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“Remember, no matter where you go, there you are.” – Confucius
Photo: Where do you find solitude in this hectic digital age?
“Today, in the world gone mad with gadgets and the so-called “Social Media”, people everywhere, it seems have no time left for themselves. No time for solitude, contemplation, reflection, thinking and meditation.
Today, everybody, young and old, is constantly Facebooking, tweeting, texting, Iphoning, IPadding, emailing, surfing the net, Goggling, Amazoning, and watching TV. Supposedly busy or indeed pretending to be!
All this, supposedly, to making us feel as if we are connected. But, connected to what, to whom and for what purpose? We do not know!
A pertinent question surely should be "What happens when constant communication replaces thoughtful reflection?" I'm not saying that the immediacy of the Internet is harmful, but rather how we tend to thrive on it. Instead of engaging with each other or just ourselves, it seems we are seeking something "out there" while ignoring real sustenance for thought.
In this ‘busy’ world, when we are virtually constantly connected to somebody else, somewhere else, then, where is the time for solitude, contemplation and connection between ‘Myself and Me’? To my mind, this must be the biggest question we should all ask of ourselves.
After all, "solitude gives us room, at least in the mind, to take a break from the churn."...Continue to read
...‘They seek out diversion and distraction. After all, if you don’t like being yourself, the television, the magazine, the iPod, or the Internet can quickly become an easy escape. This invited distraction breaks the silence and brings even more opportunity for discontent into our lives.
This is a shame. For there is great confidence to be found in contentment and solitude.’...
Photo and the caption above:Simplicity Begins in Us
Now, please continue to reflect more on what was noted above by reading the very excellent article below:
In a Distracted World, Solitude Is a Competitive Advantage
By Mike Erwin. This article was first published in Harvard Business Review on 19 October 2017
Photo:bing.com
“Always remember: Your focus determines your reality.” Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn shares this advice with Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars, but in our hyper-distracted work world, it’s advice that we all need to hear.
Technology has undoubtedly ushered in progress in a myriad of ways. But this same force has also led to work environments that inundate people with a relentless stream of emails, meetings, and distractions. In 2010, Eric Schmidt, then the CEO of Google, shared a concern with the world: “Every two days, we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization until 2003. I spend most of my time assuming the world is not ready for the technology revolution that will be happening soon.” Are we able to process the volume of information, stimuli, and various distractions coming at us each and every day?
A significant volume of research has outlined the problem with this onslaught of information. Research by the University of London reveals that our IQ drops by five to 15 points when we are multitasking. In his book, Your Brain at Work, David Rock explains that performance can decrease by up to 50% when a person focuses on two mental tasks at once. And research led by legendary Stanford University professor Clifford Nass concluded that distractions reduce the brain’s ability to filter out irrelevancy in its working memory.
There is no silver bullet to solving the complex problems ushered in by the information age. But there are some good places to start, and one of them is counterintuitive: solitude. Having the discipline to step back from the noise of the world is essential to staying focused. This is even more important in a highly politicized society that constantly incites our emotions, causing the cognitive effects of distractions to linger. In our book, Lead Yourself First, Ray Kethledge and I define solitude as a state of mind, a space in which to focus one’s own thoughts without distraction — and where the mind can work through a problem on its own.
The ability to focus is a competitive advantage in the world today. Here are some thoughts on how to stay focused at work:
Build periods of solitude into your schedule. Treat it as you would any meeting or an appointment. If you don’t schedule and commit to solitude, something else will fill the space. One need not be Henry David Thoreau here; 15-minute pockets of solitude are very effective. If we spend our entire workday sitting in meetings and answering emails, it leaves little space in our minds to do the hard thinking that is essential to good decision making and leadership.
Analyze where your time is best spent. Most of us have meetings that we can afford to miss, and most of us underutilize our energy because we have not allocated time to reflect and be rigorous about our priorities.
