What can you be wholehearted about?
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A secondary school couple going fishing with a bamboo stick. Found them in my daily sunset watching ritual - so adorable!!
Hello everyone,
The last four weeks has been very full for me with several on the ground projects here in Ho Chi Minh City.
Like a feast, it was filled with appetizer conversations, prolonged main courses of tasty work and a sweet dessertly closure.
It's now that time of the year where people wrap up summer endeavors and curl into the fall. For many, summer is action-packed enough that it needs some proper digestion.
Let me share some of mine as well as some helpful framing for such reflection.
What can you be wholehearted about?
For those of us who are in search of the work that fulfills and uplifts (by work, I loosely mean "anything but sleeping or lying on the beach drinking or appreciating flowers on the street"), you probably will ask yourself
"What do I really want to do?"
That's a good question, and here is one more after that to help you fine tune
"What can I be wholehearted about?"
This question by David Whyte comes from his conversation with the wise brother David TODO at a time when former was burn out in his nonprofit work.
I had my day on my mind, and the mind-numbing tiredness I was experiencing at work. I said suddenly, out of nowhere, almost beseechingly, “Brother David, speak to me of exhaustion. Tell me about exhaustion.” And then he said a life-changing thing. “You know,” he said, “the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest.” “What is it then?” “The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness. You’re so exhausted because you can’t be wholehearted at what you’re doing...”
It speaks to a longing in each of us that we want to dedicate our own life to something, someone or perhaps most importantly, some questions. For some people, it's "What's possible?" or *"How might we help people navigate the new landscape of work"? (*my buddy Paul MIllerd doing amazing work here)
This longing lies at the heart of the human dilemma: wanting to surrender ourselves to something greater yet feeling afraid of being consumed by such total commitment.
What to remember then is not to resolve this tension once and for all but rather allowing it to live brightly in us and breathe in everything we do. Let it work on us so that we become tender, open and understanding of what living entails: paradoxes, confusions, tensions and joy. Lots of it.
Wholeheartedness as a measure is not an arrival checkpoint but an ever receding horizon that we plant ourselves towards in gracious reverence.
For me, the central question has been "How might we be together?" In this time, in this unraveling world, in the world of the invisible, with ourselves, with someone else, in community, in the workplace...
My story in short is that as a young child growing up, I've always been baffled by how other people can be the source of utmost joy in one moment and then pain in another moment to each other, especially closed ones in family. I just don't think we, or at least I, know how to be together.
This thread continues until today.
This question of wholeheartedness came to me after helping organize an alumni retreat for SEALNet two weeks ago.
I was so dedicated to this work that once again it reminds me of what is possible, not so much in terms of what I could do but how I could be in life: full of dedication and love. From that, I came to know two important pieces of my work
People: I'd like to work with and for people whom I may not know directly, but trust and admire for their heart of service, intelligence and passion for the work.
Activity: I'd like to continue to learn, teach, write and facilitate.
Such glimpses of self-knowledge alone is worth the whole summer.
It's now your turn.
"What can you be wholehearted about?"
No need to have the answer now, but keep the question alive.
Khuyen
Young Adult Guy & The Need for Female Mentor
On a related note of wholeheartedness, sometimes we may not know what we care about until someone teaches us how to feel about our life. Here is a short rant, reposted from FB on this.
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Recently in a conversation about women in leadership and the lack thereof in Vietnam, I realized that much of the pain between men-women dynamics came from an unfortunate fact that most of these men grow up without having a figure who is sensitive enough to teach them about emotional processing, inner life and relationship.
Many don't have a really good or close relationship with their mothers.
Even for a few lucky ones who do, the mothers are sometimes to closely attached to us in order to help with that aspect of emotional maturity, which include noticing, processing and letting them go in ourselves and in other people.
Usually it will take the first frustrated girlfriend, sometimes a few, for them to begin learning about that. Speaking from true personal experiences...
This is a gap that can be filled by a female mentor (or in my case, a gay one).
It reminded me of a well-known philanthropist who shared that a long time ago when he was 20, he had a 70 year old lady who was his English teacher but really was an important mentor in this aspect. He confided with her often, about his fears and the emotional confusion that any young adult men would have. From her generous listening, he learned about compassion and kindness, mostly for himself, exactly what a young driven man needed to learn the most to sustain himself for the long journey of achievement and success. Later, he named his daughter after her to honor the invaluable gift that lady has give.
Listening to him and reflecting on my own experiences having that gap filled by several wise motherly figures, I couldn't help but ask myself "how could I help?"
