Do You Practice the Art of Being With?
Would you like to be more efficient, more effective, more intimate? Then join us in learning the art of being with.
Being with is a way of listening to people. It’s listening to others without any filters up. One filter compares whatever is said to your own personal experience. Another filter is listening with an agenda in mind, wondering what you’re going to get out of the conversation. There’s also the “right/wrong” filter where we constantly assess I’m right/they’re right, or I’m right/they’re wrong, etc. When you practice being with, you are present without any filters between you and the other person.
You are also present as a whole person. Every person is made up of a mind, body, feelings, and spiritual nature. When you’re being with, all four of these are present in the moment.
Regarding Accountability Partners
By Rosie Bank
K&A attracts many people who are in business for themselves. Why? Because entrepreneurs are often oriented toward personal and professional development. This is exactly the kind of individuals who would flock to a leadership training like K&A. Also, people who are in business for themselves frequently seek a good stretch because we know that the prizes are slightly beyond our reach, but within our sight. I may be short in stature but I strive to be tall by stretching to the next level in my business. I know I am not alone in having experienced some of the most significant personal stretches of my entire life while going through all tiers of the K&A seminar series.
Today in business, it is no longer acceptable to be good enough. You must be extraordinary. One of the differences between average and exceptional people is Read More…
Combine Open, Honest Communication with Responsibility
How do you communicate when you are angry with someone else? As discussed in If How-To’s Were Enough We Would All Be Skinny, Rich, & Happy (page 52), there are responsible and irresponsible ways to handle resentment and let another person know that we are upset.
When we are not used to expressing our anger or have allowed it to bottle up over a period of time, our communication typically takes on negative tones. Honest communication that is non-responsible may be manifested in several ways.
You can communicate honestly, but non-responsibly by: Read More…
The 3Rs – How Do You Respond To Resentment
The 3Rs — resentment, resistance and revenge — represent one of the most self-destructive paradigms I have seen, yet it is also unbelievably prevalent. Let’s start by focusing on the first of the 3Rs: resentment.
As discussed in chapter 3 of If How-To’s Were Enough We Would All Be Skinny, Rich, & Happy, resentment is any negative emotional reaction to what we think was said or done. There are many situations that can spark resentment in us. We might be resentful when people we love get sick or die. Sometimes we become resentful when our hard work doesn’t pay off. Resentment can creep into our lives when we don’t get the recognition we deserve or when acts of nature, such as floods and fires, affect our lives.
Resentment
Many of us wear a set of sunglasses — or have the viewpoint — that resentment is bad or inherently wrong. If that is true for you, then you might further complicate the problem by thinking that if resentment is bad and you are resentful, then you must also be bad.
The problem with this viewpoint is that there is no way any of us can exist in the physical world we live in without this emotional reaction. There is a danger if you become resentful about being resentful. Then you might, in fact, resist going into resentment or resist anything that might lead to it. This puts you in a never-ending cycle that you can’t get out of.
Of course there are prices to pay for resentment, but there are prices all of us pay for everything we do. So, be okay with resentment. It will happen no matter how great your relationships with others are, or how great the company you work for is. What is NOT OKAY is to stay in resentment. The key is not allowing resentment to progress into resistance, because then the prices you pay increase.
As an example of this progression, let’s look at an employee who doesn’t feel appreciated and has resentment. If he doesn’t deal with his feelings, then he can go into resistance. This can lead to reduced communication, apathy or indifference. And then his attitude can turn into revenge when he badmouths the employer or thinks, I will do my job, but that is all you will get out of me.
How do you know if you are in resistance? If you stay upset about an experience, then you are in resistance. Another sign is numbness or apathy. If you are to be good at anything — your business, relationships, sports, etc. — then you must be okay with resentment, and you must have systems to handle it when it does occur. This puts you in charge of your feelings, instead of allowing your feelings to be in charge of you.
