Nine practical tips for letting go in a chaotic world

let go: black and white photograph of (on left) fingers holding the cuff of a sweater over the hand (on right) fingers letting go of the cuff of the sweater from the hand "Let Go" by JFXie is licensed under CC BY 2.0.Recently, I’ve been practicing what Susan Pollak calls “letting go of whatever isn’t serving you right now”. Perhaps your first thought is “That sounds nice”, quickly followed by a second thought along the lines of “Huh, easy to say, hard to do. OK, Adrian, how can I let go in this chaotic world?”

I’ve no guarantees, but here are nine suggestions that almost always work for me.

1 — Notice what’s going on

Yes, we need to shut up and listen to what people say. And we need to notice what they do. But what is often harder is to listen to and notice ourselves. To notice:

A simple personal example is noticing I feel angry about a small irritation, like accidentally dropping something I’m holding. When I’m centered, an incident like that is no big deal. But when I respond with an expletive, that’s a sign something else is going on. I’m likely carrying some anger that has nothing to do with my fumble.

Without noticing what’s going on with ourselves, we’re unlikely to be capable of letting go of anything that isn’t serving us well.

2 — Meditate regularly

Regular meditation is the key to giving me practice and supporting my need/want/desire to let go of what isn’t serving me in the moment. Though I struggled to meditate daily for many years, I’ve finally developed a daily meditation practice that serves me well. I also try to meditate when I notice incongruence in my responses to experiences (see above).

3 — “Nothing to get. Nothing to get rid of.”

While meditating, thoughts and (sometimes) feelings appear. When this happens, reminding myself that there’s “Nothing to get. Nothing to get rid of.” calms me and helps me empty my mind.

4 — “Is it necessary?”

The question “Is it necessary?” is a useful tool to examine a disturbing thought that captures your attention.

Do I need to be thinking this thought right now 😀?

Usually, the answer is “no”!

5 — Remember who you are

I have a contract with myself, that I developed in 2005. Sometimes, I notice I’m circling through thoughts and feelings about a fantasized future unrelated to the current moment. I remind myself of my contract — who I really am — by mentally repeating it to myself. This helps me center and stop clinging to unhealthy and unproductive thoughts and feelings.

6 — Greeting what comes up with compassion

You can’t force letting go. Instead, you can accept the reality of what is happening.  One way to do this is to greet what comes up with compassion. Compassion is a form of acceptance that can allow persistent thoughts and feelings to lose their force.

6 — “Let John be John.”

Sometimes you find yourself worried, upset, angry, etc. due to a specific person’s actions that affect you. A helpful way to get some distance and relief from these feelings and associated thoughts is to accept that they are the way they are. Saying to yourself “Let John be John” (substitute their name for “John” 😀) acknowledges that:

  • They are not you.
  • How they interact with you is always about them, and, often,  not about you.
  • You accept their reality without it necessarily affecting yours.

7 — Use music

Music has the strange power to change our emotional state. I don’t know of a better way to move away from persistent distracting thoughts and feelings than by listening (and sometimes dancing) to music that I love.

8 — Other concepts that may help you.

I’m using imperfect words to convey helpful approaches to letting go. Here are some other words and phrases that may strike a chord for you:

  • Acceptance
  • Loosening
  • Surrendering
  • Releasing
  • Noticing the burden
  • Clinging is suffering; letting go ends suffering
  • Letting go is a form of love.
  • Letting go is an ongoing practice and process
  • Letting things be as they are

9 — Finally, be kind to yourself!

We are all imperfect realizations of our perfection. I fail at all the above over and over again. When the renowned cellist Pablo Casals was asked why, at 81, he continued to practice four or five hours a day he answered: “Because I think I am making progress.” So, be kind to yourself!

What practical tips do you have to help you let go in this chaotic world? Please share in the comments below!

Image attribution: “The image Let Go” by JFXie is licensed under CC BY 2.0 .

Cultivating Respect in Facilitation

Through attending decades of Vermont Town Meetings, I learned that effective facilitation requires respect.

For over two hundred years, my little hometown of Marlboro, Vermont, met at least once a year for “town meeting”: a form of local government where every eligible resident can directly participate in town governance.  At our main annual town meeting, we discussed and voted on published agendas that included the town and school budgets and many other articles. Debate, facilitated by a town moderator, was common, people made amendments and voted on them, and the meetings (one for the town and one for the school) could last most of the day.

Photograph of people filling the Marlboro (Vermont) Town House for the 2012 Town Meeting. Photograph by Zachary P. Stephens/Reformer
People filling the Marlboro (Vermont) Town House for the 2012 Town Meeting. Photograph by Zachary P. Stephens/Reformer

In my experience, though people in the room had different points of view, town meetings worked as well as they did because our town moderator respected everyone present and, for the most part, town residents respected each other. We remembered that the folks around us were our neighbors. They were people who, if we needed help, would be there for us despite our disagreements about politics and other issues. Sometimes votes wouldn’t go how we liked, yet we shrugged and moved on.

We could listen and make (sometimes) painful decisions because our moderator modeled respect and we respected each other despite our differences.

Facilitation and respect

Effective facilitation requires respect. An image of two women facilitating a group of participants standing in a well-lit meeting room.

So, how can we cultivate respect in facilitation?

As a facilitator, I sometimes struggle to keep my opinions of the sayer and what’s said and the sayer to myself. It can be hard to shut up and listen when facilitating, and I’m occasionally tempted to offer unsolicited advice.

