Belief Makers

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Several times today, I found myself liberally advising people to be curious.  I must admit that I am very generous with any advice that is resonating deeply with me in the moment.  I hope my conversation partners found it useful, but first and foremost, it's a reminder to me about how I want to position myself when facing things I don't yet understand.

One of our new volunteers shared with me her initial discomfort playing with Jay because she didn't know what to expect.  As she shared, I reflected that the more I know, the more I know I don't know.  Since I know I don't know, then I should expect to encounter situations in which I ... don't know.  In those situations, there are 3 options:

1. I will know what's going on at some point
2. I will never know what's going on
3. I will find out immediately what's going on.  

Now, if I don't want to know what's going on, we don't need to explore this any further. If I want to understand what's happening, my doing discomfort is really unhelpful.  Doing discomfort blocks all my creativity, my free thinking.  If I could even figure out what's going on by assessing the various factors, discomfort acts like a cataract, clouding my vision so I don't even see all I could see.

I've been thinking about the past 15 years married to my honey.  The first many years were spent with If you loved me you would work harder to do this or that that I want.  I faced the unfamiliar with judgements about its unfamiliarness.  Fear (is this thing going to last forever? How will I cope?) contributed to being really unclear about all the other facets to the situation, that would have helped my understanding tremendously.  Frankly, it took a few years to even admit that understanding wasn't my primary objective.  Getting my way was more my thing.  The difference between a few years ago and now is that individual events don't have the cataclysmic repercussions they once did.  I am better able to look at the event as it is, not projecting (too much) into the future, not making it mean something about me...  Just looking at it, curiously.


It's amazing what you will see if you look curiously at the things around you.  Actually, stop for a second, and look around your space right now.  I bet  you see something you hadn't noticed before, or perhaps hear something, or smell something.  Curiosity opens up a whole world!

I saw several meanings for curious when I looked it up in the dictionary.  I'm holding on to an active desire to learn or know.  I've done a fair amount of structured study, then much more self directed study on several topics.  One thing I know for sure is that I don't know for sure!  An active desire to learn means being open, being willing to look at things that don't make sense.  Active curiosity is comfortable with the presence of questions and the absence of answers, with the knowledge that any second now, some new awareness can suddenly appear (it was there all along, but that's another story).

So why do so many of us seem afraid of curiosity?  What is this constant message: Don't look, people will think blah blah blah.  Don't ask questions, mind your business. Is that part of the inner programming that has our eyes shuttered,  our ears muffled?  Did we buy the belief that curiosity killed the cat? Well, I'm not a cat, so...

I googled the phrase and found out that the original comment was 'care will kill a cat' referring to worry or sorrow.  Well that makes more sense.  Everyone knows worry will kill you!  No debate there!

So I'm learning to be curious about all kinds of things.  I'm even curious about myself, and my reactions to things like spit and a messy house. Next time you are in a situation that has some puzzling factors, try being curious about the factors in the situation.  Ask some 'how come?' and 'I wonder why..?' in that relaxed child looking under a stone kind of way.  Better yet, next time you feel yourself getting uncomfortable about the puzzle, get curious about your discomfort!

The western part of Europe has recently been influenced by the plume from a volcano in Iceland. The volcano is called Eyjafjallajökull, which seems to me more difficult to pronounce than Tuomenoksa! The power of this volcano is even more difficult to comprehend than its pronunciation. At this moment there is still more plume coming and we do not have the knowledge to stop it or to calculate the duration.

The last two days the sky has been blue, and every time I looked up in the sky, I could not detect the plume. It is hard to imagine that it is up there while I cannot see it, but I surely felt it because the temperature has dropped significantly.

The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull has given us, the western Europeans who are not used to tornados or earthquakes, a great opportunity to observe our reactions.

My first reaction:
My first reaction was fascination. I found this whole situation mind blowing (I mean this in a positive sense). I saw the pictures of the volcano and pictures of the plume and I was completely fascinated.

At the same time I felt at deep respect for these enormous powers. Mother Earth calling us.

My second reaction:
My second reaction was to be grateful for the opportunity for us to learn from this.

In the Danish news I watched a scientist explain how fabulous an opportunity this was: this plume is acting in similar ways to the reaction after an atomic bomb. It went higher and moved slower, but the patterns in which the particles moved were similar. This meant that the scientist, who is responsible for calculating the effects of an atomic bomb, had the possibility to test his models on questions like: What is the possibility that the plume reaches our country? If the plume reaches our country, when will this happen? How long will it take to pass the country? He creates projections for all the information you need in order to make and maintain evacuation plans.

How often do we judge events as bad when they can be seen as great learning opportunities? How can I ever judge an event as good or bad when I do not know the specifics of whom or what may benefit from this event?

My third reaction.
This reaction was the one, which surprised me the most. I realized that I have no idea of the greater impact my wishes have.

Today some people asked me to meditate on keeping the plume less than three kilometers high so that we could soon fly from Europe again. Earlier this weekend I heard that if it would start to rain then the plume would not raise as high and this would give us better chances of flying.

