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Listening to your Family

I’ve been writing about writing on Thursdays, community on Saturdays. If you missed the Fusions in the Void check the archives, especially if you’re in a valley or desert season in your life, or in what has traditionally been known as The Dark Night of the Soul since St. John of the Cross identified it that way. That series ran every Tuesday for the last 15 weeks.

Time for something new on Tuesdays, and I guess at least for a one-off I’ll talk about Motivational Listening again. Once the holidays are over I’ll evaluate whether I want to run a series on Tuesdays or just do one-offs on listening. Feel free to drop me a comment and leave a request for me to comment on any particular topic.

Listening to your family:

I get so busy with coaching clients sometimes that I forget to listen carefully to the few things my children and my wife say to me. This is so convicting, it’s worth writing about over and over.

Around Christmas and New Year’s we get together with the people we most need to listen to, and we do our best to ignore their opinions and ideas. Sometimes that’s healthy. My sister-in-law announced to the entire family on Christmas Day at breakfast that she hoped we could suspend any political discussions for a day. And it’s not that we fight, so much, it’s just that we can spend one day enjoying each others’ company without digging into things that can cause friction. So we stayed away from it, because, sister, I’m listening. If you listen for peoples’ desire for peace, you can support it.

My mother-in-law said grace at brunch on Christmas Day. Halfway in she choked up, to her own surprise. She’s so grateful for the grandkids; I think she’s pleased, for the most part, with even her sons-in-law. I’m grateful for a mother-in-law who loves the family so much that praying over them would move her to tears. Mom, I’m listening. If you listen to people, you can see where their love rests, and learn from their love.

My father-in-law, a staunch Republican, surprised me this morning (the moratorium on politics over) that he’s thinking about voting for [candidate X] because he’d rather have [ideology X] in the White House than [Lord and Master of the Minions and Inhabitants of Hades X]. At first I thought he was joking, but realized that he’s not missing the big picture when he watches the GOP debates. I’m listening. He often comes across with self-degrading language that indicates we who have college degrees are smarter than he is. This is not true. He has a variety of street smarts I’ll never touch. If you listen to people, really listen, you’ll begin to see where they know more than you do, and recognize the places where you can learn from them.

My wife asked me (as I posted in a different discussion Saturday about community) to make sure to spend time with my children during the vacation, and not immerse myself in books and writing while we’re at the in-laws. I’m listening. She’s going out with her sisters this afternoon to see about mounting her deceased grandmother’s diamonds. I’ll be parent-on-duty. It’ll be fun! The kids are having such a great time with their gifts, and with their cousins. If you listen to your spouse and children, you’re clued in to their needs, and you can give them what they hope for. Jesus talked about how if a son asks his father for a fish, would he give him a stone? No! Unless he isn’t listening. Then, he might give him a stone, or just nothing. Listen, then give fish.

My dad likes to give people five dollar bills on occasion and not for any reason that they earned, but just because he loves them. He calls it “a fish”, too. I love to tell my kids I’m proud of them. They always say “why?” and I say, “because you’re my son/daughter. That’s all the reason I need.” This builds the relational capital they’ll need to have with me one day when it’s time to come to me and tell me something they’re afraid I don’t want to hear. I only hope they trust me enough to tell me. To know that I’ll be listening.

Listening like this happens out of unconditional love for one another. Learning to listen better is the best gift we can give each other for the New Year.

Once in a while at the end of my blog I like to remind you that I have books for sale and would love to sign one for you and ship it out. Please cruise over to the bookstore and purchase one … or both! I appreciate your support!

Resolutions: Intentional Community #6

You can’t have intentional community without intent.

I intend to publish three blogs a week. Sometimes I get a few weeks ahead of myself, six or eight posts in the can, scheduled, giving me all kinds of emotional cushion. But today is Christmas Day, I’ve only 24 hours to the due date for this blog, and so I get up early (before 3/4 of my kids are up!) and I write. That is the nature of intent. Without it, I’m sleeping in. With it, I’m acting. Without it, entropy takes its course, we drift, we disconnect, we fall apart. We don’t have community, because we don’t seek it.

Intent is a great thing to talk about during the season of a New Year. We all “resolve” things and most of us quit by the end of January. That’s because most of us don’t live with much intent most of the time. We aren’t used to forming new habits, so when the time comes, it’s harder to do.

