When I first picked up a guitar in junior high, I loved everything about it: The way it looked, the way it nestled in my lap, and the way it sounded when I strummed that first chord. I couldn’t wait to get home, shut myself in my room and play until my mom knocked on my door to announce dinner.

Playing guitar was something I did in private. No one at school knew. No one was grading me, or demanding I spend 2 hours a night on it. I had no goal, and no performance date to practice for – it was just me, the guitar and the pleasure it gave me.

As a guitar major in college, my ego moved in to my practice room. I thought I needed its help. Everything I did was under scrutiny. I wasn’t practicing enough, I wasn’t serious, I wasn’t dedicated, I wasn’t talented enough, did I intend to perform it that way? The guitar went from being my source of joy to being my ball and chain.

My ego turned out to be quite the harpy. Fueled by the terror of failure, I found myself thinking I should be practicing all the time. Like when I was eating, or sleeping, or in the shower. No matter how well I played something, it wasn’t good enough. No matter how long I practiced, it wasn’t long enough. I still loved everything about the guitar, and the music I was learning was heaven.

The problem was the clipboards. Each time I performed, my teachers would listen for the first few lines, then start scribbling their feedback on the clipboards they carried. My ego became more frenzied and insistent.

Which must be why I came home with a banjo kit in my junior year. I’d never built an instrument before, and I didn’t know much about the banjo, but I loved its mahogany neck and shell. I decided to oil finish it, sanding against the porous grain to fill it particle by particle. My father came into the basement to help, but could not fathom why I was using such a laborious method. I wanted to feel the mahogany grow smooth in imperceptible increments, and watch it take on luster one lumen at a time. He wanted to finish it in an afternoon. He left muttering and shaking his head.

My ego could not get a toehold either, and left me in peace. Eventually, I had a fine-sounding 5-string banjo all tuned up and ready to go. I had no goals for it. I told no one at school about it. Since I wasn’t concerned about learning to play it, I’d pluck on it a little before I went to sleep, just to enjoy the sound. Lights-out got later each night, but I always went to bed grinning.

I don’t know how I knew to do it, but I’d built my ego a vacation home, right in the midst of all that pressure. A place my ego could wear plaid and do a terrible job splitting logs to burn in the big, smoky fireplace. A place where I could reach new depths as a banjo player. I loved it there.

I’ve been noticing the pressure building in my life over the last couple of years, so over the holidays, I built another vacation home for my ego: I’m using a kid’s book, Mark Kistler’s Draw Squad, to learn to draw. The rules are simple: 1. No erasers. 2. No pressure. 3. No results. When I get too wrapped up in drawing a perfectly straight line, I draw with my other hand. When I start going too slowly, focusing on getting it right, I switch from pencil to pen and draw twice as fast.

Just thinking about it makes me smile.

Happy New Year. It’s good to be back on my weekly schedule.

Does your ego have a vacation home? Tell me about it.

This one is really easy to use – and effective. Here’s the typical scenario: You suggest a course of action Someone else raises an objection to your suggestion. Someone else makes alternate suggestion; again someone makes an objection.

This can go on for hours. Days, even. It’s like Wimbledon, but without the volleying.

Your group begins to lose energy and grows quiet. Over time, they get discouraged. Subtly, at first, camps form: There is the postiive or “proactive” camp, and the naysaying or “reactive” camp. Although these are false divisions, they take on a life of their own. Members of each camp come into your office after the meeting to lobby you. You have a headache and no time for all these meetings about the meeting. You want the ideas expressed in the meeting where everybody can respond to them, not in the meetings about the meeting, which only you can hear.

This is easy and fun to change. The next time someone – anyone – raises an objection in a meeting:

1. interrupt them
2. paraphrase their objection, and
3. ask them to make a suggestion or a proposal. “Got it, Jim, you object because that approach is too slow; what ideas do you have about what will work?” Or, “I’m hearing a lot about what won’t work – I want some proposals about what will work. Let’s hear some suggestions.”

