Boomer Ronin

This is an elegant technique from the field of energy psychology.  Its benefits generalize into a lot of areas.  Give it a try!

It’s All in the Details: A Game of Self-Discovery by Yaromil Fong-Olivares
Self-discovery may sound like an easy endeavor, but with the social pressure to consume and conform, it can be quite difficult. Nevertheless, no one says it should not be fun.
A little self-disclosure: I have always thought of myself as someone averse to paying attention to details. At the risk of sounding cliché, I prefer to look at the big picture. Recently, in an effort to improve my ability to stay in the present moment, I realized that in my personal life the details make the biggest impact in my happiness, growth and healing.
To play the game, document the details in your life. Notice the things in your life that cause a surge in your happiness. Document and analyze why the activity impacts you so profoundly. Below are examples from my own life. I completed the first three from my perspective. These activities are intended to get you started, but I encourage you to develop your own list also.
• Walking down the street I notice a mischievous child laughing as he attempts to let go of his mother’s hand (unsuccessfully). – Risk-taking and love of adventure.
• Walking in a store’s flower department I stop to admire and smell the roses and if available, the lavender. – Appreciation for beauty and pleasure.
• I search for a moving quote about a subject I am already thinking about; then I send it to my loved ones. – Community building and the need to connect.
Your turn:
• Treat yourself to a nice song. Listen deeply noticing tone, mood, and your response to the lyrics and rhythm of the song. Try closing your eyes to isolate the stimulus to your hearing.
• Smile at a stranger or when a stranger smiles at you, smile back.
• Buy yourself flowers.
• Get a manicure and let the manicurist choose a color she thinks would look good on you or if you are a regular customer ask her to choose a color she thinks you would like.
After completing the exercise – and yes this is probably the most important part of the game – ask yourself how, and if, you are upholding these values in your life now. Are you stimulating your adventurous spirit? Are you feeding your appreciation for beauty and pleasure? Once you figure this out, make a commitment to prioritize the activities that help you grow and live the life you desire.

By Yaromil Fong-Olivares

Obstacles
Obstacles remind us that we are unbreakable.

Unless we are physically ill or the obstacle is in the form of a person in our lives, most obstacles exist in our psyches. Consequently only we have the power to transform them into learning experiences. Obstacles are temporary because they don’t truly exist until we allow them to exist. With determination and creativity any obstacle can be transformed into a marvelous opportunity. Some common examples of obstacles turned into opportunities are: writing a memoir, engaging in public service, and sharing our experiences with others through public speaking.

Flexibility
When confronted by an obstacle, our spirit is like a rubber band; it is meant to stretch but not to break.
When we experience a block in our lives, the lowest phase of the experience is also the most crucial. During this phase we feel like the only viable option is giving up and hope is gone. The experience of deep suffering and pain is what I like to call the “moment of elasticity.” Our inner rubber band is stretched widely forcing us to regain control. These feelings are unpleasant but they add complexity and layers to our lives. We experience compassion for ourselves and inevitably learn to feel compassion for others. It is through compassion that we are able to find our way to our resiliency and discover a comfortable but challenging state of elasticity. The experience gives us VIP access into our immense capacity to stretch our hearts, minds, and souls and we begin to feel reconnected with ourselves.

Immediately after the “moment of elasticity” we access our vulnerabilities, strengths, and inner fire. We are able to rebuild ourselves and realize the need to make adjustments to our lives we were unaware of or unwilling to make prior to experiencing this particular block.

Toddlers
Consider approaching obstacles as if you were a toddler learning to walk. It takes many attempts. It involves falling down. It involves getting up. It often requires a tremendous amount of creativity since parents are usually watching us, attempting to protect us from the fall. It involves a lot of external pressures and almost always disappointing others. Despite all these variables we learn to walk and eventually run.

When you feel paralyzed by an obstacle ask yourself where you would be if, as a toddler, you had given up on learning to walk. Succumbing to feelings of disinterest, fear, inadequacy or even rationalizing other priorities are alluring distractions from tackling obstacles. The list of excuses is endless but all excuses in our lives can be challenged by the toddler within us. Run on and if you are not ready to run start by occasionally getting on your feet and allowing yourself to fall. Great feelings accompany standing up after falling.