However, I’ve learned that listening is a gift you can’t fully give when you don’t respect the person you’re listening to. Effective facilitation is inherently rooted in showing respect to each individual involved. A facilitator needs to respect diverse perspectives and honor the contributions of each participant. This involves active listening—truly tuning in to what others are saying without judgment or interruption.

Respectful facilitation also involves fostering inclusivity and fairness. It means ensuring everyone has an equal opportunity to speak and participate, regardless of status or background.

In essence, effective facilitation is a delicate dance between structure and empathy, where respect serves as a guiding principle. When participants feel respected, they are more likely to engage authentically, share ideas openly, and collaborate productively.

A perspective from meditation practice

Meditation practice can teach us how to cultivate mindful respect. Recently, one of my meditation teachers, Helen Narayan Liebenson, has been speaking about respect from a Buddhist perspective.

One concept she shared is “loosening judgment”. We continually interpret our sensed experience. When this involves listening to others, we may judge them or what they say. Some form of judgment is, perhaps, inescapable, but when we notice it we can practice loosening judgment: moving away from judgment and towards direct experience of another.

She also described performing an “inner bow“. This is a way of honoring either another or oneself, a conscious intention derived from an external act of respect: the act of bowing to another.

Ultimately, such language only points to the action to convey. Listening, loosening judgment, or performing an inner bow are ways to treat others with respect. All of these actions are intertwined and reinforce each other in the process.

Postscript

Marlboro abandoned traditional town meetings at the start of the COVID pandemic in 2020. My town has not readopted them, though many Vermont towns still practice this form of local government. We’ve switched to voting on articles via Australian ballot so there are no more large spring gatherings, debates, or amendments. I appreciate that our new form of government allows all eligible residents to vote, rather than only those who attend an in-person meeting. But I miss meeting with townsfolk and discussing our town’s direction and future together.

No matter our differences, I hope we continue to respect our neighbors, in the same way effective facilitators respect those with whom we work.

Photograph attribution: People filling the Marlboro (Vermont) Town House for the 2012 Town Meeting by Zachary P. Stephens/Reformer.

Lessons from Anguilla on returning after four years away

After a four-year gap due to the COVID pandemic, we eagerly returned to Anguilla for a two-week vacation. We love this tiny Caribbean island and have taken a welcome break from Vermont winter for fifteen years. I have written many posts about lessons from Anguilla gleaned during our visits, and this trip uncovered more.

The trip

For the first time in many years, Celia and I stayed in Anguilla without company. In the past, family members, and Celia’s women friends would join us for a week. But flights were so expensive that we couldn’t afford to bring family, and Celia’s friends couldn’t come for various reasons. The villa where we’d stayed previously was up for sale, so we looked for another place to stay.

We love the East End of the island and found a wonderful Airbnb in Island Harbor. Right on the northern coast, it featured two decks overlooking the North Atlantic, without a speck of land between us and Nova Scotia, 3,000 miles away.

Here’s the view from the large deck outside our apartment.

And here’s the view from the lower deck.

Lessons from Anguilla: Photograph of our deck overlooking the North Atlantic, including the author's feet
The same deck with the author’s feet included

We loved our new accommodations (read below for more reasons) and hope to return there next year.

So, what lessons from Anguilla did I learn on this trip?

Lesson 1—Don’t make assumptions

The third agreement of Don Miguel Ruiz’s classic book “The Four Agreements” is

Don’t make assumptions.

I’ve spent so much time in Anguilla that, understandably, I make assumptions about what a new visit will be like.

I think I’m a little wiser about making assumptions these days. One thing I now know is to not assume that something I’ve experienced in the past under certain circumstances is likely to occur when those circumstances are repeated. Great initial experiences may not be so good the next time.

For example, on our Anguilla vacation, a memorable restaurant could go out of business or somehow lose its allure. Perhaps, a perfect beach is now covered with seaweed. The Nurse Boy Carwash and Thick Madam clothing store are no more. The perfect bartender who knew your names and made the best rum punches left for better pastures.

The day we arrived offered a good example. We’d had some charmingly idiosyncratic meals and good times at a little shack, Lime Keel House, that was within walking distance of our new island home.

Lessons from Anguilla: The former Lime Keel House
The former Lime Keel House

But when I passed it on my morning walk, it was clear that the restaurant was closed. A woman working inside the building told us they were renovating it into a tourist store.

Well, since it had been four years since we’d last been on the island, I assumed that some things that we had loved would be gone. Smart, huh!

Don’t make assumptions!

Over the next two weeks, we found that the vast majority of places and experiences were just as wonderful as we remembered!

Goats still roamed everywhere!

Our favorite restaurants were still around and just as good as ever!

Dining at Blanchards Restaurant
Blanchards Beach Shack
Lessons from Anguilla: Photograph of the menu and serving windows at Blanchards Beach Shack
What do you want to eat?! The menu and serving windows at Blanchards Beach Shack
Small plates at the Sandbar restaurant
Small plates at the Sandbar restaurant
The view from the Sandbar Restaurant in Sandy Ground, Anguilla

Once again, the sunsets did not disappoint.
Lessons from Anguilla: a typical Anguilla sunset

And the beaches were just as gorgeous as we remembered.

Celia in the ocean

OK, the Nurse Boy Carwash and Thick Madam clothing store were, sadly, no more.

But they were pleasant memories, nothing we needed to experience again.

