Showing posts with label Boundaries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Boundaries. Show all posts

October 21, 2020

Watch Where You Stick Your Nose

This was an interesting sign:

We love it when you stick you nose in our business...

Gee, I sure hope this isn't referring to a manure business.  LOL

In short, be careful into what stink you stick you nose in or know when to mind your own business!  ;-)

(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)


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May 16, 2018

Braving Trust and Credibility

So I thought this was really good from a colleague this week. 

How to build trust and credibility in the workplace:

Credibility is about being "convincing and believable" and results from "expertise and experience."

Trust is believing strongly in the honesty, reliability, character, and effectiveness of a person."


BRAVING

Boundaries - Have good boundaries--respecting yours and having my own; show others respect in words and deeds. 

Reliability - Be someone who is both reliable (can be counted on)  and is authentic.

Accountability - Hold others and yourself accountable; we all own our mistakes, apologize and make amends. 

Vault - Keep information in confidence.

Integrity - Hold courage over comfort; choose what's right over what's fun, easy or fast; practice and not just profess values. 

Non-judgmental - Believe the best in people even when they occasionally disappoint you. 

Generosity - Offer and ask for help from others, and give generously of yourself in time and effort. 

No offense to anyone...the last thing they said was a little spicy for the workplace (but I know it was meant well):  "Good conversation with others should be like a miniskirt--short enough to retain interest and long enough to cover the topic." ;-)

(Source Photo: Dannielle Blumenthal)
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April 21, 2017

Breaking The Bounds Of This World Thinking


Coming from the Metro, someone stopped me and gave me this card for meditation, and I thought it was really insightful. 

"Changing the human mind to infinite universe mind"

Our minds are constrained by our mortality, materialism, and physical limitations of space and time. 

But if we free ourselves even momentarily from these, we can enter into a sort of limitless universal mindset.

"Human is incomplete because human are living inside human mind world which is one's lived life and thoughts."

We are beset by a near endless barrage of life's fears and worries--like that we can't fully perceive the metaphysical and spiritual world that is the real and meaningful one for us. 

"One can live forever and [when] he has escaped pain, burden, stress, and the countless kinds of agonies; his old self has disappeared and so it is great freedom."
Through mindfulness, centered and balanced thinking, we can go above the "false world" and enter the "true world."

Doesn't this ring fundamental and true?

What an amazing approach to thinking that we can use elevate ourselves above what we live and see every day. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal via Rockville Meditation)
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October 12, 2015

Terrorism Knows No Boundaries

Another stabbing in Jerusalem--right in the back of the head!

So far 18 terror stabbings in Israel in less than 10 days.

You never know when it's coming until the blade sears through the air and into the head, neck, chest, or back of the victim.

In an apartment, at a shopping center, riding a bus, on the way to prayer--no one is safe!

Today, one 13-year old boy is in critical condition after being stabbed nearly a dozen times while riding his bicycle in Jerusalem.

The stabbing attacks are coming on top of shootings, stonings, bombings, molotov cocktails, and vehicular hit and runs.

The call for a third Intifada to terrorize and kill Jews in Israel is underway.

This on top of last year's Gaza War when thousands of rockets where fired targeting Israeli cities and critical infrastructure as well as terror tunnels coming under the border to murder and abduct Israelis.

But Israel is not alone in fighting a wave of global terror--it is engulfing the Middle East and farther--from Libya to Syria, Yemen to Turkey, Iraq to Afghanistan--and hundreds of thousands of refugees are streaming to Europe.

Bombing of markets, weddings, funerals, houses of worship, and even peace rallies.

Chemical weapons, beheadings, hacking off limbs, crucifixions, burning victims alive, abductions of women and children, slavery, and gang rape, are now virtually accepted items in the International news, and on a daily basis. 

Next in the mix--maybe some suitcase or missile-tipped nukes delivered by impassioned Jihadists?

For now, we are watching from our perch of safety and security here and in Europe, but what when what we witness happening "over there" eventually comes over here...

Have we become so used to and callous to all the terrorism that we barely even blink an eye anymore when we read, hear, or see it?

While terrorism knows no physical boundaries, perhaps with an ever-increasing tempo of sickeningly outrageous and barbaric terrorist acts, it knows no boundaries to our soul anymore either.  ;-)

(Source Photo: Facebook via Documenting Anti-Semitism)
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October 6, 2014

Lock Or Peephole

So is that keyhole in privacy for a lock and key or as an exhibitionistic peephole?

The New York Times had an excellent article on this yesteday, called "We Want Privacy, but Can't Stop Sharing."

We are compelled to share online to demonstrate that we are:

- Important
- Interesting
- Credible
- Competent
- Thoughtful
- Trustworthy

The problem is when you inappropriately overshare online, you may leave youself little to properly disclose in building real-world intimate relationships in a normal give and take of "opening and closing boundaries."

Moreover, being like a lab rat or in a house of glass walls for all to watch indiscriminantly can leave us with feelings of "low self-esteem, depression, and anxiety."

