The Unfolding Now: Realizing Your True Nature Through the Practice of Presence
by A.H. Almaas

A.H. Almaas is the creator of The Diamond Approach work, which Ken Wilber calls “a superb combination of some of the best of modern Western psychology with ancient (and spiritual) wisdom…probably the most balanced of the widely available spiritual psychologies/therapies.”

The Unfolding Now book is like chamomile tea for the soul, made with purified water, with honey from sacred bees, served in a hand made Zen bowl. So simple and nourishing. It is a book of rare transmission that sparks one’s deeply innate desire to be real.

We want to learn how we can be here in as real a way as possible: How can I be completely here and completely myself, or as completely as possible? How can my atoms, which are scattered, vibrating, and oscillating in some kind of frenzy, slow down, collect, and settle here as what I am?
- A.H. Almaas

The most delicious mix of questions I drank in all year.

Erin Rooney Doland always impresses me. She’s A+ organized, but not chilly ‘n uptight about it. She’s a ruthless time manager, but always has time to help. She hangs with Quakers and speaks to the high-powered women’s groups. And she’s smart, really smart.

She is: Editor-In-Chief of the uber popular Unclutterer.com, a Real Simple.com columnist, and a mama to a new baby and a new book: Unclutter Your Life in One Week: A 7-Day Plan to Organize Your Home, Your Office, and Your Life, with a foreword by David Allen and a glowing endorsement from my (other) favourite organizer, Peter Walsh.

Erin Doland’s motto: simplicity is revolutionary. Clear the clutter so you can pursue what you love the most.

1. What do you know the most about?

When I was five, I got it in my head that to get your driver’s license you had to fill in every street name on a map of the town where you do most of your driving. It wasn’t until I was 13 that I discovered driver’s license tests have nothing to do with memorizing street names. But, every time I rode in a car for eight years of my life, I would repeat, study, and store to memory all the street names that passed me by in Topeka, Kansas. Unfortunately — or maybe fortunately — I’ve never been able to rid myself of this habit. To this day, you can name two addresses in my hometown and I can give you perfect turn-by-turn directions between them. The same is true for every town where I’ve lived, and pretty much any place I’ve visited. Honestly, if I’ve looked at a map of a place I haven’t even visited, I’m pretty decent at giving directions. I don’t get lost. My husband calls me his “little GPS.” While other people’s brains are filled with valuable scientific proofs and theories of the universe, my noggin is stuffed with street names.

2. Inspiration flashback: When is the last time you thought, “Yes! That person has so got it going on!”?

I think this way about those I choose to spend time with. The vast majority of people in my life inspire me on a daily basis. Their energy is contagious. I try to avoid toxic and negative people at all costs. I don’t mean that I abandon my friends when they’re going through a rough patch — in fact, this is when I try my hardest to pay my friends back for all they times they have been there to support and inspire me. I’m talking about avoiding people who believe that there is a limited supply of happiness and success in the world. I crave joy and laughter and conversations that take me to unexpected places, so I surround myself with people who do exactly this.

3. What are you trying to discover?

I enjoy discovering the unexpected. Just today I learned that former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright wore pins and broaches when she met with foreign dignitaries to convey clever, hidden meanings. She wore jeweled wasps when she wanted the other person to feel a sting, a tiny missile when she met with a Russian foreign minister, a snake pin whenever she worked with Iraqi officials — all sorts of things. I had no idea, and I find this sort of planning and subtlety to be fascinating. I even think it makes me respect her more.

4. What global policy, credo, practice, or law would you like to decree?

Most days I have trouble figuring out what is best for me and my family, so I’m glad to not have to shoulder the responsibility of governing large groups of people. I probably wouldn’t make laws if I did have that kind of power. I’d work mostly on removing them. I’d start by getting rid of laws and/or traditions that violate the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — such as nations that continue to turn a blind eye to slavery.

5. What question in your life has had the biggest impact?

“What would I do if I were not afraid?” It’s a quote by a woman named Martha Mangelsdorf and my personal answer was life-altering. I changed careers, became a writer, authored a book, adopted a child, and pursued even more of my dreams after I answered this question.

6. What book(s) are you always telling people to read?

Einstein’s Dreams, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Getting Things Done, Heaney’s translation of Beowulf, anything by T.S. Elliot, Dashiell Hammett, and Haruki Murakami, and now my book.

7. I’m going to give you a word. Tell me the first thing that comes to mind when you read it… Ready? The word is: LOVELY.
The first rich, stinging sip of my morning coffee.

Viva la simplicity!

. . . . . . .
FIND ERIN DOLAND
UNCLUTTER YOUR LIFE IN ONE WEEK
Unclutterer.com
Twitter @UncluttererTips

Bonus reading, moi, on Unclutterer:
Choose from the heart: Clutter free and feeling fine
Ruthless Simplicity: How to ward off doing more and burning out

Being well-rounded is highly over-rated.