Those who like my Thursday writing blog– writers– will recognize that without intent, writing your book doesn’t happen either.

I have a weight loss goal, but yesterday I didn’t eat with intent. I ate like a pig. We’re at my in-laws house and my wife’s mom is dishing up all kinds of good stuff. I didn’t MEAN to…

My kids love that phrase. They pass the buck. The kids are playing in the other room, when suddenly a THUD is followed by wailing. What happened? Well I didn’t MEAN to…

It’s as if your lack of intent absolves you of responsibility. But of course as adults we recognize the faulty logic here and change our ways. Uh. Right? “I didn’t mean to balloon to 245 pounds…” “I didn’t MEAN to become an alcoholic…” “I didn’t MEAN to tell a joke about my boss’s wife… it’s his fault he’s so sensitive, I always joke around!” Oh, so all these things just happened to you? A lot of the crap that gets us in trouble stems from a lack of intentional living. Well, yes, and if this makes intent-less people sound like real jerks, I think it can be a lot more subtle than these examples, but it can still make you sound like a jerk. Whenever my kids say “I didn’t MEAN to” they sound like jerks to me. Adults don’t use this phrase overtly, we just find ways to disguise it. And people think we are jerks. Donald Trump made fun of Carly Fiorina’s face, then later said he was talking about her persona, not her appearance. Here’s her response, which essentially tells us that she knows we know exactly what we already knew: that he’s a jerk. Donald doesn’t appear to do anything with intent right now, or rather, if he’s being intentional, it’s an intent to be as cruel on the outside as he is on the inside. He’s not thinking about others before he speaks. Without intent to be kind, we lapse into egotism. It’s a social infection caused by entropy we might call Trumpiasis. The swelling of the ego.

“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies-“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” — Kurt Vonnegut.

Vonnegut knew that kindness takes intent. The scariest thing about Trump is that he seems to be casually and caustically intending the opposite, for the sake of his own face. Why is it working? Perhaps because people are tired of the faux-kindness of every other politician, baby-kissers, but not really following the only rule Vonnegut knew (happy to bomb the babies in other countries, so long as it serves their rise to power). Faux-kindness-intent is the worst kind of intent. Worse, at least some voters seem to think, than a real intent to be cruel. It leaves us suffering the soundbites of a political shock jock: a jerk who’s always making excuses. “I didn’t mean your appearance, I meant your persona.” Right… right.

Before we came to my in-laws this week, Megan pointed out that often when we visit I hole up with a book and she ends up with all the childcare duties while also trying to visit with her mother, dad and sisters. So I very intentionally spent three good hours with my kids yesterday while my wife rested or blogged or whatever. She was very gently telling me “please don’t be a jerk.” (Upon reviewing my draft, she said “I wasn’t telling you not to be a jerk.” But, yes, she was. She was asking me to live with intent.)

Living with intent is hard to do, I recognize that. It’s why we life coaches spend a lot of time with our clients working on Life Purpose. Heck, it’s why we exist! Once you have a better sense of the purpose for your life, you start doing lots of things with more intent. We also provide accountability for what YOU DO want to do, which, guess what … doesn’t happen without intent.

Living intentionally is a daily pursuit. When you’re kicking a bad habit, an addiction, it’s an hourly or by-the-minute pursuit. It helps to have healthy things to put your attention on, direct your intent actively towards.

Things that happen to you may not be within your control, but notice I just switched to the passive voice? When you live with intent, you make things happen. Not all of it will be good, or perfect, but it won’t be happening TO you. It won’t be a passive life. You’ll stop saying “I didn’t MEAN to…” because most of what you do will be intended. Famed stunt bicycle rider Pee Wee Herman used to say “I meant to do that” as a cover-up for any accident he had. Which is, of course, an ironic usage. I wonder if the actor “meant to do that” when he got busted for inappropriate behavior?  Or did he so identify with his character he thought he could get away with this in real life? Method acting isn’t healthy, even (maybe especially) if you aren’t a professional actor. Don’t method-act your way through this stuff! This is about the real you.

So we see that this lifestyle of intent includes your community, but it also includes a whole lot of other stuff. So, as you consider your New Year’s Resolutions, consider what it will mean to live with more intent in every area of your life. What is your purpose? Who will hold you accountable? What will you make happen? What do you MEAN to do? Now, go be the force that happens to life. Go happen to your community.