And Ruthy’s Yum-Yum and Fruity Web were still thriving!

Photograph of Ruthy’s Yum-Yum courtesy of anguilla-beaches.com


Lessons from Anguilla: I learned that sometimes the present can turn out to be quite like the enjoyable past.

Lesson 2—Stay open to new possibilities!

We’ve been visiting Anguilla for the last twenty years, so we’re pretty familiar with the island. With an area of just 35 square miles, 16 miles from end to end, and 3.5 miles at its widest, it’s eminently explorable. Over the years, I think we’ve walked or driven down every rocky road. So it was easy for me to assume that there wouldn’t be any major surprises on this trip.

Yeah, I know.

Don’t make assumptions!

The world outside the vacation

Just because you’re on vacation doesn’t mean the outside world can’t come crashing in. We got some unexpected upsetting family news early during our stay. There was not much we could do about it, and we were able to (mostly) let it go. But this was a reminder that vacations aren’t a sealed hermetic pleasure bubble that nothing can penetrate.

Hermit crabs

OK, we were not expecting this. As we walked down the concrete path into our new home, we saw a lot of these guys moving out of our way…
They’re called hermit crabs, and we’d seen them before on the island. What was different, we soon realized, was the sheer quantity of these creatures that lived around the building compared to our previous sightings. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of them. (Later, a local friend told us that island fishermen used to come to the area where we were staying and use the crabs as bait for their lobster traps.)

We quickly became attached to these odd creatures. They move around surrounded by a shell they’ve found that fits their bodies. When they sense potentially dangerous circumstances, like us, they either scurry away from the open or withdraw into their shell. As we walked on the path we could hear the clink of their shells hitting the concrete as they moved or retreated. When the path wasn’t level, their retreat often turned them into a shell ball that rolled entertainingly down the path.

Hermit crabs are omnivores that feed voraciously on anything available. After watching them for a few days, we put out a piece of melon rind and made a 30-second time-lapse video of what happened when we retreated for fifteen minutes. The crabs leave at the end when we approach to retrieve the camera.

Enjoy!

Unexpected weather

We have always visited Anguilla at some time between February – April. The weather is generally delightful. Rain is light and occurs for short periods and rainbows abound. Hurricane season occurs during the fall, so we’ve never experienced bad weather on the island.

Until this trip.

Midway during our stay we experienced two days of torrential rain. All the boat ferries between Anguilla and St Martin had to stop running (which hardly ever happens) and the island was cut off from the outside world except by air.

That was OK; we could stay outside on our large deck, watch the ocean, and stay dry. But when we went out to dinner, it was a different story. Night had fallen, and driving the length of the island turned into a very scary experience. Visibility was so poor it was almost impossible to anticipate the frequent expanses of water of unknown depth that would suddenly appear around a corner. We are used to driving on winding Vermont roads in icy conditions, but our 45-minute drive to dinner and our return were perhaps the most challenging driving we’ve ever done.

Later, our landlord told us that the two days of bad weather were very unusual for February. They were more like hurricane-season weather when a big hurricane goes nearby. (I wrote this post about what happened when Hurricane Irma hit Anguilla in 2017.)

But we made it to dinner and back home safely. The trips became a memorable experience, and we gained a new respect for what it’s like for Anguillians when they live through hurricane season each fall.

Unexpected experiences

Yes, Anguilla is a tropical island so there are coconut trees. While relaxing on Shoal Bay East beach one day, this guy ran up the tree right next to me…
Lessons from Anguilla: A local climbs up a coconut tree…and chopped down a coconut.
Lessons from Anguilla: A local chops down a coconut
He wanted a drink.

Two spots for meditation

This was a small unexpected treat, but regular readers of this blog know that I meditate daily. I can do it anywhere, but it’s nice to be in a supportive and beautiful environment. Imagine our delight when we found our apartment had a little meditation deck (not included in the listing), clearly made with us in mind.

Our lower deck (pictured at the start of this post), surrounded by the ocean and enveloped in the sound of breaking waves, turned out to be a wonderful place to meditate too!

Lessons from Anguilla: I learned that, even though you’re very familiar with a place you love, I can still discover new things there.

Lesson 3—Sometimes things unexpectedly improve

We’ve seen Anguilla beaches change so much between our trips. When we first visited Shoal Bay East Beach, the east end of it featured Gwen’s Reggae Bar and a small resort called Serenity. The beach in front of these properties was beautiful, and our former landlady and many tourists and locals danced to live music at Gwen’s every Sunday at lunchtime.

But over the years the east end of the beach shrank drastically. The palms in front of Gwen’s that once held hammocks fell into the sea and the beach disappeared…

…and Gwen’s had to be abandoned and rebuilt down on the west end of the beach (where it remains to this day).

In 2020, the last time we’d visited Anguilla, right before COVID decimated tourism on the island, walking down to the old Gwen’s from the main Shoal Bay East beach was a slightly perilous undertaking. At high tide, waves could dash you against the rocks. At low tide, you’d certainly get pretty wet. The sea had essentially eaten the small beach at Serenity.

But on this trip, the beach was back! Once again, we could walk the entire length of Shoal Bay East, rounding “proposal point” and enjoying the white sand down to Serenity, which has once again installed beach chairs and umbrellas.

The beach came back!

We’d experienced the resilience of Anguilla after Hurricane Irma but had thought of it as the remarkable resilience of the Anguillian people. But Nature is resilient in surprising ways too, and this was a pleasant lesson to learn during our vacation.