Employers who are trying to multiply the strengths of people are missing the point. Entrepreneurs trying to do it all are bound to go in circles. When you focus on building on your natural strengths, on doing what comes easiest to you, you get some serious momentum. It may be counter-intuitive, it’s certainly counter-culture because it’s been drilled into to us to work hard (all you Catholics and Ivy Leaguers say hey!) but truly, optimizing your second nature is the surest way to get a return on your investment.

Ever since I read Marcus Buckingham’s The Truth About You, I’ve been stopping strangers on the street. “Hey, get this. You know what a strength is? A strength is what you do that makes you feels strengthened, vital! And…wait, it gets better, you know what a weakness is? A weakness is stuff you do that makes you feel weakened!”

Deceptively simple. Revolutionary.

Why does this make me wanna do back-flips? Because this changes everything, people. And it goes back to my root theory in life, that it’s all about feelings. It means that all that crap that you don’t really like to do, but that you’re really good at … you get to dump it! No more faking it to make it.

So what about good old-fashioned hard work? I’m all for it – when you’re moving towards the real you. No more trying to be a PR genius when what you do best is paint landscapes or make the widgets (hire a PR genius.) No more trying to come up with blue sky five year plans when you’re a short-term focused details guy (get a coach or a visionary friend to help you see the possibilities.) For me, that means I will never care about cooking the Thanksgiving turkey, being good at parties, or rocking Excel. Never gonna happen.

THE STRONG / WEAK EXERCISE
Buckingham has a powerful exercise that I loved. For one week I wrote down what made me feel strong and what made me feel weakened/drained. This showed up on my “weak” list: unqualified meetings make me feel like a loogan.

I was scheduled to have tea with an acquaintance of an acquaintance. I trusted the referral and so I made the date in haste, with a quick “sure, how about the café by so and so’s.”

A few weeks later when I was walking to the meeting, I was feeling really resentful and pissy. WEAKENED. Because I hadn’t bothered to ask, I had no idea why the person actually wanted to meet. And I was feeling like I’d betrayed my time, my priorities. (And sure enough, the meeting could have happened in 15 minutes over the phone and I wouldn’t have had to find parking or rush to pick up my kid.) Conclusion: I feel strong when I ask, when I clarify, when I know The Point. I feel weak when don’t value my own time.

The masters focus on what they do best … on their NATURAL CAPACITIES. They stay in their zone … and the zone is what feels good, damn good.

So I what makes you feel strong?
Do more of it. And more still. Find ways to get even better at it, sharpen your saw as the old master of effectiveness, Stephen Covey puts it. Push your edge. Dare to be focused on your natural capacities. Say yes to what you love, what inspires you, what lights you up. It takes some kahunas, but it beats well-rounded mediocrity any day.

. . . . . . . .

FIND MARCUS BUCKINGHAM
His site
The Truth About You
Now, Discover Your Strengths
Twitter: @mwbuckingham

A great friend gave me the coffee table book, Wisdom for Christmas. And I actually read it. It’s packed with layers of experience. Humbling. Argumentative. Informed. From Clint Eastwood and Frank Gehry to Jane Goodall and Vanessa Redgrave.

This video clip is great for two reasons: one, it highlights the immense power of the players, but it also shows how Andrew Zuckerman, the book’s author/coordinator, just did it. He had a values-based vision, and zero experience as an interviewer. He aimed high. He didn’t settle. He made himself “a servant to the pursuit of wisdom,” and he made it happen. Gotta love that.

Announcing my Amazon a-store. Think of it as private tour through my neuroses and brilliance. Enjoy.

CLICK HERE TO HEAD ON OVER.

Every pithy page brought from my new very favorite book by Hugh MacLeod brought on a yes!. McLeod is a foul-mouthed, illuminated advertising pro, who writes about marketing, meaningful living, and in his own way … love. He is pulled forward by his thrill of “creative sovereignty.” And he’s one pragmatic, sweet curmudgeon. I’m in love.

Each one of his 39 Keys to Creativity is a sutra of street-wise insight. Here are my favorite gems:

: Question how much freedom your path affords you. Be utterly ruthless about it. It’s your freedom that will get you where you want to go.

: So now corporations are awash with nonautonomous thinkers.
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”

And so on.
Creating an economically viable entity where lack of original thought is handsomely rewarded creates a rich, fertile environment for parasites to breed.

: As the artist gets more into her thing, and as she gets more successful, the number of tools tends to go down. She knows what works for her.

: Never compare your inside with somebody else’s outside.

: The only people who can change the world are people who want to. And not everybody does.

: Anyone can be an idealist. Anyone can be a cynic. The hard part lies somewhere in the middle — that is, being human.

Sprinkled with MacLeod’s now-legendary back-of-business card cartoons, Ignore Everybody manages to be both raunchy and lovely, sardonic and warm. MacLeod’s found that essential humanity that makes all the difference.
Go get it.