Writers keep on a writin’

Hey writers, it’s writing Thursday again here on my blog, and I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Motivated New Year (not just January or November, either).

In our writer’s group last Thursday night (meets monthly for accountability and support) we talked about setup. Here’s our video on the topic.

Knowing your basic setup is great, but how do you maintain disciplines of writing (if you write daily or even once or twice a week) or really disciplines of any kind (how many calories you consume) when your normal setup gets upset by holiday travel?

Maybe you’re hosting people, maybe you’re with relatives, but usually a holiday week means somethin’s gotta give, and there’s a good chance your normal setup will suffer.

My main tip here is pretty simple: have a plan. You may know what your situation is going to look like, and there’s always Uncle Harv who arrives at the last minute throwing everything off kilter again.

The second tip is that you may have to squeeze it in the cracks instead of having a nice three hour block.

The third thing is, to avoid discouragements, appropriately adjust your expectations. Maybe you usually write 10,000 words a month, adjust that to a lower number. Or, if you’re like Justin, you have two weeks off school and you actually have more time. Find space to push yourself, either way. That’s how you get it done!

Again, everybody have a wonderful holiday and keep on a-writin’.

Fusions in the Void #15

Rich and Poor: A living community.

I’ve been writing about community in another series, this piece sort of crosses over with that one.

The Fusions in the Void concept begins with the idea that when all seems dark and we’re not even sure where our next step will be, we feel that our world is falling apart, God is fusing things together.

One thing God fuses is riches and poverty into a living community. God’s confusing in this way. Some preachers notice that God has all material wealth in his hand, and so teach you prayers that manipulate God to give you stuff. On the other hand, there’s some truth to having a mentality of abundance and what your mentality can bring about in your life. It’s a subtle paradox.

God spends a lot of time in Scripture letting us know how much he loves poor people and poor things.

When I was in Thailand this spring, one missionary remarked that Jesus said: you will always have the poor with you. Another missionary immediately replied, “yes, but that doesn’t mean they have to go hungry.”

Scripture warns against giving the best seat in a banquet to the richest guy who shows up. Instead, Jesus suggests that you give the seat of honor to a poor person.

The first rich person who pops into my head is Donald Trump. You really can’t go anywhere in cyberspace without running into this really rich guy. And for the many who think what he says is golden, there are many more who despise him for his obnoxious and offensive ways. He’s a prime example of the hubris the United States far too often embraces.

In the Void, hubris goes out the window. The void is a lot like one of those swirling money machines where you have to grab as much cash as you can in one minute and then get out, but the air is blowing through so hard the bills swirl in such a way that makes grabbing hold of any of it nearly impossible. The air is full of resources, yet the void experience makes them all completely unattainable.

Yet, in the Void, God controls all those resources. God fuses the wealth with our spiritual poverty to make a wholeness within us so that we’re mature enough to be part of a thriving community. Rich as one may be, one needs a community to survive in this brutal world. So it doesn’t always mean money. A community, however, is a network of mutual support. There may be money exchanged, or there may be relationships which come together to propel you forward as you exit the void, but whatever God is doing, he’s putting rich and poor together for sustainability for His children.

Intentional Community #5

A blog reader asked me to comment on the topic of Slackers in your intentional community.

You’re trying to engage your community with purpose and intent for accountability and growth, and you run into slackers. It doesn’t matter what your format or system is for intentional community. They will be there, sitting at the table, waiting to eat.

Someone asked me recently if I could push a big RED button and something in the world would change, I said that for me, it would be that everyone in the world would have at least one good friend.

Slackers are a bit like the monkeys on Monkey Island in Thailand. A guy named Tim and I kayaked out with half a loaf of bread and fed these wild monkeys. First of all, we figured out quickly who was the Alpha male. (No females even showed up for the handouts. Not sure why.) We had to work to get bread to the others. The Alpha was a little bolder, willing to brave water up to his knees. He was ready to chase anyone off, baring his teeth and screeching. Tim and I made sure to stay far enough out that we couldn’t get bitten. A bite from one of these guys would be bad news. One of the monkeys climbed up on Tim’s kayak and found his water bottle. The little dude punched a hole with his teeth and sucked out the fresh water. The monkeys lost interest in us when we ran out of bread. It seems they could tell the handout session was over. Perhaps they saw that our hands were empty, maybe they just knew by experience, or maybe they could even smell that we didn’t have any left in our pockets or bags, but they left pretty quickly.

