Eugene Bible
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Reflection #10 – No, But, However
For the tenth exercise of Leadership Step By Step, I had a deceivingly simple task: do not start sentences with the words “no”, “but”, or “however.” The goal of which was to become more self-aware of how you interact with people and specifically, whether you are communicating in a way that is detrimental to relationship-building.
What does a good conversation involve? An interesting topic? A solid variety of opinions? Open mindedness of the people involved? I think there are many factors that contribute to an interesting and engaging conversation, but one of the most important is just having two people who are genuinely curious about the topic, specifically the other person’s opinions on it. When you engage in a conversation with genuine curiosity and a desire to understand someone else (especially when they have an opposing opinion to yours), it leads you to ask questions that “open the door” to deeper, more meaningful conversations. And more importantly, it starts to signal to the other person that you’re interested in them and as a consequence, starts to build trust – even if their opinion is polar opposite to yours. That is where the value of this exercise lives: it’s not just an exercise in awareness of speech, it’s an exercise that helps you to build better relationships.
This exercise is one that was actually recommended to me years ago by Josh himself, to help me with hosting a podcast and interviewing guests. And while I can’t say that I’ve completely mastered the skill, I’ve definitely become much better than I was back then. I have now gotten to the point where I catch about 95% of my sentences that might have started with no, but, or however. Over the years, I’ve also been able to see what happens when you start a sentence with no, but, or however: it immediately incites defensiveness, disconnection from the conversation, and also something personal – maybe a feeling of hurt? I can also tell that this exercise has really taken root in my social interactions since I now also feel the sting when others do it to me. When I hear someone respond to something I say with “But…”, I immediately feel like “They’re not even listening to me. They were just waiting for their turn to talk.” After being fed a “no, but, however” statement, I myself have felt the impulse to want to get defensive and tell them why they’re wrong before I’ve even heard what they’re going to say. It made me want to disconnect from a conversation and turn it into a “who’s right, who’s wrong” debate.
I think the people I talk to have also noticed a difference, if only subconsciously. When I avoid starting sentences with “no, but, however”, it almost naturally leads to a feeling of curiosity – if I can’t start with why they’re wrong, I start thinking about how to engage on details of what they’re saying, which in turn leads to the other person feeling cared for and heard. Once someone feels heard, they start to open up and trust, which further leads to deeper, more meaningful conversations.
I will say there are some ways in which I feel like I’ve cheated to get out of starting sentences with “no, but, however”. Depending on how invested I want to be in the conversation, I may just say “I see what you mean, but…” instead of just saying “but” from the start. The way I’ve come to think about it is pretty simple: if the person I’m talking to and the conversation I’m having are things that I appreciate, I make it a point to actually listen and try to understand them instead of negating something they’re saying, even if I disagree.
This exercise is one that I think everyone should do at least once, for at least a week. It’s a great exercise in self-awareness, working on your conversational skills, and developing better relationships.
Reflection #9: Adopt a Challenging Belief
For the 9th exercise of Leadership Step By Step, I had to do the exact same thing as in Exercise 8 (feel an unwanted emotion, identify the unwanted belief, find a belief to replace it with), but now with a challenging belief. The trick is…I feel like the two beliefs I ended up trying to change for the last exercise were both pretty challenging beliefs, and for this exercise I felt like I had to one-up myself.
In some ways, I feel like the belief I decided to try to change for this week was not the best choice for this exercise, partially because it was possibly too challenging, but also because I didn’t feel the particular unwanted emotions often enough that I had enough chances to try to change the underlying belief over the course of just one week.
The unwanted emotions I felt were discontent, disappointment, and frustration. The belief that was leading to those emotions was: happiness is something to aspire to or to achieve.
I actually identified this belief over the course of exercise 8, when, one very early morning, the sun hadn’t risen yet, and I was sitting in my darkened living room with my baby boy, both of us in a state of drowsy quiet and calm. I was doing what I usually do in my early mornings: being pensive, thinking about the coming day, thinking about my goals, and trying to meditate a bit. And as we sat there quietly on the floor, baby in my lap, both of us looking out of our glass sliding door, I happened to be thinking about the things that I’m not satisfied with – the goals I haven’t achieved or my lack of progress on some of my goals. I felt like maybe in some aspects of my life I haven’t come as far as I “should” have, and that I need to work on those things if I’m going to be happy in life, hence feeling discontent, disappointment in myself, and some frustration. After several minutes of pondering this, the sun started to come up, and I got out of my own head for a moment and thought “Look at the sunrise. That sunrise is completely unique to today. This is the only time this particular sunrise will ever happen. This moment will only ever happen right now with everything just as it is: me and my little baby boy just sitting here quietly watching the sunrise, with those pinks, purples, and oranges filling the sky filled with puffy clouds. If I can’t feel happiness in this moment, right here and right now, I never will.” That thought stuck with me through the rest of the week.
