categories

The categories will vary depending on your job function, but they must be both strategic and tactical—identify not more than six.

2. Ask yourself what percentage of your time you should be spending in each category

Before you assign percentages, Blank advises that you ask yourself this question: “Given what I truly want to accomplish today as a leader, what will be the best use of my time?

She goes on to talk about managing your time and auditing your time. These are such important skills if we want to learn to be effective AS we learn to live a heart centered work life. Balance requires work.....on and off the mat! These practices are the basics. Use them.....your work life will be more successful, and a successful work life COMBINED with a deeply gratifying inner life is a wonderful design!

The Audacity for a Company to Care

Okay, so I borrowed a word from Obama's book. Forgive me. As I began to write this, I wanted to engage about the nature of caring as a company, and the more I read, the more I was struck by how audacious it is for any company to attempt to care. A bit of history...

The company I work with (Yoga Yoga) was started with a commitment to bring more yoga into the world. Mehtab, Guru Karam and Kewal Kaur were looking to teach and to share. Making money was not primary, but it was important...they did have to pay the rent, and pay utilities, and eventually anyone who would wind up working at the company. In short, they were small enough to decide to care, rather than focus on making money. Their decision, and theirs alone.

However, as Yoga Yoga has grown, we now have different constraints, different needs, and different demands. Instead of 3 folks, other jobs, and no employees, we now have over 150 people who earn money from Yoga Yoga each month, and 4 landlords to pay rent to, and many many other bills. Now, we get to focus each day on 'can we care'? Can we make the decision to care on an equal (or sometimes senior) footing to 'is this profitable'?

Riane Eisler's newest book (she wrote the Chalice and the Blade) , The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, altering the value we place, as a society, on caring work. Here's a quote:

An economics based on caring may seem unrealistic to some people. Actually, it’s much more realistic than the old economic models, which strangely ignore some of the most basic facts about human existence..

In some ways, Yoga Yoga is simply an experiment in economics...'is it possible, on a level scaled up from a one room studio, to offer a high quality experience of yoga - steeped in lineage, respectful of all, honoring of tradition, yet accessible to all levels of students - AND be economically viable?

I say it is audacious to try, but it makes our work teaching yoga to thousands of people each week a joy and an adventure. As a team, those of us who work at Yoga Yoga know that we can put caring above profit (as long as we are skillful enough to succeed), and that we are working with a group of folks who are committed to seeing if we can make this work. We are really a bunch of audacious yoga-economists!

Listening, Networking and Finding Deep Inner Peace: TED Talks & Social Networking

Like many of us, I have enjoyed the gift of establishing a network of connections with a wide range of folks around the country, and around the world through the omnipresent infrastructure of the internet. For our parents, their input was limited by physical proximity...ours is not. Every day, most of us receive input from our own personalized information system. Many of my connections are biological - living folks sifting through their own structures, and sending items along, either directly or through their blogs or other constructs. I also use automated tools - blog readers, keyword searches, and other 'content sifters'. This sifted information influences my reality, and who I am, since who I am evolves in a 'dance' with the inputs available to me. I had a teacher once who said 'be careful who you listen to' for just this reason. In our new socially networked world, we now get to create 'who and what we listen to' in a powerful new way!

Recently I have been even more enamored and curious about social networking as it relates to our yoga studios, so I am paying more attention to my own input through these channels. This talk, Stroke of Insight: Jill Bolte Taylor on TED.com, was sent to me by at least 6 diverse players in my personal network. Folks who don't usually send material over (they are mostly not in that role, they are just too busy). How fascinating, if we want to promote something, to notice how promotable a talk is that so deeply touches our wants, desires, connections as human beings. If you have not yet watched the video, just go watch. It will be the most moving 18 minutes you've spent in a long time. Then, give some thought to 2 things:

1. Do you have a message that merits awareness and promotion? Without merit (in whatever context you choose to engage) you will not have the emerging social network opportunities available to you. These networks are ruthless in recognizing value (which is defined in the background, and ONLY in the context of the network!)

2. What are you doing to enhance your social network and your own, personalized information 'funnel'? Your 'edge' is a function of your connections. And your connections have to be growing and 'informed by' the ever changing flow of the market. You must be participating in the networks that are emerging if you want to benefit from them.

Which structures do you use to create your personal information 'funnel'? Blogs? Searches? Facebook friends? Share the most powerful ones in the comments.