Critical for success:

The interrupting is crucial. Don’t just cut them off though – make sure you understand their point and can paraphrase it back to them. On the other hand, waiting for them to finish may take too long. We’ve all been in the position of having the floor and being unable to utter a cogent sentence. Sometimes being interrupted and correctly paraphrased is a gift. Let the giving begin! Interrupt as politely as you can, but interrupt.

Be clear about why you’re doing this. You are not an ogre. Mostly. They are not stupid and bad. Mostly. You all have some bad habits. You’re all getting stuck on side of the brain that likes to pick at things, rather than the side that likes to create things. No wonder you’re tired!

Steer clear of Robert’s Rules. Just because you use the word “proposal” doesn’t mean you are now moving and amending and voting and have to buy a gavel. Eeuw. You are creating and building on each other’s ideas. If this goes according to plan, you won’t have time for the General Bob’s stuffy language and convoluted procedures.

In no time at all, your team members will be prompting each other in this way. The naysayer camp will evaporate. No one will be allowed to maunder on about why something won’t work. Instead, they’ll already have an idea or suggestion. Your meetings will be lighter, more productive and much more energizing. This single thing will change the energy of your meetings.

Some friends and I were watching the wildcam at Pete’s Pond in the Mashatu Game Reserve the other evening, not really expecting to see any wildlife as it was high noon in Botswana, which is not a time the animals come to the pond to drink. So, we were especially delighted when camera zoomed in on a lone jackal. This jackal was standing at the water’s edge trembling from head to tail and looking everywhere at once. Occasionally he’d thrust his muzzle into the water then jerk it back and begin looking around again, still trembling like a junkie in detox. Or like Wiley E. Coyote after being electrocuted by Bugs Bunny, if you prefer.

It looked painful.

We started looking for the predator that had the jackal so terrified, but could see nothing. Appearing to read our minds, the camera operator zoomed out, then panned left and right. Nothing.

Our thirsty, trembling jackal was all alone. We sat, staring, for the next 5 minutes, waiting for a denouement. It never came.

I’ve been that jackal, lost in some repetitive, negative thought, all the while standing in a reality that argues against it. Those thoughts are like having a sore tooth – even though it hurts to keep running my tongue over it, I can’t leave it alone. I’ve gotten much better about it over the years, but I’m always looking to improve my relationship with my brain.

This is why I was so excited to receive and devour The Open-Focus Brain, by Les Fehmi, PhD and Jim Robbins. Without spoiling your reading pleasure, this book summarizes Dr. Fehmi’s decades of research about shifting brain waves from narrow-objective, high-alert beta to relaxed yet alert synchronous alpha. High beta gives us narrow focus and the ability to get things done but comes with a cost: stress, anger, anxiety and muscle tension. Alpha brain waves, especially synchronous alpha (where two or more areas of the brain are vibrating at the same frequency) creates a relaxed, wakeful state that gives rise to effortless, fluid movement, calm spontaneity and an open, light presence. It’s the hallmark of veteran meditators, according to the authors, and leaves the mind functioning better on every level – reasoning, memory, ability to focus.

I tried the first open focus exercise. It directs you to focus your attention both on the object in front of you and on the space between your eyes and around the object. The results were instantaneous. Physically, I felt a sense of ease and softening in my muscles, and I could feel my mind loosening its grip. I hadn’t realized I’d been gripping until I began to let go. It was pure pleasure.

According the authors, our over-reliance on narrow focus attention to perform tasks – the rut we live in – is wearing on the body and brain, but:

“When the mind is asked to imagine or attend to space, there is nothing – no-thing – to grip on to, to objectify and make sense of, no memories of past events or anticipation of future scenarios. The brain is allowed to take a vacation…The imagination and realization of space seems to reset stress-encumbered neural networks and return them to their original effortlessly flexible processing.”

I’ll be practicing this more and getting back to you about the results. I’d love to hear about your experience with it in the comments below.

