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A few years ago, my wife and I were at a school meeting and the teacher, a seasoned elder, was telling the parents about the various challenges our kids were facing. As we concluded she said, “You’ve got great kids. The thing is . . .” She paused and seemed hesitant, and then set her jaw and continued, “Look, I don’t mean to offend anyone, and I hope you’ll take this the right way because it’s important. Your kids lack grit.” As she scanned our faces, I think she wanted to say that many of us adults lacked grit too.
We still have certain hardships today, but because life is undoubtedly easier for most people, it’s quite possible to live a normal lifespan with very little grit. Although this grit deficiency is widespread among modern people, the upside is that we generally have higher emotional intelligence than our ancestors did.
There’s a big difference between managing intense emotions because we’re emotionally intelligent versus being unaffected by emotions because we don’t feel them. Grit often goes along with emotional suppression, which was probably a more common coping mechanism in previous generations, in part because we just didn’t talk about our feelings much. The downside was a narrowed experience of life and lots of dysfunctional relationships.
My point is that what we call “grit” often comes at a high price. But grit and emotional intelligence aren’t mutually exclusive qualities. We can be tough without being shut down emotionally. In fact, the better we understand our emotional landscape, the more resilient we are, the healthier our supportive relationships are, and the less daunting it is to step out of our comfort zone.
The cultivation of both grit and emotional intelligence requires a willingness to be uncomfortable. When you think of a person with grit perhaps you imagine them sleeping on the ground, plodding through snow in order to deliver the mail, getting thrown off a horse and climbing back on, or having to use non-organic soymilk in their latte. (Soymilk is almost synonymous with grit, am I right? 😉)
We’d be best served with a combination of both qualities. Grit without emotional intelligence implies a person who can be tough and tenacious, but won’t get to fully experience the journey and rewards of whatever they invest their grit into pursuing. As for emotional intelligence without grit, a person may fully understand what they’re feeling but be unable to stand up to their emotions when they threaten to take over, nor to stand up and say what needs to be said in order to clear the air, maintain integrity, and honor their boundaries.
One silver lining of this pandemic is that I've seen more emotionally intelligent grit in people than ever. It takes grit to make do with shortages of food and toilet paper, to find ways to get our kids educated when schools are closed, to figure out how to make ends meet when our jobs and businesses disappear, and to change our behaviors to reduce the spread of a contagious disease. The emotional intelligence aspect is not letting our fear be the driver, instead being guided in all our adaptations by homing in on what's most important. For instance: family, community, service, vibrant health, kindness, and ecology. It
means honoring the choice that mere survival isn’t enough.
This brings us to the crux of emotionally intelligent grit, which is that having a higher purpose is essential. Without it, we adapt without heart. To me, a high purpose always implies an intention that goes beyond personal gain. It inspires the willingness to be uncomfortable as we develop and maintain these muscles, and the world is made better by this sacrifice.
Be well, and not too comfortable,
Peter
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It was my birthday party in May and before we all started eating, Briana asked if I wanted to say something to my guests. Unbeknownst to them, I had been feeling a nauseous gurgling in my guts all day, so I was trying to hold it together and was caught a bit off guard. But I looked around at this group of shining faces and said the first words that came to me: “Community is medicine. Thank you for being here.” And that was enough.
Immersion in loving community is deeply fortifying, supportive, and uplifting. Studies show that when a suffering person holds someone’s hand, their suffering is reduced. I think the same is true of metaphorically holding many hands through community engagement. And while it’s therapeutic to be seen and held in our challenges, there’s also value in the way that being oriented to our community gives us a break from self-scrutiny and self-indulgence.
Like eating green vegetables or meditating, sometimes we can forget to prioritize community when we’re busy or immersed in a personal struggle. But as some wise person once said, our community is like our muscles. Besides supporting and empowering us, they need to be engaged regularly in order to stay strong. If you neglect your muscles, they get flabby. If you neglect your community, they probably won’t turn their backs on you, but for numerous reasons they won’t be able to support you as well as they could.
From our book, The Well Life, here are some actions you can take to mindfully build your community:
- Ask people for help – whether it be in your garden, with your taxes, or finding a great preschool. Learn what gifts and wisdom those around you have and give them opportunities to share.
- Be involved. Go to local meetings. Participate. Know your community’s plans for the future – and how you fit into them.
- Know the names of people you see often – the grocery cashier, the gas station attendant, the school principal, the guy who takes the same bus as you every day. Allow them to be real people in your life.
- Make eye contact with the humans you pass on the street. Be the one who says “Hi!” first.
- Protect the green spaces.
- Fix something that’s broken – a neighbor’s fence, your niece’s bike, the librarian’s flat tire.
- Support local businesses – even if it costs a little more.
- Learn about others’ traditions and celebrate together. Look for local festivals to attend, even if they’re for an event you wouldn’t normally observe.
- Stick up for someone – a disadvantaged person or population, someone being mistreated or disrespected, or someone who’s unable to stand up for themselves.
- Be curious. Attend lectures at the library, senior center, or local university, check out a high school science fair, and – foremost – learn what cool stuff people are up to in your town. What are people building? What are they learning? Who can tell you about the history of this place?
I want everyone to have the experience of being part of a healthy, loving, supportive community. I hope you’ll engage with your community today and be reminded of how nourishing it is.
Be well,
Peter
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In working with the community that has developed around our Dreambook, Briana and I have encountered people looking for many different forms of life-optimization. While there’s plenty of guidance we can offer someone to help them figure out and actualize what makes them happy, we meet quite a lot of people who essentially already have it. They really are living the dream. The main issue is that they just don’t see it.
