The Congruence of Snowboarding Monks

Yeah, so once upon a time I had this lucid dream, a vision of smiling monks snowboarding down the side of an impossibly steep mountain. Pure vertical drop. No fear. Nothing but fun and laughter. As I watched I knew that if they could do it, then I could do it, too. So I started walking up the mountain. It wasn’t easy. In fact the path was treacherous. But I was fearless as the monks and for me it was no problem.

And then I started wondering. I started worrying. I thought “Man this isn’t fair. For me this is really easy. There is no doubt I can reach the summit and then ski down as well as those smiling Buddhas. But it isn’t fair that for me it should be so easy, while so many other people could never do it.” Suddenly, a rope appeared coiled around my shoulder. I thought “Ah. All I have to do is lay down guidelines for people to uplift themselves. This way I don’t have to worry about whether or not other people can do it, because then I will have done my part to help them. Then I am free to go up and down the mountain as I choose.”

Feeling satisfied, me and my dramatic mind took that to be our latest mission: “To lay down guidelines for people to uplift themselves.” Man that felt good. To have such a kick-ass mission that once my work was done, I wouldn’t even have to deal with anyone anymore!

But I guess there was something else to learn, because a few weeks later, when I told an actual yogi about this vision, he said I was missing the point. He said the monks uplifted me without even trying to. Indeed, without even knowing I was there. They were just being themselves and having fun.

Damn. Now I had even more to think about!

Couple of years later, I had prescribed a meditation for myself to become a better manager. It was really challenging. Required a certain state of mind where I could gracefully balance many different things at once. Was having a really hard time doing it, so once again I asked the yogi.

“Hey. How do I do this meditation? I keep on getting all tripped up.”

“Yes” He responded. “You must cultivate a sense of being, not doing. It requires presence. Relaxation. Flow.”

Being. Not doing.

Yes. That was it exactly. That’s what it takes to manage many things at once.

To make sure you really get the picture, let me color it in with quotes. I once worked with a precocious young marketer who said “In order to get results like you have never seen before, you must become something you have never been before. So what must you become?”

Or as Thomas Leonard wrote: “Orient exclusively around your values.”

Or Jim Rohn: “It’s character that counts.”

Which opens the door for telling you about a young woman I recently met online. A woman who…well…let’s just say the only reason I would kick her out of bed…would be to do her on the floor. So it seems this hot young Harvard philosophy student had seen one of my videos somewhere. She wrote to me and said “Take it as a compliment that a 21 year old would do you.” Now being 46, I did indeed take that as a compliment, and for a moment, let go of the reigns and let my creative mind run wild. All kinds of pleasure-seeking thoughts ran amok throughout my brain, with total disregard for all the potential pain.

Fortunately, that story had a happy ending as my values won the day. But the reason I bring it up is because of something she said that I’m not sure I agree with. She said “All is play. No more. No less.”

Yeah, easy for a hot young philosopher to say. And hell, maybe even easy for some transcendent yogi or smiling monk to demonstrate. But what about all my lousy bills? What about all the work I have to do? What about all the rules and responsibilities of daily living? All is play? No freakin’ way! What kind of view is that?

And then I remembered quoting Ayn Rand in another recent conversation. I had referenced the scene where Dagny crashes her plane and then says to her lover “We never had to take any of it seriously, did we.”

And then there is Stephen Covey’s stance: “While values are internal and subjective, principles are external natural laws that ultimately determine consequence.”

Or what about Richard Bach’s line from Illusions where he wrote. “What if God commanded you to be happy?”

Hell even on this website, I have previously written that “When your work becomes your play, everything is okay.”

And here I am right now visiting my younger brother in Iowa. His name is Grant and he’s an emergency-room doctor. Always the hardest worker, Grant really loves his job, has a beautiful home and family, great health, great friends, all the toys and travel he desires, is passionate about life in general…in short the lad is really living well, while managing so many different things…and yet it seems like he is always smiling and having fun!

But here’s the thing. Today Grant came home from work and he was telling me about a 7 year old little girl who tripped and put a screwdriver through her eye. I’ll spare you the details, but the screwdriver was lodged deep inside the child’s brain, and my brother’s job was to pull that damn thing out with minimal damage.

Now I don’t know about you, but to me that doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun for anyone concerned. So here is Grant’s philosophy: “Sometimes life just sucks. Deal with it.”

The happiest, healthiest, most successful people I know, are those who are congruent. My definition of “congruence” is when what you are saying and doing on the outside matches what you are thinking and feeling on the inside.

That is attractive and powerful beyond measure.