But what happens if the plume is low? What happens if it starts raining?

During the first days the volcano directly impacted only the people close to the volcano in Iceland. They have been keeping the animals indoor because there is too much powder on the ground and this can be harmful for the animals. When it has been raining people and animals stay inside since it could be harmful for the lungs. Now, if it starts raining here in Denmark, while the plume is above my country, we are also advised to stay indoors.

They say that Eyjafjallajökull is not very harmful, but it is close to the biggest volcano on Iceland and it seems possible that it can "wake up" this neighbor called Katla.

I don't know if the rain will have any influence on the possibility of waking up Katla, but I when I got the request of wishing for the plume to get lower my reaction was: how can I know if this will be more harmful, if it might influence the awakening of Katla?

My fourth reaction
My fourth reaction was how surprisingly calm I felt not knowing what would happen in the future.

Historically this volcano becomes active every 200 yrs. The last time it was active it lasted one and a half years (on and of). How long time will it last now?

Last time it was active no one bothered about airplanes! But if it stays active for that long this time, how would it influence our lives? No flights to the USA? Would we sail to Iceland to take a flight from there (in Iceland only eastbound flights are influenced)?

Will we start living with a different attitude? Like: if I can't fly today, then maybe tomorrow or next week? Will we invent aircrafts who are less sensitive to the plume or who can fly under it?

A short term effect has been friendly people offering people they don't know a long distance ride in their car, since trains and busses didn't have capacity to take all the people who missed their flights.

And there have been some beautiful sunsets...

I would love to hear your reaction to Eyjafjallajökull's activities or to experiences with earthquakes, tornados or....

Love Joy

Labels: all blogs, beliefs, joy vigh strand, mother nature, reactions

I thought the volcano eruption on Iceland wouldn’t affect me, but it did. This is a perfect opportunity for me to practice to choose happiness, to stay present, to focus on what I want and to stay positive.

First I got the news that the family I was going to work with got stuck on their holiday. So I thought, no problem, I’ll go home earlier. (I am in the UK for a two weeklong outreach journey)

I told the family to focus their energy on staying positive instead of worrying and so allowing everything to work out perfectly. This is so easy said to someone else! But then...

Then I booked a ticket for Tuesday, so I would be home three days early. The days moved along and Tuesday was getting closer, and the ashes were not disappearing. I noticed that I started to use some worrying thoughts, but was able to stop myself. This was another perfect situation. The universe gave me the opportunity to practice. So I decided to stay positive and go with the flow even when it became clear that I would not be able to fly on Tuesday!

I am really doing it! I am so amazed by myself! Me, who used to worry about everything all the time!

So, what is helping me?
• Prioritize feeling good, no matter what.
This is really cool. If we stop, take a moment and decide what we want to focus on in a situation we can really create our experience.

Labels: barbara balla, positive thinking, vulcano

My friend Jonathan's motto is, "How hard can it be?" Having developed everything from flight simulators to advanced telephony systems to chips that block epileptic seizures to devices that prevent heart attacks, Jonathan's motto has served him well and often confounded people around him. I find his motto incredibly useful, not only in what it helps me to accomplish, but also in how it shapes my thinking.

At the core of 'how hard could it be?' is the notion that things aren't as different as they may appear to be, that there are common themes that unite apparently disparate sets of activities, processes and systems. If you find these commonalities, you can take something that appears complex and difficult and make it simple.

In Any Key
For example, pretty much any music that you'll ever hear (all western music and much of contemporary eastern music) relies on just twelve notes. Just twelve little notes and hundreds of thousands of songs. Roughly speaking, songs are written in either a minor key (dark and sad) or a major key (bright and happy). So, 12 notes time 2 keys gives you 24 possibilities for any song.
Typically, songwriters compose songs in keys that are easy for them to sing or perform. A singer will adjust the key of the song so that the notes match her vocal range. Many guitar players will select a key that's easy to play on a guitar. However, if someone else is going to perform the song, they may want to do so in a key other than the one in which it was written. This requires that the song be 'transposed', moved from one key to another.
If the song were written in the key of A and the singer wanted to sing it in the key of C (which is three steps higher), then all the chords in the song would need to be adjusted by three steps; an A would become C, a D would become F, a C#minor would become E minor, and so on. If you're a pianist who accompanies singers, then doing this kind of transposition is commonplace and for many, quite challenging. Essentially, as you play you perform a kind of musical math in your head, transposing the chord you see on the page to the one that needs to be played.
For me, transposing has always been really easy and people often wonder how I can hear a song, play it, and then begin to play it in whatever key the performer wants. Once I've got the song, I can play it in any key, without even thinking about it.

Now, here's the 'how hard could it be' part: I never actually transpose.
Instead, I learn the song in a manner that is key-less. Rather than hearing an A followed by a C# minor followed by a D followed by an E, I simply hear the first chord of the scale followed by the third chord of the scale followed by the fourth chord followed by the fifth chord. A-C#-D-E becomes 1-3-4-5.

