Giving is Receiving—the Fall 2024 Zen Leadership Flip

A bee giving to a leek flower – or is it receiving? PHOTO: Kelly Bannister

Giving is Receiving—the Fall 2024 Zen Leadership Flip

By Kate Watters, Board Chair, IZL

At the Institute for Zen Leadership, we train to become more effective leaders, to find a path through murkiness and messiness, to find clarity in confusion, and to embody our values and not just speak them. Through meditation, energy work, deep reflection, and community connection, we build our own resilience and that of our teams and fellow practitioners. This is a community effort, one that can require a deep dive into discomfort, but also into delight and connection in ways that can be surprising and joyful.

A significant part of the Zen Leader methodology consists of “flips.” We work with an idea or a feeling and flip it, looking at it from another perspective, often finding an innovative approach, a new meaning in the way we process ideas and thoughts that are common or usual responses to the conditions we experience in life. These flips provide us with new perspectives, novel ways of managing stresses and processes in our lives, and open possibilities to remove the “othering” that we so often fall back on in our disconnected world.

As we practice these flips, new approaches become more accessible, and we can access diverse ways of managing—and flourishing in—the complexities of the world we live in. In doing this, we also connect to the energy patterns in our bodies, using IZL’s unique FEBI system to explore our distinctive leadership strengths as well as those of our families, friends, and colleagues.

The Institute for Zen Leadership is entering into its annual fundraising season, and during this time of year, we are exploring another kind of flip—that of giving and receiving. Studies show that giving results in a feeling of happiness that is greater than that associated with receiving. Research suggests that the part of the brain where happiness lives grows as we give, as we practice gratitude, as we share with others. In one study, when the participants practiced gratitude for three weeks, “the ventromedial prefrontal cortex [i.e., a key region for reward processing in the brain] increased the value it placed on benefits to others.” In other words, gratitude fuels a cycle where giving leads to receiving a greater sense of reward. Extraordinary.

Over the next two months, we will be presenting stories of gratitude and generosity, of giving and receiving, as we embark on our fundraising campaign. We invite you to join us, sharing your stories, your experiences, your expertise, and your resources as you are able.

We look forward to this opportunity to give and receive—together in the IZL community.

Gassho,
Kate

Kate Watters is the IZL Board Chair, an IZL Instructor, and a FEBI Certified Coach.

______________________________________________________________________________