Learning. I think we are too eager, busy, or naive to test learning through our own experience. We want a best case example and then imitate it or install it as plug and play into our organization. We readily hire outside consultants to tell us what to do and fall in love with their PowerPoint presentations and compelling analytics. I think this is true for the fields of employee experience and employee engagement.

I think we need to treat more of what others tell us are solutions as hypotheses. Use more test than trust and more experimentation than expertise.

Here is a short quotation from a little book that encourages us to learn from experience and experience our learning:

“The point is that whatever one is trying to learn, it is necessary to have firsthand experience, rather than learning from books or from teachers or by merely conforming to an already established pattern.” – Chögyam Trungpa

Going Through the Grind and Coming Out with Purpose. I was sipping on a hot cup of Kicking Horse Pacific Pipeline coffee when a tiny lesson this size of a coffee bean began to percolate in my brain about potential, purpose, and the grind.

“Coffee beans are full of potential. But their true purpose is fulfilled only after they have gone through a grind.”

The coffee bean lesson offered me a tiny nudge through the grind we are all going through these days and the possibility of it releasing more of my potential.

I encourage you to read, download, and share this very brief, under 7 minute, guide to meditation based on my 40 years of meditation experience. You will find it easy going, playful, and potentially very helpful.

To read, download, or share click the following link: http://www.davidzinger.com/wp-content/uploads/How-to-Meditate-with-David-Zinger.pdf

This morning I was rereading Jon Kabat-Zinn’s, Full Catastrophe Living. It feels like so many of us are being thrust into the full catastrophe. Here is a little present from the introduction to the second edition:

“The only way we have of influencing the future is to own the present, however we find it. If we inhabit this moment with full awareness the next moment will be very different because of our very presence in this one. Then we just might find imaginative ways to fully live the life that is actually ours to live.

Can we experience joy and satisfaction as well as suffering? What about being more at home in our own skin within the maelstrom? What about tasting ease of well-being, even genuine happiness? This is what is at stake here. This is the gift of the present moment, held in awareness, non-judgmentally, with a little kindness.”