From Ginny (Page 4)

By flipping around our usual way of sensing, including our sense of self, we confound our filters, invert our thinking and let the new emerge. Descartes’ famous dictum, “I think therefore I am” flips around into the spacious truth that when we don’t have to reify a self, we don’t have to habitually think the same thoughts. We can put up different antenna and new music becomes possible.

In Lincoln’s first inaugural address, he appealed to the nation’s “better angels,” meaning the better aspects of our character, such as good sense and virtue. Seven score and sixteen years later, in the thick of the Trump presidency, historian Jon Meacham spoke to the battle for our better angels in The Soul of America. He recounts the disparities and triumphs of a nation founded on the declaration that all people are created equal and its unequal efforts to live up to that mighty truth.

More leaders are waking up to the awareness that business cannot continue as usual. Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) have moved from being a UN wish list to being investor requirements for many companies. Sustainable practices have shifted from being “greenwashing” to core strategy. From burning out employees, to drying up resources, to driving away the next generation of customers, companies are realizing that they themselves are unsustainable using extractive practices.

String Theory is on the ropes. At least that’s the summary from a recent review of the state of high energy physics and the lack of experimental support for the current ranking Theory of Everything. The Large Hadron Collider, the first of its kind powerful enough to detect the supersymmetry particles required for String Theory to hang together, has found nothing of the like.

The Most Essential Leadership Skills And How Zen Reframes A Way To Master Them by Ginny Whitelaw. Originally published on Forbes.com An in-person leadership team…

More leaders are waking up to the awareness that business cannot continue as usual. Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) have moved from being a UN wish list to being investor requirements for many companies. Sustainable practices have shifted from being “greenwashing” to core strategy. From burning out employees, to drying up resources, to driving away the next generation of customers, companies are realizing that they themselves are unsustainable using extractive practices.

I write on the cusp of the biggest presidential election of my lifetime – and I’ve lived a long time. 

Embodiment is trending. At a time of deep divisions and discontent, the dissociations of head from heart, of talk from walk, of action from a felt sense of its consequences, are wholly inadequate for dealing with the wicked issues we face. So it’s not surprising that an antidote is resonating in the Zeitgeist, what many herald as an emerging stage of human development in which the clever head re-integrates with the deep wisdom of the body. Embodied leadership is showing the way.

From a global pandemic, to rising racism, division, tempers and temperatures, it’s easy to get triggered in this time by a sense of urgency or helplessness, anxiety or depression. Yet there is a way to lead into this time, making the difference that is ours to make. That way, grounded in the 1500-year tradition of physical Zen training moves us beyond a struggling self, where we can be in a mess without being a mess.