resilience

Lead with Love

August 1, 2019 by Tara Cousineau Leave a Comment

There’s a funny thing that happens when you start walking the kindness talk. People seem to crave it. Recently, I’ve been asked to speak at various companies and organizations — from accounting companies to human services, from high net worth investment firms to public schools. What’s the common denominator? I’d like to think this trend is about how we each can be more of the human we want to be: caring, wholehearted and generous. That’s part of it, of course. That’s the bright side of such a talk. But underneath is a deep need to understand what gets in the way. That’s the shadow side.

We need to become friends with the shadow side.

This is easier than you might think. The dark side of corporate culture reveals itself in the face of fear and threat — meeting deadlines, KPIs, profits, career advancement, and all the usual suspects that arise when real or imagined survival is at stake — at the expense of human connection and compassion.

The paradox at the heart of this matter is that it’s okay to be competitive AND cooperative at the same time. It’s more than okay. It’s necessary. It requires awareness in how humans respond to the world, through three emotion motivational systems espoused by the British compassion researcher and psychologist Paul Gilbert. I wrote about it in The Kindness Cure in chapter 10 (Emotional Paradox).

The paradoxes you can experience in your own mind are clashes between the “old brain/mind” and the “new brain/mind.” Your “old brain/mind” is the “base model” of human emotional regulation and hasn’t changed much over millennia. Its job is to serve your basic survival instincts as soon as possible and to seek out pleasure and comfort. It is speedy and reactive. The three main emotion regulation systems operating within it are:

• A threat and self-protection system that senses threats quickly and activates the fight- flight-freeze- faint response in your limbic system. This is like your home surveillance system.

• An incentive and resource-seeking system that propels you to seek pleasure, consume, play, strive/achieve, and mate. It’s like an Energizer Bunny scurrying about, looking for fun or success in life.

• A soothing and contentment system that seeks balance, rest, and connection, and is strongly linked to affection, bonding, caregiving, kindness, and compassion. This is the calm and connect system, and it is a bit slower to come online, but when it does, it gives you a sense of overall wellbeing—like a baby’s snuggly or a rocking chair.

Your “new brain/mind” developed later in human evolution. It’s really smart. The newer model is more complex and allows you to work things through, compare, contemplate, mull things over, create, innovate, imagine, seek knowledge, strive for goals, and develop an identity. This allows for quick learning, exchanging information from among groups, and passing on these adaptive genes to future generations. Importantly, this sophisticated upgrade allows you to be aware that you exist and have a sense of self. Thanks to your “new brain/mind,” you can be aware of your awareness, unlike any other animal, and observe your own mind. This is, of course, both a blessing and a curse.

When your “new brain/mind” is pulled by the fears and passions of the “old brain/mind,” you can get stuck in unkind behaviors (toward yourself or others). This is the unfortunate bug in the system, so to speak.

Workplace Woes, Compassionate Action

This came up in a recent conversation. I was a guest on a podcast summit created by Mari-Lyn Harris, founder of Heart@Work, who I met via Linked In through what I call kindness spotters. (We kindness warriors just find each other.)

Mari-Lyn has been figuring out ways to share the news about leading with kindness, to assist leaders in cultivating better productivity, profits and a happier workplace culture. She created a Virtual Kindness Conference and you can watch it (it’s free). The interviews include short and sweet conversations with experts about workplace culture. You can watch the interviews at Heart@Work or on YouTube. I talk about befriending the inner critic at work and gathering positivity allies to counteract the negativity that even one nasty person can evoke. It takes commitment. Of course, it helps when leadership/management adopts and embodies the values of caring and compassion as integral to company goals, even if you are selling widgets or crunching numbers. You might enjoy the series and have something you would like to offer to an ongoing conversation on kind leadership.

Here’s to growing a kind mind.

21 Days of Kindfulness: Get daily notes to your inbox for just three weeks — which is about the time it takes for a new habit to take root. I invite you to kickstart kindness in your life and share with a friend. It’s free.

A Little Deck of Kindfulness: The card deck is here! (See the sample image above). Cultivate more kindness and compassion for oneself and for others. Order now! (in continental USA).

One Big Boston Group Hug

April 24, 2014 by Tara Cousineau Leave a Comment

Patriots Day.

Easter Monday.

She was born on a Good Friday.

My daughter turned 14 on Marathon Monday in Boston. Every year her birthday also falls on a school vacation week. As she’s gotten older, this reality has gone from the anticipation of egg hunts to disappointment when all her friends are away. Not to mention that last year we were in a surreal citywide lock down after the bombings.