Being under observation--even when it is voluntary--implies being open to judgement and this can drain us of our ability to be ourselves, creative, and take calculated risks.

We don't want to become too busy brushing our hair back and smiling for the camera and making everything (artificially) look like made for reality TV (e.g. Kardashian) perfection. 

The key to privacy is to disclose what needs to be shared, put a lock on what's personal, and not arbitrarily leave the peephole eyes wide open. ;-)

(Source Photo: here with attribution to g4ll4is)
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January 25, 2014

I, U, Y Talk Like That

Already young children in pre-school learn that "Words have meaning, and words can hurt."

All through life, we refine our communication skills learning what works and what doesn't.

Here are three letter-words with which to beware:

- "I" (Use sparingly) - I is usually people's favorite word; they love to talk about themselves. I this. I that. I like. I hate. The problem is that "I" can also be selfish, egotistical, and narcissistic. Without tempering talking about I all the time, you run the very large risk of overdoing it.  All the I can easily end up boring other people to near death or simply make them want to run the other way to get some needed healthy attention for themselves.

- "U" (Use carefully) - U is most often used to criticize.  U should do this. U did something wrong. U are a blankety-blank. While it's also caring, loving, and empathetic to talk about U (i.e. taking a genuine interest in the other person), talking about U can easily go astray and lead to disapproval, denunciation, and censure. We should and need to talk about U, but more from the perspective of understanding U and how can I help U.

- "Y" (Use almost never) - Y is used to ask questions, but usually ends up being used judgmentally. Y did you do that? Sometimes we question honestly and with positive intentions to understand, but very often we end up using the response to evaluate their actions, and pronounce judgement on them. From all the interrogative questions (who, what, where, when, Y, and how), Y should be used the absolute least, if ever. 

 I, U, Y - are letter-words that can imply selfishness, criticism, and judgement.  

While, they can't exactly be banned from the alphabet or dictionary, they are dangerous words that can get you misunderstood, alienate others, and hurt people in the process, and therefore use them, but with extreme caution, please. ;-)

(Source Photo: here with attribution to id-iom)
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July 27, 2013

Needy And You Know It

Some people are so needy--they are almost like children in adult's clothing, while others are so distant they may as well be living on another planet--they are in there own world. 

The Wall Street Journal (15 July 2013) asks why some people seem to demand so much? 

It explains that there are three types of people:

1) Secure--these people were raised in a consistently caring and responsive manner and they become warm and loving people themselves able to form healthy balanced relationships--where they can be apart from and together with others and function well in both situations.

2) Avoidant/Dismissive--those who are raised in an environment where neediness was not tolerated and was seen as suffocating, and so they learn to minimize closeness to others--they are distant and detached. 

3) Anxious/Needy--People raised in an inconsistent environment, where they got mixed messages about nurturing, and they end up constantly feeling insecure and needy, like they will get drawn in and then rejected again, so they smother other people with their neediness and don't recognize and respect appropriate boundaries. 

This third personality type, who is always needy and ends up pushing away other people, who feel suffocated, reminds me of a funny scene in Woody Allen's "Annie Hall" where a couple visit the therapist, who asks each of them how often they have sex? The man says, "Hardly ever. Maybe three times a week." But then the woman when asked the same question says, "Constantly. I'd say three times a week." 

Just like people can't really change their basic sexual needs (men apparently wanting physical intimacy more often then women), so too people can't change the home life they were raised in--good, bad or indifferent. 

Whether people are needy and clingy, aloof and dismissive, or plays between hot and cold, we need to figure out how to care about and love them for whoever they are. 

Boundaries are key. Taking some personal space is healthy. Together time and intimacy is critical. 

It's all about finding a balance--where each person has the time and space to be who they are, and then come back to a warm and caring relationship to share, rejuvenate, and laugh and cry together. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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October 27, 2012

Robots: More Than A Technical Challenge


This is the DARPA Pet-Proto Robot (a predecessor to the Atlas model) showing some pretty cool initial operating capabilities for navigating around obstacles.

- Climbing over a wall
- Straddling a pit
- Going up a staircase
- Walking a plank

These things may seem simple to you and I, but for these robots, we are talking about their autonomously sensing what's around them, identifying and evaluating alternatives to overcome them, deciding on what to actually do, and then successfully executing on it.

Not bad for a machine (even if we are spoiled by the the great science fiction writers and special effects of Hollywood)!

We will be seeing a lot more progress in this area in the 27 months in response to the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC), where robots are being looked to "execute complex tasks" for "humanitarian, disaster relief, and related activities" in potentially "dangerous and degraded, and human-engineered" environments.

I'd say only another 15-20 more years and the robots will walking among us--but are we prepared for the significant shift about to occur. 

Think about it--these robots will be able to do a lot more of the physical work (construction, manufacturing, service, care-taking, even warfighting, and more), and while we will benefit from the help, jobs are going to continue to get a lot tougher to find if you are not in fields such as engineering, science, technology, design, and so on.

