Last 8% Morning

Are the you feeling the effects of uncertainty?

In today’s episode, the second in our Managing Uncertainty series, we take a deeper look at worry. Why do we worry? Does it serve us? If you are prone to worry, you won’t want to miss this episode.

Let’s Walk!

Gabrielle Bernstein

"Fear is often our immediate response to uncertainty. There’s nothing wrong with experiencing fear. The key is not to get stuck in it."

Eckhart Tolle 

“If uncertainty is unacceptable to you, it turns into fear. If it is perfectly acceptable, it turns into increased aliveness, alertness, and creativity.” 

Do you get overwhelmed by the amount of uncertainty in the world today? Whether politically, or with the economy, the pandemic, within your organization, or with your family? Do you wish you had more insight and tools to better deal with these uncertain times we are living in? 

In today’s episode, the beginning of our Managing Uncertainty series, Part 1 we take a deeper look at uncertainty, which is the first step to managing it effectively.  

Let’s Walk!

“Looking deeper, we could say that the real cause of suffering is not being able to tolerate uncertainty—and thinking that it’s perfectly sane, perfectly normal, to deny the fundamental groundlessness of being human.”

Pema Chödrön

"Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic—this is the spiritual path.”  

Pema Chödrön

It is simply true that during this pandemic, in our organizations, or in our personal life, we will face Last 8% situations, those more difficult situations than what we normally face. Do you wish you had tools to better deal with these more difficult situations? 

 In today’s session, we  use our identity statement to help us when we face our more challenging moments, our Last 8% sitations.

Let’s walk! 

“The best way out is always through.”

Robert Frost 

“Act as if what you do makes a difference. Because It does.”

William James

In today’s episode, do you sometimes find yourself restless, feeling a lack of ease, maybe even a little fearful and Not sure how to deal with it? The fact is that we are not very skilled at being uncomfortable. And it leaves us with more, not less suffering.

If this episode, we describe How to be more effective at being uncomfortable. This is part 1 of our 5 MINUTE BOOK CLUB series that will appear every now and then in our podcast. We are reading: Pema Chödrön's, What To Do When Things Fall Apart

Today we will describe a different way to being with our discomfort so that we can live with more ease and grace upon the life.

Let’s walk!

“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.”
Seneca

“nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know, she wrote.
…nothing ever really attacks us except our own confusion. maybe the only enemy is that we don’t like the way reality is now, and therefore wish it would go away fast. but what we find is that nothing ever goes away, until it has taught us what we need to know. if we run a hundred miles an hour, to the other end of the continent, in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive. it just keeps returning with new names, forms, manifestations until we learn, whatever it has to teach us, about where we are separating ourselves from reality, how we are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down, instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter, without hesitating or retreating into ourselves.”

Pema Chödrön

“When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised, to find, it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on, to scare away the timid adventurers.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“When we protect ourselves so we won't feel pain, that protection becomes like armor, like armor that imprisons the softness of the heart.”

Pema Chödrön

Do you sometimes find yourself on your phone, in a trance-like state, on auto-pilot, scrolling, ruminating and lost in thought? Are you finding that you often run out of time during the day? That there is simply not enough hours in the day to do everything you want? Are you a bit feeling burned out? Not at your best?

 If this episode, we describe how you can gain an extra hour a day by not doing very much; a plan that will help improve your mental health and your learning all at the same time.

Let’s walk!

 
“The little things? The little moments? They aren’t little.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn

“The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn

“Long ago you may have given up control of your brain and set it on autopilot because it just felt like too much work. Well, it is work! But for me, this work was well worth it for the prospect of not waking up sad every day.”

 Chris Hardwick

“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In this episode, have you made the decision to make kindness a superpower, but have also come to realize that it will take some work on your part? Today, we engage in the ‘the work’, the internal practice of building kindness so that it becomes a foundation for transforming our lives with more kindness.

 Let’s walk!

“Love expands us, connects us, sweetens us, ennobles us. Love springs up in tender concern, it blossoms into caring action. It makes beauty out of all we touch. In any moment we can step beyond our small self and embrace each other as beloved parts of a whole.”
Jack Kornfield

“With mindfulness, loving kindness, and self-compassion, we can begin to let go of our expectations about how life and those we love should be.”
Sharon Salzberg

“The bud

stands for all things,

even for those things that don’t flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;   

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing.”

Galway Kinnell

Are you finding that you are falling back to not being as kind as you would like? Especially under pressure? Today, we build the internal practice of kindness so that we can make the kindness neuropathway in our brain more robust, more powerful so that kindness becomes easier for us to access even in our more challenging moments.

 Let walk!

“Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind."

Henry James

 "I think the most important question facing humanity is, ‘Is the universe a friendly place?’

Albert Einstein

“A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds. A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love.”

Saint Basil 

Do you want to be more kind in your life but are not sure how to do it?

As you know if you have been listening to this series, kindness is a muscle, that you can grow, that become a default behavior of yours , can become a new neuropathway.

In this episode, the third in our series on Building Kindness as a Superpower, we look at the key to unlocking kindness so that we can have the kind of life, relationship and impact on the world we want to have.

Let’s walk!

 
“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each person’s life sorrow and suffering enough, to disarm all hostility.”

U.S. poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

Dalai Lama

“Any man could, if he were so inclined, be the sculptor of his own brain.”

Nobel Laureate and the father of Neuroscience

Santiago Ramón y Cajal

 “Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.”

Eric Hoffer

Do you sometimes wish you could be more patient? Less reactive? More kind to others or yourself?

Well, kindness is not something immutable to change. You can build it, like a muscle, you can grow it so that it becomes one of your superpowers.

In this episode, the second in our series on Building Kindness as a Superpower, we look at the science of kindness and how it can help you as you grow your career and relationships and improve your life
Let’s walk!

“Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.”
The 14th Dalai Lama

“Go and love someone exactly as they are. And then watch how quickly they transform into the greatest, truest version of themselves.”
Wes Angelozzi

Are you feeling anxious or stressed about the approaching US election? Worried about what the outcome will mean or how people will react afterward? If so, you are not alone.
Many of us are feeling a mix of worry and rumination and maybe even helplessness as Nov. 3rd approaches.

With the election upon us, now seems an appropriate time to have a 3-part episode on kindness. We will cover both the science of kindness and the practice of kindness; for ourselves and for others. In this episode, we look at the barriers to kindness. Let’s walk!

"Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt

"An empty stomach is not a good adviser.”
Albert Einstein

"Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured."
Mark Twain

"You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“To get The Science of Goal Setting to Build a Better Life Worksheet where you can have full access to all of the questions and exercises found in this series, please go to Last 8% Project Facebook group, which can be found here: https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:d0109634-9849-433b-9cf7-d88957ff5bb6