The series continues.  Realities we avoid acknowledging that can provide us with strength, grit and self-sufficiency.  They seem grim on the surface, but are troves of wisdom that help us be mindful empowered service professionals.  

Making a drama out of our differences and the need to be the one that's right is one of the greatest obstacles to being of service.  I discuss how to understand and hack righteousness.  And to know when it’s working is subtle and insidious ways. 

All of this is true: 

The desire to feel connected to the people you serve is often what's behind your resentment of them.  Our need for people to seem similar to us causes conflict when they demonstrate preferences that trigger us.  Learn how to feel connected by adapting to the people you serve rather than just hoping they adapt to you.  Shore up adaptation energy with meditation. 

The best way to inspire conflict is to deny someone’s reality.  I explore subtle ways that we do this in the service environment and the best way to catch yourself and shift into a way of showing up that is much simpler and . 

“The customer is always right” does not mean what you think it means.  Learn how to use this to be able to understand and support the people you serve while maintaining boundaries.  “The server is never right” simply means that you are never right when you have a point to prove.  You are always right when you are attentive to the present moment. 

Attempting to educate or advise requires the right conditions and agreements from the people you serve - I discuss how to look for the signs such that you’re not being obnoxious and preachy. 

I explore ways that our broken service culture has resulted in restaurant guests developing guilty conditioning around “bothering” servers for anything.  Why and how this needs to shift - and why it’s vital for both parties to benefit. 

You need to know yourself and your motivations for wanting to engage the people you serve - are they driven by your love of caring for people or something more ego-driven?  I discuss the "letting go" skills you need to get joy serving people that want to be left alone and not engage the server. 


Go Deeper Into The Mindful Service Movement:

Explore The Book ToC w/ Live Content Links
Join the Facebook Community & Bring Us Your Service Struggles & Insights!
Follow Me on Instagram & Learn Mindful Ninja Moves
Subscribe/Review on i-Tunes & I'll Mail You A Basket of Kittens
Visit my partner: Institute for Organizational Mindfulness

My reflection on the fascinating discussion with Kelsey Mathes in the most recent interview episode "Ego-Driven Fear, Self-Transformation, Empowered Work…and Other Barroom Chat."  A short episode providing summaries, key takeaways and impactful ideas.

Key Points:

1. How to deal with periods where we realize that we're over-committed to aspect of our lives that are no longer serving us.  
2. We over-dramatize our lives to give them meaning, but this absorbs your energy and identity into your circumstances.  Plug into who you really are through meditation and mindfulness, and break your need to define yourself by your circumstances.  This is how you create resilience to challenging environments.
3. We have conditioned ourselves out of essential learning skills since childhood - reconnecting with them can bring untold growth and success.  The ego worries about performance and keeping everything save and consistent.  I look at how this impacts people in service and hospitality and how we become vulnerable to trapping ourselves in the stories of the ego.
4. If we do it unconsciously, the work we do helps perpetuate a low self-image.  If it's done conscious helps us become the powerful, masterful person we want to be. 
5. 3 false beliefs about hospitality work that lead us to believe that we are not becoming a capable and powerful human being.  How to make it a practice for being the person we want to be.  How it leads to greater success in all areas of life than developing skills, knowledge or "resume items."

Go Deeper Into The Mindful Service Movement:

Explore The Book ToC w/ Live Content Links
Join the Facebook Community & Bring Us Your Service Struggles & Insights!
Follow Me on Instagram & Learn Mindful Ninja Moves
Subscribe/Review on i-Tunes & I'll Mail You A Basket of Kittens
Visit my partner: Institute for Organizational Mindfulness

Kelsey Mathes is a transformational coach and meditation teacher who also happens to be forged in the fires of a long hospitality career.  She now works with people to help them start businesses and side hustles - especially when they are held back by  job and life obligations that are no longer serving them.  She incorporates her training as a meditation teacher with Ziva meditation and holistic health consultant to give her clients the tools to shift their lives by shifting themselves from the inside.  She was kind enough to talk about her recent foray back into a service-oriented job and all the ways her experience has enriched her health and well-being mission, Kam Meditation.   

*Episode Note: there are some sounds of typing, bumps and cell notifications which may make this my most unprofessional sounding episode to date.  I have up-leveled my production game and developed protocols to ensure cleaner audio in the future. 

