Research brings us a bigger picture all the time of how thoroughly mirror neurons in our brains re-create in us the feelings of those around us (Rifkin: Ted.Com).  Despite their potential and general adorableness (generally speaking), everyone around us is emerging from a rough thousand years of history.  We can protect the great things we dream about and reach for from the impact of that history and from the struggles of those around us. Depression is the “leading cause of disability in the United States for individuals ages 15 to 44″ (NMHA.Org/go/state-ranking).

Via our mirror neurons, our inbred empathy for all of those around us, that depression slows down our hard work.

It seeps into us. We feel like it is us, but it’s not. Everyone we know has struggles– Their families survived WWI, the Great Depression, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, wars in the Middle East, immigration, prejudice — and continue to survive the pressures of every day.  The psychological stress from all that has flowed into most of our culture and entertainment (TV shows, PS3 games, websites…) and will not inspire our best work.

You cannot be alone in your head because of these neurons “mirroring” what those around you feel, so make sure the company in your head is world-class, like your world-class dreams.  Modern technologies allow us to stand in the stream of the best work on the planet.  The one in ten thousand: Keep their company in your head, their struggles and successes, the dreams they failed at and reached.

Almost all of us come pretty directly from fifteen generations of field and factory workers. Their brilliance and passion interested no one. That history makes it hard for us to believe in our own passion sometimes. Believe. Keep Mother Theresa, Yo-Yo Ma, Frederick Douglass, Jane Addams pouring down on you to help you believe. From the perspective of the change and beauty they created you can enjoy your friends, family, coworkers with a greater sense of possibility.

Geneticists now know that all living humans’ direct family line from East Africa has survived two hundred thousand years.  Your grandmother 500 generations back out-survived the sabre tooth tiger; and helped hunt down and eat woolly mammoths. Our wars, injustice, materialism and environmental damage come from individuals still programmed with that history’s pain and fear.

Internal human challenges — in our heads — are the only real challenge left on our globe. When we deliberately protect and nurture our brilliance, kindness and passion we can meet our world’s challenges.  We’ll meet them school by school, family by family, client by client, child by child and make the intelligent, Basic Changes throughout humanity’s institutions that we need to flourish.

Much of America’s news reporting about changing institutions is depressing, so keep Sunitha Krishnan in your head, who’s personally rescued 1500 children from prostitution and runs 17 schools in Hyderabad (Ted.Com).  Study the Grameen bank’s provision of loans the the poorest people in more than 70,000 villages in Bangladesh, and their 99% rate of return on loans to formerly poor business owners in the U.S. (Time.Com 2009).  Listen to Bono sing “It’s a Beautiful Day”  as you read about how he “charmed and bullied and morally blackmailed the leaders of the world’s richest countries into forgiving $40 billion in debt owed by the poorest” (Time.Com 2005).

Sure there is more to love than that, but this man grew up terrorizing a Houston neighborhood called “Da bloody 5th,” became a preacher and sponsor of youth programs, and overcame years of vicious criticism in the press to become the world’s oldest heavyweight boxing champ.
For him to overcome those challenges and teach the world that love is vulnerability is exquisitely hopeful. For teachers, counselors and parents, tough as we may be, in that next step in our growth in becoming more loving, more courageous, more peaceful — “we’ve got to learn to trust people or we’ll never cross the street.”

The U.S. is by far the world leader in anti-depressant consumption, cocaine use and credit card debt. If those aren’t your problems it’s something else that’s no joke. Whatever has kept us on our side of the street in our life’s growth is serious, and Mr. Foreman’s admonition to allow ourselves time to be weak and hurt with our loved ones, to say we love them and we mean it, to see the people around us as in the same league as angels:  These can help us cross some mean streets.

Self-help, spirituality, career success books can be way too clean, too perky, can’t they? Where are the books for the unshowered, tumult-surfing, hung-over, indebted, overfed? Beautiful parenting and teaching??!*?#!*# Uhhhg!

Some people write books and speak in public like they have had clean, charmed, perpetually motivated lives. In the sharpest possible contrast to them is the group that I used to pass on my way to teach school every day who slept against a wall, between some cars next to an abandoned building.  I would wait at the stoplight and watch them emerge in the morning sun, no place to get a glass of water, sunk under whatever they had drunk/smoked/shot from the night before and from the decades before. Many days I felt so bad (paying a high price to learn to teach at my quite tough school) that I could easily imagine myself stumbling headlong through my life to end with them. Self-help, spirituality, success writers, and the always clean and successful looking would stumble right into that lot as well with enough bad luck, and no help.