Lessons from Anguilla: Nature can be resilient as well as people. I’m thankful that we live in a world which still has some buffers to the  increasing climate emergency we are now experiencing.

Any other lessons from Anguilla?

These are the three lessons from Anguilla I picked up on this delightful trip. But perhaps you’ve learned more? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Mindfulness and embodied awareness

Growing up, I was immersed in an environment that worshipped feats of mind, to the almost total exclusion of the body. Apart from compulsory school sports on Thursday after school, I spent 5½ days each week studying, studying, studying. Perhaps that’s why I eventually gravitated toward practicing mindfulness in my 50s. But recently, my mediation teachers have been suggesting a slightly different approach, one they call cultivating embodied awareness.

Embodied awareness: A photograph, taken in 1964, of Adrian Segar (standing, fourth from the left) at age 13 with his school rugby team.
The author (standing, fourth from the left) at age 13 with his school rugby team

“Embodied awareness” evokes for me what meditation is about.

Here’s why.

Mindfulness and embodied awareness

The word mindfulness nudges us to focus on our mind’s experience. Being unattached to those pesky thoughts that come and go when we meditate.

In contrast, the description embodied awareness reframes meditation as encompassing both mind and body. It encourages us to extend our awareness to include moment-to-moment bodily sensations. Aware of a muscle ache, the tick of a clock, and a breeze on our skin without getting snagged by these impressions. Being aware that we are living embodied.

A silhouetted figure does Tai Chi in a beautiful natural setting, practicing mindfulness and embodied awareness

Yet we are not just our mind and our body. To me, meditation is experiencing the mystery of who we are and being this mystery. My meditation practice is to notice but avoid attachment to my thoughts and sensations.

Have your heart be where your feet are

For some time, I have been working on developing a daily practice for living more in gratitude. Accepting loving kindness and feeling gratitude are additional dimensions of my meditative and living experience, rooted in both my mind and my body. While cultivating embodied awareness, my teachers have prompted me to “have my heart where my feet are”, a teaching of Muhammad, the founder of Islam.

To me, this is a helpful suggestion that highlights another facet of meditation that connects my mind and body.

Meditation as embodied awareness

There is no universal definition of meditation. And that’s OK. But I now practice to experience embodied awareness when I meditate—and as I live my life.

Reincarnation in this life

Images of reincarnation copyrighted to Himalayan Academy Publications, Kapaa, Kauai, Hawaii. Licensed for Wikipedia under Creative Commons and requires attribution when reproduced, CC BY-SA 2.5, Link
During a recent meditation session, teacher Narayan Helen Liebenson shared that it was Parinirvana Day, the day when the Buddha is said to have achieved complete Nirvana, upon the death of his physical body. She explained that you don’t need to believe in the concept of reincarnation to be a Buddhist. And she talked about the fact that many of us have experienced, often more than once, reincarnation in this life.

I don’t believe that I possess a non-physical essence that will, after my death, begin a new life in a new body. When we die, the atoms of our bodies remain. They continue to be incorporated into other forms of matter, including bodies of people yet to be born. And I don’t believe that anything else remains except perhaps in the hearts and minds of friends and family who are still alive, their descendants, and occasionally an ongoing influence on our culture.

While I don’t believe in traditional reincarnation, I have experienced reincarnation in this life more than once. You probably have too.

What do I mean by reincarnation in this life?

reincarnation in this life starting fresh

I remember a life history that stretches back to my childhood. But I do not see myself as being the same “person” throughout my life. I’m skeptical about the concept of moments of enlightenment that radically change a person. Yet I can identify distinct periods in my life, and I interpret the transitions between them as a kind of reincarnation of my being.

I describe these phases and their dominant characteristics as:

  • Early childhood: being intensely curious and playful.
  • Childhood through adolescence: focusing on an intellectual approach to the world, emphasizing thinking over feeling.
  • My 20s – 40s: moving toward a more balanced integration of the role of thoughts and feelings in my life.
  • My 50s – the present: discovering the primary importance for me of connection with others, coming into my power to create my life, and desiring to use my talents to make a difference in the world I inhabit.

Though there aren’t clear boundaries between these chapters of my life, looking back after each transition I experienced myself as a significantly different person compared to who I was before.

The future

Will I experience another reincarnation during my lifetime? I don’t know and want to stay open to that possibility. Whatever happens, I think the concept of reincarnation in this life is a useful way to think about one’s personal lifetime evolution. Perhaps it will be thought-provoking for you.

Feel free to share your thoughts on reincarnation in this life in the comments below!

Image copyrighted to Himalayan Academy Publications, Kapaa, Kauai, Hawaii. Licensed for Wikipedia under Creative Commons and requires attribution when reproduced, CC BY-SA 2.5, Link
Animated gif attribution.

Facilitation listening as meditation

Most weekdays, my wife and I join a fifteen-minute online meditation offered by teachers at the Insight Meditation Society. The other day, teacher Matthew Hepburn introduced a dharma practice of meditating, not on one’s breath or body sensations, but on another person. As Matthew talked, I realized that I experience good facilitation listening as a meditation.

Matthew Hepburn, sharing about listening as meditation
Matthew Hepburn

When I’m listening well, I’m practicing a form of meditation where I focus my awareness on the person who is speaking. Not just what they are saying but the totality of their being in the moment.