The Man With No Hands
By Rosie Bank
Last week I met a man who changed my life. He has an extraordinary and capable body. He can do things with his body that I cannot imagine being able to do with my body. He has no hands. He was born with two shoulders, two upper arm bones, and two forearms that end halfway between his elbows and where the wrist and hand would be if he had them. The ends of his arms are powerful and versatile tools that, to the casual observer, may look like arms that are incomplete. However, there is nothing incomplete about this man.
He also has a loving spirit, a smile that melted my heart, and a winner’s attitude that made me want to spend as much time as I could with him. When he was born with no hands, his parents told him to get off his butt, the world was waiting for him to make a difference. When he was little he learned that he could take his toys apart and put them back together better without his prosthetic devices than with them. He has not worn them since Read More…
The Challenge of Waiting
By Centa Terry
Why is it that the last bit of any journey seems the longest? My kids and I love road trips and have been on many. You can drive a 12 hour day but that last hour seems longer than the first 11. You can sit in school all day and the day flies by, til that last hour and then it feels longer than the whole day combined. You look forward to a special occasion for days or weeks but that last day seems like a lifetime. Is that when expectations are higher? There is nothing more disheartening than unmet expectations.
Well that is how Saturday or Sunday were for us. One of the doctors told us Saturday morning that we would be moving from ICU to a regular room that night or Sunday morning. Well having a good grip on reality, having been around the block a time or two with life circumstances, and having a hospital experience in the past, I knew that it was HIGHLY unlikely we would be moving Saturday night but believed there was a pretty good chance for Sunday morning.
We were right about Saturday night……which was THE longest night in ICU with blaring lights, a crying baby, and a teen who had to have stuff sucked out of his throat a lot of the night and who made loud grunting noises in his resistance to the nurses. Sunday morning, we were told we would be moving to a room in the late morning. There is a God, we are moving out of ICU. Late morning came and went. Then we were told there were 4 patients moving from ICU up to the third floor and we were first on the list. We would be going up by 2pm. Joey had a contact warning on him and they had not removed that yet which set us back on the move. They moved patients around in ICU over the next few hours and by 5pm… YES we are STILL in ICU, we were at least alone in the room where just hours ago there were 4 of us. The next update came, they made some changes and will be moving us up to the floor just after shift change at 7:30pm. How late can they really move you around? I mean come on, would they move you into a room while others are sleeping? Okay, okay, this is familiar, I have experienced this before. Oh yes, I remember, palms togethe… palms apart! Thanks to Patrick Dean and Brian Miller. I think I learned something in that exercise… or did I? We had gathered up all our things and were ready to go and excited about the thought of being at the Ritz Carlton. YES, that IS what a room on a regular floor is like after being in ICU for 9 nights and sleeping in a chair! You guessed it, that time came and went too. Did I ask for a test in patience this day. Ummmm, I think NOT! Finally at 10pm, frazzled and exhausted, they moved us up to a regular room. PHEW! That seemed like so much work……waiting.
Why does the wait seem so challenging. I believe the wait is challenging because we take our eyes off of the moment. Have you heard, life is a journey, not a destination. Life is meant to be enjoyed and experienced in the moment on the journey. When we fix our eyes on the destination, we miss out on the experiences of the moment. That is when we end up victim to our circumstances and frustrated when things don’t look a certain way, our way. Yes, that is where I found myself on Sunday. Looking back, I can only wonder what great little blessings I may have missed choosing to be a victim to my circumstances and not living in the moment. Who could I have touched, and who could have touched me? I don’t have any guilt around it – just the awareness that I may have missed out on some great moments.
My big takeaway from this day: have a goal, have a dream, have something to look forward to that you are moving towards… and then, BE in the moment. This is it and I am satisfied!
Lord thank you, for continued humbling moments and for the reminder that life is lived IN THE MOMENT!
First day, last day
By Centa Terry
First day, last day is such an easy concept to understand, sometimes a bit more difficult to live out. You truly do have to be conscious of it because it is a mind set to live this way! We are never guaranteed tomorrow and although there is much to be learned from yesterday, it is not a place to dwell.