When I began to think about a belief I could attack for the challenging belief exercise, I thought, that sunrise thought could be perfect, and decided the belief I wanted to try to use to replace my unwanted belief was: “happiness is found in the now” as opposed to being something you wait for, or even work for.” With my life as it is right now, there’s absolutely no reason for me to be unhappy, and I wanted to challenge myself to find more happiness in the “now”. The emotions I wanted to feel were contentment, satisfaction, calm, and joy (happiness?).
As I alluded to previously, the difficult part of this exercise was that it was semi-rare that I felt unwanted emotions related to happiness. But they weren’t completely absent. There were a few specific times when I was doing something mundane like hand-washing dishes and was tempted to pull out my smartphone and turn on a video or podcast while I did it, but stopped myself and thought “Happiness is found in the now. Stop searching for happiness from something outside of you, find it within” and was instead able to just sit there, focus on my dishes, and feel how good it felt to just wash each dish and feel the satisfaction of knowing I did it well. It was a sort of meditation, and felt really good for the few times I was able to try out the new belief.
Thanks to this exercise and the previous one, I think I am starting to become more conscious of the beliefs of my inner monologue and noticing more when I feel unwanted emotions. Now it sometimes feels like I’m looking for opportunities to feel an unwanted emotion just so I can challenge myself to try to come up with a belief to combat it with. These exercises were a useful tool that I think is applicable to just about everyone and would highly recommend trying it. I can see where in leadership this skill would be invaluable: A person with the ability to change their beliefs at will has the ability to shift perspectives and in doing so alter their own reality – to create a world they want to see, first in their mind, and then in the real world.
Exercise 8: Adopt a New Belief
For the next exercise, I had to adopt a new belief, using the book’s methodology: identify a negative emotion that comes up frequently, name it, identify the belief that brings rise to it, then identify the new emotion you want to replace it with, and come up with a replacement belief to think of every time that negative emotion comes up.
Ever since I moved to Hawaii and then my baby was born, I’ve felt frustrated that I don’t have enough time to do all the things I want to do during the day. It felt impossible to schedule anything or know how much to put on a to-do list since, depending on whether the baby naps or not, or how active he is, I may have little or no time at all to do anything I want, much less decide on what time I will commit to doing something. Also, towards the end of the year every year, I get pensive about my goals and productivity in life, and have been reading the book Getting Things Done to try to revamp my productivity system and rethink my goals. It seemed only fitting that I try to change a belief related to these.
I decided on the following for my exercise:
My negative emotions: Frustration, powerlessness, and sometimes anger.
The belief that leads to those emotions? I don’t have enough time to do everything I want to do.
The emotions I’d rather feel: Control, confidence, and calm.
The new belief to consider: There are people who get a lot done in a day and still raise children, author books, maintain full time jobs, etc. I have the same amount of time as anyone else, and I can control how I use it.It’s hard to tell exactly whether it was purely this exercise or the combination of this and the productivity revamping I’m working on, but after I took on this belief, I started to see results within 2 days, and they were quite surprising: I found myself feeling like I had too much time and found myself having times during the day where I’d be trying to figure out what to do with my time, and not feel like I had anything in particular to do.
Part of it was the productivity revamping: due to the new system I’m working on, I’ve started to note down a lot of the thoughts and things I have to do in my head immediately when I have them. This meant that a lot of the stressing about “Oh no, I have to remember to do this later! Oh, and I can’t forget that! And I still haven’t finished this either!” disappeared, or at least was greatly reduced – now I was tracking all of those things and actively deciding when it’s reasonable to do which things. I wasn’t stressing about trying to remember things I can’t deal with right now anyway.
