From Sandy Davis' "Zillience" Newsletter:
(1) Building up “Vital Capital” for Retirement
In my view, the “retirement equation” has two major components. The first is your tangible wealth (i.e., your financial capital), and the second is your intangible wealth (i.e., what I’m going to define as your “vital capital” or your overall well-being).
What concerns me is how few of us are paying close attention the intangible half of the equation: the importance of building up your “vital capital.” I think of “vital capital” as the sum of the intangible assets you need to live a healthy, productive, and enjoyable life. When these assets are well managed, upon retirement you will be healthy enough and you will have enough stamina to take full advantage of whatever financial capital you have accumulated.
Because these intangible assets fall outside of their expertise, most financial planners tend to take your health and stamina for granted. They can afford to consider this “none of their business.” Unfortunately, even most doctors and health care providers are now required to focus so singularly on illness and disease that they also can end up taking your overall health and stamina largely for granted. They no longer are afforded time to focus on “the long view.” You, however, cannot afford to overlook your health and stamina. Remember that no one else has as big a stake as you do in sustaining your own well-being.
Because of this blind spot, when we’re planning our retirements, most of us have been taught to put financial capital way out ahead of vital capital. This priority, however, amounts to a classic case of putting the cart before the horse. Why? Because without adequate vitality, when you stop working you might end up being unable to enjoy the fruits of your well-earned retirement funds. Indeed, if your health should fail you before your planned retirement, you might find yourself prematurely disabled and facing an early “forced retirement,” way ahead of your reaching the security of attaining all the financial capital you had planned to amass.
Either way, once you chronically lack vitality, you will no longer be able to fully enjoy doing the very things you may have been deferring until retirement. Your “glory days” might end up being behind you, and you could be left with far less to look forward to than you ever imagined. Particularly if you lack good health, even if you were to have all the money in the world, your ability to enjoy your wealth can end up being severely constrained. Indeed, it might also be short-lived.
Financial Capital Is Not Enough
So having plenty of financial capital is, in and of itself, not enough. You also need to have a wealth of “vital capital.” This includes excellent health, great personal stamina, an agile mind capable of cogent thinking, an exuberant outlook on life, and a strong confidence in your ability to continue to make valuable contributions to the world around you, ones that are creative, generative, and fulfilling.
In what follows, I invite you to look carefully at this intangible half of the retirement equation. I encourage you to be sure to do at least as much “portfolio management” around building your future “vital capital” as you do around building your future “financial capital.”
As I mentioned earlier, the critical goal that most of us tend to overlook is our need to amass enough vital capital to ensure that we will be in a position to enjoy whatever financial capital we are amassing for ourselves. In other words, each of us needs to strike a balance between our investments in these two different types of assets: those that are tangible and those that are intangible.
If you were to come up short with one or the other, I suggest that your vital capital is, in the long run, at least as important and as valuable as your financial capital. Maybe even more so. After all, without your health, it’s hard to do just about everything. You can’t leave home for long without it.
“Vital Capital Planning”
By way of analogy, let’s apply a simple financial planning model to the task of “vital capital planning.” Think of your vital capital as something you can build up and save for the future—just as you would save money. Then let’s compartmentalize what you need to save for retirement and make a plan to deposit your intangible assets it into six different bank accounts.
Three of these accounts will be interest-bearing savings accounts in which you continuously make deposits and then let what you have saved grow and compound over time. For the most part, you will rarely make big withdrawals from these accounts. They hold investments you make now with the long term clearly in mind. You have faith that what you save now will be extremely valuable to you in the future—especially if and when you decide to retire.
The other three accounts are more akin to checking accounts. They are more suitable for holding “faster moving” assets. As with your savings accounts, you want to cultivate a habit of making regular deposits into these accounts. Because of the unpredictability of life, you also may need to make occasional—or even frequent—withdrawals. Whenever you need to spend some the vital capital you have invested in these accounts, you can do so quickly and even massively. All you have to do is write a check and cash it.
The more you save and invest in all six of these accounts, the more vital capital you will have at your disposal, and the more degrees of freedom you will have day-to-day. Your accumulated “intangible assets” will provide you with a strong foundation for living your life in a continuous state of abundant zillience. This is true right now, today. It also will be true going forward, not just when you retire, but long thereafter, as well.
Let’s differentiate the six accounts further.