This is going to lead to continued, significant social, educational, and economic disruptions.

What is now a robotics challenge to meet certain performance benchmarks, may in the future become a human challenge to shift from a human-dominated world to one which is instead shared or commingled with machines. 

This means that we need to define the boundaries between man and machine--will we be working and playing side-by-side, how about loving or fighting each other, and is there the possibility that the machine will some day transcend the inventor altogether. 

I believe that we need significant more study and research into how robotics are going to transform the way we live, work, and interact, and how humanity will adapt and survive this new monumental opportunity, but also looming threat.

What is just an obstacle to overcome in a simulation chamber may one day become an urban battlefield where humans are not necessarily the clear winners.

While I love robotics and where it can take us, this cannot be a field limited to the study of hardware and software alone.

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April 11, 2011

Optimizing Culture For Performance

Interdependence

Strategy + Business (Spring 2011) has an interview with Edgar Schein, the MIT sage of organizational culture.

In it, he describes why it is so hard to change this.

In my experience, organizational culture is key to success.

Why do we want to change organizational culture to begin with?

Sometimes it becomes dysfunctional and can get in the way of performance.

Sometimes, leaders think they can simply change a culture, but Schein disagrees. He says that you cannot simply introduce a new culture and tell people to follow it--"that will never work."

"Instead you have to...solve business problems by introducing new behaviors."

However, you cannot solve problems or even raise concerns where "in most organizations the norms are to punish it."

Schein states that "the people with the most authority...must make the others feel safe"--to speak up, contribute, and even make mistakes.

Schein goes on to call for people "to work with one another as equal partners"--breaking down the traditional organizational boundaries--so that we stop telling people, so to speak, that "you're in my lane" or "that's above your pay grade."

He goes a step further, stating that the healthiest work cultures are interdependent, meaning that people actively try to help one another solve problems.

What an enormously powerful idea, that everyone has something valuable to contribute. Every opinion contributes to the dialogue--and all employees are worthwhile.

That is my definition of a healthy culture, for the organization and its people.

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August 1, 2009

Faith or Fear?

I love stories of hope and possibility.

I read in the Washington Post, 1 August 2009, about cars that actually enable blind people to drive. This was one of those stories.

In 2004, a challenge was issued from a blindness advocacy group “to build a vehicle that the blind could drive with the same freedom as the sighted.”

Around the same time, The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)—the same government agency that brought us the Internet—“ran a series of contests to inspire a driverless car that could navigate complex terrain.”

However, at Virginia Tech’s Robot’s & Mechanism Laboratory the challenge of “an autonomous vehicle wasn’t enough. We want the blind person to be the driver, not to be driven.”

To meet this once unthinkable goal, the design team developed a prototype vehicle that blind students this summer are actually testing.

Here’s how the vehicle works: An all-terrain vehicle with a front-mounted laser sensor sweeps the terrain ahead, and a computer in the back processes the information into a two-dimensional map. A computer voice tells the driver through headphones what number of clicks to turn the wheel to steer around obstacles and a vest vibrates to indicate whether the driver should slow down or stop.

By challenging ourselves, bringing innovation to the table, thinking positively, and working through the challenges, we are able to bring opportunities to people that many thought were impossible.

Yet even today, I heard people reacting to this story and saying “Oh, I wouldn’t want a blind person driving behind me.”

But why not? There are reasons to believe that this can work.

First of all, in the vehicle tests, the blind drivers actually did better than the engineers because they followed the directions coming from the computer more precisely.

Second, when it comes to other modes of transportation such as flying, people no longer seriously question the use of technology to aid our ability to see, navigate and fly through all sorts of weather and turbulent conditions. Now a days, a large commercial airplane flying at hundreds of miles an hour over densely populated cities on autopilot is an accepted fact.

I believe there are really two issues here:

On one hand, is the technology itself. How far can technology take us—are there limits?

And the second issue is can people overcome their mindset of fear, doubt, hesitation, and negativity to really stretch the bounds of the imagination to the what’s truly possible?

I think both the issues of technology and mindset are strongly related.

Obviously there are laws of nature and physics that place real limits on even how far technology can take us. Yet, as we press against the boundaries and test the seemingly impossible, we are able do things that practically defy those very laws. For example, who would’ve thought that man could fly like the birds, walk on the moon, communicate thousands of miles in a split second, or cure the incurable? Perhaps, what we perceive as physical limitations are only there until we can figure out how to overcome them with innovation and technology—and of course, the wisdom bestowed from the almighty.

By realizing that the boundaries are not so hard and fast—that they are elastic—we can have hope in going further and doing the seemingly impossible.

Certainly, I recognize the very real legitimacy of the concerns that people might have over the thought of blind people in the driver’s seat. However we must ask ourselves how much of this concern is based on rational, logical factors and how much on a misperception or mistrust of what technology—and blind people themselves—can actually do. To me, it really comes down to one’s mindset.

Through faith, courage, conviction, we can overcome our doubts and fears. We can and must continue to explore, to test the bounds, and to innovate some more.


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