Check out the whole movie when you can. Pam Slim, Michael Port, Justin Lukasavige, Chris Brogan, Janet Atkinson, John Carlton, and Hans Hageman & Associates, are some great places to start if you need or want to investigate the employment side of life as a masterless Samurai -- the Ronin. There is no better time.

I have never found regret to be a useful emotion. It’s tough to learn from regret and it prevents forward movement. If you can work yourself up to something a little stronger, like guilt or remorse, there may be some positive benefits – a necessary apology, or a change in behavior or a different approach for next time.

As Frank said, “Regrets? I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention.” I was able to figure something out when I practiced law and while not perfected, it has allowed me to lessen some of the kinds of regrets I hear too many people experiencing. Perhaps this is because of some really high self esteem but I like to hallucinate that it’s mainly because of a fairly regular values inventory.

We get our values from experience, family, role models, and various cultural/media messages. For the most part, they remain outside of our conscious awareness. Our values often change with context, age, and experience but I believe that people are happiest and most successful when they are able to establish “bedrock” values that aren’t contextual.

In some of my recent work with police officers I was interested in their answers in response to questions about their values. Like many of us, they hadn’t given too much thought to their personal values or to the values that are important to police work. In this line of work, if your personal values don’t line up/aren’t congruent with those of your job, the consequences can be extreme. It was a good discussion and the conversation was more honest and robust than it could have ever been with the board members and many senior staff at Boys & Girls Harbor.

Some of the questions I asked them are the questions I have asked myself at different times in my professional life:

• What’s really important to you?
• What motivates you to do what you do at work and for your family?
• What things, people, experiences do you feel you can’t live without?
• What do you get most excited about? When?
• In what areas of your life do you refuse to compromise?

After you answer these questions, ask yourself, “Do I live these answers?” Understand that when you don’t, you pay a price. It’s too simple to be described by single words but since we live in the land of McDonald’s, here are a list of some values that serve as my bedrock:

• Honesty
• Compassion
• Directness
• Freedom
• Truth
• Generosity
• Mastery
• Family
• Duty
• Sacrifice
• Knowledge
• Achievement

These aren’t in order of importance. Another interesting exercise is to rank them. Send me a comment or email if you want a post on this. What I do know, is that there was a conflict between my bedrock values and the people who were calling the shots at my job. I am grateful that they brought me back to awareness and I thank you all for joining me on my latest adventure.

Write me with examples in your life when your values came into conflict with the living (not espoused) values of your job.

Jai Ho!

Escape from Limboland

by: Yaromil Fong-Olivares

A lot has been written about the transition from college to career. It is a common belief that this transition marks a young person’s entrance into adulthood. Nevertheless, there are many young people who get stuck in the transition. We’ll call this Limboland. For many it is a lack of motivation. Yet for others, it is the need for structure, challenge or guidance. Due to their propensity to end up at under-resourced community colleges, confinement to Limboland tends to be associated with lower income students. However, although income is a contributing factor, Limboland is inclusive and there are many young people of means who are as disoriented as their lower-income peers, and also end up in this permanently transitory life stage.

For the most part, Limboland residents received mediocre grades in high school. While in high school they showed up for class but put in minimum effort. Some were chronic truants but were savvy enough to show up when it mattered most, like testing day. In many cases, this lack of effort and academic engagement was a result of early entrance into the workforce, involvement in athletics or other demanding activities that seem more important than class at the time. For some it was the ever-present teenage angst.

After graduating from high school, these young adults enter college (community and senior) with a false sense of hope, thinking they will finally find the passion and engagement that they lacked in high school. Or rather, taking a more passive role, they expect that such passion will serendipitously find them. As they struggle with staying interested in college life and academics, enthusiasm wears off and instead of finding a passion Limboland becomes more alluring. This is the crucial time when many students realize they lack academic preparation, study skills and family support. If they are to succeed they must now work much harder than their peers and with very limited support. While some do avoid Limboland by spending hours in tutoring or the writing center, many acquiesce into a life of Limbo. You may be thinking these are generalizations but the truth remains that if any of us looks around, we each know at least one of these limbo-dwelling young people. Rather than blaming or pointing the finger, I have some suggestions for a successful escape from Limboland.

