VOLUME XIV ISSUE NO. 6 | June 2022 |
|
"Productive insight; clear (often sudden) understanding of a complex situation." Free Dictionary
Pop the bubble of conditioned thinking and emerge into the creative realm of "no absolutes," continuous change, uncertainty and unlimited possibilities.
Then, there can be innovation, adaptation and optimal performance.
|
Performance and Open-minded Mindfulness |
Open-minded: questioning everything, accepting diversity and uncertainty.
Mindful: consciously aware; concentrated.
Foundation for blending process, project, engagement and knowledge management into a cohesive approach to optimize performance.
|
|
How to Handle Anxiety
By George Pitagorsky
|
At an 88th birthday dinner, the discussion turned to death and dying and the need for laws that permitted assisted suicide. We also laughed together about it all until one guest said that the whole conversation made her anxious.
Not only was she worried about dying, but she also worried about having to live with pain and discomfort, with or without an exit.
Don't Sweat the Inevitable
I don't mean to be an alarmist, but ... death is inevitable. If you are blessed to live past 70, you will probably experience sickness. If you are a dancer, leaps may no longer be possible. Extreme skiing may be a thing of the past. Jogging and running can overstress the hips and knees. The economy can be uncooperative. The political divide could result in an authoritarian government and/or total chaos. The market can crash. Loved ones can suffer and die.
There is plenty to worry about, and worry makes for anxiety.
ANXIETY
According to the Oxford Dictionary, anxiety is "a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome."
You can let it get you sick or use it as a signal to wake up and see what you can do besides worrying and feeling anxious.
Scroll down to continue article
|
|
Self-Aware Living - Mindfulness, Meditation, Self-Awareness
We provide online courses, workshops, podcasts and other web content to individuals, organizations, and consultants with a focus on mindfulness, self-awareness, and process thinking. Our content is based on George Pitagorsky's personal...
Read more
self-awareliving.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
Acceptance
To use anxiety wisely first recognize it. What is the felt sense of anxiety? Where does it appear in your body – in the belly, the chest? How does it affect your breath?
Accept it. Accept anxiety because it is there. Denying anything that is occurring makes no sense. So, when you are feeling anxious, accept that you are feeling anxious. – be OK with it. Welcome it as a visitor. But don't encourage it to stay. Don't feed it with obsessive thoughts and stories that fuel your worries.
Then decide what to do to be responsive rather than reactive.
Treatment
Once recognized and accepted, anxiety can be treated. Some techniques are to:
- Learn to be okay with uncertainty and impermanence and to trust your capacity to make the best of whatever comes
- Remember that anxiety is just a complex of physical sensations, feelings, and thoughts triggered by an event and uncertainty, and fueled by worry and unrealistic desires and expectations
- Meditate to cultivate your ability to step back, objectively observe, accept, and gain insight into how your mind works
- Train yourself to stop obsessively worrying about things
- Take drugs to treat the symptoms and to gain insight
- Chant - for example, as you breathe out, sound AHHH, the sound of deep relaxation or OM or anything else that makes you calm and happy
- Visualize and/or pray to whatever god, goddess, spirit, or protector that can help to alleviate anxiety
- Breathe through it - inhale positive energy, let it circulate throughout your body, picking up negativity, and then breath it out - slow, deep, and easy
- Visualize a positive outcome
- Clean the house, reorganize the fridge, go for a run
- Listen to music, dance, and sing
- Talk about what you are feeling so you can step back from it to gain insight into the causes of your anxious feelings.
Symptom Relief
Drugs, alcohol, and most meditation techniques treat symptoms without addressing their causes. Symptom relief is important and effective, though without treating the cause, anxiety will return or be suppressed to appear later with more deeply and subtly experienced symptoms.
Avoid letting techniques become habit-forming and used to bypass emotions.
To be free from anxiety, cut its roots, eliminate its causes.
The Cause
To cut anxiety at its roots, know its cause. On the surface, the cause is some potential event or loss. That is the trigger that brings forth anxiety. Triggers may be illnesses or threats. Questions like, What are you worried about? What are you afraid of? Why are you afraid of it? help to bring this level of cause to consciousness. Working with it analytically can help to relieve the anxiety.