The Three Savings Accounts
You can use your three savings accounts as “holding vessels” for the virtual capital that you create through the three “background generators” of zillience (Footnote 1). The first account is for deposits of the positive energy you generate each and every time you successfully make and keep an agreement. The second account is for deposits of the positive energy you generate when you take care to eat well. This is a matter of choosing to eat only nourishing foods and only in modest amounts. The third account is for deposits of positive energy that you generate by taking care to sleep well. By making it your habit to get enough quality sleep each night, you can not only keep your energy strong and steady, but you can also bank the dividends from being well-rested into this third saving account.
As you make continuous small deposits in these three savings accounts, you will start to “bank” a significant measure of vital capital.
The Three Checking Accounts
The three checking accounts hold the virtual capital that you create through your “foreground generators” of zillience (Footnote 1). These are the three developmental practices in which you make intentional small investments every single day in order to be sure that you are continuously paying yourself first.
The first checking account holds the virtual capital that comes to you by dint of having a daily centering practice. You might think of this as “mind capital.” It includes your having a well-developed ability to re-center your thoughts and emotions quickly, and a related ability to maintain your “centeredness” through thick and thin. Ironically, you develop these abilities by practicing “getting out of your mind” and spending short periods of time in a restorative place of deep inner stillness.
The second checking account holds the vital capital that flows from exercising vigorously every day or every other day. You can think of this as “body capital.” It includes great health, abundant stamina, a high degree of fitness, corresponding physical agility and flexibility, and the ability to move your body through space both powerfully and gracefully.
The third checking account holds the deposits you are able to make when you invest in a daily creative practice. You can think of this as “spiritual capital.” It includes your ability to stay connected with your own true passions, to be fully authentic, to be ceaselessly creative, to be expansive emotionally, and, all the while, to be continually at peace with just what is. It also includes having a great and reliable sense of humor.
Your Portfolio of Virtual Capital
All six of these bank accounts make up your “portfolio” of investments in your own virtual capital. The distinction between what goes into each account is likely to gradually dissolve over time. In the end, every “dollar” invested is a “dollar” you can spend. It’s yours to put to good use when you need it, regardless of when or how you earned it.
So however young or old you are today, and however far away your retirement appears to be, remember that there is more to amassing wealth than just accumulating financial capital. At least as important is having a wealth of vital capital. Amassing this latter type of capital is entirely up to you. No one else can do it for you.
Just remember that the act of developing vital capital requires clear intentions, sharp attention, and a continuous and systematic amount of effort. Alas, there are no shortcuts. On the other hand, the rewards can be immeasurable, life sustaining, and thoroughly enjoyable.
Call to Action
To start the process of building up your “vital capital,” all you have to do is open up one bank account. Which of the six accounts above appeals to you the most? What would it take to start making some daily deposits in that account? To what do you need to pay attention? What specific actions would be valuable for you to take every day? Once you start making deposits, how fast can you grow the intangible wealth in your account(s)? How will this benefit you? When will you have enough to start sharing your intangible wealth with others? What do you want to contribute? To whom? To what cause? For what heartfelt reason?
Once you have answers to these questions and start to take action accordingly, you’ll most likely find yourself moving along your own true path. You’ll be headed “homeward” in the very best sense of the word.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Resilience for Leaders workshop
What do I mean, "for leaders?"
I assume a unique definition of leadership: A leader is someone who says to themselves "I am going to be the one to take responsibility to make sure things around me go well for everyone." So it could easily mean you, and everyone you work with!
What do I mean by Resilience?
Resilience is the quality that allows us to be our best self, even in situations that are not to our liking. How can leaders and other "stressed-out" professionals prepare themselves to demonstrate grace under fire?
Resilient people have many traits and habits.
...the capacity to access spontaneity and creativity to address problems, positive interpretations in thought and conversation, internal grounding and fullness, the capacity to find and use social support, and so on. The cultivation of these habits and capacities also enhances the quality of individual and organizational life.
Call to set up a workshop in your workplace: 202 550 5462
In this first session, we will begin the journey toward a resilient workplace! We will explore our own stories of resilience, offer support to peers, set or reaffirm personal goals for the ongoing cultivation of resilience, and use action methods to work with a couple of stories.
I assume a unique definition of leadership: A leader is someone who says to themselves "I am going to be the one to take responsibility to make sure things around me go well for everyone." So it could easily mean you, and everyone you work with!