Starve your distractions. Social media, YouTube, and the limitless possibilities of the internet hang over our heads. They tempt us to click links that take us to another five-minute video or article. Acknowledge the ways that the internet lures you in, and then intervene by logging out of your social media accounts and blocking certain websites during work hours — especially the ones you use for a quick distraction “when you have 10 minutes to kill.”
Don’t be too busy to learn how to be less busy. One of the biggest reasons we struggle to focus is because we fill our schedules with too many commitments and we consistently prioritize urgent tasks over important ones. Leadership development and training opportunities exist to enhance your ability to understand yourself better, to reflect, and to grow. Don’t let the tempo of work get in the way of good development opportunities (once in a while).
Create a “stop doing” list. There are only so many hours in a day. As your to-do list grows, you cannot keep accumulating more tasks. Solitude gives you the space to reflect on where your time is best spent, which provides you with the clarity to decide which meetings you should stop attending, which committees you should step down from, and which invitations you should politely decline. This is something that Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, has been advising people to do for many years.
The volume of our communication, and our unfettered access to information and other people, have made it more difficult than ever to focus. Despite this reality, there is another truth: Opportunities to focus are still all around us. But we must recognize them and believe that the benefit of focus, for yourself and the people you lead, is worth making it a priority in your life. In other words, before you can lead others, the first person you must lead is yourself."
Mike Erwin is the co-author of Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude and CEO of the Character & Leadership Center. He is also the president of The Positivity Project and a Lt. Colonel in the Army Reserve, assigned to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point as an Assistant Professor in Leadership & Psychology.
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‘Free market capitalism is the greatest agent of collective human progress ever created’-Theresa May
Photo:thedailysheeple.com
In an Open Letter to Prime Minister May published on the GCGI website, I had noted the disastrous consequences of our broken capitalist model and values, whilst offering an alternative path (more on this a bit later).
Today I was very pleased to hear that many leading capitalists, the so-called captains of industry and finance in our country have come out, agreeing with me! WoW! Can you believe it!
‘Capitalism 'has been broken', top UK business leaders warn’
'Greedy, tax-dodging capitalism'
Photo: bing.com
Socialism for the Fatcats and Capitalism for the rest
Capitalism and the Grenfell Towering Inferno Photo:bing.com
Photo:edie.net
Bastard Economics of Greedy Neoliberalism and the Killings of the Innocents in London Tower
‘The state of capitalism is in desperate need of reform and modernisation, according to some of the UK’s top business leaders, who claim that the system has been hurt by management greed, corporate tax dodging and investor short-termism.
Speaking on a panel for the Financial Times, former minister Baroness Shriti Vadera, who is now chairwoman of Santander UK, said that “the underlying promise of western capitalist economies — that a rising tide lifts all boats — has been broken”. She said that a “better model” is needed. Others echoed her remarks.
Robert Swannell, the former chairman of retailer Marks and Spencer, said that capitalism had “lost its way” and that companies and their investors had become much too focused on short termism, according to the FT.
People’s Tragedy: Neoliberal Legacy of Thatcher and Reagan
The Destruction of our World and the lies of Milton Friedman
The Value of Values: Why Values Matter
What might an Economy for the Common Good look like?
And Carolyn Fairbairn, director-general of the Confederation of British Industry, said that capitalism had taken a number of “wrong turnings”.
“The financial crash, a fixation on shareholder value at the expense of purpose, and the toxic issues of […] payment of tax and executive pay stand in the way of redemption,” she said, according to the FT.
The chairman of Barclays and Lloyds and the former chairman of HSBC also levelled criticism at the emergence of short-termism. Anne Richards, chief executive of asset management company M&G, said: “In the current era, best described as ‘the age of anxiety’, we will see capitalism rejected unless it finds a way of fundamentally addressing this anxiety.”
Last week the former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, claimed capitalism is coming to an end because it is making itself obsolete.
Speaking to an audience at University College London, he said that artificial intelligence would spell the end of capitalism in its current form.
“Capitalism is going to undermine capitalism, because they are producing all these technologies that will make corporations and the private means of production obsolete,” he said, according to the FT.’