I believe that being truly heard and seen at meetings is a gift, because someone to tell it to is one of the fundamental needs of human beings.

Giving the gift of listening is hard work—until it isn’t. Sometimes, facilitative listening is simple because it’s all that’s going on. The speaker has my full attention. That’s it.

Distractions

At other times, unfortunately, I’m feeling hungry, wondering if we’re on schedule, noticing that the carpet is ugly, etc. A myriad of possible distractions seduce me from full attention, and I succumb to them over and over again.

This is just like meditation.

In doing either, there are moments when you’re just here, and then all the moments when your attention wanders. Facilitators and meditators do the same thing: we notice that our attention has wandered and then bring it back to the object of attention. Over and over again.

Practice

Of course, facilitators don’t have the luxury of devoting their entire allotted time to meditative listening. We have other responsibilities: bringing sharing to a close, breaking on time for lunch, and framing the next segment of our work, to name just a few. Preparing for these transitions requires us to leave listening as a meditation.

But when we’re listening to people, treating such time as a meditation with the speaker as the sole object of our attention is a great practice to practice.

If you’re a facilitator, do you experience facilitative listening as a meditation? Feel free to share your experiences in the comments below.

Building good habits: How I taught this old dog new tricks

Building good habits—you can teach an old dog new tricks! A photograph of a black and white dog leaping to catch a Frisbee.Leonard Cohen wrote “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” One bright silver lining of the COVID pandemic is that it’s given me the opportunity to work on building good habits. Habits that I’ve struggled for years to create, because personal change isn’t easy. Though I’m in my 70’s, I’ve found that I can teach this old dog new tricks! In this post, I’ll share my specific challenges and, in detail, how I accomplished my successes.

Creating daily habits

It’s really hard for me to create a habit to do a daily task at some point during the day. I find it much easier to complete a daily task at the same time every day. For example, it wasn’t hard for me years ago to create and maintain the habit of washing my hands and brushing my teeth right when I get up and stagger sleepily into the bathroom. The habit is engrained in me, it’s automatic.

But for a long time, I struggled with reliably performing the following daily tasks:

  • Taking vitamins and meds;
  • Recording website statistics;
  • Posting on social media;
  • Avoiding sitting at my computer for long periods of time;
  • Exercising; and
  • Meditating.

Over the last two years, I successfully created daily habits to handle all of the above! Here’s how I did it.

Three habits built by changing my environment and chaining

A simple set of changes made it far easier for me to create a reliable daily habit for the first three tasks on the above list. I need to take vitamins and meds daily for my health. Because my website provider’s statistics page occasionally stops working, I wanted to record cumulative visits every day so I could contact support promptly and avoid losing data. And each day, I need to schedule a bunch of social media posts of my latest weekly blog.

One of the simplest ways to create good habits is to make them easy to do. Environmental design is about creating a personal environment where performing desired tasks is as easy as possible. This may sound obvious, but it usually requires a little creativity.

Vitamins and meds

For example, I’d always kept my vitamins and meds in the bathroom cabinet and would sometimes forget to take them daily. If it occurred to me I hadn’t taken them, I’d usually be in my home office downstairs. That meant I’d either have to stop what I was doing and go upstairs or try to remember to take them when I was next in the bathroom.

So I moved my vitamins and meds to a shelf in my office. It then became much easier for me to take them whenever I remembered.

So far so good. But how to ensure that I’d remember every day?

Once I decided to track daily website visits I needed to create a habit to remember to do so. In this case, creating a regular time to do it made it much more likely to reliably occur. But when?

It was my desire to build the third habit on my list—setting up a bunch of daily social media posts—that solved the “when?” portion for all three of these tasks. I invariably schedule my first social media post for 9 AM local time, so I had to get this task done before then. The obvious thing to do was to schedule all the day’s posts in one go.

And then I had a simple idea that has worked flawlessly since I implemented it nine months ago.

Chaining habits

I decided to chain these three desired habits into a single sequence.

Chaining habits (which James Clear [see the resources below] calls “habit stacking”) grafts new habits onto a single well-defined habit that you do every day. Choosing that existing, well-established habit was easy for me because I always start my office day with a cup of coffee.

Here’s how it works. When I walk into my office with my coffee, after the first sip I put it down and immediately go over to my vitamins and meds shelf. I get the pills I need and take them with a drink of water (new habit 1). Next, I sit down at my computer, click on the browser tab with my daily website stats and record the current visits (new habit 2). Finally, I copy the text for the social media posts I want to make that day and schedule them in another browser tab (new habit 3).

Bingo, all three desired tasks are done! No more remembering is required during the day!

At this point, the entire sequence from the cup of coffee through the last post has become automatic.

What’s been interesting to observe is what happens when I’m (occasionally) traveling and not in my office. I may not be able to start my day immediately with a cup of coffee, and my vitamins are in my suitcase. Even so, this set of chained habits is engrained enough that I have little difficulty in enacting it in an unfamiliar environment. I’ve created a single giant habit that satisfies several goals.

Designing my environment to make habitual tasks easy to perform and then chaining habits so that when I do one I do them all is an incredibly powerful way to build good habits that stick.

Moving regularly and getting enough exercise

What if you want to create good daily habits that can’t be scheduled at a regular time or chained with another habit? As I age, staying active and exercising every day has become especially important to me. I spend significant time at my computer each day, and it’s easy for me to lose track of time. When engrossed in work, I may not know whether 45 or 90 minutes have passed. Sitting for long periods is not good for my health.