They often suffer from what my friend Andy Dooley calls “lousy and lazy thinking.” Today I want to talk about the antidote. Whether you’ve already got a great thing going or there’s clearly a gap between where you are now and where you want to be, either way, you’ll benefit from being deliberate with how you use your attention.
Attention is like fertilizer. When you put your attention on something it grows.
This is why panicky thoughts tend to balloon and pain tends to increase when we focus on it. Unfortunately, bad experiences also tend to cut deeper grooves in our inner terrain, causing stronger memories and a tendency to be retriggered. We can easily get into a negative feedback loop as the thought “something’s wrong” demands our attention and then gets fed by it.
Our nervous system is just trying to be helpful; we’re wired this way to ensure our survival. Thus, it’s by design that things that signal danger are able to usurp our attention. But even while the risk of physical danger is lower than ever for most modern humans, we’ve trained ourselves to react similarly to a very broad range of other conditions, like money scarcity and situations that could lead to disapproval by our peers (because we subconsciously associate both money and our tribe’s approval with our survival).
But as humans with highly evolved brains capable of reasoning, we don’t need to be run by our animalistic side. We can change our default programs. One of the best antidotes is get a hold of that mind and put your attention on something else. Your two best options are (1) whatever you are currently engaged with (A.K.A. mindfulness) (2) anything that is good, fascinating, funny, joyous, celebratory, beautiful, loving, trustworthy, kind, generous, or peaceful.
By putting your attention on what is good and what is here and now, you fertilize those parts of life and override your overactive survival mechanisms. Not only does this help heal you of the tendency to focus on the bad (or possibly-maybe-could-be-bad), if you do it enough it actually starts to change your life.
If you’re using the Dreambook, an easy thing to put your attention on is all the goals you achieve. Too often we complete something, barely register it, and move on to the next thing. Just pausing, acknowledging, and celebrating this achievement amplifies the feelings of satisfaction, self-trust, and gratitude.
Revel in those feelings. The satisfaction of completion – like finishing a puzzle or making it to the finish line – is a combination of relief and delight. The feeling of self-trust is like an inner stability and fortitude. You said you were going to do this and you do it. You can rely on yourself. You will always be there for you. Finally, gratitude makes you feel expansive and connected. Consider all the internal powers (your body, your ingenuity, your creativity, your persistence, etc.), external powers (the people and resources that helped you get it done), and spiritual powers (the vision, strength, and gifts of your Highest Self) that made this possible. It’s like saying to your system, “I’m pressing the save button. I’m configuring myself for trust, fulfillment, serendipities, and optimism.”
While it’s especially important to do this with your big quarterly and one-year or longer-term goals, it’s perfectly wonderful to do it with your monthly, weekly, and daily goals too. In fact, the more you celebrate the more you start to notice reasons to celebrate.
Be so well,
Peter
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A few years ago, my wife and I were at a school meeting and the teacher, a seasoned elder, was telling the parents about the various challenges our kids were facing. As we concluded she said, “You’ve got great kids. The thing is . . .” She paused and seemed hesitant, and then set her jaw and continued, “Look, I don’t mean to offend anyone, and I hope you’ll take this the right way because it’s important. Your kids lack grit.” As she scanned our faces, I think she wanted to say that many of us adults lacked grit too.
We still have certain hardships today, but because life is undoubtedly easier for most people, it’s quite possible to live a normal lifespan with very little grit. Although this grit deficiency is widespread among modern people, the upside is that we generally have higher emotional intelligence than our ancestors did.
There’s a big difference between managing intense emotions because we’re emotionally intelligent versus being unaffected by emotions because we don’t feel them. Grit often goes along with emotional suppression, which was probably a more common coping mechanism in previous generations, in part because we just didn’t talk about our feelings much. The downside was a narrowed experience of life and lots of dysfunctional relationships.
My point is that what we call “grit” often comes at a high price. But grit and emotional intelligence aren’t mutually exclusive qualities. We can be tough without being shut down emotionally. In fact, the better we understand our emotional landscape, the more resilient we are, the healthier our supportive relationships are, and the less daunting it is to step out of our comfort zone.
The cultivation of both grit and emotional intelligence requires a willingness to be uncomfortable. When you think of a person with grit perhaps you imagine them sleeping on the ground, plodding through snow in order to deliver the mail, getting thrown off a horse and climbing back on, or having to use non-organic soymilk in their latte. (Soymilk is almost synonymous with grit, am I right? 😉)
We’d be best served with a combination of both qualities. Grit without emotional intelligence implies a person who can be tough and tenacious, but won’t get to fully experience the journey and rewards of whatever they invest their grit into pursuing. As for emotional intelligence without grit, a person may fully understand what they’re feeling but be unable to stand up to their emotions when they threaten to take over, nor to stand up and say what needs to be said in order to clear the air, maintain integrity, and honor their boundaries.
One silver lining of this pandemic is that I've seen more emotionally intelligent grit in people than ever. It takes grit to make do with shortages of food and toilet paper, to find ways to get our kids educated when schools are closed, to figure out how to make ends meet when our jobs and businesses disappear, and to change our behaviors to reduce the spread of a contagious disease. The emotional intelligence aspect is not letting our fear be the driver, instead being guided in all our adaptations by homing in on what's most important. For instance: family, community, service, vibrant health, kindness, and ecology. It
means honoring the choice that mere survival isn’t enough.
This brings us to the crux of emotionally intelligent grit, which is that having a higher purpose is essential. Without it, we adapt without heart. To me, a high purpose always implies an intention that goes beyond personal gain. It inspires the willingness to be uncomfortable as we develop and maintain these muscles, and the world is made better by this sacrifice.
Be well, and not too comfortable,
Peter
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