So, this year was special indeed. We spent it at the Boston Marathon.

Redemption. Forgiveness. Compassion. It was all there. We could have opted out. High security. Large crowds. Nervous peeps. But we chose to participate. And am I ever so happy we did.

We had five young teen girls in tow. We scored a spot in Kenmore Square, between mile 25 and 26. My older daughter was at Hereford Street with her friends – just at the turn of the finish line – with a mom who cried every time a wheelchair team passed by.

I think there are relatively few experiences in life that makes an impression like a community coming together with compassionate purpose. Over 32K runners and a million strong along the sidelines from Hopkinton to Boston, all cheering like mad. You could feel the energy and good will. For me, it restored faith in the greater good of humanity.

I thought about the work in compassionate conversations. Dr. Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman, whose work I can’t put down, describes the way we communicate with one another can fundamentally change the brain. I thought, “Whoa, what kind of ‘neural resonance’ might be happening along the Boston Marathon route?”

They write that, “kindness builds cooperation and cooperation builds a better brain.” Let’s hope we sprouted a few more compassionate circuits by witnessing this race!

Even more so, the outpouring of support represented for me meaning making at the societal level. When people stand up for what they believe in, life has purpose. Nobody knows what the personal values of the people on either side of us might be, but it brought them to the marathon.

Newberg and Waldman write: “Even though everyone has a unique set of values – running the spectrum from highly idealistic principles like truth, integrity and growth, to highly interpersonal values like love, family and friendship – when people openly share their values with each other, they come together and express mutual support.”

With Boston Strong slogans everywhere, there was certainly a sense of camaraderie. But more than that there was a resilient sense of respect, awe and love – it was ten people deep on both sides of a 26.2 mile stretch.

I believe the 2014 Boston Marathon will leave an impression of a lifetime on my daughters. We saw the elite runners, the dad of one girl in our tween entourage and scores of people from all walks of life and all abilities. A blind man. A pregnant woman. Survivors from last year’s bombing in wheelchairs. The National Guard in combat boots. Team Hoyt. The runners for the foundation created in memory of little Martin Richard, MR8. Runners from Germany, Mexico, Chicago, and San Diego, Canada. Thousands upon thousands of runners and many more spectators. Truly Impressive.

And then the next day, my newly minted 14-year-old ran 3 miles across town.

* * *

Planting Seeds of Self-Compassion in Childhood

March 26, 2014 by Tara Cousineau Leave a Comment

It’s difficult as a mom the bear witness to a child’s grief. Recently, my little one – little at least to me – was diagnosed with deteriorating bone condition in her elbows. It means she can’t do her very favorite sport, gymnastics. For reasons, still mysterious to me, Josie has been jumping since I found her hanging by one arm off the side of her crib at 10 months old. One tumbling class after another sprung her into the throws of competitive gymnastics. She has spent at least one-third of her life in a gym. If I calculate the time it is over 10,000 hours. She’s not even 14 yet.

But the wear and tear proved too much on her arms, such that the impact of tumbling stopped the flow of blood and nutrients to her elbows and the bones started dying. A bird with broken wings. Surgery is in her future. In spite of the pain, she just competed in her last state championship meet in a very limited way (for the team!) and eked out one last medal. It took a lot of courage.

We had a long drive home in the dark and in silence. There were muffled tears. If I tried to speak, she’d “shush” me. Shhhhh!

Then, after a long while she began telling me about news story she had heard recently – about a man who was creating prosthetic limbs for children in Africa. Indeed, these were for people whose arms had been blown away in war or maliciously butchered off so they could not stand up against the warlords. “The man was making this one kid a set of new arms with fingers,” she reported. “So the boy could pick things up and eat with a fork.” Then she remained silent.

I didn’t know quite what to say. I was just trying to hold back my own grief about the inevitable goodbye she have to make to her coaches and her gym family in the upcoming week. And here she was, in two sentences, giving perspective to her life in the bigger scheme of humanity. She was suffering yet she could appreciate, and identify with, the plight of others far worse off than she.

Really, there was nothing more to be said.

Kristen Neff, PhD, a leading expert on self-compassion describes three attributes: mindfulness, self-kindness, and common humanity. Essentially, self-compassion involves the ability for a person to hold in awareness one’s own suffering – without judgment; it means being able to direct kindness, warmth, and understanding toward oneself; and finally, it entails the ability to experience one’s pain as part of a universal human experience. We are not alone.

There are teachable moments every day, even in long drive home.