First day, last day… Do you remember those first days, of a new job, the day your baby was born, that first kiss, your first time speaking or sharing publicly, a new love, your first day of school whether it be grade school, high school or college? Aren’t those first days awesome? A bit scary and yet totally exciting and exhilarating! These are the times you have butterflies in your stomach but you are still totally jazzed about what is next and the possibilities. And then there is last day… how would you really live your life if you knew this was your last day? Would you mend relationships, would you see or do something you have never done before, would you spend it with loved ones creating memories and laughing? Laughter really IS the best medicine!
My kids and I had that conversation a few days ago. It would be really easy to look back at this whole situation that we have been gifted with and ask ourselves all the what if questions… what if we would have found this sooner, what if the doctor would have done an MRI a year or so ago, what if we visited doctors more often? If we caught this sooner would Joey’s vision not be permanently affected, would any of his endocrine system have been salvaged and on and on the questions go. We could also look into the future at the prognosis of what the doctors believe in this moment of the probability for Joey to be on medication for the rest of his life, possible future surgeries, possible radiation, the likelihood of Joey still having to go back on human growth hormone for the continued growth of his body, will he have to get his braces back on, and again, those questions are endless.
Honestly, we as a family really do try to live IN THE MOMENT. We believe it is the only place to live because it is all we have. Many people have asked us how we are doing so well through all this and that is what I believe it is. We love each other tremendously and are grateful for the moments we have together. We share much laughter together as a family laughing at ourselves and each other. The one thing we know we have is LOVE! Love makes a difference and love looks like something! For us, love means being there for one another, encouraging one another and spurring one another on to greatness. And one thing we are very clear of for us is that Jesus is our Rock and our foundation of love.
If there is any encouragement we would share with you, it is live your life first day, last day!!!!
Happy Thanksgiving and love from our family to yours!
Centa Terry – Samurai Camp Facilitator
How Does the Right/Wrong Paradigm Color Your Experience?
There is a set of sunglasses we wear that colors our experiences in the context of right and wrong. When considering this, I am not speaking in terms of morality, but about a person’s experience. More specifically, within this context one person is right and the other person is wrong.
Over the years I have come to see that everyone wears this pair of sunglasses to some degree or another. I have also observed that this way of looking at the world is one of the most difficult paradigms to change.
To understand this, let’s look at some of the other “sunglasses” that we wear. One example would be Read More…
A lesson in resistance & acceptance
By Alison Silbert
After a short while of having what many people would call the perfect life – a wonderful husband, a beautiful home, and the beginnings of a growing business – things quickly ‘went south’: my husband became not-so-wonderful, the business developed problems as a result of the personal issues, and money became a sticking point. In addition, I had two children very close together because I had lost my ability to say no. In desperation of trying to keep hold of what I had, I tried to ‘fix’ the problem by pushing others to come on board and ‘fix it’ with me (surprise surprise, that didn’t work!).
After doing work with K & A I realized that it’s not my job to fix others’ problems – it’s their job, and if they’re not ready to fix themselves, then I need to be ready to move on. The problem was Read More…
City Buys State a University
by Bob Harrison
The California State University system’s newest campus is located in the Palm Springs area. What is unusual is that this university campus opened without the state putting up any money.
For years, officials in the Palm Springs area tried to get the university system to open a campus in their area. Repeatedly, they were told… “If the state has to pay for it, it will take decades. In fact, it might never happen.”
However, two individuals would not accept that as a final answer. They invited the California State University Chancellor to come to town for a luncheon attended by dignitaries. During their time together they asked him, “What if we donated a campus to you? Would you then build it and furnish a staff?” He answered, “Yes.”
The city of Palm Desert agreed to donate the land for a 200-acre campus site. Then by piling municipal money on top of private donations, in 90 days the two raised $9 million and then $10 million more. Now the thriving campus is Read More…
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Sona van Der Hoop
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Victor Blanco
Dan Dorr
Ronnie Doss
John Edwards
Tom Haupt
Janet Henze
Brian Miller
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D. Scott Pullan
Centa Terry
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