Since I purchased it five years ago, my trusty Apple Watch Series 3 has become an invaluable tool for building habits to move regularly and exercise every day. As I write this, I have met my move, standing, and exercise goals every day for the last three years!

The Apple Watch has two separate tools that have helped me build these habits. A set of three colored rings, shown by a touch on the watch face, concisely display your desired daily levels of standing, movement, and exercise.

Standing, movement, and exercise

You close the Stand ring by getting up and moving around for at least 1 minute during 12 (the default) different hours in the day. This is a perfect tool for avoiding becoming a couch or desk chair potato. If you’ve been sitting for a while, the Watch supplies a gentle reminder to get up at ten minutes before the hour. When I started using the Watch in this way, I frequently needed these reminders. Over time, the device made me more aware of how long I’d been sitting, and now I rarely need a nudge to get up and move around. Apple’s Stand’s default goal of having active periods in 12 or more different hours in the day works perfectly for me.

The two other rings, Move and Exercise, can be customized to any level you choose. I leave them at their defaults (320 calories and 30 minutes). I run almost every day, and when I do these levels are easy for me to achieve. But my desire to meet these goals means that I’ll check my Watch activity any day I’m not able to run and figure out some other form of exercise.

Without my Apple Watch or a similar fitness device, I doubt I would have ever built my now-engrained habits to stand and move regularly and get enough exercise to stay fit. It’s proved to be an invaluable wearable for me.

My biggest challenge: meditating every day

As I’ve previously chronicled, I’ve struggled to meditate daily for decades. Unlike the three habits above, there generally isn’t a fixed time for me to meditate each day. I’m too sleepy when I wake up, and too tired when I go to bed. My chosen challenge is to meditate for ten minutes or more at some point each day. And my life is too varied to pick a time that will work on any kind of regular basis.

The closest I’ve come to scheduling a regular time to meditate is a recent addition to our life, a Monday – Friday 8:45 – 9:00 AM Insight Meditation Zoom session led by Narayan Helen Liebenson. My wife, Celia, and I join whenever we’re free at this time. Often, one of us will remind the other of the session and see if we can both take part.

Having a buddy system like this is a great way to reinforce habits! In addition, my friend, Sue, also tries to meditate regularly. For over a year now, we’ll email each other after we’ve meditated.  No pressure, but it supplies another reminder to practice.

These two support systems are really helpful, but I want to meditate every day. What I needed was an unobtrusive way to remind me that I hadn’t yet meditated so far that day.

Creating a trigger

Just over a year ago, I hit upon a simple method inspired by David Allen’s Getting Things Done. As I’m at my computer frequently, I made a card with the number “10” on it and placed it below my keyboard each morning. (It’s stored propped against one of my vitamin bottles so I don’t forget to move it.)

building good habitsDuring the day, this card reminds me to meditate. Once I have, I email my meditation buddy Sue and return the card back to its vitamin bottle prop, ready for the next morning reminder.

This has worked! I have only missed four days of meditating in the last year, usually because I’ve been on the road and the card trigger wasn’t available. I’m OK with not being perfect, and very happy to have finally built this difficult (for me) habit.

Getting better at remembering to do stuff

If you’re young and reading this, you may be thinking, “What’s the big deal? I don’t have any problem remembering what to do.” Well, in my twenties and thirties, I never needed a written to-do list. I had a great memory and could easily keep track of everything I needed or wanted to do each day.

Today, an idea can flash through my mind, and I know that if I don’t capture it right away it will likely be forgotten in ten minutes. Yes, I might remember it later, but there’s no guarantee.

Unlike in my youth, if something comes up that I need to do but can’t get out of the way right there and then, there’s a real chance I may forget to do it later.

So for many years now, I’ve solved this problem using a written To Do list or software app, and/or timers.

Using timers

I’ve written about how I use To Do lists, but using a timer to remember to do stuff is worth a mention. As an example, my wife goes to bed earlier than me and I like to go and say goodnight to her before she goes to sleep. To remember to do this, I set a timer to ring when it’s her bedtime. I used to use a cheap countdown time to do this, but now I use the timer function on my Apple Watch. (I’ve found that my memory is still good enough so that when the timer goes off, I still remember what I set it for!)

Timers are great ways to keep me on track with tasks that need to be done later in the day. I also use the snooze function on my Apple Calendar to delay calendar reminders of daily tasks when it’s not a good time to do them immediately. Thinking about the duration of the timer or snooze also helps to reinforce my intention to actually do what I decided earlier.

Recommended resources

Here are two resources for creating good habits that I’ve found really helpful.

Getting Things Done by David Allen.

Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Building good habits

I’ve written frequently about facilitating change for organizations and groups. Building good habits is about facilitating personal change. Like me, you may also have specific wants and needs to make changes in your life. I hope my examples inspire you to work on personal changes that are important to you.

Have you used a seemingly unwelcome change in your life to create opportunities to facilitate personal change by building good habits? If so, feel free to share your experience in the comments below!

Image attribution: C Perret on Unsplash

Connection, attachment, and meetings

John Singer Sargent's painting, A Street in Venice. Image courtesy Clark Art Institute. A man looks at a woman in a Venetian alleyway. Is there connection or attachment between them?A teacher recently advised our daily meditation group to seek “connection free from attachment”. This is a wise practice for me. But what does it mean in the context of meetings? Surely we sometimes become attached to people we meet? Isn’t creating and strengthening attachments one of the desirable functions of meetings? So what is the relationship between connection and attachment when people come together?