The blizzard of theories about human dysfunction, potential, psychology, neuroscience distract us from the simple balance of how much good and bad have been poured into a life. The quality of the teaching, counseling, parenting you do depends just on what’s been poured into your life: e.g. the kindness and inspiration vs. the rage, despair and senselessness that’s come to you: again the simple balance.

I would watch the people in the vacant lot on my way to teach and wonder which of my students would end up there. I’d watch them pour hideous cheap wines into themselves for breakfast. If enough was good in my life, I would decide to pour some SCHOOL into my kids that day. My wonderful young people in that sleeping out there? NOT IN THIS LIFE!!!. So I would roar into class and pour hope into my students, knowing that only luck, support and uplifting influences, kept me out of that alley, knowing that those things were mighty.

Those clean-clean smiling successful people on TV can make it seem like the rest of us are from a lower order, but they have days of feeling just as bad as any of our worst days. The most successful people in history found resources to pour into their lives to keep their balance tipped to the positive side. We can always pour more good into, and subsequently see more good in our lives, see the “majesty” all around us. We can spread it to our children, our students, our clients, and lift the balance in our lives towards the best work that has ever been done.

Pour into your life the stories of Archbishop Tutu who endured years of looking at his children’s faces, after they had received telephoned death threats against him at the height of the apartheid struggle. He built his faith, persevered and became a towering spiritual inspiration. , Women from uncountable generations of huge families receive Grameen Bank micro loans and consulting support, and they decide that just one or two children will be fine. They’re so excited about their business futures that they remove themselves from the seemingly unstoppable cycle of overpopulation. Grameen and its founder Muhammad Yunus have also turned 100,000 beggars into loan-repaying businesspeople. Frederick Douglass carried out a one man challenge to “whites only” seating, 120 years before Rosa Parks. He would be beaten out of his seat by as many as it took, proceed to his next speaking engagement, and present with power and eloquence. All of these stories have mighty lessons for teachers, counselors and parents in our beautiful work.

Studying the successes and profound personal struggles of those who have bettered our world the most can allow us to ask for

more profound help,

more often,

more honestly.

Knowing their struggles takes the shame out of our struggles.  Sydney Poitier’s battle with self-loathing; Churchill’s alcoholism and months-long bouts of depression; Gandhi’s shame and insecurity; Jane Addams’ arrogance, MLK’s infidelity, Darwin’s tortured grief for his daughter — in the face of their incredible qualities and achievements– show us the reality of being a decent person in our still-evolving human species. With your gifts and your dreams: each of your struggles merits all the support, healing, and training necessary to overcome it.

There are painful waters all around us that we can drown ourselves in, oceans of numbness and distraction that take us away from the clients and youth that depend on us.  Instead we can pour into ourselves true histories of successful struggle that technology has made more accessible than ever before, along with the world’s most uplifting singing, poetry, literature, public speaking etc.  Along with that we can open our eyes to the “bright blessed days and dark sacred nights,” open our souls to the “majesty all around us” and shine that into troubled schools, families and lives.

(The quoted lyrics “The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night” were created by Bob Thiele and George David Weiss and first recorded by Louis Armstrong: Our great thanks go out to them for such beauty.)

A key skill:  I was speaking with my friend Kate on the phone the other day.  She had some other people to speak with briefly at one point, and then probably a child approached her. Kate’s voice switched immediately to this absolutely beautiful welcoming warmth. When she got back to me she had a pressing question and I never found out if it was a child who she spoke to like that.  There was not a cootchy-coo tone that would have probably been used with a child, just the beautiful welcome.  It struck me though, how much impact that such unguarded warmth could have on work relationships.

I can imagine some rough buddies of mine saying “Yeah I’ll talk to everyone like Barney does.” With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you. But these same guys welcome their good friends with huge smiles, laughter, big manhugs. They make it “cool” with a few insults along with their big smiles, irregardless, they’ve shown the world who’s important to them, who’s side they’re on.

My friend Kate on the phone let someone know she was on their side, all the way on their side. The best thing that could happen with politics at work would be to have everyone on your side, at least sometimes! It is possible to build and deepen alliances all around us, all the time, with simple friendliness. When problems arise handle them humbly, intelligently; powerfully if necessary. There are crises that can require a big skill set, but every mother’s child can make steady progress on this skill set with adequate training, inspiration and support.

Photograph of factory workers stringing beans, Baltimore, 1909

Photograph of boys in a cigar factory, Indianapolis, IN, 1908

A voice like my friend was using is one of the most important tools in that skill set, a voice that could ease political squabbles before they happen; a voice that builds a trust that squabbles won’t emerge from. We don’t hear those generous tones of voice in this world so often because, frankly, we still live in a half-civilized society. Two hundred thousand years ago our direct homo sapiens ancestors made cooked food, music, art and buried their dead. Nine thousand years ago the French were still cavemen (with nicer caves than Americans though).  Only one hundred years ago it was common for factories to be filled with children in Europe and the U.S.