Even as a remote outsider, it's painful to see those heated dialogs around these gender issues. While social media has made them more visible online, I too see them in my day to day reality in Vietnam in many families I know. I see it in my own family and my own life how much I needed to learn it.
You maybe familiar with the stereotypical trope of "boys are trained to be strong and not cry".
That's generally true, but I'm not too much in favor of the Naturalist camp ("let everything be natural, let them cry etc.."). I think holding back is oftentimes appropriate and necessarily, but what I didn't get to learn is how to process rather than repress it (and then it simmers and explodes one day).
I don't know if there is a systematic way to address that gap (social emotional learning in school is a good trend to follow).
But I do know one small thing.
You can help by being that understanding aunt (or uncle) to these young men. Show them how to be the sensitive and strong men who will go on to become nuanced in the messy emotional life while still stepping up and making the necessary decisions.
For young adults, esp men like me, seek out those wise female mentors and confide with them about the inner challenges you have. They may not understand your business or career issues but they do know a thing or two about the human condition. Because they are often much older, you won't be as afraid and ashamed to get help.
If you want to be superhero like Peter Parker, find your Aunt May.
Sharing is sprouting.
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Two useful frames for work & life
Career Anchors by Edgar Schein: summary article, paper and a nice youtube webinar.
"One may have known in a vague way about those elements of one's own personality, but until they have been tested in actual life experiences one does not really know how important they are, and how any given talent, motive, or value relates in a subjective hierarchy to other elements of the personality. It is only when one is confronted with difficult choices that one begins to know what is really important to one."
From Career Anchor Paper. Written in 1986 and surprisingly still relevant till today with all the hypes about "everyone has become creative entrepreneurs".
I particularly find this framing "What you would not give up?" to be very helpful with my new experiences.
For example, what surprised is how I seem to not want to give up any chance to apply my knowledge of to new situations to do something useful while keep getting better at understanding the human-together conundrum. That actually fits under Technical Competence, which used to mislead me because I always thought I'm more of a people-person. It turned out that I'm pretty technical about the messy domain of human relation!
Here is a good quote about our self-knowledge
Money Maturity, from this book Seven Stages of Money Maturity by George Kinder.
I found this book from my mentor's bookshelf 6 years ago, but only last year did I dive more into it. What made it unique is the blending between human development, spirituality, psychology and the practical of financial planning.
This book is apt among many modern hustlers and digital nomads for whom the phrase Financial Freedom has been an ideal.
What is that freedom though? Not to get too philosophical here, but as we all know, with freedom comes responsibility.
I'm reminded of Venkatesh Rao's quip on Twitter recently "If your definition of "freedom" hasn't changed every year or so, you are not growing."
I very much prefer the phrase "Financial Maturity" or "Money Maturity".
Many people become financially free in the sense of having enough money in the bank to live off interest rate for the rest of their life but still psychologically consumed by it.
On the other hand, maturity includes capacity, nuances, kindness, proper relationship, responsibility, complexity and also enjoyment. Like the well-known Capability Maturity Model, it takes a lot more to unpack this term but as a top-of-mind framing, "maturity" is just a whole lot more inspiring to me.
Other resources on deep work with money.
Blog: Peter Koenig on Money belief: Amazing work to understand the money system both at personal and collective level.
Book: Money and the Meaning of Life by Jacob Needleman. He has a 30' interview here on Dailygood.
Book: The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist: sounds woo woo at first but actually a very insightful and inspiring book.
Quotes I'm contemplating this week
The world also has a soul, by David Whyte
"Looking at the mountain for it own sake opens up a life that can be descried only in the numinous effulgence of poetry or the self-forgetfulness of vital prose. This self-forgetfulness is the essence of firsthand experience. We no longer see our experience as useful for getting something out of
someone
else, or getting us quickly
somewhere
else, but as the primary touchstone of both our individuality and the strange way our individuality depends upon everything else. In such experience there is nowhere to go because the experience of interdependence is complete in itself. This experience of belonging satisfies a primary hunger that lies at the center of our soul life; it holds both restful and fiery qualities simultaneously, it is not an easy out. Taking the first vulnerable steps into our own experience, no matter how small or hidden at the beginning, opens us to a more generous life, where what we have to give figures as largely as what we receive. We stop trying to draw infinitely from a finite world and begin to learn how little is necessary to live a life that honors the soul of the world. We learn that in many respects our world works as a partner, sometimes friendly, sometimes terrifying, but always true to its own necessities and by its example drawing us toward our own.
May life continue to be an example of interdependence that bring us all together,
Khuyen
Lastly..
Do reach out for the Inner Critic Assessment or general conversations about life. I'd love to be helpful.