All of this is true: 

1. Doing what you want to do with your life is not a matter of skill, knowledge or capability, but a surprisingly simple mindset. 
2. We have conditioned ourselves out of essential learning skills since childhood - reconnecting with them can bring untold growth and success. 
3. There are powerful aspects of your mind that want to keep everything the same.  You can work with them rather than against them to create positive change in your life. 
4. Working in hospitality can be a sustainable and inspiring profession - but this depends on the choices you make.  We look at how you need to shift your relationships to the work you do. 
5. Overdramatizing neutral situations can give them meaning and even be a requirement for showing that we are caring and motivated.  Kelsey and I discuss far more empowered alternatives. 
6. If you are not where you want to be in life, what needs to change: your circumstances or yourself?  Kelsey helps explore this question and offers valuable tools and perspectives that you can apply to your life. 

All Roads That Lead to Kelsey: 

Kam Meditation
Instagram

Go Deeper Into The Mindful Service Movement:

Visit my partner: Institute for Organizational Mindfulness
Explore The Book ToC w/ Live Content Links
Join the Facebook Community & Bring Us Your Service Struggles & Insights!
Follow Me on Instagram & Learn Mindful Ninja Moves
Subscribe/Review on i-Tunes & I'll Mail You A Basket of Kittens

All of this is true:

1. I'm experimenting with shorter episode times (for solo stuff).  Let me know how you like this format.
2. The Japanese slogan of tea ceremony "Ichi-go Ichi-e" essentially means the threat of constant assassination can make you more mindful, grateful, and of service.
3. Gratitude is empowering in ways that you can't imagine.
4. Truly living requires an "ownership reversal" means taking ownership of what's not
5. Gratitude requires the strength of a warrior because it involves breaking all conditioning around behaviors that you don't like.
6. You can convert all of people's rude, mean and inconsiderate behavior you experience to you to fuel for growth and further service.

Visit my partner: Institute for Organizational Mindfulness
Explore The Book ToC w/ Live Content Links
Join the Facebook Community & Bring Us Your Service Struggles & Insights!
Follow Me on Instagram & Learn Mindful Ninja Moves
Subscribe/Review on i-Tunes & I'll Mail You A Basket of Kittens

All of this is true:

1. I'm experimenting with shorter episode times (for solo stuff).  Let me know how you like this format.
2. People don't suck, you just expect them to be different than they are.  
3. You can have expectations, priorities, preferences, goals, etc., and still be nimble enough to respond to reality dealing you a different hand...in fact this is the key to truly thriving.  I discuss how to develop a non-attached relationship to your expectations of the people you serve o you can have more success and less frustration.  
4. You don't need a higher position in order to be a leader - you just need to be more compassionate, adaptive and understanding of reality than your current manager.
5. "Managing expectations" in your guests should not be nearly as important at managing yourself and the emotional energy you invest in frustration, disappointment and resentment.
6. Why indifference is not the solution.  There are far more empowered solutions.

Visit my partner: Institute for Organizational Mindfulness
Explore The Book ToC w/ Live Content Links
Join the Facebook Community & Bring Us Your Service Struggles & Insights!
Follow Me on Instagram & Learn Mindful Ninja Moves
Subscribe/Review on i-Tunes & I'll Mail You A Basket of Kittens

My reflections on my fascinating discussion with Wu De in the previous episode: Walk The Line Between Freedom & Discipline – Interview w/ Zen Tea Monk Wu De.  I'll now be doing follow up episodes that summarize some of the points made in the interview and connect them do the challenges and opportunities of service life.

Key Points:

1. How Cha Dao (sitting with and serving tea mindfully) has completely transformed my ability to serve, live and do everything.
2. Taking practice beyond the mat/cushion: the power and importance of being mindful in everything we do.
3. How a practices like Chao Dao connects you with "Dharma".  This is a simpler and easier to connect with than you think: it's simply a matter of developing your intuitive ability such that you can say: "What do I feel I absolutely must be doing with myself right now."  
4. Freedom vs. discipline, acceptance vs. self-work.  Knowing the pitfalls of going too hard or too soft, and when to adjust focus.  Know when to prioritize technique and when to prioritize the essence of why you're learning technique.
5. Authenticity is not just "following your impulses".  How "being yourself" isn't just a matter of being ungoverned.  Learning how to be more mannered and adapting to others actually allows you to be more effectively yourself via relationship-building.
6. Become important in a job where it is hard to. Doing this one simple, and slightly parental thing - value others!

Go Deeper Into The Mindful Service Movement:

Explore The Book ToC w/ Live Content Links
Join the Facebook Community & Bring Us Your Service Struggles & Insights!
Follow Me on Instagram & Learn Mindful Ninja Moves
Subscribe/Review on i-Tunes & I'll Mail You A Basket of Kittens

All of this is true:

Wu De provides a fascinating introduction to the lost art of Cha Dao (The Way of Tea), a practice that both inspired me to be a better hospitality professional and a better meditation teacher.