What do I mean by Resilience?
Resilience is the quality that allows us to be our best self, even in situations that are not to our liking. How can leaders and other "stressed-out" professionals prepare themselves to demonstrate grace under fire?
Resilient people have many traits and habits.
...the capacity to access spontaneity and creativity to address problems, positive interpretations in thought and conversation, internal grounding and fullness, the capacity to find and use social support, and so on. The cultivation of these habits and capacities also enhances the quality of individual and organizational life.
Call to set up a workshop in your workplace: 202 550 5462
In this first session, we will begin the journey toward a resilient workplace! We will explore our own stories of resilience, offer support to peers, set or reaffirm personal goals for the ongoing cultivation of resilience, and use action methods to work with a couple of stories.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Three Doors to Resilience
From Sandy Davis' newsletter:
In order to generate lots of “zillience,” I recommend that you have at your disposal three different ways to “come back to your senses.” That way, no matter what challenges you face, you will have not one, but a choice of three different steadying practices on which to lean. You can rely on any one, two, or all three to sustain your personal energy in a state of zesty coherence.
The Front Door
The first zillience-generating practice I recommend to everyone is a daily centering practice. This is the most straightforward way for you to slow down and calm yourself. When you take time do whatever centering practice works best for you, you intentionally let everything around you fall away so that you can create an inner place of centered stillness.
With practice, you teach yourself to turn off the incessant “chatter” in your mind for short periods of time so that you can just “be.” In doing so, you can gain a huge amount of control over your ongoing emotional states. Using techniques as simple (and infinitely portable) as deep breathing, you can open up new choices about how to handle upsetting circumstances effectively and gracefully.
In a sense, your centering practice is the “front door” to re-energizing yourself. It’s the closest and easiest door to walk through, and it arguably provides the most “bang for the buck.” You can do most centering practices anytime and anywhere. Even better, doing them needn’t cost you a penny. After you spend time in the state of intentional inner stillness that you become skilled at creating for yourself, your mind and spirit will normally feel well refreshed and re-energized.
The Side Door
The second zillience-generating daily practice I recommend to everyone is regular aerobic (i.e., vigorous) physical exercise. By exerting yourself physically either every day or every other day, you can strengthen your heart, revitalize every cell in your body, and, over time, you can develop great physical stamina. An abundance of scientific research has established that regular exercise also serves to strengthen your immune system, prevent all sorts of life-threatening diseases (including various forms of cancer), generate new neurons in your brain, contribute to your emotional stability, help you control your body weight, forestall the onset of dementia (including Alzheimer’s Disease) and, when all is said and done, lengthen your life measurably.
You can think of exercising as a “side door” to re-energizing yourself and building up your zillience. It’s a door that may be a bit less obvious than the “front door.” For many, choosing to walk (or run or cycle or swim) through this door it is more of a challenge. Strenuous exercise requires significantly more physical effort than centering practices that focus on stillness.
As a way to “come back to center,” however, physical exercise can be just as effective as doing a “pure” centering practice. When you are moving continuously and are at one with the cadence of your stride, the rhythm of your stroke, and/or the meditative quality of your repetitive movements, you can experience the paradox of being physically in full motion while simultaneously being totally focused and still inside. Athletes refer to this delicious state as “being in the flow.” Attaining this state is a second reliable way to “come back to your senses” and dwell in a restorative place of centered stillness.
Exercise offers an additional benefit for those of us who sometimes feel stuck and/or depressed. Just as it is impossible to keep your eyes open when you sneeze heartily, when you are physically moving through space by dint of your own willful exertion, it’s impossible to feel stuck. For the duration of your exercise session, “stuckness” falls away, and you benefit from experiencing the opposite of being stuck. You have an irrefutable experience of “being in motion.” This experience is “priceless” because positive (physical) experiences trump negative (mental) thoughts.
The Back Door
If centering practices are the front door to developing more zillience, and regular vigorous exercise is the side door, the “back door” can take the form of a daily creative practice.
I define a creative daily practice as an intentional creative activity that normally falls outside of the domain of whatever it is you do for a living. You want your creative practice to be a genuinely refreshing and re-vitalizing counterpoint to everything else that you are obligated to do. You want it to provide you with a surefire way to re-connect you to your deepest passions. You also want it to be focused on developing something new, whether it be a new personal experience, a gratifying new result, or even an enjoyable new identity fragment such as: “I’m an artist.”