Since I never learn the song in a key in the first place, so I never need to transpose it. I just go from key to key playing 1-3-4-5. There aren't twelve keys nor twenty-four keys; there's just one.

Why We Make Things So Complex
One of the biggest contributors to 'making things harder than they actually are' is branding. Now, I'm not just talking about Pepsi versus Coke, or Microsoft versus Apple, or Republican versus Democrat types of branding. I'm talking about the apparent need of so many to have something uniquely identified as their own creation, invention or discovery. People will latch on to small nuances among otherwise identical situations and call it something. By calling it something, they shift the focus from the multitude of common threads to the isolated exceptions.

This phenomenon seems to be most pronounced in academic circles where one has to simultaneously prove orthodoxy (showing comprehensive understanding of and adherence to the tenets of the field) while providing novel insights and discoveries. The result is making much ado about nothing.

For example, the phrases autism, autism spectrum, and pervasive developmental delay are more brands than they are descriptions of specific conditions or sets of conditions. In fact, one might argue that as descriptions, they're pretty terrible (what exactly is autism?), but as brands they've become quite powerful (more people have a strong response to the word autism than can tell you exactly what it is). Even the phrase Asperger syndrome is named for the Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger who, in 1944, described children in his practice who lacked nonverbal communication skills, demonstrated limited empathy with their peers, and were physically clumsy.

So, on the one hand, you have strong brand recognition of autism (and many of its variants) and very little understanding of what autism actually is (almost all treatments are based on interplay with symptoms not core causes). To top it off, you have all sorts of autism treatment protocols whose purveyors are trying to distinguish themselves in the market with branding.

All this mitigates against understanding and effective results.

To be sure, there are differences among various forms of anything. However, most of the differences are not pronounced and certainly not inherent to the brands

Solve Anything, Solve Nothing
In the movie This is Spinal Tap, a mach documentary about a fictitious legendary rock band, the band's leader, David St. Hubbins, has just been handed a copy of the band's latest release, an all black album jacket with no text or photos. His manager tries to explain why an all black album is a great idea comparing it to the Beatle's White album. St. Hubbins comments:
There's a fine line between making something impossible and making it easy. It all comes down to how complex you make the problem, how you frame it. If you spend your time enumerating differences and isolating nuances, then you'll probably be able to make anything impossible. If you look for common threads and filter out insignificant details, then you can do pretty much anything.

Einstein said, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler."

I'm not advocating oversimplification; however, in a world where so many 'experts' have a vested interest in the complexity of their areas of expertise, it's not likely that you'll find the simple answer there.

The best source for answers is you. Listen to what the experts have to say, do your research, read and study. Then ask yourself, "How hard can it be?"

Happy Monday!
Teflon

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

Faith wrote a blog yesterday that inspired my mind to think about lots of different things. And instead of putting in a comment, I thought it might be fun just to write a response in a blog article. So this one is especially for you, Faith!

I might run out of time halfway, but hey I will just start and see where it brings me!

My waterfall
I remember the time where I was not able to express myself clearly to others. I used to keep everything in my head and I would not let the stream of thoughts come out often. When it would come out it would be a lot and very fast, confusing the people around me! Like a waterfall my thoughts would spout into the depths, and then the waterfall would dry up again and it would get really, really quiet.

Then I learned that my judgments were the reason that the waterfall would stop flowing. Every time I was judging my judgments the waterfall would dry up. I believed judgments were really, really, really bad! They were so bad that I would deny that I had judgments at all, and I actively would avoid expressing judgments which would block the stream of words coming from the waterfall.

"You are a nice person, you are an amazing woman, you are a big complainer, you stink, that place is beautiful, that place is horrible, those people are smart, I am stupid, you are difficult, he doesn’t think, that is a bad thing to do" where thoughts I actively suppressed.

Looking back it is so easy to understand why I did this. I was judging people who did express these kind of thoughts (even if I agreed with them) and because I wanted to be different then them, I decided to stow these thoughts away under the soil. And if I said things like that myself, I would actively judge myself too.

I think that one of the reasons for judging my judgments was, that I got confused about when judgments seemed to be appropriate and when not. If you have ever been in a group of women, you know the double messages. They see an unknown woman walk by and comment on how the person looks and how she acts. This judging seems appropriate. But then, when two friends do the same about a third friend, this is inappropriate and can create a drama that will last for a long time!

I also felt disappointed by judgments others seem to put onto me while raised in a family where alcohol and other challenges were part of daily life. I wanted support and I got judgment and started to see judgments as BAD!

Expectations - Disappointment
If expectations are met, we are happy, if the expectations are not met we are disappointed.

Grateful I am for the lesson that I got growing up: Fulfillment of expectations by others does not say anything about their love for you or your love for them. I know my parents love me deeply, and I love them deeply, but we for sure have not fulfilled the expectations we have from each other.

