The answer: Go deep and hold the paradoxes.

This wisdom comes from Philosopher Peter Koestenbaum, who works with business leaders trying to lead more effectively. In an article “Do You Have the Will to Lead? in February’s issue of Fast Company (here is the full article), Koestenbaum proposes you must answer the deep questions inside.

Philosopher Peter Koestenbaum poses the truly big questions: How do we act when risks seem overwhelming? What does it mean to be a successful human being?
His agenda: to apply the power of philosophy to the big question of the day — how to reconcile the often-brutal realities of business with basic human values — and to create a new language of effective leadership. “Unless the distant goals of meaning, greatness, and destiny are addressed,” Koestenbaum insists, “we can’t make an intelligent decision about what to do tomorrow morning — much less set strategy for a company or for a human life. Nothing is more practical than for people to deepen themselves. The more you understand the human condition, the more effective you are as a businessperson. Human depth makes business sense.” 

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I receive a lot of emails from wives whose husbands have left them or are discovered having an affair.  “He must be having a midlife crisis”.

Is it?  In a NY Times article, Dr Richard Friedman, a professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, challenges the notion. In discussing one case similar to the emails I mentioned, he described it as “this was a garden-variety case of a middle-aged narcissist grappling with the biggest insult he had ever faced: getting older.

He goes on to write, “Why do we have to label a common reaction of the male species to one of life’s challenges — the boredom of the routine — as a crisis? True, men are generally more novelty-seeking than women, but they certainly can decide what they do with their impulses.”

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A friend sent me this. It is a gift of great wisdom and relevant to working with the Disquiet. I thought it appropriate to share in its entirety at Thanksgiving. Jose Stevens is a healer, shaman and teacher.

The Human ToolBox
by Jose Stevens

The human experience comes with a secret toolbox preloaded with three exceptional tools for healing and accelerating growth. These tools are user friendly and quite ordinary but are often overlooked as being simplistic and not respectable, especially in the world of science and particularly in the field of Western Psychology. Even those who know about the tools tend to misinterpret them or fail to understand their true significance. So here in this article we are going to focus on these three tools and explore the territory covered by each. (more…)

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