It seems kind of mean to compare slackers with monkeys, but remember, my personal vision statement is that everyone would have at least one friend. Even monkeys. Even Slackers. The point isn’t to be mean, it’s to be frank.

Principle number one: You are the only person responsible for the depth of community you experience. You do not get to blame it on others if people don’t show up and you therefore don’t get to have community. As I’ve mentioned in an earlier blog, you need to build in redundancy to combat the fact that other people are typically not as concerned about building community with you, specifically, than you are concerned about it for yourself, and therefore for others by extension of your involvement.

Principle number two: we are called to share our bread, even with monkeys. Bread is of course analogous to money, but it can also easily mean time, emotional energy, or whatever else you give to relationships.

Principle number three: Your bread isn’t limitless. If people aren’t reciprocating in your relationships, you’re going to run out. When that happens the monkeys will leave or you will get in your kayak and paddle away. No harm, no foul, monkeys are used to this pattern. They may act offended, but they’re really just pushing to see if you don’t have a few crumbs left.

My hope and belief is that everyone has the ability to grow and mature, to become a leader (not analogous to the Alpha male, who is more like a bully) and steward the gifts God has given them, but the stark reality of the world is that while everyone shares that potential, some do and some don’t. That takes us back to the first question, will you be one who does? Who shows up? Who makes community a priority?

The second thing is that because you’ve made this a priority, you’ll make sacrifices. You’ll give sometimes and get nothing in return. This WILL deplete you. You’ll have to retreat, gather new resources, rest your aching heart, and try again, make another investment. I suspect a combined approach is healthiest:

Reach out to some of the monkeys who took your bread. Maybe next time around they’ll get it. Also, reach out to new people, because this helps build redundancy. You may find some new monkeys, but you may also find some people who will stick with you. Somebody else is looking for this. I am, and I have plenty of friends who do. Intentional community is a real possibility for your life.

Finally, keep investing. It’s a bit like the stock market. Sometimes you buy stocks and they fall for a while, but if you keep them, they can come roaring back. Sometimes you buy in with a high-flying stock and it crashes. But any financial adviser will tell you this: keep investing, even when the market is down. Especially then.

You’ve got to find someone who needs one good friend. Then go be it. They may be a long-term monkey, or they may just be a stock that’s down at the moment. Either way, you’ve done something good for humanity.

Remember this: if you stop investing, you may not realize it, but you just became the monkey.

 

 

Writing: The X Factor

There’s this thing called the X-Factor. It’s what makes your writing sing.

This is the fifth in a five part series on writing.

The X Factor is this is the unteachable element.

If something’s unteachable, you have to tack. Tacking is a technique sailors use when they want to take a sailboat directly into the wind. Well, you can’t do it. So you go at a 45 degree angle, sideways. Then, to stay on course, you go into the wind sideways the other direction for a while.

How do you tack when it comes to growing in the X-factor?

Tack left: engage the arts. Read. Read challenging things. Read the great Russian writers. See good art at museums or fine art galleries. Watch interesting films with plots. I prefer foreign films, they’re less predictable. Listen to music you don’t normally gravitate to.

Tack right: work on the basics again. Do the four exercises from the previous four weeks. Grow in all four of the other areas, tack towards the muse, and you’ll grow in this area too. You’ll learn to recognize it, for one thing, when it happens to you.

The last thing you have to do is keep consulting the compass as a good sailor would to make sure you’re still headed where you want to go. This means getting feedback from writers you respect, and taking them seriously.

I’m still tacking a lot. My two books are The Art of Motivational Listening (2015) and White Buffalo Gold (2012). See the bookstore for how to order.

Fusions in the Void #14

If you’re new to my blog, this one is the penultimate blog in a series which wraps up next Tuesday. Or maybe I will throw down a wrap up blog after that. Anyway, you can find the previous ones in the archives.

In the Void, also known as isolation, a desert or valley season, or dark night of the soul, God fuses things together while we’re in a time that feels like we can’t see an inch beyond our nose or get anything accomplished. My goal in the series is to hold out hope to those who feel lost in a confusing mess, whose life doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, who can’t figure out why they’re here, or just can’t seem to connect with God.

Fusion #14 is Man and Woman: Love for the garden. I wrote that phrase down ten years ago. Today my task is to figure out what the heck I meant back then, ’cause I don’t really remember.