The change in emotions was also due to the belief change. Everytime I started to feel like “I don’t have time!!!” I would just try to tell myself “I have as much time as anyone else. You decide how you use this time.” and would find me asking myself “What’s the most important thing I can do now? What do I WANT to do now? Can I accomplish two things at once here?” and I started to realize that the negativity in thinking “I don’t have time!” was preventing myself from taking control and taking action. It wasn’t that I didn’t have time – I was convincing myself I didn’t have time. I had that feeling very strongly about twice throughout the week, and it did indeed feel empowering. And it felt like I had suddenly gained a lot of time.
Thanks to the success of the first belief-changing exercises, I really felt how useful of a skill this could be, and decided to try with another belief through the week. I am now trying to change how I feel about waking up early (From “waking up early is hard” to “others can do it, I can too”), though this one still hasn’t taken as well as I’d like, and will continue to try. It feels like it may require some adjustment, and that maybe I just got lucky with that first one being so easy. This one feels more like a challenge.
I’ve recognized how valuable it is if you can actually get your new belief to take, and now find myself looking for beliefs that I can try to change. If I were able to do this regularly and with more ease, I can imagine how a lot of stressful or uncomfortable situations in life could be turned around – it’s like the ultimate version of finding the silver lining and staying positive, but better, since it’s less focused on just “being hopeful” or focusing on the positive, and instead actively changing your own perspective and the belief that is leading to the negative feelings.
For the next exercise, I will need to find a more challenging belief to change, so it is the perfect place to continue to practice. I will most likely continue to try to change my belief about waking up early, but also am trying to find one more hard-to-change belief. This exercise is another that feels like it’s part of a neat set of skills I’m learning that are all leading up to something powerful, and am excited to keep moving forward.
Exercise 7 Reflection: Authentic Voice
The Authentic Voice exercise is a simple exercise on the surface: instead of writing your inner monologue like I did in exercise #3, this time you have to verbalize it, first alone, but then with friends, family, or anyone else.
The first couple of times doing this exercise on my own made it seem easy enough – it was just like when I sometimes talk to myself about what I have to do for the day, or if I’m checking to see if I’m remembering everything before I leave the house. I thought, “this exercise is going to be super easy, and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to get out of this.” It wasn’t until I tried it with others that I really started to feel something new.
The first time I tried it with someone else, I asked them to give me a topic and I just opened the floodgates from my brain to my mouth. I immediately noticed some things that are very different from my usual conversations with others. First, I became really self-conscious of how much I was talking without giving the other person a chance to talk. I felt voices in my head saying things like “I wonder what he thinks about what I’m saying? Does he have anything to say about this? I should ask him something related so he can talk”. Because of how fast these thoughts came to me, some I was able to voice, but others passed too quickly for me to verbalize.
Talking “without a filter” also brought some other feelings associated with speaking freely. In one way, I did feel like it was my “authentic voice” – I wasn’t trying to tailor what I say to the person I’m talking to, meaning I wasn’t saying anything simply to appease the person I’m talking with or to placate them. But other times, it also felt like having a filter is not a bad thing – I found myself asking “Is it a bad thing to be aware of who I’m talking to and tailoring my conversation for the person I’m speaking with? Does speaking in my “authentic voice” truly make the conversation better? For me? Or for the person I’m talking with?”
Another feeling that I really enjoyed during this exercise was a feeling of importance, or being special, if only because the format of the exercise made that artificially so. Speaking freely for a couple minutes without being interrupted or disturbed felt like I had a spotlight on me – like I was on a stage giving a speech, rather than having a conversation. It meant all of my attention was devoted to trying to speak in a way that was impactful, engaging, and “worth” the listener’s time. It felt exciting and almost like an improv performance.
I definitely felt the value in the exercise: I’m simply not used to giving speeches or speaking freely and the more I did it, I felt more confident and like a more powerful voice was slowly shaping up, for when the need arises. The exercise really made me feel like this is a new area I can work on and felt like a skill that, when developed, can become a really potent tool for leading and influencing others. For the first time, I felt why organizations like Toastmasters are so popular – learning to speak powerfully, from your heart, and without inhibition can be thrilling, fun, and in a way, addictive.
There was one area that I didn’t feel like I got to try enough: using the “authentic voice” unannounced in normal conversation. I tried to do it a few times, but during regular conversations, it was really hard to not just have my typical, ordinary conversations. I found it difficult to just trigger the same mental state as when I would “prep” my listener for the exercise, and found myself trying to figure out whether I was doing something wrong, or was there some kind of belief or self-consciousness that was preventing me from doing it. Sometimes it felt like maybe this “authentic voice” exercise just doesn’t quite suit regular conversation, though from the description in the book, it didn’t seem like that is the case.