I did lots of frustration growing up about all the expectations that didn't get met. My parents who were not there to trust upon when I thought they should be there, my friends who were not my friends because they didn't support me at the moments I did expect them to be there. My lovers who didn't grow into the relationship in the way I had expected to.

Over time I learned that you can love someone and someone can love you, but that what you will get from that love relationship, might not ever meet your expectations. Especially, when you do not tell the person about your expectations, the change big you do not get what you want!

I want to write so much more, but in five minutes I have to run out to go to the playroom, so I have to somehow create a quick finish here:

Nowadays I see myself more as a river with a waterfall. The relationships I create are like animals drinking from my river, the land touching my river, and other rivers flowing around where our paths may cross. Some contacts small and quick, others solid like rock and last for a long time. All have an impact on my life. I don’t know what the animals, the land or the rivers expect from me, and they do not know what I expect from them, except when our waterfalls meet and we talk. At these moments our streams may run together, or go again different ways, and all is fine!

Love is acceptance of what's there, not of what will come or has been.

Labels: iris tuomenoksa

Labels: faith clarke, love

Wow, that race on Sunday was something! A gorgeous day, and more than 1700 people came out to run this beautiful trail along the coast. The 10 K was along a path that was a lot less flat than I had anticipated and the run was challenging for me.

Especially because in my enthusiasm I forgot to take my inhaler before the run and after the first 200 feet my muscles started screaming, "Where is the oxygen"?!

But I made it all the way till the end, and my lovely accompany too! Teflon decided to run the race with me. He is a biker and trains every day, so he is in good shape. But halfway the race his run muscles decided not to cooperate any longer, and the last part of the race he moved over the trail like a little penguin.

Congrats Tef, for going all the way till the end and thank you so much for supporting me!

Recovery
Now we are three days after the run and I already did one following up run of 5.5 miles and I am following my schedule working towards my next goal: half a marathon. I have not had a set back from the race (in opposite: I feel great) and Mark also has recovered properly! Isn't that fabulous?

It makes me think about recovery times. The whole running experience gives me a new insight in recovery times after you really challenge your body and what a difference that makes if the body is trained or not. And I can feel the difference for me. It's not that long ago that after a two-mile run I had to do a nap, before I could start the rest of the day, and now I need water and food and then I can go on.

So, seeing that this is the way it works with running, I want to pull this knowledge into other an area: working to become happier. Last week I was going to do a dialogue with a new person and we discussed beforehand what a dialogue is, how it works, how it would help her. And when we talked about finding and changing beliefs I told her that the more she practices, the faster she starts to see which beliefs she has in place that lead to unhappiness, and can then start changing them. I told her that the more you do it, the shorter the time frame of unhappiness will be. On a given moment you will say: "oh no, that thought will lead me to unhappiness, let me make another decision instead".

If you train your body and mind to be in excellent shape, you can experience very short recovery times and you will have a lot more time to spend in the way you would like.

Do you recover easily? Or do you hold on? In which areas do you recover fastest? In which areas do you recover very slow?

Labels: beliefs, iris tuomenoksa, marathon

Labels: beliefs, kathy decastro, travel

I mentioned last week that Jaedon has a new fascination with spit.  He collects it in his mouth, filling up his cheeks until he has a natural fish face.  He swishes it around in his mouth, making the most interesting noises.  He often wants to speak, and finding his mouth full, he then hums the words.  Sometimes he even tries to speak.... though it is not much clearer than humming.  Sometimes he starts to giggle and spit comes trickling, or gushing out.

It was about a year ago that I first started writing about my journey in the world of loving acceptance, and the nudge that drooling  was for me.

I'm fanatical about smells. My mom works in a home for people with significant physical and developmental challenges.  Many of her clients are in wheel chairs, with feeding tubes.  None of them speak.  I visited her at work one day.  One of the first things I noted was the smell.  It wasn't the 'nothing' smell of an ordinary home.  It wasn't the warm fragrant smell of food and other pleasantries.  It wasn't even a bad smell, like garbage or poop.  It was an odd smell of stale disinfectant and other cleaners.  Many body fluids of various sorts were emitted throughout the day and cleanup was a steady ritual.  Whenever Mummy got home in the evenings, she   disrobed and took all her clothes to the laundry room, showered and washed her hair.  The smell of her  job was now in the laundry room.

When Jay was about 4 and still not anywhere close to being potty trained, I remember deciding that no matter what, he wouldn't smell.  I am a fastidious changer of pull-ups, an over-user of wipes and all kinds of cleaning agents and essential oils.  I can become discombobulated if I return home after a day away, and there is anything but the smell of childhood coming from Jay's direction.

Now, the science of pee and poop smell management I have down pat.  Spit now, was totally something else.

After years of learning to see things in new and different ways, it's as if there is an argument going on in my mind.  I can easily think of 3 possible wonderful things happening with Jay as he holds spit in his mouth:

• He's increasing his muscle tone
• Circulation in his mouth area is increasing so his lips are much less dry, almost pink
• He may be stimulating saliva production and this may be helping with digestion

Labels: autism, faith clarke, parenting, smells

Every Friday until November 7, 2010 you will find entries from a series written by Iris about her training to run the New York marathon in 2010. It is something she never aspired to do; she has never run a distance of more than two kilometers in her life. In this series she describes her adventures and how she works on her beliefs to transform her challenges and successes into one great experience.