The most core feature of our identity is our gender. When you were born, nobody said “It’s a baby!” Instead, they proclaimed your gender. “It’s a girl!” Megan and I deliberately did not get an ultrasound done during any of our pregnancies. We felt that one of the greatest surprises in life was the gender of a newborn. There wasn’t really cause to spend the money on an ultrasound, and we never had insurance that paid for it. But beyond that, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t have wanted one anyway. Three boys and one girl later, all healthy, and five years later I’m still glad we kept this surprise for the day of birth.

Now without getting too deeply into issues of transgender or sexual preference, on which I am not an expert, I think it’s important to note that God’s very self transcends gender. God’s love extends to all people, no matter their identity or preference. So, from here on out, when I’m talking about man and woman, I really want to consider that as inclusive as the universe is vast. In God’s transcendent sexuality, God still gave us two primary genders as broad categories. The animal kingdom and plants, too, give us other reproductive models which are also glimpses into God’s gender. The Bible says that God made humanity in God’s image, but it does NOT say that plants or animals are completely unrepresentative of God’s image. God’s stamp is really on everything. In other words, I do not think the image of God rests exclusively on the genders and subsequent potential reproductive abilities of those genders as seen in a majority of humans.

I started the series by talking about Genesis 1:2, where the earth is formless and void, and the Spirit of God hovers over the water. This is pre-gender. Genesis 1:27 is the first time God is referred to with a pronoun (at least in English, I’m not a Hebrew scholar) “God created [Adam (a Hebrew collective word for “him”)] in his own image, in the image of God he created [Adam]; male and female he created them.” Sorry, at this point I’m confused about God’s gender. All I can say from this passage is that God transcends gender and humanity reflects God’s image.

Today a guy dropped by the house and I got to ask, “How’s the baby? Two months old now, right?” Seven weeks. “Uh, it’s a boy, right?” I said. I couldn’t remember his name, either, and the father reminded me, admitting he couldn’t remember all his own cousins’ kid’s names. I commented that it takes a while until they develop their personality and we begin to associate their name with who they are.

In the Void we cry out over and over again: “Who Am I? Who Are You?”

If we are in a place where we really question ourselves, our deepest identity, we may even wonder, “Am I a Man?” (Or am I a Muppet?) Seriously, after you read the rest of this blog, go watch that video. It’s awesome.

Our identity and personality is hog-tied into gender, but God doesn’t seem as concerned about that. God is happy. He blesses the people and gives them a garden. He doesn’t say “Now, guys, over here, and girls over in that line; guys on the green beans and ladies, you have the artichokes project.” He just points to the garden and says to be fruitful and multiply.

I want to comment at this point that if you’re really struggling with gender issues and not sure where you land, I don’t want to make light of that. It occurs to me as I write that perhaps the thing to do (this might be completely wrong, but seems like something Wendell Berry would say) whether your identity issues have to do with gender or anything else, maybe just go work in a garden for a couple years. Prune some fruit trees, weed a patch of asparagus (maybe pull up the asparagus while you’re at it), plant some carrots or pick some kale. Whether this will help you discover who you are or not, I don’t know, but I think God would be fine with it. There’s something carnal about working with plants and animals that appeals to our sense of identity as humans even before we concern ourselves with gender. This could be a horrible idea and I really don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m happy to be told that I have no idea what it’s like to grapple with gender questions. But I kind of like it, this idea of working in a garden, for people who are working at any sort of root identity issue.

So the point of the series is that while we’re in the Void, God is fusing something for later. We’re in a space that feels isolated, may even feel like we’re sort of floating, with nothing to ground our feet, and God is fusing male and female (at least in Godself) so that the garden can be tended. You could take this as an analogy to your inner spiritual garden, or to your marriage, children and family.

Ultimately, God is fusing gender in the Void, so that Adam (humanity) can be productive. It’s sort of weird, because in the creation story God seems to be separating the two basic aspects of God’s own gender-based nature, but I think there’s still a fusion happening there, not a separation. The fusion is a two-part productivity process. Basic chemistry. Diet Coke + Mentos = explosion. And I’m not saying women are for making babies, let me be clear about that. I’m saying men and women must work together to take care of the world, even on days when it seems like nothing’s growing at all. If we can find ways to begin to do that, we may find that other issues settle themselves in our hearts as we walk through that valley season into a place of productivity after the dry season.