Like the past few exercises, this exercise continues the pattern of being one that doesn’t feel like one week is enough. It feels like a skill that you could spend years developing and improving at, and I certainly would like to continue to do so. I hope that the coming exercises will continue to build on this and allow me to keep practicing it, but even if it doesn’t, I think I will probably continue to try to practice my “authentic voice” during regular conversations.
Exercise 6: Unwanted Beliefs
This week, the Leadership Step By Step exercise was to attempt to identify unwanted beliefs everytime you feel an emotion you don’t like.
This exercise felt distinctly different from the past two. Whereas when I was just trying to identify as many beliefs of mine or others felt like it was something I had to constantly remind myself to do, this challenge had a very specific trigger: feeling an emotion I don’t like. With a trigger, I found myself trying to identify not just beliefs when I feel disliked emotions, but I’d start thinking about other people’s beliefs and my own beliefs unrelated to the disliked emotion as well. I found myself going back and starting second pages for my “Write Your Beliefs” and “Write Others’ Beliefs” sections of my notebook. It could have just been that I’m improving at identifying beliefs, but having the trigger seemed to open the floodgates and I was able to find a lot more beliefs.
There were some new questions that arose from this challenge as well. Does a disliked emotion (sadness, anger, frustration, embarrassment, disappointment, etc.) always mean there’s an unwanted belief? Sometimes it felt like my anger/frustration/sadness was coming from a perfectly reasonable belief. For example, I may have felt frustrated and disappointed when someone was late to a meeting because I have a belief that being punctual is virtuous and respectful. This is a belief that I rather like and don’t feel is unwanted at all. Other times, it was very clear that my emotion was coming from a belief that I clearly would want to change, like when I felt frustrated that someone else wasn’t doing something the way I would do it, and I recognized that my way is not necessarily the “best” way.
Some of the beliefs I wrote also still felt a lot to me like judgments. Sometimes it felt uncomfortable to write beliefs, and I would feel a need to write a second sentence to try to justify it (“I know this isn’t true!!!” or “I reflected on this and recognized I was wrong later!!!”) as if I was afraid of my own judgment of my past self. I never wrote those second sentences, but sometimes there was a very strong urge to.
I was also surprised at how often the beliefs I was starting to discover felt like they were uncovering bits of who I am as a person. In general, I think we all think of ourselves as a kind of amorphous being that can’t really be defined by concrete, quantifiable measurements, but in some ways, this exercise started to feel like it was getting as close as you can to doing so. Writing many beliefs felt like they were very “core” to who I am as a person – fundamental, basic tenants that I live by to define my everyday self. Very often the beliefs were ones that I’ve never really thought deeply about or put down on paper, and were often beliefs that I take for granted or feel like are obvious and common to everyone. This made the exercise feel very much like an exercise in self-discovery and self-exploration.
Another interesting result of the exercise was that identifying beliefs made me a much “cooler” thinker when problems or conflicts arose. Having this trigger to identify the beliefs of myself and the person I was associating with gave me a way of taking a step back in the moment and thinking, rather than reacting emotionally. It gave me a brief moment to forget the emotion and analyze. This ended up making the emotion itself feel weaker and have less of a hold over me, and allowed me to handle the conflict with a much cooler head. This was one of my favorite results of the exercise. Depending on the situation, identifying the possible beliefs associated with a negative emotion might’ve helped me navigate the issue and come to a better solution than I would have ordinarily.
I can clearly see how this exercise is going to help in the future for leading myself and leading others. Trying to control your emotions is hard. But if you can identify their source, it becomes a much easier thing to do. If you can successfully identify your own beliefs and the beliefs of those around you with a high rate of accuracy, you’re far less likely to overreact, far more likely to think clearly, and will be far more likely to start with a problem, and turn it into a solution that is not just a solution, but also a better connection to and deeper understanding of a person in your life.
Writing Others’ Beliefs
The exercise of the week was to write the beliefs of others (to the best of my ability, based on observations of behavior and words of others). I found the exercise to be more difficult than I anticipated it to be.