Sitting with tea (real tea) in attentive silence for a few minutes every day will absolutely transform your life.

As "civilized" humans we have lost connection (or more: "sense of connection") to nature and the innate wisdom it provides us with.  Sitting with tea mindfully can re-connect us to our natural intuitive brilliance as people.  Our potential for insight is found in a place of stillness and listening, which means going counter to our culture of motion.

"Freedom is not doing what you want, but doing absolutely what you must:" discipline may seem rigid and restricting, but it's ultimately liberating.  Mastery of anything is a play between restriction and looseness.  You’re always practicing, always working on form and yet you’re always willing to forget form to allow fluidity and spontaneity.

“When you’re with me you can do nothing right and when you’re on your own you can do nothing wrong:” having access to lineage teachers, training, and accumulated wisdom is necessary and empowering.

“The best way to matter to others is to allow them to matter what to you:” One of the greatest gifts you can be given is the opportunity to serve.  

All Roads That Lead To Wu De:

Get His Books
Explore Global Tea Hut

Go Deeper Into The Mindful Service Movement:

Explore The Book ToC w/ Live Content Links
Join the Facebook Community & Bring Us Your Service Struggles & Insights!
Follow Me on Instagram & Learn Mindful Ninja Moves
Subscribe/Review on i-Tunes & I'll Mail You A Basket of Kittens

Part two of the five-part series on becoming mentally and emotionally self-sufficient. Serve with the warrior spirit by reconciling and learning to navigate the hard truth that....

3) No one is going to save you.
4) Pleasure doesn't last.

This episode gives you the tools to:
::Know how to engage with important and influential people such that you stand out from the status-seekers.
::Create relationships that have integrity and allow you to be of value to others.
::Create your own opportunities for growth and success that are better than anything someone you're hoping to "network with" can offer you.
::Be your own source of self-worth and break dependency on others for validation.
::Know how to deal with difficult, self-important and impossible-to-please clientele.

Honestly, once you take ownership of these hard realities, your life of service becomes a source of freedom, empowerment and fulfillment.

Explore The Book ToC w/ Live Content Links
Join the Facebook Community & Bring Us Your Service Struggles & Insights!
Follow Me on Instagram & Learn Mindful Ninja Moves
Subscribe/Review on i-Tunes & I'll Mail You A Basket of Kittens

This series is about reminding you of the inner strength you have to become mentally and emotionally self-sufficient. Because service requires having the warrior spirit.  This means being able to show up to the role when you can't depend on being received openly and warmly by those you serve (openness and warmth are your job).  Resilience and adaptiveness are key, which is why I'm so excited about the pain, revelation and surprising optimism that these 10 hard truths will provide.  This multi-part series hopes break any dependencies you have on others acting the way you want.  And dependencies on life going the way you want it to.  It's not gonna.  And it's gonna end soon (see Truth no. 6: You're Going To Die). 

This episode covers the first two:

1) No one cares about you.
2) You’re never going to make anyone happy (or even happier).

Ouch.  Once you get over the shock, listen to the episode and learn the tools to hack what seems like a grim reality.  Honestly, once you take ownership of them, these principles are the raw material for freedom, empowerment and fulfillment.

Explore The Book ToC w/ Live Content Links
Join the Facebook Community & Bring Us Your Service Struggles & Insights!
Follow Me on Instagram & Learn Mindful Ninja Moves
Subscribe/Review on i-Tunes & I'll Mail You A Basket of Kittens

All of this is true:

• Jennifer discovered and built a wholesome, inspired lifestyle around her hospitality career, which then drove her into a path of self-development.  We discuss how and why such awakening is so uncommon in this industry even though it's so utterly crucial...especially if your work is more a means to an end than a passion. 
• We examine the traps of the “noble struggle” identity.  Working hard can not only distract you from doing right by yourself, but create a conditioning that we're not earning it unless we're suffering and sacrificing.  
• You should definitely pursue a job will give you a sense of confidence and authority…so you can see how little you truly need it for that (the true source of confidence is you).
• You can ease the stress-response of a high-pressure situation by embracing it as what we’re designed for.
• Break codependency by redirecting your service instincts to yourself (away from the need to feed your martyr complex).

All Roads That Lead to Jennifer:

Jennifer Lancaster (Instagram)
Jennifer Lancaster (Facebook)
The Other Side of Dining (Facebook)

(Not To Tell You What You Need, But...) Serve Conscious Things You Need To Check Out:

::Mindful Ninja Moves:: Alexa Flash Briefing
::Mindful Ninja Moves:: Instagram

::Post a shout out that you're listening to the show and I will post back and tag you!::