Human history is full of soaring art, incredible music, spirituality, culture; great kindness, friendship and families. It may still be more full of brutality though, because we have had to learn to survive brutal conditions for millenia. In reaction to brutal conditions that harshness came into our various human cultures. We are still waking up.  In lots of ways humanity is waking from its past quickly and brilliantly, and if we want to do some good in our workplaces we have to stay in close contact with the sectors that are waking up: the best writers, singers, researchers, activists, spiritual leaders and more.

It is this harsh history that makes people at work, or anywhere, hard to deal with. As children they never asked for whatever yelling, hitting, or disrespect they received. They were ALL beautiful kids, born in to this rough world and soon to get rough edges on them.
We can respond to all of them however with our warmest voice. Humor can buff off the roughest edges. Listening can buff off even rougher edges.

In long talks with murderers, molesters and rapists in detention centers, tough schools, psychiatric hospitals, and ERs I have been repeatedly astounded at the decent person that could be uncovered through simple decent treatment. The tenacity of their humanity, despite the nightmares they had lived through – and perpetrated – astounded and humbled me. Brutal environments pulled them in and there was not a place to escape. Tougher, braver, kinder, more inspired workers in compassion-based professions will create lots of ways to escape, and eventually eliminate brutal environments.

Bolstered by enough of what is brilliant and beautiful in this world and in our closest relationships we human beings can handle all the challenges of tough clients, situations and politics. Call us up and let’s get you BOLSTERED!

His Holiness the Dalai Lama is more impressive every time I look into his work. These 1981 quotes offer a vision of forgiveness that is purer than anything I have ever heard.

The people we have a hard time with at work have typically not been treated as “precious treasure” too often, in the Dalai Lama’s words. We are probably not suffering from an over-abundance of that ourselves, but workplace politics can be greatly improved if we take an activist stance towards the environment there. If we infuse our work relationships with respect, humor and warmth we create a good working environment for ourselves.  We make our moment to moment work experience better.

People will respond sometimes with betrayals, coldness, ugliness.  That is where the Dalai Lama’s wisdom is crucial.  We all grew up with too much coldness, betrayal and ugliness in our lives, and it’s going to creep out.  Countering that with warmth and generosity can heal the coldness, and prevent betrayals. Supporting ourselves with great relationships in our lives gives us the strength to face betrayals and tensions. This subject is obviously far more complicated, so if this is an issue currently in your work speak with us for a detailed response to your particular situation. Another recent inspiration on this topic was Morgan Freeman’s performance in Invictus.

Freeman, playing Mandela, truly greeted a white South African woman who came to his office with the afternoon tea as a ‘precious treasure.’ Such great charm and kindness can overcome any politics, and made him the last African leader whose influence could pervade that whole continent.

The movie was also valuable in offering a picture of how Mandela used poetry to maintain his vision and generosity of character.

(A brilliant set of conversations between the Dalai Lama and Paul Ekman that explores forgiveness, hostility, relationships et al, are in the book Emotional Awareness: Overcoming the Obstacles to Emotional Balance and Compassion.)

Maya KNOWS what love has to do with it. And Sophie B. Hawkins sang that “only love can make a miracle of life.” Excuse my corny self. Excuse me, but I want miracles in our schools, and social service agencies. I want patients in hospitals to have their healing sped up and their hope restored by the enormous kindness they receive with their medical services. I want our parents, teachers, counselors and police to be so respectful, so warm and wise, that our young people are not getting pumped into a 100 billion dollar prison system!!! I want a generation of progressive politicians that are not intimidated by scared and angry conservatives that think money will solve all of their problems–progressive politicians that can move forward their vision of a great, loving and fair society in the face of the harshest attacks–and find true rapport, common ground and common goals with their now hopeful former attackers.

Keeping our hearts that open in our work requires a basic change in how we think about ourselves. We have to equate the beauty of our best dreams with the quality of the support, training and inspiration that we receive.

For example: a teacher’s vision of the life-changing things that could happen in her classroom moves her to regularly travel to trainings by the most inspired educators she can find, moves her to read biographies about the leaders whose successes she finds most uplifting, moves her to play the most powerful music she knows in her car, earpiece and classroom every day.

A triathlete will consume four thousand calories per day to keep up with the demands of their sport. A caring police officer surrounded by cynical co-workers, a counselor of battered children, an inner city principal: all need their four thousand calories of uplift, of loyalty, of love, of awareness of the sacred in the world, of histories of struggle and triumph.