When you zero in on an activity that meets these criteria and then give yourself permission to purse some aspect of it every day for an average of at least 15 minutes, you will begin to systematically develop your own creativity in ways that cannot otherwise be done. You will also likely rediscover how inspiring it is to become entranced repeatedly by an enjoyable activity that tantalizes you to grow and be more at one with your own authentic self. This, in turn, can lead to your reconnecting with the joy of expressing your deepest values ever more fully and ever more creatively.
You will also likely experience the encouraging sensation of “not being dead yet.” Your creative practice can supply you with repeated compelling evidence that you are still alive, still capable of self-discovery, and still capable of learning “new tricks.” (You can teach old dogs new tricks; old dogs just have to practice with sharper attention.)
In the process of getting entranced with whatever creative practice you choose for yourself, you can become so singularly focused that you lose track of time and of all your other concerns. Just as when you are doing your centering practice or exercising vigorously, everything else can fall away, thereby paradoxically enabling you to reach a similar place of centered stillness.
By way of distinctions, note that your creative practice usually requires you to do some form of “not doing anything.” In contrast, your creative practice works only when you are actually doing something. Thus, your daily creative practice is somewhat of an inversion of your centering practice, and hence it has an inherent “back door” quality.
In order to generate lots of “zillience,” I recommend that you have at your disposal three different ways to “come back to your senses.” That way, no matter what challenges you face, you will have not one, but a choice of three different steadying practices on which to lean. You can rely on any one, two, or all three to sustain your personal energy in a state of zesty coherence.
The Front Door
The first zillience-generating practice I recommend to everyone is a daily centering practice. This is the most straightforward way for you to slow down and calm yourself. When you take time do whatever centering practice works best for you, you intentionally let everything around you fall away so that you can create an inner place of centered stillness.
With practice, you teach yourself to turn off the incessant “chatter” in your mind for short periods of time so that you can just “be.” In doing so, you can gain a huge amount of control over your ongoing emotional states. Using techniques as simple (and infinitely portable) as deep breathing, you can open up new choices about how to handle upsetting circumstances effectively and gracefully.
In a sense, your centering practice is the “front door” to re-energizing yourself. It’s the closest and easiest door to walk through, and it arguably provides the most “bang for the buck.” You can do most centering practices anytime and anywhere. Even better, doing them needn’t cost you a penny. After you spend time in the state of intentional inner stillness that you become skilled at creating for yourself, your mind and spirit will normally feel well refreshed and re-energized.
The Side Door
The second zillience-generating daily practice I recommend to everyone is regular aerobic (i.e., vigorous) physical exercise. By exerting yourself physically either every day or every other day, you can strengthen your heart, revitalize every cell in your body, and, over time, you can develop great physical stamina. An abundance of scientific research has established that regular exercise also serves to strengthen your immune system, prevent all sorts of life-threatening diseases (including various forms of cancer), generate new neurons in your brain, contribute to your emotional stability, help you control your body weight, forestall the onset of dementia (including Alzheimer’s Disease) and, when all is said and done, lengthen your life measurably.
You can think of exercising as a “side door” to re-energizing yourself and building up your zillience. It’s a door that may be a bit less obvious than the “front door.” For many, choosing to walk (or run or cycle or swim) through this door it is more of a challenge. Strenuous exercise requires significantly more physical effort than centering practices that focus on stillness.
As a way to “come back to center,” however, physical exercise can be just as effective as doing a “pure” centering practice. When you are moving continuously and are at one with the cadence of your stride, the rhythm of your stroke, and/or the meditative quality of your repetitive movements, you can experience the paradox of being physically in full motion while simultaneously being totally focused and still inside. Athletes refer to this delicious state as “being in the flow.” Attaining this state is a second reliable way to “come back to your senses” and dwell in a restorative place of centered stillness.
Exercise offers an additional benefit for those of us who sometimes feel stuck and/or depressed. Just as it is impossible to keep your eyes open when you sneeze heartily, when you are physically moving through space by dint of your own willful exertion, it’s impossible to feel stuck. For the duration of your exercise session, “stuckness” falls away, and you benefit from experiencing the opposite of being stuck. You have an irrefutable experience of “being in motion.” This experience is “priceless” because positive (physical) experiences trump negative (mental) thoughts.