Hello everyone,

Before I start my rant about my running, I want to direct you to a blog from an amazing writer with a son on the spectrum. Her blog is called Zen Master Quinn. Her newest article made us laugh and cry. It is so fabulously written that I don't want you to miss it. So click the link and enjoy.

If you want to support Jenny's writing, you can become a member of her blog and let her know her musings (I would call them art) are appreciated!

This weeks update...
Tomorrow I will run my first 10K and to my surprise I feel prepared! Over the last two to three weeks I have been able to start running again properly, and I have been able to slowly build up the miles. I have not yet been able to run a full 10K, but I have been able to do a combination of running and walking, so I feel confident that I will reach the finish line! Tomorrow is Teflon's birthday and he might even run with me! Awesome, isn't it!

As a way to celebrate my accomplishments so far, I decided to review some of my beliefs and compare them with where I started two-and-a-half months ago.

Running is Healthy
You might thinking. 'Of course running is healthy! Well duh!', but that is not how I saw it. If I ever saw a person running, I would think, "That cannot be good for you. Stressing out your heart, making your blood pump so fast. Those people are going to die some day because they burned themselves out!"

REALLY! That was what I would think. Now, after a couple of months of training, I notice that I breath better, that my skin is softer, that I have a greater appetite for more active things. After having cursed my gym teachers forever because they "forced" every kid to run two kilometers, I am now grateful that they tried. Yes they did. But I didn't want to listen!

Running Makes Me Breathe Better
Time will give me a better perspective, because I have allergy related asthma and the season is only starting, but I must say that without the allergies around my breathing has become much better. I was never someone who had asthma attacks where you cannot breath from one moment to another. Instead, my breathing gets worse over time and my breathing becomes less and less deep.

Because it happens over time, it is not very noticeable. I get more tired and think less clearly, but hey, we all have those days once in a while... not! So, when I was working at Harvard, I decided to visit my doctor. I told him that I wanted to have my breathing checked and when he did, he was surprised about the result. Wow, not enough air to make a baby breathe! No wonder I felt tired! Since then, I am one of the "lucky" people who have an inhaler that I use on a "if needed" basis. And I must say, I have not had to use it a lot lately.

Running Gives Me Longtime Health Benefits
I decided that running is not only helping me with short-term things like breathing and softer skin, but it will also improve my health at old age. Some of you may know that I have signed up for at least 93 years and I want to bring them through in good health. I really have lots and lots of plans for the years to come and would rather not delay them because of health issues. I really believe that active people age later and are in overall better health. I want to be one of those women of 80 that is still running around, doing her daily things as though she were 38.

Running Outside is So Nice!
I didn't realize how much different running outside would be compared to a treadmill. You feel the wind; you smell the odors of the places you pass; you hear the sounds of moving animals or cars. People wave at you; birds fly with you; dogs greet you.

To Run, You Have to Balance Your Mind with Your Body
I never understood that my body consists of different systems that are regulated independently. For example, at this point I believe that I got my first injury because I over trained the muscle in my leg. I believed that when my breathing became better, I could run further and harder. I didn't understand that my muscles have their own training regimen that is independent from my breathing. Now I know that my lungs adapt faster to further distances than my muscles, and that I have to say at a certain point, "Hey stop, no more miles today".

I have to take care of my body.

Running is Fun
Can you believe it? It is something I now look forward to. I am enjoying it. I am even reading about it. I am looking up what other people do, reading tips and browsing race opportunities. It is fun! What a total switch from when I started in January.

I am looking forward to starting 9-mile runs! This is a crazy one. I cannot yet do 9 miles, and I must tell you, 9 Berkshire miles are challenging with all the hills here. Still, I am looking forward to that day that I will be dropped in Great Barrington and then run home.

I am looking forward to it! Can you believe it! Maybe it is because I know that at the end of that day I will be so satisfied. Because it means I have reached a level that I want to be at until I am very old!

OK, there are many more beliefs I could type up right now, but it's time to get moving! Speak to you all again after my first 10K experience. Have a healthy weekend!

Iris

Labels: beleifs, empowerment, iris tuomenoksa, marathon

Over the past couple of months, I've come to realize how few people actually know what the heck they're talking about. It's taken me a while to accept this realization as I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt (understatement) and there are so many people who are capable of conducting syntactically flawless conversation without ever having a clue as to what they've said. Nonetheless, I think it's time that we do something about it.

This Internet Thing
I was working at AT&T when the executives of the company finally decided that this Internet thing wasn't just a passing fad and that, as a communications company, they might actually need to address the burgeoning Internet market. AT&T was structured as a large bureaucracy with hords of minions and middle managers who were still reading and responding to email using paper; their secretaries would print the email, they would scribble their responses on the paper and their secretaries would type the responses.