Then there is another level of cause - attachment to having things different than they can be. You worry about keeping or not getting what you want or not being able to avoid what you don't want.
When things are uncertain, you may create stories about what could happen. Avoid negative stories that highlight worse-case scenarios without factoring in the probability of their occurrence and of positive occurrences.
Underlying it all is an existential fear. Fear of loss of self, fear of death, fear of a painful, uncomfortable, miserable existence.
The Long-term Cure
Yes, it is skillful to relieve anxiety. But, to treat it for the long term requires a radical approach –changing your self-perception.
Imagine if you accepted your own impermanence, uncertainty, and anything else that you are fearful of. Imagine if you were convinced that you will be able to make the best of anything that might happen. Imagine if you were convinced that the "you" that was anxious and the "you" that was working with anxiety were parts of a "you" that has many facets.
Then there would be nothing to be afraid of. Anxiety would be one of many feelings, each with its causes and underlying conditions, and none of them you or yours.
You could be conscious of the onset of worry and STOP to rest in awareness, in Flow. You could replace worry with positive thinking – including the assessment of the likelihood and impact of what you are worried about.
You can accept and handle anything that comes your way. You can laugh in the face of death when you have already accepted it as inevitable and not as terrible as you have been led to believe.
"Do your best. Don't worry. Be happy"
|
|
Emotional Support for Ukraine
To support people experiencing the horrors taking place in Ukraine, we have published and wish to distribute freely
"How to Manage Difficult Emotions and How to Support Others"
in English and Ukrainian. Please pass the toolkit on to anyone who can benefit from it or can distribute it further.
Emotional Support for Ukraine is a small ad hoc group of coaches seeking to help relieve the suffering of those under fire, refugees, and helpers across the world.
|
|
How to be Happy Even When You Are Sad, Mad or Scared:
How to be happy...How to be Happy Even When You Are Sad, Mad or Scared is available on Amazon.com. It is a book for children of all ages (including those in adult bodies). Buy it for the children in your life so they can be better able to “feel and deal” - feel and accept their emotions and deal with them in a way that avoids being driven by them. You can order the book at https://www.amazon.com/How-Happy-Even-When-Scared/dp/1072233363
|
|
Performance and Open-minded Mindfulness |
|
Open-minded: questioning everything, accepting diversity and uncertainty.
Mindful: consciously aware; concentrated.
Foundation for blending process, project, engagement and knowledge management into a cohesive approach to optimize performance.
|
|
|
By George Pitagorsky
Success is measured in how well and how regularly you meet expectations. But what exactly are expectations, and how do you effectively manage them when multiple priorities and personalities are involved?
Using the case study of a Project Manager coordinating an organizational transition, this Managing Expectations book explores how to apply a mindful, compassionate, and practical approach to satisfying expectations in any situation. George Pitagorsky describes how to make sure expectations are rational, mutually understood, and accepted by all those with a stake in the project. This process relies on blending a crisp analytical approach with the interpersonal skills needed to negotiate win-win understandings of what is supposed to be delivered, by when, for how much, by who, and under what conditions.
|
|
Managing Conflict in Projects
By George Pitagorsky
Managing Conflict in Projects: Applying Mindfulness and Analysis for Optimal Results by George Pitagorsky charts a course for identifying and dealing with conflict in a project context.
Pitagorsky states up front that conflict management is not a cookbook solution to disagreement-a set of prescribed actions to be applied in all situations. His overall approach seeks to balance two aspects of conflict management: analysis based on a codified process and people-centered behavioral skills.
The book differentiates conflict resolution and conflict management. Management goes beyond resolution to include relationship building that may serve to avoid conflict or facilitate resolution if it occurs.
|
|
The Zen Approach to Project Management
By George Pitagorsky
Projects are often more complex and stressful than they need to be. Far too many of them fail to meet expectations. There are far too many conflicts. There are too few moments of joy and too much anxiety. But there is hope. It is possible to remove the unnecessary stress and complexity. This book is about how to do just that. It links the essential principles and techniques of managing projects to a "wisdom" approach for working with complex, people-based activities.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