I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of ways to take this idea, and probably a lot of ways you could put words in my mouth that aren’t accurate, so remember this: in the Void, I hold out hope to my friends. That’s it. That’s all this is about. Find hope in God that God knows what she is doing when she incubates a plan for your life, God knows what he is doing when he plants a seed of an idea in your mind, God knows how to harvest what you’re carrying in your heart; God can fuse that. Your gender is both very beautiful to God, yet irrelevant in some paradoxical way I’m not even  going to try to explain, so long as you work the garden.

Intentional Community, #4

In #3 I talked about the need for redundancy in your intentional community.

Intentional community (lower-case “i” and “c”) is defined for the sake of this series as a systematic approach to making sure that you have developed a series of relationships which form a support network for your life– and vice versa, it includes relationships in which you provide support for others.

Diversity. We compartmentalize our lives a lot. We can fight that, to some extent, but the reality is that we do have different spheres we operate in, sometimes they are completely separate from each other.

Part of establishing good redundancy is establishing relationships for diversity in your own life, making sure that you have people who are working with you in every area. For example, in my life I need people who check in with me on spiritual growth; growth as a writer and blogger; growth as a leadership coach; growth as a father and husband; growth as a nonprofit executive and leader, including growth as a fundraiser; and more. If I tuck one of these areas aside and don’t spend time working on it with one of my coaches, mentors, leaders, etc. then I’m at risk for failure in a certain area.

This is why I check in regularly with Keisa, Mark, Mark, Tim, Justin, Jonathan, Ralph, and more. It may seem like it would take a lot of time for me to meet with two or three of these people every month– that’s because it does! But that is a component of intentional community too. This will take some time. Each one brings a slightly different perspective and is relating with me on a different focus. Some are broader, working at all of life, while some are more narrowly focused. Some are peers, and some are people who’ve worked in a specific area better or longer than I have.

Finally, to be well balanced, you need to provide the same for others. Giving this way is a beautiful thing! Find people you can mentor, lead, coach, or otherwise invest in relationally.

Writers Thursday #4 in series

Last week we discussed how to improve both your micro and macro levels of language, from vocabulary to speaking in a particular context.

This week I’m suggesting exercises for increasing your originality.

It’s easy to get stuck in a rut with your characters, setting, or plot. As long as you know the rules and understand why you’re breaking them, you can do some original work and break some new ground, but you may need a boost.

Here’s a five minute game or exercise: take twenty of your favorite novels. Make some slips of paper with the following categories:

Location/ Setting

Era

Main Character

Supporting Character

Plot driver (a wedding, breakup, death, attack, murder, birth)

 

For example let’s take classic Romance lit Jane Eyre.

  1. Thornfield Hall
  2. mid 19th century
  3. Jane Eyre
  4. Mr. Rochester
  5. Finds out there’s a mad lady in the attic

Drop the slip with your Location into one bag, Era in the next bag, and so on; repeat with 19 other novels or movies of various genres.

Draw one slip from each bag, so that you end up with something like this:

  1. Setting: Tatooine (Star Wars)
  2. Era: Prehistoric/ Stone Age (Clan of the Cave Bear)
  3. Main Character: Huckleberry Finn (The Adventures of …)
  4. Supporting Character: Mr. Rochester (Jane Eyre)
  5. Plot element: All the land is sold to corporate farms and the sharecroppers are evicted (Grapes of Wrath)

Now, sketch the plot of a book. Write a few paragraphs: How does it open and how does it end? This exercise should help you break out of any originality ruts and may even help you develop a ground-breaking novel that crosses over two genres. You may not end up writing any books that you came up with during the exercise, but it can help you break out of your ways of thinking.

 

The Art of Motivational Listening

This book is like a tin of truffles. You don’t want to consume it without pausing to consider what you’re getting, but rather, you look for coconut or mint. It’s OK to pick a random piece and surprise yourself, it all depends on your mood. In The Art of Motivational Listening, Adam G. Fleming brings the creative voice of a novelist to the expanding body of literature on the topic of leadership coaching and listening in general. Recognizing that you don’t need another linear, how-to book on the topic, Adam instead offers a collection of essays with an invitation-to-ponder.  Brace yourself for flavor. Slow down and enjoy a turtle. Settle in beside a crackling fire and think about what it means to you to become a better listener, a better leader.
Pre-purchase your copy here and be one of the first to get an autographed copy!

Motivational Listening art front coverAdamFleming_casual