Observing others with the goal of trying to identify their beliefs is harder than it sounds. First of all, I would frequently just forget to do it while I was having interactions with people – it usually takes most of my focus to stay fully engaged in conversations and enjoy time with people, and adding an extra challenge of trying to analyze their behaviors was certainly pushing the boundaries of my mental capacity. Most of the time, I would have to take some time to try to reflect on conversations I just had, and then I’d find myself doubting whether my “beliefs” that I’m assigning to their behavior were right or not: “I mean they said this…But is it REALLY because they believe this? It sounds kind of like a stretch..I guess I’ll write it down since this is just to the best of my ability…” Most of the beliefs I wrote never “felt” like they were right. It felt like I was judging or assuming things of others, which felt slightly uncomfortable.
It was easier to do when I thought about entire groups of people as a whole, rather than individuals. With the recent election, I found myself trying to think about what Trump supporters believe, or what Kamala supporters believe. I thought a lot about if you take society as a whole, what do we believe? Oftentimes I felt myself feeling like I was judging people, which made me go back and rethink the belief I just wrote down. For example, I might have thought “Trump supporters are racist”, but after writing it down thinking, “you know, that’s not really fair…Not ALL Trump supporters are racist…I guarantee there are racist Kamala supporters somewhere in the country too…” and started to regret some of the things I wrote. This was one of the more interesting outcomes of this exercise: it forced me to think about what my beliefs of others are, and it opened my mind and made me less likely to quickly group people into categories and label them. In a way, the activity felt like an exercise in empathy.
Doing this exercise, identifying other people’s beliefs certainly felt like a skill that I had to develop. At the beginning, it felt very difficult (and it still does, a week later), but as I did it, I did feel like I was improving, albeit slowly. Making myself conscious of the beliefs of others feels like a difficult skill to learn that takes a long time – it almost requires an entirely different mindset, which is, maybe quite obviously, something that takes a long time to adjust to.
I can see why this skill of becoming aware of others’ beliefs is a useful one in a leadership course. Leading others requires first listening and learning about the people you want to lead – you have no chance of leading someone if you can’t identify with them or show them that you’re listening to them and that you understand them. I certainly wouldn’t be interested in being led by someone who doesn’t know me, doesn’t understand what I’m trying to achieve, or have dissimilar ideas as I do, so I wouldn’t expect anyone else to want to be led by me either, if I’m not able to do the same.
Much like the last exercise, I think this is one I’m going to continue doing for the next few weeks. I still feel like it’s a skill I’m weak at, at best. I can imagine a version of me that is able to identify beliefs quicker and more accurately, but I feel like I’m still weeks away from that.
Write Your Beliefs – Eugene Bible
The Write Your Beliefs exercise, much like the 2 previous exercises (3 Raisins and Inner Monologue), is an exercise in learning how to step outside of yourself and become an observer to your own being.
Whereas the 3 raisins exercise and inner monologue focused more on being a passive observer and just noticing what your mind is experiencing, the Write Your Beliefs exercise felt like I had to become more of an active observer. I had to get more meta about my thoughts and ‘think about thinking.’ I almost felt myself going back to the inner monologue exercise, as I frequently caught myself noting and hearing my inner monologue “talk” about what my beliefs are: “Wait…What’s the belief behind this? Why do I do this? What is my belief that tells me this is the right/normal thing to do? Do most other people believe this too? I wonder if this is a rare belief…Is this even a belief? Does this count as a belief? I’m not sure it does…” From that perspective of observing myself, it really felt like this exercise had built on the last two.
In general, as someone who has lived abroad for one third of my life, I taught myself to be hyper-conscious of my own actions and always question my own beliefs and whether they are typical for where I am. The smallest, almost insignificant beliefs or actions in another culture can be highly disrespectful, which I learned the hard way. Because of this hyper-sensitivity and always-questioning attitude towards my own actions and beliefs, the beliefs I wrote down were generally unsurprising to me, though I have never taken the time to write them down before and found the act of writing them all in one place to be really interesting. To have so many of your beliefs all just written out on paper made me feel somewhat exposed and self-conscious. I found myself thinking “What if someone reads this? What will they think of me?” It felt like I was really exposing a very private part of myself, and that was interesting to me. As fundamental as these are to my everyday life, there is probably not a single person on earth (other than me) that knows all of these about me.