Last week I was exploring paintings at The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts when this work by John Singer Sargent caught my attention.

Although Sargent is chiefly known as “a portrait painter who evoked Edwardian-era luxury“, this painting of Venice shows something different. Instead of “focusing on iconic views of Venice”, Sargent “offers a glimpse into everyday life”.

I see this painting as a depiction of an event about to happen: two people meeting, a foreshadowing of connection. I could be wrong because what we see is ambiguous. It’s possible that the man will turn away and continue his walk. But perhaps the woman is about to turn towards the man looking at her; they will connect in the alleyway. Perhaps they are about to enter the wine cellar and connect there.

My fanciful, though perhaps plausible, interpretations of Sargent’s painting illuminate how I think about the relationship between connection, attachment, and meetings.

Connection and attachment

Connection is something that happens in the moment. As another meditation teacher put it: “Nothing to get. Nothing to get rid of. Just this.”

In contrast, attachment is a description of a complex fusion of past, present, and future connections. It’s a historical construct. Even if we connect with a person once, that only creates attachment through our continued memory of the experience of the moment. Attachment is about our relationship with others. Our attachment to people is created and strengthened by one or more moments of connection with them over time.

Traditional meetings and connection

At meetings, as in life, connection happens with another person or, sometimes, in small groups. Not while someone is lecturing in a room full of people.

At traditional meetings, connection happens almost exclusively outside the formal lecture-style sessions. It’s inefficient and random. Even if someone asks a question at the end of a session and you want to talk to them more about it, you have to hunt them down in the hallways or socials.

Traditional meetings offer minimal opportunities for connection, attachment, and ensuing relationships.

Luckily, we can do better.

Creating connection and attachment at meetings

For decades, one of my core goals for participant-driven and participation-rich meetings has been to facilitate connection around relevant content. In our meetings, we need to provide plenty of opportunities and support for moment-to-moment connections around relevant learning. The resulting connections lead to attachments, and to valuable relationships between meeting participants that endure into the future.

Achieve success one small step at a time

achieve success with one small step: a black-and-white photograph of a small child walking away from the camera on a brick-paved street. The child is followed by an adult whose step mirrors the child's.
I’ve written frequently about facilitating change. Despite attempting to practice what I preach, I still sometimes fail to create a desired change in my life. Here are two recent examples that led me to realize that I need to achieve success one small step at a time.

1) Meditation and gratitude practice

For 29 years, I’ve been a member of a small local consultants group that meets monthly. Recently I’ve been facilitating a set of meetings to work on changes we want to make in our lives. This involves figuring out what they are, and supporting each other in making these changes a reality.

To model the process, I went through it myself first with our group. Two of the changes I wish to make are maintaining a daily meditation practice (something I’ve struggled with for years), and creating a daily gratitude practice.

My group made two good suggestions for creating these desired changes:

  1. To maintain my daily meditation practice, I committed to meditating for a minimum of five minutes per day without fail. This was much shorter than my prior time goal. I also gained a group buddy who wanted to meditate more frequently. We would send each other an email when we’d completed our daily meditation, helping us to keep on track.
  2. For a gratitude practice, I decided to write down daily three things for which I was grateful. I found some small cards and a box for them and kept these on my desk.

I have been able to faithfully maintain my meditation practice since our last group meeting. Hopefully, this change will become a habit for me. However, I started to miss days for the gratitude practice. This was a little upsetting, and I kept trying, unsuccessfully, to get back on track.

I realized that attempting to make both changes simultaneously was a barrier to complete success. So I’ve dropped the gratitude practice writing. (I still try to notice moments for gratitude when they arise, and I’m getting better at this.)

My goal now is to work on maintaining my daily meditation practice until it becomes a solid and permanent change. At some point, I may increase the minimum time I meditate. Once I feel secure in this change, I will begin to work on maintaining a daily gratitude practice.

One success out of two is an improvement! One small step at a time.

2) Tying my shoes

Don’t laugh! OK, laugh if you want; I don’t mind.

My physical therapist recently showed me a cool new way to tie my shoes. (If you don’t want to learn it, feel free to skip the next bit.) When I was a kid, my mum taught me the most common method, as shown in the first 30 seconds of this video.

one small step
click to watch

The above knot is easy to untie by pulling either lace end. However, over the years, I found that it would occasionally unexpectedly untie. So I added tying the two loops in a half knot. The resulting knot doesn’t spontaneously untie, but you can’t just pull a lace end to untie your shoe; you have to untie the half knot first.

Last month, while fitting some orthotics into my brand-new running shoes, my physical therapist saw how I was tying my shoes. She suggested a better method with one extra step. Watch it in the second half of the same video.

click to watch

Changing something I’ve done the same way for 60+ years isn’t a piece of cake. But I found it fairly easy to get in the habit of tying the thick laces in my running shoes the new way.

However, the skinny laces in my everyday sneakers are another matter. For some reason, it’s much harder for me to add the extra step with these laces. I got frustrated trying to tie my sneakers in the new way, and it was affecting my running shoe-tying muscle memory.

So, instead of trying to make the change in two different places, I decided to give up the new method for my sneakers. Using the new method, but only for my running shoes, is becoming increasingly automatic. I have no problem staying with my childhood method for my sneakers.

