Breakthrough
Newsletter
VOLUME XIII ISSUE NO. 11 | NOVEMBER 2021
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.
More than Mindfulness - Path to Stress Relief, Optimal Performance, and Beyond
By George Pitagorsky
Mindfulness-based meditation is mainstream. It benefits individuals by increasing concentration, objectivity, and attention while reducing stress and anxiety. Organizations, families, teams, and communities benefit by performing optimally with clarity, healthy relationships, and focused action.
 
Is Mindfulness Enough?
Mindfulness is the capacity to objectively observe everything that is going on while being fully immersed in it. While it has wonderful effects, mindfulness meditation is not a magic pill cure-all. It takes more than mindfulness to sustain more effective working and living. 
 
There are limitations and potential side effects.
 
It Takes Time, Effort, and Values
Transformation takes time and effort. Obstacles like habits, biases, attachments, aversions, conditioning, and neuroses can take decades (or even lifetimes) to fully dissolve. Fortunately, there are short-term methods like mindfulness and loving-kindness meditation practices to make life more effective, healthier, happier, with less self-imposed discomfort.
 
In addition to the time factor, Studies show that there is a limited impact on prosocial behavior, the kind of behavior that benefits others. They also show that there may be side effects like anxiety, depression, and disassociation. 

 
Assassins and self-serving authoritarian, leaders are quite mindful, focused, and attentive. While their behavior might benefit some (for example their clients and supporters), it is not for the greater good and violates generally accepted positive values - qualities like kindness, compassion, truthfulness, patience, integrity, responsiveness, acceptance, resilience, etc.

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Coaching for Happy, Resilient Effectiveness

George Pitagorsky offers individual and team coaching with a foundation in mindful awareness, systems and process thinking, and wisdom teachings. The goal is sustained optimal performance - effectiveness, happiness, resilience, and adaptability.

Read more
self-awareliving.com
Mindfulness, Wisdom, and Skillful Action
The limitations of mindfulness are not a surprise. A few thousand years ago the Buddha identified eight strands which when woven together are a way to eliminate the causes of suffering and to live optimally.
 
Mindfulness is one strand. Some say it is the foundation for the others. But to be truly effective intertwine it with
  • Understanding the realities of interdependence, continuous change, and responsibility for the consequences of action
  • Intention to live with positive values
  • Concentration to enable focus and calm
  • Effort to patiently persevere in the face of obstacles
  • Values based behavior that displays skillful speech, action, and livelihood.

The relationship among the strands is complex. But, not to worry, no need to analyze how it all works, unless that helps you to let go into experience. Keep it simple.
 
Intentions
To achieve your goals, begin with your intentions and expectations. Practice (e.g., meditation, behavioral change) delivers when intentions and expectations are meaningful and realistic. Otherwise, side effects like stress and anxiety get in the way. Let's look at how intentions magnify and focus the effects of meditation.
 
Mindfulness meditation is a means to the end to fulfilling intentions and goals. Some want to reduce stress, improve performance, make themselves happier and healthier, more resilient and adaptive, etc. Some want to better understand the way their mind works and to transform their behavior. Some have the intention of experiencing enlightenment, deep calm clarity, unconditional compassion, loving-kindness, contentment, joy. 
 
Mindfulness results in insight that dissolves the habits and beliefs that block these natural qualities and get in the way of optimal living.
 
Note that there is no conflict between improving performance, the psychological, and "spiritual" pursuits. They are interrelated. The intention to use meditation as a performance enhancer or feel-good technique – meditation as medication – can lead to the discovery of the psychological and spiritual possibilities – meditation for liberation. Intention may change with awareness of these possibilities.
 
What are your intentions and expectations?
 
Expectations
Unrealistic expectations cause unnecessary stress. Realistic expectations avoid it. Here are eight realistic expectations:
  • Old mental habits take time and effort to change
  • You can apply mindful awareness in everything you do, think, or feel
  • You can experience periods of calm clarity and flow
  • Patience, effort, and self-compassion are needed
  • You cannot stop your thoughts or feelings
  • You can change your relationship to your thoughts, so they lose their power
  • Mindfulness-based practices may produce anxiety and cause depression or anger by bringing unconscious disturbing thoughts and feelings to the surface and confronting dearly held beliefs with reality
  • You can use every obstacle as a source of learning, an opportunity for self-growth.

Relax
Meditation as the medication is great, but don't expect miracles. You can use meditative and cognitive techniques to de-stress and improve concentration. For example, taking a hot bath, listening to meditative music, physical exercise, repeating mantras, aphorisms, and prayers, breathwork, and letting the mind flow with sound and imagery, are skillful ways to take care of yourself. It is like using medication to soften symptoms, relax, feel better, and heal. Relaxed, you think more clearly and perform more effectively.
 
Defanging the Old Stressors
Mindful self-awareness results in a change to the relationship with one’s sense of self and to the thoughts and feelings that define it. As your relationship with them changes, stressors lose their impact. You become responsive rather than reactive. You stop automatically grasping at things you like, pushing away what you don't like, and ignoring everything else. You cultivate the right attitude: "accepting, observing, and learning from your experience just as it is." From Daily Tejaniya 11/6/2021
 
Mindfulness cuts the roots of stress and anxiety. It requires a relaxed effort with meditation, wisdom, intention, attitude, and behavioral change, which paradoxically leads to effortless experience as the practice becomes a natural part of your life.
 
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.