The most compelling part of spending a week writing my beliefs was that the sheet I ended up with ends up representing the core fundamentals of who I am as a person, at least in the present moment. As far as I can think of, there isn’t anything else I’ve ever written, including journals, daily to-do lists, or life trackers that could come close to encompassing all that I am as a person, but I feel like my list of beliefs came close. The beliefs described who I am, the ideas that motivate the actions I make, and even revealed some of my flaws. Some beliefs were ones that were only temporary and felt just because of a particularly emotional moment. Others felt like they were core to who I am and never change. All were, in some way, me.
One lesson that this exercise imparted on me was the difference between values and beliefs. Before doing this exercise, I would not have been able to truly understand the difference between a value and a belief, but I feel like I do now. Whereas a value is a consciously made, fundamental concept that I aspire to embody, a belief is not always something that I have consciously chosen to believe. Whereas I always know what my values are, beliefs can be elusive and hard to identify. For example, I value kindness and respecting other people. That is something that is learned, but also something that I recognize is important and decide to embody. But a belief can be an unconscious, possibly dangerous, assumption, like a belief that classical music is good for you and rap is not (not an actual belief of mine, but a belief that I have heard). I might value and enjoy classical music, but if I believe that rap is bad for you and am not careful, my actions or words might easily offend someone. I recognize that beliefs and values are not necessarily mutually exclusive and can deeply affect each other, as well. I even found that sometimes my beliefs were opposite of my values, which was a valuable realization.
The value that I got from this exercise was surprisingly deep. Learning to recognize my own beliefs is a skill that, until now, I primarily used as a tool for navigating other cultures or interactions with other people, but this exercise has made me see the value of recognizing beliefs in the application of self-analysis. Only in being honest and transparent with yourself in your beliefs can you have any hope of growing – recognizing your beliefs, good or bad, gives you an opportunity to decide “is this the person I want to be? Does this belief accurately reflect my values and the person I am trying to be in the world?” It gives you a tool to analyze your own actions – to identify the reasons behind good actions in order to reinforce and encourage more of them, while identifying the reasons behind bad actions in order to block them from happening again.
This exercise is one that has felt so compelling, that after just one week of doing it, I feel like I haven’t done enough. I want to write more. I want to find every single one of my beliefs. It may not be realistic or possible, but there is something satisfying in the process of self-discovery and writing them down. I will certainly be continuing to write my beliefs for the coming weeks.
Writing My Inner Monologue: Reflection
The 3rd exercise of Leadership Step By Step is to record your inner monologue a few times a day for a week. Most days I recorded it at least twice, but I also managed to get to it 3 times a day from time to time.
Since it’s not my first time doing this, I knew it was coming, and I’ve already had some practice. I remember the first time I did this exercise, it was surprisingly hard to focus on the monologue itself. I would get too involved in the “thinking about thinking” instead of just writing what my mind was blabbering on about. For example, I’d end up writing “I’m thinking about how hard it is to write as fast as I think” instead of “Wow, it’s really hard to write all my thoughts. By the time I’m done writing a sentence, my mind is already thinking about the next one. Wait what was the next thing I thought?!”
This time it was much smoother. I knew to just relax, stop “trying” and just let the mind wander. As before, my mind would do a lot of commenting on whatever was happening in the moment. “Hey, there’s a red car passing by. They don’t live here. I wonder where they’re going.” or “There’s my dog. She’s looking for food again. She’s putting her head on my lap. Should I give her something?” Another trend I noticed was that my mind would almost become self conscious about itself “recording” itself. A lot of times I just would feel like “I don’t know what to think about. My mind is blank. Well…Not blank. Since it’s thinking this right now…But not thinking of anything important or significant. Is this really worth writing?” And I did notice that sometimes my mind would go blank for longer periods of time. Times when there was no inner monologue, not even a “Blank! Blank! My mind is blank!”
I often tried to give myself a topic to think about so I wouldn’t just be writing the exact same narrations of what is happening around me: “Let’s think about that thing that happened today…It really made me feel disrespected. I don’t know why they had to say that like that, and why I couldn’t just speak up and tell them so…” I almost felt like I didn’t want to waste “thinking time” and be sure it was “productive”, which was an interesting realization in itself, and possibly speaks to an unnecessary desire or habit I have to try to “optimize” everything, sometimes to a fault.