The above excerpts were first published in The Independent on 23 October 2018
Photo:printerest.co.uk
Capitalism is broken. Here’s how to fix it
The best I can offer is to revisit the letter I had written to Mrs. May which is as true today as when I wrote it: Dear Prime Minister-Britain needs a New Economic Model
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Helping Hands Tree
Photo:pinterest.co.uk
What is the essence of a good life? Aristotle tells us that it is ‘‘to serve others and to do good.’’
VOLUNTEERS
“Many will be shocked to find
When the day of judgement nears
That there's a special place in heaven
Set aside for volunteers.”-Author unknown
Photo:uumilwaukee.org
Recently I came across a very interesting article about the wonders of volunteerism, doing good in the interest of the common good, and their corresponding health and emotional/spiritual benefits for those who engage in this type of activities.
I believe the article: ‘Rx It’s Good to be Good (G2BG) 2017 Commentary: Prescribing Volunteerism for Health, Happiness, Resilience, and Longevity’ is of significant interest to the GCGI community, and thus, I wish to share it with our readers.
However, before doing so, I would very much like, to share, once more, a selection of related articles that have been posted online at the GCGI website to highlight our mission further:
“To understand, appreciate, and face the challenges of the contemporary world requires us to focus on life’s big picture. Whether it is war and peace, economics and the environment, justice and injustice, love and hatred, cooperation and competition, common good and selfishness, science and technology, progress and poverty, profit and loss, food and population, energy and water, disease and health, education and family, we need the big picture in order to understand and solve the many pressing problems, large and small, regional or global.
The “Big Picture” is also the context in which we can most productively explore the big perennial questions of life - purpose and meaning, virtues and values.
In order to focus on life’s bigger picture and guided by the principles of hard work, commitment, volunteerism and service; with a great passion for dialogue of cultures, civilisations, religions, ideas and visions, at an international conference in Oxford in 2002 the Globalisation for the Common Good Initiative (GCGI) and the GCGI Annual International Conference Series were founded.
We recognise that our socio-economic problems are closely linked to our spiritual problems and vice versa. Moreover, socio-economic justice, peace and harmony will come about only when the essential connection between the spiritual and practical aspects of life is valued. Necessary for this journey is to discover, promote and live for the common good. The principle of the common good reminds us that we are all really responsible for each other – we are our brothers' and sisters' keepers – and must work for social conditions which ensure that every person and every group in society is able to meet their needs and realize their potential. It follows that every group in society must take into account the rights and aspirations of other groups, and the well-being of the whole human family.”...Continue to read
If you want to be happy, be a volunteer. If you want others to be happy, be a volunteer
Your Body, Soul, Mind, Health, Happiness and Volunteerism for the Common Good
Build a Better World: The Healing Power of Doing Good
And now, the article I had mentioned above:
‘Rx It’s Good to be Good (G2BG) 2017 Commentary: Prescribing Volunteerism for Health, Happiness, Resilience, and Longevity’
Stephen G. Post, PhD
President, Institute for Research on Unlimited Love—Spirituality, Compassion, Service, and Founding Director, Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care and Bioethics Department of Family, Population, and Preventive Medicine Stony Brook University School of Medicine.
Abstract
This article presents and interprets the strong evidence that helping others in meaningful ways generally results in a happier, healthier, resilient, and even longer life for the giver; based on the strength of this evidence overall and in subpopulations including patient groups, it then asserts that the time has come for health-care professionals to prescribe and recommend such behavior at sustainable levels generally in the range of 2 hours per week. The medical evidence justifies the prescribing (or recommending) of volunteerism and helping activities for individuals, schools, companies, and whole communities. This article presents this innovative claim against the backdrop Norman Rockwell’s iconic image of The Golden Rule (1961), in which he captures the benefits of focusing our minds and actions on contributing to the lives of others. The review encompasses all age groups, many special categories of people grappling with illness, and population health generally.
Read the article: Rx It’s Good to be Good (G2BG) 2017 Commentary: Prescribing Volunteerism for Health, Happiness, Resilience, and Longevity
Photo:bing.com
