Provision #717: Zest Matters
by Bob Tschannen-Moran
Laser Provision
This week's Provision comes to you while I am in Costa Rica, attending and
participating in my daughter's wedding. What fun is that! The inspiration for
this Provision on zest comes from my daughter and new son-in-law, Bryn and
Andrés Rodriguez. The two of them work and play harder than just about anyone I
know. They epitomize zest: hearty enjoyment, gusto, liveliness, vitality, and an
animating spirit. What does this have to do with leadership? Everything! If
leaders do not bring zest into the equation, then who will? People count on us
to elevate not only their hope but also their confidence that things can and
will get done. Zest will do that, which makes it one of the most important
leadership qualities of all.
LifeTrek Provision
My wife, Megan, and I were married almost 35 years ago in the California
redwoods, near Santa Cruz. By all accounts, it was the best decision we ever
made. Even though we were very young at the time – 19 and 21 years of age,
respectively – we have grown together rather than apart and we have realized our
premarital vision of not only loving each other profusely but also of serving
the world better together than either one of us could have apart. Little did we know
at the time just how close our partnership would become. In every stage of our
lives, including the most recent with co-authoring a new book and collaborating
around the Center for School
Transformation, we have found ways to support, enrich, and enhance each
other's lives.
Since our wedding in the redwoods included people from all over the
United States, we decided to have a wedding weekend rather than just a wedding
ceremony and reception. Why have people fly or drive thousands of miles for just
a few hours of pleasure? Since these were our family and friends, many of whom
we did not see regularly, we wanted to use the occasion to spend a good chunk of
time with them. So we rented a church camp for the weekend and planned the
wedding as if it were a retreat.
We started the event on Saturday morning with the ceremony, then had time at the
beach on Saturday afternoon, followed by free time and then square dancing in
the evening. The next morning we had a final get together, a service of
celebration and thanksgiving, before Megan and I took off
on our honeymoon: a night in Monterey followed by 2,200 miles of driving from
San Francisco to Chicago. Along that route we included backpacking in the Grand
Tetons and taking in other national treasures such as Yellowstone National Park,
Mt. Rushmore, and the Badlands. The whole adventure was great fun.
Fast forward 35 years and our now almost-30-year-old daughter plans to get
married tomorrow, April 18, 2011, to a wonderful man who hails first from Peru
and then from Australia. We have really enjoyed getting to know Andrés and we look forward
to the many good times we will share together as members of one family. That
starts today. Bryn and Andrés faced the same conundrum we faced 35 years ago,
only a quantum leap larger due to globalization. What's the best place to hold a
wedding if you want people to come from the United States, Peru, Australia, and
Malaysia? Costa Rica! Especially since Bryn has been part of an adopted family
in Costa Rica since she was a foreign exchange student there as a junior in high
school.
Well, you don't travel to Costa Rica just for a wedding ceremony and a
reception. And it doesn't make sense to go to such a wonderful place for just a weekend. So
we're here for an entire week, with all kinds of festivities including swimming,
body surfing, catamaran cruising, canyoneering, zip lining, volcano trekking,
and hot springs relaxing. What could be better than that! Another adventure has
started.
This adventure certainly fits the personalities of my daughter and son-in-law.
They are both incredibly active and filled with life. Living in Los Angeles,
they have year-round good weather and they make full use of that opportunity
with lots of hiking, sports, and an active lifestyle. Somehow they manage to fit
that in around two very demanding jobs: as a fourth-year medical resident at LA
County Hospital and as the manager of a luxury hotel in Beverly Hills. It would
be easy, with jobs like that, to become workaholics with no rest, relaxation, or
recreation. Not Bryn and Andrés! They have the zest to work hard, play hard, and
still get married in Costa Rica!
Perhaps that's why more than 50 people have traveled from the far reaches of the
globe to participate in this special occasion. Zest is infectious. In a world
where far too many people are sick, stressed, addicted, depressed, impoverished,
afraid, ashamed,
undervalued, unemployed, sedentary, and otherwise fatigued, it is not just
refreshing it is rejuvenating to be with people who are healthy, engaged,
released, happy, focused, confident, content, valued, employed, active, and
otherwise invigorated. People want to get close to that, even if it means
traveling thousands of miles or kilometers.
So what's the secret to zest? It's really no secret at all. Did you read last
week's Provision,
Laughter Matters? The same elements that generate laughter, also generate
zest:
- Positive emotion. How happy am I?
- Positive engagement. How interested am I?
- Positive relationships. How connected am I?
- Positive meaning. How valuable am I?
- Positive achievements. How competent am I?
Those are the qualities that contribute to zest as identified by Marty
Seligman in his new book,
Flourish: A
Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being (Free Press,
2011), and those are the qualities that people have come to know and love in
Bryn and Andrés. They are happy, engaged, connected, passionate, and capable
people. They feel that way about themselves, about each other, and about their
way in the world. What more can two people want?
To understand how this dynamic works, I would point you to a beautiful and true
story told by my favorite poet, David Whyte. Before David became famous as a poet, he was serving as the executive director of a nonprofit corporation in the
Pacific Northwest of the United States. As much as he valued the work he was
doing, protecting the natural world, David remembers becoming increasingly
exhausted. The problem was not just that he was so busy, although that was
certainly true. The problem was that he was growing increasingly disconnected
from the world he was attempting to protect.
The press and pace of the work was so great that David was in danger of losing
not only his zest, but his very identity. I remember laughing when I heard David
tell
the story of hurriedly walking into a meeting, late, and asking, "Has anyone
seen David?" Although he got a laugh with that line, it was a very real question.