Overall, I feel like the thoughts I had during this exercise were probably pretty typical. I think that most people would be inclined to just think about what’s happening around them, or about how they can’t think of what to think at the moment, but I will be really interested to read others’ essays.
The exercise didn’t feel profound or lead to any incredible realizations, but I think the exercise is a great practice to have regularly. The ability to just open the fire hydrant of your mind and let it just release all of its thoughts onto a piece of paper and clear all the messy, disorganized, and rambling thoughts out is almost a form of therapy. For this exercise, I never wrote more than 10 sentences or so each time, but in the past, to relax, I’ve taken an entire 8.5×11” sheet of paper and just filled the whole thing with exactly these kinds of thoughts. My mental state afterwards is always more focused after I’ve let all the random thoughts out.
I also hope that doing this exercise leads me to higher levels of self-awareness – by being aware of what I’m thinking, it gives me a meta look into my own brain. It allows me to step back from myself and almost look at my own thoughts from a distance and evaluate whether I agree with what I’m saying or thinking. In a way, it creates a second layer of “me,” which I think can be a very useful tool for staying calm and level-headed. I anticipate that in future exercises when you must learn to lead yourself, it will become a critical skill to have.
3 Raisins
The next exercise of Leadership Step By Step was to eat 3 raisins. This seemed simple enough, but there were a few conditions that made it a deeper exercise than it seems. The exercise required that you turned off your phone, and then fully engage all of your senses to focus on the raisin and eat it as if you’ve never seen or eaten anything like it before: touch it and focus on the feel of the raisin, take in it’s aroma, even listen to how it sounds as you squeeze it or as you chew it. When I really engaged every sense to experience the raisins, eating just 3 raisings became a whole new experience that took me about 20 minutes to finish!
For this exercise, I chose a unique way to approach each raisin from the start. For the first, I would consume it in miniscule bits. For the second, I would put the whole raisin in my mouth at once. For the last, I would put the whole raisin in my mouth, then hold it for as long as I could before breaking the skin.
I sat down at my dining table, phone on airplane mode and silent, with 3 raisins set in front of me. I picked up the first raisin and felt the bumpy texture on the outside, gave it a small squeeze, and started rolling it around in my fingers, noticing how crisp and flakey it was at first, but as I rolled it around between my fingers, it softened into a small juicy morsel. I then took the tiniest bite from one end and started to chew the tiny bit between my front teeth. I noticed how the texture was a little grainy, but the taste was sweet and tangy and I could feel the sourness hitting the back-right side of my tongue. The piece was so tiny and after being chewed I barely had to swallow. I went for a second tiny bite, searching and trying to find if there are more hidden experiences within the raisin that I hadn’t noticed yet. What could I experience that I haven’t yet?
If I were to write the experience of each bite and each raisin, this essay would probably end up being about 10 pages, so I’ll just give a short list of thoughts and things I noticed from my raisins:
The depth of flavor – I felt like in different bites, I noticed something different. Sweetness, fruitiness, a spiciness (cinnamon maybe??), and a tangy-ness that really outlasts the raisin. Half an hour after finishing, I still had a sour tang on the back of my tongue!
The feel – raisins can be solid, hard, flakey, crispy, dry, or juicy, plump, soft, and tender. And sometimes all at once, after enough gentle massaging!
The sounds – as I chewed on different bits of raisins, some were more grainy and I could hear crunching in my ears, sometimes slightly unpleasantly, but other times, very satisfyingly.I’m sure there were many more thoughts I had as well that I can no longer remember. It really was surprising how many things you can think about just 3 little raisins.
Not all of the experiences I had were directly from the raisins either! There were a few things that happened during the exercise that really had me thinking about how we experience the world every day. During my experiencing of the second raisin, the air raid alarm in our neighborhood went off (they test them about once a month). Normally, I don’t bat an eye, but as I was so focused on my raisin, trying to activate all of my senses, the moment the alarm went off, it felt so loud and so disruptive my whole body jumped! It made me think about how often I am usually just kind of sleepwalking through my days, not 100% focused on what I’m doing.
The last significant thing I noticed during the experiment was how much I started paying attention to my own body, in particular my own heart rate. As I focused hard on my experience of the raisins, suddenly I could feel my heart pounding throughout my body. In my arms, in my chest, in my neck, and in my ears, I realized that if I’m calm and focused on the present, my heartbeat is this powerful, ever-present life-force in my body that I couldn’t believe I don’t notice in my usual life.