I sigh when I read this book. About every three paragraphs I close my eyes and shake my head in awe, as if to say to the gods of philosophy and poetry, Thank you for this man! This is a diamond blessing of a book that has become one of my favourite gifts to give. It will cause you to find and heed that naturally deep ache for beauty in your life. John O’Donohue will have you believing that beauty is a colossal force for transformation that is waiting in our personal and collective shadows. I believe. I believe.

7 reasons to buy yourself and your favourite friend a copy of John O’Donohue’s Beauty, in the words of the master poet himself:

We live between the act of awakening of the act of surrender.

In a sense, all the contemporary crises can be reduced to a crisis about the nature of beauty. This perspective offers us new possibilities. Perhaps, for the first time. we gain a clear view of how much ugliness we endure and allow. The media generate relentless images of mediocrity and ugliness in talk-shows, tapestries of smothered language and frenetic gratification. The media are becoming the global mirror and these shows enshrine the ugly as the normal standard.

Could it be possible that a landscape could have a deep friendship with you? Perhaps your favourite place feels proud of you…it will miss your voice, your breath and the bright waves of your thought, how you walked through the light and brought news of other places.

Colour is the clothing of beauty.

No-one wants to remain a prisoner of an unlived life.

The imagination has a deep sense of irony.

The who-ness of someone can never be finally named, known, claimed, controlled or predicted. The who is beyond all frames and frontiers and dwells in the mystery of its own reflexivity and infinity. Who has no map. … Beauty is the inconceivable made so intimate that it illuminates our hearts.

Leo Babauta is in no rush. Why hurry when you know what’s most important?

His new book, The Power Of Less, is an easy breezy read on “the fine art of limiting yourself to the essential…in business and in life.”

MY 4 FAVOURITE REMINDERS FROM THE POWER OF LESS:

1. Let your life be ruled by the moment. {Huh, is this a productivity book I’m reading?} Don’t schedule most appointments. If someone requests an appointment, tell them to call you a little before they’d like to meet and if you’re available, then meet.

2. If you aren’t finding yourself passionate about a certain tasks, allow yourself to move on to something you’re more passionate about. The more passionate you are about a task or project, the more energy you’ll put into it, and the better you’ll do with it.

3. Create a simple projects list … just three projects, not ten, that will have your entire focus until you see them through to completion. The other projects on your list go on the “On The Deck List.”

Leo is a big proponent of email checking restraints. His suggestion, like that of Tim Ferris’, is to set email times … check it once in the morning, and check it once in the afternoon. Leo admits that this is not as easy as it sounds. His answer is deceptively simple:

4. Every time you find yourself habitually switching to e-mail, stop yourself. Breathe. And then focus on your work instead. Your reward: you get a lot more done.

Got the itch to Twitter or check in on your Facebook friends in the middle of a looming deadline? Breathe. The itch will pass and your fans will love you all the more when you tweet. I breathe a lot.

Many productivity books have a drill sergeant running between the lines. Panic! So much to do to organize all that I have to do. The Power of Less is a sweet exception to that. Babauta’s energy is gentle and kind. No whistles. No drills. Just a zen-like understanding of what it takes to honour what’s essential.

RESOURCES + RELATED
: Leo is the the man behind the wildly popular ZenHabits.net
: Entrepreneurial Time Management: How I Rock It

My 5 Favorite bits from REALITY CHECK, {with which I couldn’t agree more:}

1. Innovation is a hard, messy process with no shortcuts. It starts with making something that you’d like to use that makes meaning, and it gets both easier and harder from there.
2. Ultimately, the underlying assumptions in your marketing model are the key to the fundability and viability of your start up.
3. Like the sun rising and Canadians playing hockey, you can depend on the greed of venture capitalists.
4. Don’t be afraid to polarize people. Most companies want to create the holy grail of products that appeals to every demographic, socioeconomic background, and geographic location. To attempt to do so guarantees mediocrity. Instead, create great products that make segments of people very happy.
5. Judge others by their intentions, and judge yourself by your results.

In typical Silicon Valley style the tone of Reality Check is brash, the wisdom is delivered in bullet points, and it’s full of shortcuts. Kawasaki gets a bunch of other big players to contribute chapters on viral marketing, public speaking, social entrepreneurship, and the art of sucking up. The bottom line: Reality Check is an effective, useful book based on the realities of success and failure.

The heart of the book is Buddhist mind training “slogans.”
Divine dictums like:

• Examine the nature of unborn awareness.
• Don’t ponder others.
• Abandon any hope of fruition.
• All activities should be done with one intention.
• Don’t expect applause.

As Chodron puts it, “The basic notion is that we can make friends with what we reject, what we see as ‘bad’ in ourselves and in other people. At the same time, we could learn to be generous with what we cherish, what we see as ‘good’. If we begin to live this way, something in us that may have been buried for a long time begins to ripen.”

Juicy cosmic fruit.