Suddenly, everyone at Bell Labs who knew anything about the Internet was asked to educate the bureaucratic masses on what the Internet was, how it worked and what it meant to them and their customers. People gobbled up 'for dummies' books on all things Internet. Meetings were called, task forces created, and everyone started using also sorts of Internet-related words and phrases.

At one of our biggest customer conferences (where each customer represented many millions of dollars of annual business), I helped prepare a speech for one of the executives who would present AT&T's plans for Internet-based business services. Throughout her speech, she had pause to allow time for rousing applause and cheers as customers enthusiastically embraced and endorsed the company's grand vision for Internet services. As she walked off the stage, those of us who had helped her prepare congratulated her on a great presentation. She responded, "I don't know what I said, but they sure seemed to like it!"

The audience response did not go unnoticed. Before you know it, everyone seemed capable of delivering rousing speeches without a clue.

Pod Speak
As the Internet 'strategy' developed, I would attend meetings (more accurately depicted as convocations) where the agenda would bounce along like the ball at a kids' soccer match. Absurd propositions would be put forth with nary an eyelash batted. Intractable conclusions would be reached without anyone voicing an objection or pointing out the 'then a miracle occurs' steps. The business executive who had brought me into these meetings asked me to observe, but not to say anything. He would later ask me to tell him in private what I thought.

At one particularly delusional meeting, I finally raised my hand to voice a comment. The meetings were not ones in which people raised hands; instead, anyone wishing to speak would wait for dead air or simply interrupt. After a few minutes, the woman running the meeting determined that my hand would likely not descend until she asked what I had to say. In a room full of executives clad in Giorgio and Hugo, I stood up in my T-shirt and jeans, and began talking about the various conclusions that had been reached and the relative likelihood of success. I believe I might have used the phrase, "we'll have time travel before then" or something like that.

I spoke for just a few minutes providing some clarification on what was and what was not the Internet, how the business model was different than charging 20 cents a minute for a phone call, and so on. Then I sat down.

After a few moments of silence, I was thanked for my comments. The executive who had brought me in was bestowed an evil eye from the meeting's organizer, and the meeting ramped up again to full pod-speak.

The Execution
After the meeting, I stood outside the conference room taking in the imperial majesty of AT&T corporate headquarters one last time. As I stood there, one of the senior executives walked up to me and asked if I'd accompany him to his office. I said, "Uhmm... sure..." wondering if they did 'wet' work at AT&T. We walked into his office (the kind with its own bathroom and where the secretary had a secretary) and he began to ask me questions about the Internet: not convoluted, high-level questions, but basic nuts-and-bolts questions.

I answered. The more I answered, the more he asked. As we proceeded, I noticed a stack of Wired magazines on his credenza and I started to relax a bit. It seemed that he actually wanted to understand the Internet, not just to know what to say and when to say it.

We talked for about three hours after which he asked to me to attend all sorts of meetings and to speak up whenever I felt like it.

Not Everyone Was Happy
When I showed up at the next meeting, I was greeted with an interesting mix of quizzical expressions and sideways whispers. The meeting's organizer quickly approached me, but then noticed the executive who'd invited me beckoning her with outstretched palm and motioning fingers.

I had become part of the business group of AT&T and was no longer just a researcher.

Pervasive Cluelessness
Lately, I've started to notice more and more cases of aggravated cluelessness. I'm sure whether I'm simply becoming better at diagnosing what's been there all along or if there's been a significant increase.

While picking up some batteries at Radio Shack, I overheard the manager telling a customer about the new Sprint mobile phone plan. He mentioned that Sprint works everywhere that Verizon works (as Sprint has a deal with Verizon) and that the Sprint plan is much cheaper.

Since we rely on Verizon Wireless for everything from telephones to our home Internet connection (we can't get cable or DSL where we live), I asked him if the data capabilities on the Sprint phones worked with the Verizon EVDO high-speed data services. This was a question to which there were three acceptable answers: "yes", "no" and "I don't know". After five minutes of buzz words and references to 3G versus 4G, he stopped, looking at me to see if he'd satisfied my request. I told him that I'd understood everything he'd said, but was pretty confident that he'd not answered what I'd asked.

Shotgun or Rifle?
As I've learned more about autism and its treatment, I've started to realize that Pod-speak is perhaps as pervasive and insidious as it had been at AT&T. For years, there has been no foundational theory or blueprint of the physiological basis of autism; instead, treatments have been developed on a trial-and-error basis; a technique or approach is tried and changes are measured symptomatically.

In the absence of a foundational theory, if you want to start helping people right away, then trial-and-error is the way to go. However, if you're using trial-and-error where your only metrics are symptomatic, then you want to be really disciplined in attribution and tracking of what works and what doesn't.