The value I gained from this exercise is more than you’d ever think you could get from simply eating 3 little raisins. It was an incredible, meditative experiment in sensory exploration, self-awareness, and living in the present.
My SIDCHA – Eugene Bible
I spent the week coming up with as many SIDCHAs as I could. I asked many people for suggestions as well! In the end, I brought it down to a list of 3 SIDCHAs that I think would be personally very satisfying if I were to accomplish:
I will do one piano exercise every day.
I will read for 10 minutes every day.
I will compliment one person every day.Doing any one of these would be an amazing improvement to my daily life. It’s almost impossible for me to pick one, so I think I’m going to just let it happen naturally: choose one at random and see how it goes, knowing I can always switch later! Here is my SIDCHA statement:
I am doing a SIDCHA in personal development and emotional health: I will do one piano exercise every day.
Despite knowing that playing the piano or violin makes my whole day feel “right,” I too rarely take the time to practice, especially piano. I think this SIDCHA will help center me emotionally every day and balance out any stress in my day.
Personal Essay – Eugene Bible
The term “leadership” means different things to different people. To some, it’s merely a position at work, granted by some higher authority. To others, it’s the first step to changing the world.
Most (if not all) of the major changes that have come to modern society happened at least partially due to having leaders who were able to rally people to a cause and effect change. Leadership done poorly looks like coercion, compulsion, oppression, intimidation, or harassment (I actually don’t think of this as leadership at all really, but to some, that is what it can mean). Leadership done well leads to progress, people feeling supported and empowered, and true growth and change. Some of the greatest leaders gave us basic human rights, equality, freedom, and much more. To me, leadership is the first step to changing your world for the better.
As a young boy, to say I was shy would be a grand understatement. I couldn’t talk to anyone I didn’t already know well and feel comfortable with. I certainly couldn’t talk to girls, and as a burgeoning teenager, that just wouldn’t do. In my mid-teens, I spent years learning how to be “well liked.” I read books on body language, having conversations, relating to others so they feel like you’re listening, and how to make them feel understood. I studied stand-up comedians tirelessly, figuring they are a group of people who have to go up on stage, seem down-to-earth, and make everyone in the crowd feel comfortable enough to laugh at jokes within seconds. After years of practice, I achieved my goal. By 18, I could be the life of the party. I could be surrounded by 10 people listening to me ad lib on whatever I felt like talking about, with everyone laughing. I can still recall the voices of friends telling everyone else “Eugene is SO funny!!!” I loved the attention and being in the spotlight.
At some point, the excitement of knowing how to steal the spotlight died – I no longer felt any need to be so attention-seeking and I had gained a lot of confidence from that experience. But 20 years later, I realize that recently I don’t want to just be likable. Being likable and having lots of friends is fine, but having lots of friends doesn’t change the world. I want people’s lives to be better for having had me in it. I want to have more of an impact on those around me than just being a nice person to talk to. It’s time to focus instead on leadership.
I’m now reading Joshua Spodek’s Leadership Step By Step with a new goal in mind: to gain the skills in leading others – to learn how to help people search within themselves and motivate them to want to change for the better. To help them realize their vision and help guide them and show them the path to achieve. To help them make their world better.
In my current life, I have several semi-leadership roles in my life. I work as a project manager for water utility projects – I need to be able to lead field crews, engineers working for me, administrative assistants, all with a goal to complete a project. At home, I am a husband and a father – I need to be able to offer direction, stability, guidance, and partnership to my wife and children. I am a podcast host and advocate for sustainable living – I need to be able to help others find their reasons to live healthier and happier lives through sustainability. There is no area of my life where improved leadership skills wouldn’t help.
My current leadership skills are not non-existent – there are certainly some parallels between leading and connecting with others and being likable, but my leadership skills are certainly not as strong as I want them to be. I find that in leading others, empathy, assertiveness, and strong listening skills are key, and I try to remember that at all times. On the contrary, telling others my own opinions, telling others what they “should” do, and trying to “prove” I’m right are all prime examples of things I’ve learned not to do when trying to lead, though admittedly, I find myself doing them all-too-often anyway and thinking to myself that it’s time for change.
So this has brought me here. The value I hope to gain from these exercises is a new abundance of tools to help me communicate better, guide others, and become a person others want to follow.