The Back Door
If centering practices are the front door to developing more zillience, and regular vigorous exercise is the side door, the “back door” can take the form of a daily creative practice.
I define a creative daily practice as an intentional creative activity that normally falls outside of the domain of whatever it is you do for a living. You want your creative practice to be a genuinely refreshing and re-vitalizing counterpoint to everything else that you are obligated to do. You want it to provide you with a surefire way to re-connect you to your deepest passions. You also want it to be focused on developing something new, whether it be a new personal experience, a gratifying new result, or even an enjoyable new identity fragment such as: “I’m an artist.”
When you zero in on an activity that meets these criteria and then give yourself permission to purse some aspect of it every day for an average of at least 15 minutes, you will begin to systematically develop your own creativity in ways that cannot otherwise be done. You will also likely rediscover how inspiring it is to become entranced repeatedly by an enjoyable activity that tantalizes you to grow and be more at one with your own authentic self. This, in turn, can lead to your reconnecting with the joy of expressing your deepest values ever more fully and ever more creatively.
You will also likely experience the encouraging sensation of “not being dead yet.” Your creative practice can supply you with repeated compelling evidence that you are still alive, still capable of self-discovery, and still capable of learning “new tricks.” (You can teach old dogs new tricks; old dogs just have to practice with sharper attention.)
In the process of getting entranced with whatever creative practice you choose for yourself, you can become so singularly focused that you lose track of time and of all your other concerns. Just as when you are doing your centering practice or exercising vigorously, everything else can fall away, thereby paradoxically enabling you to reach a similar place of centered stillness.
By way of distinctions, note that your creative practice usually requires you to do some form of “not doing anything.” In contrast, your creative practice works only when you are actually doing something. Thus, your daily creative practice is somewhat of an inversion of your centering practice, and hence it has an inherent “back door” quality.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Sunday, August 3, 2008
The difference between stress and burnout
Stress, by and large, involves too much: too many pressures that demand too much of you physically and psychologically. Stressed people can still imagine, though, that if they can just get everything under control, they’ll feel better.
Burnout, on the other hand, is about not enough. Being burned out means feeling empty, devoid of motivation, and beyond caring. People experiencing burnout often don’t see any hope of positive change in their situations. If excessive stress is like drowning in responsibilities, burnout is being all dried up.
Read more about preventing burnout here
Burnout, on the other hand, is about not enough. Being burned out means feeling empty, devoid of motivation, and beyond caring. People experiencing burnout often don’t see any hope of positive change in their situations. If excessive stress is like drowning in responsibilities, burnout is being all dried up.
Read more about preventing burnout here
List of Ways Life Coaching Builds Resilience
* Self-discovery
* Fuller understanding of self
* Harnessing your spirituality
* Finding vision
* Establishing purpose
* Setting meaningful goals
* Designing your career path
* Sustaining joy
* Attracting only good
* Re-creating mindset
* Achieving balance
* Embracing intentions
* Maintaining focus
* Raising expectations to a higher level
* Reaching peak performance
* Identifying potential
* Grabbing hold of possibilities
* Fuller understanding of self
* Harnessing your spirituality
* Finding vision
* Establishing purpose
* Setting meaningful goals
* Designing your career path
* Sustaining joy
* Attracting only good
* Re-creating mindset
* Achieving balance
* Embracing intentions
* Maintaining focus
* Raising expectations to a higher level
* Reaching peak performance
* Identifying potential
* Grabbing hold of possibilities
Resilience: imagining that what is can be better
If you approach circumstances with the mindset that you have the wisdom, fortitude and arsenal of choices on which to draw, there is no end to the variety and magnitude of the solutions you will arrive at. If you doubt this, talk to a colleague or coach who favors this approach. In addition, the stress, pain and anxiety will concomitantly be far less than if your approach were to succumb to self-pity, fear, doubt, anxiety or hopelessness. Before facing any new threatening situation, such as that of losing your job too soon, practice with less disastrous tests in your life. With this creative mindset rehearsed you will surely become a master over time, since all of modern life is made up of transitions.
-Hyacinth E. Gooden-Bailey, M.A., Life Transitions Coach
-Hyacinth E. Gooden-Bailey, M.A., Life Transitions Coach
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