The Power of Conviction

Today was a busy day, comprised of interviews and prepping for upcoming leadership development programs. A thought that I could not help but contemplate through the day was that leadership is based significantly on the willingness of a person to live by the strength of one's convictions. Paying mere lip service to this reality is entirely different from living its precepts. The mettle required to tie one's success in life to one's fortitude of will appears to be substantial, however not an impossible goal. Now the question is how does one go about getting this done?

Cultivating Resilience
Challenging curriculum and educational strategies nurture the seed of resilience within learners. Cultivating environments which require learners to think in critical ways provides them a solid foundation from which to address life’s challenges. Problem based learning (PBL) is a powerful tool in an educator’s arsenal.

Excerpt from: The Power of We

You have not ended your sorrow, and you want to find enlightenment.

You can sit in the right posture with your back straight, breathing correctly, do pranayama and all the rest of it for the next ten thousand years, and you will be nowhere near perceiving what truth is, because you have not understood yourself at all, the way you think, the way you live. You have not ended your sorrow, and you want to find enlightenment. You can do all kinds of twists and turns with your body and this seems to fascinate people, because they feel it is going to give some power, some prestige. Now, all these powers are like candles in the sun; they are like candle light when the brilliant sun is shining.

Krishnamurti in India 1970-71 - 55

The Brink of Knowledge and Learning

Tranquil cords drip endlessly from fingertips caressing passionate strings of heartfelt sentiments, condiments of the soul. Foretold moments of majesty between valleys of melancholy, it is folly to believe that an escape lies in wait. For more is in store beyond what we might call the brink sink not into an endless abyss, but link to all that exists in time. Sublime destinies are one in the same, one in the vein. Beyond perception's veil, she sets sail upon the stream of intuition and feeling, struggling to understand this thing called life. She reveres its majesty yet she knows she is more…beyond the shore of infinity's embrace; she sets pace with the pristine and the timeless….

Can one not exist with the other?...

Can one find peace in the midst of discomfort? Is it possible to find a state of joy in the center of pain? Does the presence of one mean the nullification of the other? The mature mind may be the one which views the two realities as coexistant and embracing them both as such.

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To understand one habit is to open the door to understanding the whole machinery of habit

So, I must first understand the futility of resistance or effort in breaking a habit. If that is clear, what happens? I become aware of the habit - fully aware of it. If I smoke, I observe myself doing it. I am aware of putting my hand in my pocket, bringing out the cigarettes, drawing one from the package, tapping it on my thumbnail or other hard surface, putting it in my mouth, lighting it, extinguishing the match, and puffing. I am aware of every movement, of every gesture, without condemning or justifying the habit, without saying it is right or wrong, without thinking, 'How dreadful, I must be free of it,' and so on.

I am aware without choice, step by step, as I smoke. You try it next time, that is, if you want to break the habit. And in understanding and breaking one habit, however superficial, you can go into the whole enormous problem of habit: habit of thought, habit of feeling, the habit of imitation - and the habit of hungering to be something, for this too is a ha bit. When you fight a habit, you give life to that habit, and then the fighting becomes another habit, in which most of us are caught.

We only know resistance, which has become a habit. All our thinking is habitual, but to understand one habit is to open the door to understanding the whole machinery of habit. You find out where habit is necessary, as in speech, and where habit is completely corruptive.

Krishnamurti Collected Works, Vol. XIII - 204

The Germ of Defeat

The mature mind knows that the germ of defeat lies in every selfish thought.

-Charles Haanel

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Train the mind by training the body

It is midnight I am still up……

My body still aches from the jog I went on previously in the day. As I ran, my mind thought about the conditioning regiments athletes put themselves through. These regimens are often discussed as not only a conditioning of the body but of the mind as well. The fact that rigorous training builds mental toughness is almost axiomatic in the sports realm. The ancient Samurai Musashi identified that the reason warriors are fierce is because their training is fierce.

In the education realm, we would call this "toughness", persistence. Persistence is a person's ability to identify and see a task through to its completion. Many factors come into play when identifying people with high levels of persistence. One major factor contributing to persistence is an individual's level of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is one's perceived ability to control the direction their lives take. A person with a high level of efficacy will persist longer through adversity than someone with a low level of efficacy. Physical training can help to increase a person's perceived level of self-efficacy as people gain much of their perceptions about efficacy through the interpretation of physical stimuli. Training one's ability to manage, control and interpret physical stimuli through exercise will in turn influence one's ability to enhance perceived levels of agency.

Old Habits

Old behavior patterns die hard. Best to redefine how you engage life's situations through the adjustment of your mindset. Assess the perspective you have about your histoy. Also assess the traditions you hold dear and the symbolism you integrate into your life. Are these things in line with your desired path? All three elements will help you transform your circumstance.

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A State of Mind

I sat in contemplation today thinking about the role mindset plays in how we interact with the world.

A mindset of ownership and responsibility will yield different behaviors, than a mindset of one trying to get by in a world created by others.

Change the mindset and you change the behavior. The trick is that all of your habits and routines must reflect the new state of mind. Habits are the indicators and reinforcers of our current internal condition.

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