Recently, I announced to my family and friends that I am pursuing a career as a life coach. After almost a decade of doing youth development and nonprofit management work, I am considering this my second life. I expected bewilderment and even skepticism. Instead, I received countless requests for life coaching sessions, and even gave some impromptu, urgent sessions as interviews and relationships needed quick intervention. I found this alarming and decided to explore it further. I spoke with various young people about this desire for life coaching. They all expressed a lack of drive, enthusiasm and concern for the delayed arrival of what they consider their “calling”, something they are passionate and excited about. “Like how you are excited about life coaching,” one young woman said. Another common complaint was the lack of challenge within their current jobs and academics. I thought to myself, these are all reasonable and thoughtful expectations. However, the truth remains that the young adults I am talking about are not over-achievers waiting to be recruited by top financial and legal firms. They are smart, yes, but they are also the ones that work full time at retail shops, rush home at midnight to complete homework due the next morning and sometimes use their limited income to pay someone to complete their assignments. From a survival standpoint, this is a savvy approach; albeit ironic since rather than learning themselves they are helping their peers become better equipped to become their future bosses.

In a society measured by standardized testing and ability to follow directions and structure, these young people are at a disadvantage. Or are they? I believe they are actually better positioned to find true meaning and achieve true financial independence from a society based on career hierarchies and overly corporate business practices.

The truth is that these young people are an untapped resource. I am not referring to the expected incorporation into the workforce. Rather, an untapped resource to themselves. Here is what I suggest: what if these young people who refuse to settle and follow a predetermined path (i.e. college, tuition debt, marriage, entry level jobs) really search within themselves and decide to follow their current passions. Granted, it may be an interest in fashion, dancing, video games, MTV, or even tattoos. To name a few of the things youth culture seems to be about nowadays.

One example is a young woman whom I spoke to for this piece. She was enrolled in a community college that she paid for out of pocket, sometimes with her mother’s help. After her third year, she was out of a job and her mother was out of patience waiting for her to receive a two-year degree. She also owed the college money. She eventually dropped out and got a part time job at a trendy clothing shop in Soho, New York City. She was making enough money to maintain her shopping habit and her weekend nightlife and still living at home.

A club promoter noticed her natural dancing abilities and decided to give her a try as a dancer at his dance club. No nudity or stripping, just sexy clothing and house music. Since she was a frequent patron she decided to give it a try. After a few months, she was dancing at various clubs and making up to $1000 a week (that’s 56K per year!), in addition to her part time job.

Now you are probably thinking, she will not be able to do this forever. True. She thought the same thing, which is why she decided to gather a few of her friends, who happen to also be waiting for that light bulb to turn on and show them the way to a perfect career. Together they formed a dancer collective. Currently, they are in the process of incorporating as an LLC and I suspect that they will develop a reputation for their unique business model. All business, including decision-making, is done as a collective and 20% of each dancer’s salary goes back into the business’ overhead.

The goal is to hire additional dancers as needed. Even if the business does not succeed long term, these young women are gaining invaluable experience in entrepreneurship, management, marketing, and networking. Better self-esteem, improved body image, developing troubleshooting and conflict-management skills are just a few other crucial benefits of this project.

So what’s your current passion? How do you spend your hard-earned money? When you are sitting at your desk, bored, answering the phones, what do you daydream about? Therein lies your untapped passion or potential light bulb switch. Call it what you wish, but trust yourself to turn it on. Everyone has a passion, and usually the first passion will lead to others, even if it takes you years to discover and many more years to commit to them.

If you are reading this, I encourage you to think through these questions. If you are truly open, more questions will rise and I guarantee they will lead you closer to your core passion, what you’ve been waiting for your entire life. Passion leads to fearlessness and determination. That combination will lead you to success. Escape from Limboland now, the world is waiting for you.