Breakthrough
Newsletter
VOLUME XV ISSUE NO.4 | April 2023
Breakthrough
"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.
Managing Anxiety: Confront and Avoid
By George Pitagorsky
I am running into more and more people experiencing anxiety as life unfolds amid physical, social, political, and economic uncertainty. Left untreated, anxiety can become chronic, resulting in physical symptoms, behavioral problems, phobias, and addiction. With the right mindset and approach, anxiety can become a wakeup call or just an uninvited visitor who you can let in and let go.
 
Anxiety: A felt sense of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome. "A mental condition characterized by excessive apprehensiveness about real or perceived threats, typically leading to avoidance behaviors and often to physical symptoms such as increased heart rate and muscle tension." Oxford Dictionary
 
In earlier articles on managing anxiety[1] I focused on intentionally confronting it. But there are two approaches - confront it to treat its roots and avoid it to treat the immediate experience and reduce physical and behavioral effects. This article is about using both.


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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
Come to Presence
To manage any emotion you must be self-aware, and have the power to stop, consider, decide, and act.  Self-awareness is the ability to step back and observe your feelings and thoughts. It enables presence of mind, responding rather than reacting.
 
Anxiety can take over, causing panic and becoming chronic. Self-awareness enables you to experience the felt sense of anxiety and be aware of anxious thoughts before they take over and you lose control.
 
If anxiety does take over, the best you can do is to watch it without adding fuel to the fire by judging yourself or being anxious about being anxious and losing control. Use whatever methods (breathing, aphorisms, etc.), you have and accept help from others to come to presence. Accept and let go to let yourself calm down. Panic episodes pass. The underlying anxiety may still be there, but there is presence of mind to remain calm, think clearly, and act sensibly, not being driven by emotions.
 
Get to know what calm presence feels like so you can step back into it when you start feeling anxious. If you have been working to increase your self-awareness and emotional intelligence, you are likely to have your training kick in. If you are not working on yourself in that way, consider mindfulness, mindset and emotional intelligence training and coaching.
 
Presence of Mind
So, to manage anxiety we need presence of mind. 
 
Presence of mind is a calm state, a step back from the stream of your behavior, thoughts, and feelings. It is being dynamically balanced, in a state of equilibrium in motion, open to whatever comes next. Present with a sense of serenity, peace, clarity, and comfort is the platform for skillful action.
 
 
Cultivate presence with meditation, body and breath work, and other techniques so you experience it in everything you do do, all the time. A calm center is always available, find it and make it the point of origin for your thinking and behavior.
 
Avoid and Confront
With presence of mind, consider the options, avoid and confront.
 
Avoiding means acknowledging that you need support so you are not overcome by anxiety. There is nothing wrong with needing support. It doesn't mean you are weak, it means that you are clever and brave enough to seek and accept help when you need it.
 
Support may be in the form of psychotherapy, meditation, mantras, aphorisms, exercise, analysis, antianxiety medication, alcohol, breathwork, or unhealthy habitual behaviors. If it is a choice between being debilitated by anxiety or taking a medication to enable living effectively, I'd take the meds. Be smart about it. Pick supports that have the least side-effects. And don't become habituated or addicted.
 
The goal is to keep from freaking out so you can reduce or eliminate the anxiety. Once you are centered, you can choose to stay with symptom relief or to confront to address anxiety's roots. 
 
Confronting your anxiety means accepting physical discomfort, using it to wake up to the beliefs, models, and perceptions that fuel anxiety. For example to explore why you project doom and gloom, or why you worry about scary scenarios and minimize the positive ones.
 
Taking it Home
The ultimate confrontation is with fear of uncertainty, change, death, and debilitating illness. Confront these and identify with your calm center, confident that you will be ready for anything. Then anxiety becomes what Tsoknyi Rinpoche calls a "beautiful monster", that comes and goes. Let it be but don't serve it tea.
 
My advice to a person I coach, who is freaking out because he is afraid that he will never recover from a series of health issues that have disrupted his life, was:

You do best to calm down and listen to what the doctors say.

You don't need to be a monk or Buddha to be calm in the face of uncertainty and pain.

You know how to sit and follow your breath.

You know how to allow the feelings to be what they are without pushing them away or trying to hide from them.

You know that everything is impermanent and that there will be disappointments, pain, and suffering.

Anyone in your place would be scared and would want to be well again. 

At this moment, you are doing all you can.

Clinging to your vision of how things must be for you to be happy is bound to make you unhappy.

Keep your vision of better health and the life you want. 

Do your best to make it happen. But don't cling to it.

Accept what you can't change.

Realize that you can handle anything.

For the moment get and take your pain and anxiety meds until you can be calm and present without them.

Accept and let go.

____________________


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.