And, I wish someone could let that terrified little jackal in Africa know.

I’ve been in New York for the past week visiting family, eating, walking, going to plays (Grey Gardens – yawn; Spring Awakening – fabulous), walking, playing cards with my uncles, walking through Soho, eating, walking, buying a new pair of MBTs, and walking in Central Park. A satisfying week hanging out in one of my favorite cities.

My first morning home, I woke up vibrating with anxiety. I’d gone to NYC in the middle of a major redesign of my business – new name, new website, new logo. Just a fluke of scheduling and my utter inability to figure out the best time to take a break. Consequently, I’d not only “lost” a week on the biz redesign, I’d lost my momentum, which was much worse. I could hardly bear the tension I was feeling: on one hand there were the deadlines I myself had set with the usual difficulties and delays; on the other there was my blank, sluggish mind. I tried all the strageties that usually work: sleeping in, getting up early, going to the gym, reading voraciously, going back to the gym, taking a walk, going to the office, working from home, drinking a lot o’ tea, sticking to water, journaling, not journaling, talking about it, suffering in silence.

Nothing.

Always precarious, the teeter-totter in my mind had shifted from “of course I can” (hear this in the voice of Glynda the good witch) to “who do you think you are?” (“and your little dog, too!”). Let’s say a fond farewell to my sense of purpose and focus. It must have been my fuzzy-headed jetlag that had driven my favorite quote from authors Steve Chandler and Sam Beckwith out of my mind. Instead, I was stuck trying to create just the right space in my routine into which creativity, focus and copious free time would automatically pour. Waiting for just the right moment, the right feeling, so I’d want to do what I needed to do. Waiting for hours of time to free up. Waiting for Godot.

This makes me wince.

You know this song, I know you do: Every tiny task keeps expanding to fill the time available. Then they started exceeding the time avaiable. Then they started multiplying and turning up everywhere like tribbles on the Enterprise. There is no question of boldly going anywhere. Soon the whole question of time triggers hopelessness and a desire to watch Dancing with the Stars. This lead to more hopelessness – how could it not? It causes a sort of pointlessness hangover. You get more anxious and more stuck. You become convinced your day is measureably shorter than other people’s.

Lucky for me, this always makes me reach for a frame drum, which I learned to play a few years ago. Playing it always makes something shift. This time, I didn’t even have to touch it. As I reached for it I thought “How did I ever find the time to learn to play this?” I was just as busy then as I am now, yet I commited to practice every day, no matter what. I stared at it and I remembered: I wanted to play this drum, more than I wanted anything – sleep, food, vacation time that wasn’t dedicated to workshops. Then I followed through, even if practicing was only 5 minutes a day, even if it freaked out my nearest and dearest (and it did). Soon, an hour and a half was flying by everyday and without losing anything I cared about. I was flying all over the country to study with top players.

It was a fun few years. And, it caused nary a ripple in the pond of my life. My business was booming, I was energized and happy. Same thing when I started exercising – I wanted to be healthy and fit so I commited to doing what it took. I had to replace my physical torpor with dialy exercise and that led to the 11 hours a week I now spend at the gym. Happily. I didn’t have that much time available when I started and I don’t now. The only possible conclusion: time is not what’s required. Desire leading to commitment is. I still remember the first time I heard someone play a frame drum. I had to learn it. I remember the first time I saw my pilates teacher: Tall, muscular, in graceful control of every muscle. Whatever I could have of that, I wanted more than I wanted sleeping in or not looking like a fool.

So, what was I doing, trying to push away the details of life to make a hole in time for the work has so captivated and challenged me? I had it backwards: Nature abhors a vacuum, but she makes way for a passionate commitment. I made one. You’re reading part of it. What a relief! And just in time, as I was running out of tea. Here’s the Chandler-Beckwith quote I alluded to earlier, the one that has made all the difference:

“Discipline is remembering what you want.”