Unfortunately, although a lot of empirical research has been conducted on the causes of autism, most of the work in autism treatment has been conducted outside the lab, or worse, by PhD's in psychology. What you end up with is fuzzy notions of what works and what doesn't, but no exacting specification of techniques and methods. It's somewhat akin to going a doctor who, not knowing exactly which pill will cure what ails you, prescribes a regimen of 100 pills to be taken daily. She knows that something about the combination works, but she can't pinpoint it.

Similarly, if someone prescribes an all encompassing and pedantic regimen designed to help you a person with autism, it's likely that they simply don't know what they're talking about it. It's not that the regimen won't work per se; it's not that they're ill-intended; it's just that they don't know specifically what works and what doesn't, so they prescribe the whole thing.

The problem is that you can end up in a situation where the burden of doing everything just so you can accidentally get to the something that's working often mitigates against doing anything.

What to Do?
I'm not sure why people seem so keen on being perceived as knowing what they're talking about, but it does seem to have reached epidemic proportions. But fear not, there are things that each of us can do to help.

First, if you ever find yourself saying something so as to sound 'smart' or to not be found out, where the easiest answer is simply to say, "I don't know", then repeat after me... I DON'T KNOW. Say it loud. Say it proud. Say it often. You'll feel better. You really will.

Second, if you ever suspect that someone is saying things that they don't fully understand or about which they're clueless, ask them about it. If they throw up the defenses, thank them for their help and move on.

Third, if you've embraced I DON'T KNOW, then you're perfectly positioned to begin learning and discovering on your own. Surely you can gather lots of data by googling and reading; however, don't confuse collecting data with drawing conclusions. Once you've read and talked and discussed, step back and build your own conclusions one step at a time. If there are missing steps, then conduct your own experiments noticing what works and what doesn't. You'll be amazed at all you can figure out on your own.

Fourth, if you really want to rely on the conclusions of someone else, then ask lots and lots of questions.

In the end, clueless is an artifact of neglect, not stupidity.

Have a thoroughly clued-in Friday!

Teflon

Labels: all blogs, autism, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

Last week I walked into the bridal shop to try a dress for my girlfriend's wedding in the summer.  This particular shop seems to have the market share for brides, bridesmaids and prom going teens in the area.  Everyone went there.  I walked in, told the customer service rep. the bride's name, and was encouraged to browse because 'Susan' (name changed to protect the guilty) was going to serve me.

I have to admit a few things.  My heart dropped when I recognised Susan to be a Jamaican woman.  My belief that customer service from Jamaicans is less than desirable immediately came to the surface.  I ought to know.  I'm Jamaican.  It's not that all Jamaicans give poor service, but let's say that the reputation exisits (See Misery's West Indian Restaurant).  This is not a sociological treatment of the whys and where-with-alls of the situation.  This is just me exploring the effects of my belief.


Enough said about that.  By the time I left the store, I was mad at the owners for treating their monopoly with little care, mad at the customer service person for putting me, a Jamaican woman, to be served by the other Jamaican woman in the store, mad at Susan for being inatttentive.... With the uncomfortable irritation present, I started to ask mysefl the questions.  Why was I so mad?  Several thoughts came to mind, but the thought path I was most attracted to was this one:

• I expected Susan to give poor service
• Susan treated me as I expected
• I didn't get what I wanted (which I didn't expect...hmmm)
• I judged her for not giving me what I wanted
• I compared myself with her, and determined that my customer service is not like hers! (so I need to judge something as bad to see what I do as useful and beneficial?)
• My negative judgement of her justified my anger
• If I got angry enough, it would give me courage to say something to someone about the service

Just looking at it, I saw how not helpful, even tedious, most of those responses were.  First, by expecting the service to be poor, I set the stage for the judgement.  I didn't position myself as a loving, accepting presence.  As I think about it now, what if I had put Susan in my mental playroom?  How would I have responded to her?  What if I engaged her with the thought that she is doing the best she can given whatever she is believing right now, and I can just cheer her on, celebrate (internally) the 70% of her service that was useful and be grateful?

As I write this, I realize that Susan is just an example of my response when I don't get my way.  I have also been getting pretty angry with the children, too.  Their explorations and enthusiasm to act out whatever comes to mind has not been met with much celebration by me.  Dog-gone-it! They should just do things my way! Forget the lofty ideals. My conversation to them sounds very similar to the tantrums they throw...

Yet, as I reposition mysslf mentally, they are such wonderful kids, eager to learn and explore.  I can lose grumpy and take gratitude!  It's just a switch of the gears.

Labels: angry, beliefs, faith clarke, grateful

I guess you could say that my life is pretty busy. We had friends visiting over the weekend and spent the whole time talking, playing music, hiking, eating and drinking.

Since I usually spend a lot of time over the weekend catching up with all the things I 'intended' to do over the week, I got up at 4:00 on Monday morning to play a little catch up. I wrote my blog, coded a bunch of software, worked out, went out and bought a car, went to some meetings, wrote a white paper, and then drove to New Jersey to have dinner with Jonathan, getting to bed at around 1:30.