Over time, I hope that typing my running shoes the new way will become completely automatic. I’ll have successfully made one small change. Then, it will be time for me to work on adding the change to tying my sneakers and achieving success one small step at a time.

Jerry Weinberg’s take

I’ve learned so much from my late mentor, Jerry Weinberg. And he had something to say about achieving success one small step at a time. Jerry was a consultant to Ford on the ill-fated Edsel. As he recalls in his jewel of a book, The Secrets of Consulting, the Edsel project was a great triumph. Ford “…installed some terrific new computer systems that ultimately were adopted by the entire auto industry.”

Twenty-five years later, Jerry realized that the Edsel was a flop because Ford, scared of all the “better ideas,” put all of them into one car. “That approach guarantees that even if each one of the individual ideas is terrific, the result will be a debacle.”

From this experience, he derived The Edsel Edict.

“If you must have something new, take one, not two.”

In other words, achieve success one small step at a time.

One small step

Have you tried to make changes in your life and, like me, sometimes failed? Perhaps reducing the number of simultaneous changes you attempt may help you achieve success one small step at a time.

Image “one step behind” by Andreas Schalk under CC BY 2.0 license

Struggling to meditate daily

meditate daily: A sepia photograph of a back of a person wearing a black shirt and sitting cross-legged in a field, surrounded by trees. Photo attribution: Flickr user wiertz
For three months now, I’ve meditated for twenty minutes every day.

Personally, this is a big deal, as I’ve struggled to maintain a regular meditation practice for decades. I’ve resolved countless times to meditate daily, and fallen off the mindfulness wagon over and over again.

Three years ago, I began attending silent meditation retreats and continue to do so a couple of times a year. These experiences are important and transformational. Each retreat deepened my resolve to start a daily meditation practice. But, despite this increased desire, I was unable to do so.

Until now.

Excuses
Why has it been so hard for me to maintain a daily meditation practice?

One excuse is that my daily schedule is not regular. When I’m home, there is at least the potential to set aside a regular time to meditate. But I travel a lot. I’m just back from a four-week trip that spanned nine time zones, from Italy to the Caribbean, to Las Vegas. I average about two engagements per month that require travel. I might be up at 5 am to catch a flight, arrive late at a destination, and be intensely involved on-site for two or three days. There’s no regular “free” time in my life.

However, my travel for work and pleasure that creates an erratic daily schedule is a choice that I made. It makes it harder but not impossible for me to create a meditation habit.

Another excuse is related to my biorhythms. Over the years I’ve found I do my best creative work in the morning. Meditating early feels like it’s delaying starting my day. At night, my energy level sags and it’s difficult for me to maintain mindful habits. I’m tempted to relax over a drink and a nice dinner.

Finally, my experience of the benefits of regular meditation from retreats quickly fades. I remember that I felt inspired to meditate regularly, but I don’t experience the inspiration. And I lapse…

How have I changed my meditation habit?
I’m sorry. If you’re hoping to learn the secret simple trick that allowed me to finally sustain a daily meditation practice, I’m about to disappoint you.

As I’ve shared previously, the hard work we do that precipitates personal change is largely unconscious.

But here are some clues that might help you.

—At the Vipassana retreats I attend, sitting and walking meditation sessions last for 45 minutes, and there are many such sessions every day. I set myself a far more modest daily goal of a single twenty-minute session. More sessions or a longer time are great but completely optional.

—While meditating with a simple timer, I noticed that my mind started wondering about how much time was left towards the end of the twenty minutes. (Somewhat pathetic, but that’s what I noticed.) So I switched to a free meditation app, InsightTimer, which can be configured to play multiple sounds during meditation. Adding a momentary wood block “click” halfway through tells my thinking mind that there are ten minutes to go, which helps quiet it. This sounds silly, but it’s helpful for me.

—Finally, while vacationing for two weeks in Anguilla last month, I broke through my self-limiting belief that an early morning meditation session would reduce my creative morning time. For the last few years, I’ve started my day there with a (now) forty-minute walk, down to Island Harbor and back. This year I sat on a bench at Falcon Nest and meditated for twenty minutes before returning.

(Here’s the panorama I saw one morning when I opened my eyes. Four island dogs in a neat but respectful oval around me.)

Since then, I’ve been willing and able to meditate for twenty minutes within the first hour I’m up.

What I have noticed since beginning to meditate regularly for the first time in my life
—I have more equanimity in my life. For example, after I rose early for a flight from Boston to Las Vegas last week, it was delayed for four hours due to the weather. I was surprised and pleased at how serene I stayed about this, compared to the persistent annoyance I would have felt in the past. There was plenty of time to meditate at the airport!

—Having said that, I am noticing how easily certain events bend me out of shape. My phone says the Wi-Fi password I’ve entered is incorrect, though I know it isn’t. My new MacBook keyboard switches unexpectedly into ALL CAPS. I fumble several times picking up a heavy piece of wood for the stove.

I’m not doing much better dealing with these surges of irritation, but noticing them is the first and necessary step to change.

—I’m getting better at listening to people. Less likely to jump in with a response before they’ve fully shared. (Yes folks who know me well; there is still plenty of room for improvement. Sigh.)

Celebration!
I am happy that I’ve made this change that has eluded me for so long. Perhaps I will increase my modest meditation time in the future. Regardless, I like the effect on my life daily meditation makes, and this is evidence that I am still able to change my behavior through work and grace.

Photo attribution: Flickr user wiertz