Zen @ Work

💼 Navigating tough professional decisions? Usually, the answers aren’t found in spreadsheets or endless analysis. Our intuition can offer clarity where logic falls short. Listen to it when choosing a job, deciding who to work with, or shaping your career path. Need help sharpening your intuition? Let’s connect! #CareerGrowth #Leadership #IntuitiveThinking

🚀 Back to Business! After an unplanned hiatus supporting a client through major transitions, I’m excited to resume regular newsletter postings. Coaching has been intense these past weeks, but my schedule is finally back to normal! ✨ P.S. I have two coaching spots open—if you’re interested in a journey of growth and transformation, let’s connect for a free Discovery Session (link in the Comments)! #Coaching #GrowthMindset #LeadershipDevelopment

💡 Intuition is real. We often overlook or dismiss it because it doesn’t fit into the rational boxes we rely on. But some of the greatest decisions and breakthroughs—by artists, entrepreneurs, and everyday people—come from intuitive insight. Tune into your inner signals. Your gut might just know more than you think. #Intuition #Leadership #DecisionMaking

🌱 Curious about what you're missing? What if the way we think limits what we allow ourselves to see? By being loyal to logic, we might filter out important intuitive signals that could guide us. Take a moment today to ask: What signals am I missing? #Intuition #PersonalGrowth #Awareness

What do you think? Are you a Bodhisattva?

"My job as a hospital COO was to make nurses' jobs fulfilling." This statement came in a private conversation I had with Peter, one of my Zen students, a man who spent a long career as as an executive at hospitals, academic institutions and foundations. Now an elder (he's over 70), he was able to reflect on what was most important in his work. My heart glowed when I heard this, because of my desire to help people do fulfilling work and create fulfilling cultures of work. Also, because my mother was a nurse her entire professional career. It is fortunate that Peter was able to act in accord with those values when he was working. Shortly after he left the position at the hospital (operations included over 10,000 people), the nurses went on strike. (He claims the two were not related, but I wonder.) I question how many leaders hold employee fulfillment as their primary objective. If you truly believe in the mission of your organization, and truly value and respect the people in the organization, how can this not be your top priority? If it is not, you are living on borrowed time. Your organization is unsustainable and is bound to fail. Peter said another thing about his career, which may appear unrelated but to me is not. He said the course of his career -- which was long, storied and featured many top-level positions -- was completely unplanned. He never knew where his next opportunity would come from, when he would leave, and where the next would come. It was a brilliant wandering, and entirely fulfilling for him. This is the mindset I can help you tap into in my upcoming minicourse. Link is in the Comments.

Being out of work is one of the scariest and most confusing things we can go through. In some ways it is even scarier than death. After death, we won't (as far as we know) have to do stuff, pay bills, and, you know, BE someone. But being alive, we do. Our "imagined future", the one we held and polished while employed, has disappeared. Our financial resourcing has become unstable. There is a path of succumbing to those fears and confusion, and a path of embracing them. One leads to MORE fear and confusion. The other leads to excitement and clarity. I can help you navigate these paths in my upcoming mini-course, which I am offering at an open donation as part of my commitment to an economy of generosity. More information on my website, at the link in the Comments. 🙏

My 16-year old stepdaughter is my teacher.... Of her own accord, she has put a 90-minute daily time limit on her combined social apps, primarily Instagram, and Tic Toc. I asked her what she does instead, although I knew the answer.... she mostly paints and reads. This is one of her recent creations in her Jackalope series. I aspire to Bear Bear's level of self-discipline, although for me the time limit would be on LinkedIn. 😀 #changingwork #zen #mindfulwork #zenatwork

Getting fired got me fired up. :) For the next few weeks, I looked at the job boards every day: LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster, Dice... I applied for a few and talked to several people about new startup ideas. But I came to realize that I wasn't really interested in any of them. I had been in Tech for thirty years, and had even founded two startups. I understood the fundamental paradigm of the tech industry was (and is) governed by values-free “innovation” and a race to monetization. This is not to say that many good things have not been created by tech companies, just that the fundamental drivers are not intrinsically values-based. I no longer took fulfillment being part of an organization that was at its heart a “problem-solving machine” optimized for what was implementable and monetizable with little conscious thought of what would be beneficial in the big picture. I realized that the poor-to-toxic work cultures I had experienced were connected to this mis-alignment between the organization’s priorities and my own. In some ways I don’t blame poor Tech culture. They don’t necessarily claim to be values-driven. (Well, Google did, back when it’s motto was “Don’t Be Evil,” basically the first Zen pure precept. Of course they changed that nine years ago to “Do the Right Thing” which is a much more fungible concept, requiring the ability to reflect on consequences against the backdrop of a primary value system, which is …. who knows? The Buddhist Eightfold Path is expressly about “right” livelihood, speech, action, etc. and it’s based on specific values and vows.) So …. It was a chance for me to reflect on what I really wanted to do with my life: the precious and limited weeks I was devoting to my work-in-the-world. More on Substack, link in the Comments.....

I was fired from my last "real job" in Tech in 2018. It was one of the best days of my professional career. Let me rewind .... After closing down my second startup (I've written previously about turning down bridge funding because I wasn't confident in our approach) I worked several consulting jobs -- for Twitter, for a robotics company and finally for an innovation marketplace based in the Bay Area. All three places suffered from poor-to-toxic work cultures, but the third was the worst. I had been hired to mediate between the CFO and CPO. They were old friends who under the stress of a major product release could barely talk to each other. Getting no support from either of them, it was no surprise when three months in they decided I had failed to bridge their gap. I was scared. I had recently taken on financial support for my then-girlfriend, now-wife. So, my inner money manager was sounding the alarms. But something deeper in me was shouting in joy. (I remember blasting Elvis Costello's "This Year's Model" to 11.... that was the album I always played in my 20's when big things happened in my life.) For the next few months, I applied for a number of jobs, but I came to realize that I wan't really interested in any of them. What I really wanted to do was to bring my Zen practice to the professional world, in ways that were deep and accessible. I had been envisioning doing so for years, but it was always in the future. Always "when I'm older." When I had socked away more money, when I had "figured out what I wanted to do" or "developed my work more." I came to see that all of those ideas were just helpful evasions which kept me on the safer, more conventional path. I was so fortunate to be fired from my well-paying "placeholder" job, and forced to jumpstart a professional path that was aligned with my inspirations and creativity. Getting laid off or fired can be the best thing that has ever happened to you. 𝗜𝗻 𝗳𝗮𝗰𝘁, 𝗶𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝗶𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝘀𝗼. You can turn the natural feelings of fear, anxiety, and insecurity that come with a layoff into excitement and inspiration about the future. Don't be a slave to the job boards! If you want help with this, I invite you to sign up for my Summer Mini-course starting in two weeks. The link is in the Comments below. I am offering this at an Open Donation, whatever you can swing. Please share this with those you know who have been laid off recently, and if you have..... congratulations!