Because the David he once knew, the David filled with energy and zest for life,
"had disappeared under a swampy morass of stress and speed."
Fortunately, David received assistance from a Benedictine monk, Brother David Steindl-Rast. That night, after his experience of losing himself at the office,
David came home to find the monk sitting in a chair, reading a book of
poetry. Suddenly, the monk's eyes lit up as he discovered one of Rilke's
poems, The Swan. A native of Austria, the monk was reading in the original German,
so
David went to locate the marvelous English translation by Robert Bly:
This clumsy living that moves lumbering
as if in ropes through what is not done,
reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks.
And to die, which is the letting go
of the ground we stand on and cling to every day,
is like the swan, when he nervously lets himself down
into the water, which receives him gaily
and which flows joyfully under
and after him, wave after wave,
while the swan, unmoving and marvelously calm,
is pleased to be carried, each moment more fully grown,
more like a king, further and further on.
David could identify with "clumsy living that moves lumbering as if in ropes
through what is not done" and of walking awkwardly through his days. "Tell me
about exhaustion," David said. The monk looked at him "with an acute,
searching, compassionate ferocity for the briefest of moments, as if trying to
sum up the entirety of the situation and without missing a beat, as if he had
been waiting all along to say a life-changing thing." The monk then posed a
question that was at once an assertion: "You know that the antidote to
exhaustion is not necessarily rest? The antidote for exhaustion is
wholeheartedness."
"You are so tired through and through because a good half of what you do in this
organization has nothing to do with your true powers, or the place you have
reached in your life. You are only half here, and half here will kill you after
a while. You need something to which you can give your full powers. You know
what that is; I don't have to tell you."
And David did know. He wanted his work to be his poetry, and yet he had been
setting that aside for many years in favor of being reasonable and gainfully
employed. "How do you tell your father-in-law," David asks, "that you are going
to support his daughter and grandchild as a full-time poet?" How indeed. You
can't, unless that decision is made out of the very fabric of one's life, and
the monk was challenging him to be both real and accountable at the same
time.
"You are like Rilke's Swan in his awkward waddling across the ground,"
the monk continued. "The swan doesn't cure his awkwardness by beating himself on
the back, by moving faster, or by trying to organize himself better. The swan
does it by moving toward the elemental water, where he belongs. It is the simple
contact with the water that gives him grace and presence."
It will work the same way for you. "You only have to touch the elemental waters
in your own life, and it will transform everything. But you have to let yourself
down into those waters from the ground on which you stand, and that can be hard.
Particularly if you think you might drown. That takes courage, and the word
courage in English comes from the old French word cuer, heart. You
must do something heartfelt, David, and you must do it soon." (Crossing
the Unknown Sea, adapted from pp. 113-138).
It is in this respect that marriage and leadership are a lot of like. They both
require courage, wholeheartedness, and zest. To go through the motions is not
enough. To put in the time without the passion is a formula for divorce and
disappointment. Until we find that water, that place, that person, that element or
environment where we can be fully alive, we will not be at our best and we will
not attract the best on the strength of either our energy or our efforts.
So pay attention to the things that make you feel happy, engaged, connected, passionate,
and capable.
Those are things that make people flourish and fill people with zest.
In the
Coaching Psychology Manual, which I co-wrote with Margaret Moore and my
colleagues on the faculty of the
Wellcoaches
School of Coaching, we identify zest as one of the nine being skills of
coaching presence. The other eight are calm, warmth, playfulness, affirmation,
courage, authenticity, empathy, and mindfulness. We call them "being skills"
because they are not inborn qualities or traits over which people have no
control. They are ways of being in the world that can be intentionally
cultivated, developed, and aligned.
The concept of zest, we write, is about "living and experiencing life as an
adventure." That is one of the three themes in Bryn and Andrés' wedding and it
is an important part of evocative leadership. When life and leadership become an
adventure, then zest is easy to come by – even in difficult of times. There is
no "trial and error," only "trial and correction." There are no setbacks, only
new adventures. There is no "win–lose," only "win–learn."
However you frame the concept, zest is a critical part of success in just about
any area of life. We would all do well, then, to approach, assimilate, and enjoy
life to the fullest.
Coaching Inquiries: How much zest do you have in life? What gives you energy?
What drains you of energy? How could you spend more time with your energy
boosters? Where could you go that would fill you with a sense of adventure?
How could you make that a standard part of your everyday life?
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LifeTrek Readers' Forum (selected feedback
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Editor's Note: The LifeTrek Readers' Forum contains selections from the comments
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Email Bob.
This was a wonderful
Provision on laughter! I have always said that, at
the end of every day, I have to answer two questions: 1.) Did I make a
difference? and 2.) Did I have fun? Your article was really great! Also, I went
back a couple of weeks ago and reread “Jesus Matters.” I agree with all you
said. Thanks!
Another terrific issue of LifeTrek Provision. The article on
Laughter Matters
was very enjoyable to read, and the anecdote you included about Martin Seligman
was wonderful. It reinforced why I like having my grandchildren around. I liked
the way you made a case for paying attention to the five elements and how they
can act as a catalyst for a conversation about well-being.
Love this!! Top
May you be filled with goodness, peace, and joy.
Bob Tschannen-Moran
President, LifeTrek Coaching International,
www.LifeTrekCoaching.com
CEO & Co-Founder, Center for School Transformation,
www.SchoolTransformation.com
Immediate Past President, International Association of Coaching,
www.CertifiedCoach.org
Author, Evocative Coaching: Transforming Schools One Conversation at a Time,
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