Tuesday, I got up early and headed to the offices at Angel Medical Systems to catch up with the folks I've been working with and to sketch out the requirements for a new project. After meeting with everyone and flying through my email, I jumped back into the car and headed up to the Berkshires for band rehearsal. I walked back into the house around 10:00PM and spent some time with Iris and our friend Rebbecca who showed up Monday just before I left for New Jersey.

Today looks to be, well, really busy. I love my life.

Shooting from the Hip
While in New Jersey, I sat at lunch with Jonathan and Rich, one of the guys with whom I work quite frequently. Rich is a really sweet man who's also very cautious. He carefully considers all his words. He likes to collect as much data as possible before making a decision. When you ask Rich a question, he'll often spend five minutes providing background and qualifying his answer before actually stating it.

Jonathan is Rich's boss's boss. In terms of being cautious, he is pretty much Rich's opposite. Jonathan will carefully consider his words, but it's usually a bit after he's said them. Being super busy, he makes decisions with as little information as possible. He's good at answering questions with just one word.

So, as we sat at the table, I asked Rich, "What's one thing that you would change about Jonathan's management style."

Rich looked a bit like a deer caught in the headlights (so to speak), but he went for it. He started... stopped... started... stopped... and then closed his eyes carefully considering how to answer the question. He prefaced his answer with qualifications indicating that he'd not spent enough direct time with Jonathan to provide a good answer and that he felt a little uncomfortable with providing an answer given the fact that Jonathan was his boss's boss.

When he did finally get to his answer, it was really good and insightful. He said that he felt as though Jonathan often put him and others on the spot in meetings, that Jonathan sometimes made him feel stupid. As he said this, he was really clear that it wasn't what Jonathan said that made him feel stupid; it was how he was responding to it. He stayed focused on specifics. His response was really good and earnest.

Jonathan then explained why he conducts meetings the way he does. He has very little time and lots of questions to be answered. He listens to people's responses only long enough to know what his next question is. He then interrupts and asks it. He moves things along quite quickly; it's a style that allows him to accomplish all he needs to accomplish.

Jonathan explained to Rich that, if you want to accomplish a lot of things quickly, then it's important to be comfortable making decisions with less information than you might like to have. It was a really great exchange, and Rich, despite his discomfort, was open and engaged.

Chained to the Music
Rehearsal last night was with a new band that I'm really excited to be playing with. We're developing a really funky kind of R&B sound with an amazing young singer accompanied by bass, drums, guitars and horn section. My friend Scott (whom I've mentioned before) is playing trumpet along with me playing sax.

We have an upcoming gig for which we don't have quite enough original material. So, last night we started working on some cover tunes. We did some Michael Jackson and some Marvin Gaye and some Donna Summer. Really awesome music.

Normally, I would write out all the horn parts for Scott as he 'needs' to see the music in order to play it. However, there'd been no time over the past few days to prepare the music, so last night, I simply made up the parts as we went along. I would play a line for Scott that he would listen to and then play back to me. Once he had it, I would add the harmony and off we would go.

Now, since Scott 'needs' sheet music, you might imagine that this would have been a rather long a laborious task as I spoon-fed each note to Scott. It wasn't. In fact, in most cases, I would play a line once and Scott would immediately play it back. Not only that, but as I added inflections and sforzandos and crescendos, Scott would track them completely, in real time. For a guy who can't play by ear, he was absolutely amazing.

What's Your Bias
Each of us enters the world with thousands of biases. Some are biased towards shooting from the hip and others towards careful preparation. Some of us are biased toward reading music to play it and others towards hearing music to play it. Some of us are biased towards staying in the same situation for decades and others towards changing everything all the time. Some are biased towards their left hand, some their right.

As we grow, our biases become more pronounced. Sometimes, it's simply because doing things one way comes more easily than the other. Sometimes it's because we get more of what we want one way than the other. Sometimes it because we're trained one way versus another. Still, after ten, twenty, thirty or forty years, the biases can be so strong that we no longer see them as such; we start to see our biases as 'just who we are'.

As I think about Rich and Scott, I also think about some of the discussions we've had over the past couple of days and the role of bias. For example, in Joy's More Reflections on Burning Bridges, the question really isn't one of whether or not to burn bridges, it's a question of recognizing your bias. Are you someone who's is afraid to let go of relationships or someone who is afraid to hang on to relationships? In regard to Making Commitments and Other Bad Ideas, it's really a question of a bias: translating commitments into judgment-laden obligation or casually making commitments that you never intend to fulfill.

I think it's a great exercise to recognize and consider balancing our biases. As for me, it's always been so much easier just to hear and play that I still can't read piano music. I think I'm going go buy a book of classical pieces and learn to read.

Biasedly, Teflon

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

Every Friday until November 7, 2010 you will find entries from a series written by Iris about her training to run the New York marathon in 2010. It is something she never aspired to do; she has never run a distance of more than two kilometers in her life. In this series she describes her adventures and how she works on her beliefs to transform her challenges and successes into one great experience.

Labels: all blogs, iris tuomenoksa, make belief, marathon