Master Walking his Talk

One of my favorite spots is our downtown Coffee shop. As a coffee lover, a latte is my favorite drink. My coffee has to have the right aroma and right taste, and I know that in this coffee shop, no matter who makes my coffee it will taste the same. 

A few days ago when I entered the coffee shop, I was surprised to see my kids’ Taekwondo teacher assistant, or as they call it: The Master’s Assistant. When he saw me entering the coffee shop, he stood up and bowed toward me. 

When my three kids joined the Taekwondo studio the Master taught us, the parents and the kids, that when we all enter the studio, we bow, when the kids go on the mattress or off the mattress, they bow. When the Master and other instructors hand you something you bow, and when you hand something to the Master he bows. 

When you bow, it signifies not only respect for your Master and classmates but respect for yourself, for the art of Taekwondo and your life in general. It is a universal gesture that signifies respect and appreciation. It is as they say without words: “I see you.”

When my teenage kids came for the free trial lesson, I could see something in their eyes and stance that I haven’t seen for a while. The Master was able to ask for respect and discipline from the students, but at the same time, he also showed respect for each student.

As you know, this is an experience that teenage kids don’t always have. I believe that most of the time when you enter teenage phase two things happen at the same time; While observing the world and the adults they are trying to understand what’s good/right and what’s bad/wrong and with those categories, they observe the adults and the world as a whole. It feels at time as they have much judgment regarding the way adults behave. They are watching closely to see if the adults are walking their talk in alignment with what they expect from the kids. 

That day, when my kids took the trial class, I could see that because the Master’s respected all students and at the same time almost demand respect, they saw the Master, an adult, whom his walking his talk. I could sense how their energy is shifting during and after the class; it was magic. 

Back to the coffee shop, when the assistant Master bowed toward me, I have to admit that I was inspired. This young man who has a dream to be a Taekwondo Master walked his talk. In today’s world, I feel that many of us walk conflicted. We behave one way in the office and another way when we leave the office.

When I mentor new coaches or coach business owners they will talk with passion about the deep conversations they have with their clients. However, when they leave the office, when they are outside with other people who are not their clients they let go of their gifts, and it is as they don't know how to utilize their strengths the same way. They hold a value or strength strongly with one group of people and don't know how to access it, how to use it in other areas in life. 

This young man knows that there is a long way for him to become a master. Even when you receive the black belt, the journey is still long. He also understands that part of his journey to become a master is to model Master behavior everywhere he goes. He holds the values of his Art strongly no matter where he goes and whom he speaks to.

I think that for some of us, doing what he did, stand up and bow in the middle of a coffee shop might sound strange, but when you walk your talk, you hold your values, thoughts and behaviors aligned no matter where you go or what others think. You stay true to what is most important to you even when others don't get it.

Do you feel a gap right now between the way you show up in one place and the way you show up in other areas of your life? I want to invite you to notice yourself. Notice your behavior, thoughts, and actions. Where does everything feel aligned? Where do you feel out of balance?

Gradually add one thing you do well to every aspect of your life and see what is available when you bring it everywhere. 

For example, curiosity, if you are curious at home, with your friends and strangers, but lack curiosity at work, try to bring curiosity to everything you do and everywhere you go. Ask, ask and ask even more and see what the impact on your life or others is. 

You might lose your balance even when you work on it, but the more you notice yourself and your gaps you will expand who you are and grow.

Overwhelmingly Unbalanced January and Assumptions About Why Generation X Feels So Distracted and Overwhelmed

Something interesting happened this month, we are talking about January, and for some reason, most of my clients shared the same burden of having too many things going on in their life right now. For some, it resulted in doing nothing, and for others, it led to making too many mistakes.

It is kind of interesting how things were starting to fall apart for all at the same time, exactly when we all supposed to let go of our New Year's resolution.

But, let’s skip the New Year’s Resolution Statistics and let me share something I am thinking about related to my generation, Generation X.

I am not sure what is happening to us, especially Generation X, but I think for many of us this smartphone/technology distraction caught us unprepared. Don't get me wrong, I am not that old, but although my father brought home Commodore 64 when I was 6, life with computers, or computer with life – not sure what is the right order – became part of my reality only when I was around the age of 24.  My assumption is that for many of my generation it was/is the same picture.

The reality is that Gen X is struggling with balance like no other generation.

You see, for my kids, technology is part of their nature, they are 100% committed to it, but! When they want to talk to me (not when I make them talk) they will put their technology away and connect fully – I am not kidding.
Now, my parents and their generation? Most of them worked with papers during their office hours, and when they went back home, they disconnected from their work until the next day. Today, after they have retired, they got used to technology, and even enjoy some social media, and smartphones, but they use it as a hobby or pleasure.

Generation X?

Think about it for a moment; we weren't born into this environment; we needed to figure out how to work with all the distractions, how to work with emails efficiently? How to build our business using social media? How to use text messages and What's App? And feel alive or not depend on our smartphone battery life.

So we feel like we always have too much, too much work, too many commitments, too many distractions, so we stopped choosing, we do it messy or just break the rules and don’t do it at all.

Again, this is my assumption about why our generation feels so overwhelmed and out of balance; we had to learn to say yes to too many things, we had to learn later on how to embody email and social media and iPhones and exploding Samsung. Oh! One thing we did forget! We forgot how to say no.

So what I like to do is go back to basics. Somewhere in the new reality of “technology is part of our life” we got confused and started to approach our brain as CPU. So listen here! Yes, our brain is a smart computer, but if you read the machine instructions (Brain at Work by David Rock is a good place to start), you will realize that our brain is not okay with multi-tasking. Multitasking is something that was invented by Human Resources to write in Job Descriptions, but let me repeat my message to you: our brain was not designed to support multitasking. Our brain was designed to figure out patterns and behaviors; it learns what we do by breaking the actions to little bites until it sees a pattern and makes it part of our "non-thinking mechanism."

So if it is okay, I would like to invite you to go back to basics, to go back in time to when Commodore 64 was just a big fat box with not much memory. That was the time when we would take a pencil or a pen and write down or even draw your list.

Write down, or draw everything you have in your head, spill it out, throw up, I know you have there more than a dozen items in your head. I can tell you that it feels so damn GOOD to empty your headspace and let go of all the distractions and even guilt for all the things you said YES to because they are easy to do, but not important and that will lead you to the next step. You need to have a serious conversation with yourself about what stays and what goes. This is your early spring cleaning. Enjoy ;-)

Last, here is something I have created to plan my goals. I broke down the process into three categories: DOING, BEING, and RESULTS. For each goal ask yourself: What is the doing for this goal? What is the being for this goal and what are the results I would like to see from the doing and being? What's cool about this process is that sometimes what you think is your goal ends up being something else. It makes you think intentionally about each of your goals.

For example, you want to speak in front of groups, is speaking is your result? No! Speaking is your doing, so what is your being? Your being can be courageous, and what are the results? Probably more clients, visibility, money…

Got it? Keep it simple, download it and have fun!