A Grounding Practice in a Fragmented World
Tony Zampella
Wisdom Coach/Speaker, Teacher, and Strategist to cultivate conscious leadership.
About six years ago, I noticed a shift in my coaching practice. People were coming to their sessions more fragmented and with heavier loads. I also noticed that it took a little longer to get into each session.
Since then, two comments I often hear at the end of sessions have stuck with me:
As a researcher, such trends and patterns have given me pause.
Being a Coach Today
Over the last two years, three events have rocked so many Americans: the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the George Floyd murder and protests, and the insurrection against?the U.S.?government.
Today, being a coach means understanding how such events impact us and our clients. Whether culturally, socially, productively, or personally, incidents such as these shake foundations, rattle emotions, disrupt lives, overwhelm the senses, and fragment attention.
Combined, these dynamics compete with accelerating technological and cultural change and complex modes of communication. A general frazzled state involves exhaustion, feeling overwhelmed, and mental drain. This is what arrives at a coaching session.
Unlike in previous years, when I might have checked in on clients in pursuing their goals and getting into action, supporting clients in becoming grounded is now vital both during and beyond coaching sessions.
What is “Ground?”
Ground?questions our view. What situation are you encountering? Who is arriving?
Who are you in your situation? Are you projecting, or are you reacting to or observing circumstances? Can you access your awareness in the moment, or later upon reflection?
We’ve developed an effective?grounding practice ?that involves three phases:
I’ve developed each leg below with an inquiry for reflection.
1. What’s So:?Observe What’s Happening in this Situation
The power of?what’s so?acknowledges situations and conditions?as we find them. We distinguish facts (who, what, where, when, and why) from any interpretation.
Like the?ladder of inference?by learning theorist?Chris Argyris , what’s so reveals our beliefs and assumptions. When distracted or “hooked” on an interpretation or assumption, we notice our thinking and bring ourselves back to discern?what’s happening.
Developing What’s So
In more than 20 years of research and practice, I’ve discovered a version of?what’s so?in every wisdom tradition I’ve pored over.
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung taught us that?whatever we resist persists.
EST guru Werner Erhard?developed a document ?that begins as follows:
“What’s so is always just what’s so. What’s so doesn’t care what you think, feel, intend or wish; it will not bend.”
Buddhist author and black and gay activist?Lama Rod Owen ?offers the following insights:
“… if we want to change something, we must first begin to love it; what I am actually communicating is that we must accept the reality of something before we can begin to change it. …
This teaching can be hard to hear when we are being asked to accept forms of violence or harm happening to us or others. I tell activists often that if we want to change systems of violence and inequity, we must accept the reality of those systems. Again, accepting doesn’t mean celebrating or condoning; it only means that we allow the reality to be present so we can see it …?We cannot walk unless our feet are on the ground.”
What’s so trains our observer in objective examination. There are two points here:
Our ability to?reproduce empirical situations?accurately increases our awareness and discerning judgment, which develops our capacity to examine our experiential life.
Applying What’s So
As a coach, applying what’s so is fundamental to support grounding.
Consider the following scenario:
A client arrives at a session upset.
I ask, “What happened?”
“They just don’t respect me.”
“who doesn’t respect you?”
“My colleague and his boss.”
“How do you know this?”?
“I got an email that has messed up my entire weekend. I am so frustrated.”
“What did it say?”
“It was so disrespectful.”
“I see. Can we review the email together?”
“Sure, I’ll pull it out.”
“Okay, let’s review it.”
I’ve seen different versions of this scenario all too often. We read the email together, and with each sentence, the client begins to calm down.
“Oh, I didn’t see that. I stopped reading after a couple of sentences about working this weekend.”
“What do you see now?”
“Well, I see I have some wiggle room here. I can negotiate some of this and not have it spill into my weekend.”
Sometimes it involves rereading an email or getting the client to lay out the details of an incident. Other times, it involves the client reproducing both sides of a conversation.
At the end of the exercise – even if the situation hasn’t changed – grounding in “what happened” produces calm and can even allow for a different perspective.
As the?Dalai Lama ?said, “The suffering and happiness each of us experiences [reflects] the distortion or clarity with which we view ourselves and the world.”
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The point of “what’s so” is to refine our observer. We see things as they are — what is happening now as a matter of observed reality.
What’s so is fundamental to being grounded. The ability to see and say?what happened?penetrates our fog to achieve clarity. Stay with this practice to embody it as an observer.
Inquiry:?Am I projecting or perceiving reality?
2. Intentions:?Creating Aspirations for Direction
Intentions, by nature, are deliberate and conscious. We establish them via?thoughts,?attitudes, or aspirations?to deliberately set a purpose or direction.
Intention is within our locus of control – the way we show up. When I attend a meeting, I can create several intentions, such as 1) being open, 2) being receptive, 3) being of service, or 4) leaving everyone well/at peace.
In the fullness of intention, we become responsible for our speaking and listening; our past and present; and the possibility that shapes our thoughts, feelings, and responses.
After any meeting, I can reflect on that experience and consider my dignity (or self-worth) based on how I fulfilled my?intention. I can witness this regardless of any external goal, accomplishment, or expectation.
Expectations, which are often concealed from us, can undermine our intentions.?Akin to a projection, assumption, or anticipation, they assume conditions that guide and cloud us until we learn to discern them.
We often live in society’s expectations, norms, or “ideals” about how things are or should be. When we become attached to these things, unexpressed expectations can be sources of upset.
Expectations project an external focus?— what?I?project. When attending a meeting, I might expect that 1) the others will waste my time, 2) the others will/will not participate or be prepared, and 3) it will go smoothly or be challenging.
After a meeting, we judge ourselves. Did we meet our expectations? Or did we undermine our intentions through unseen expectations?
Inquiry
3. MOTIVATION:?Investigate What Moves You
We investigate motivation as the?reason, desire, rationale, and logic behind?WHY?you are doing something. Unlike intentions, our motivation is unconscious to us and often only discovered upon reflection.
Motivation is a process that arouses, sustains, and regulates human and animal behavior. It is what turns us on. We are often unaware of it until we reflect on it. Our motivation might be fame, money, excitement, sex, recognition, success, loyalty, service, belonging, safety, protection, justice, or something else entirely.
In Western psychology, we note extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.
Investigating Motivations
In Buddhist psychology, motivation is a matter of desire — specifically,?the desire to act?accompanied by a sense of?purpose. The?Dalai Lama?once suggested a simple way of checking our motivations by posing the following questions:
Examining our motivations can be complex and begins with reflection.
Again from Buddhist psychology, we can discern motivation through a framework of?eight worldly concerns? in four pairs?— happiness and suffering, fame or insignificance, praise and blame, and finally, gain and loss —?that we seek or avoid.
A version of these?worldly concerns,? when concealed or obfuscated, often motivates our actions while undermining our best intentions.
For instance, as I reflect on a moment in which I was upset or impatient, I might see that my intention was to?serve?or?learn. Upon reflection, I might also see a motivation — perhaps to?control?or be?significant.
Now, I examine this situation:
In this scenario, my motivation and intention are not aligned to serve each other. This can create stress or the feeling of being overwhelmed. Often, we manage such a feeling without realizing its true nature.
Cultivating Motivations
Reflecting on and?surfacing our motivations? creates space for the possibility of cultivating our motivations.
Whether ambition, autonomy, comfort, connection, avoiding loss, fame, FOMO, quality, or success, every motivation drives your intentions and actions.
My motivations for writing this blog involve?developing ideas?and?quality. These can align with my intention?to awaken learning. However, shadow motivations, such as?fame,?success, or?perfection, could undermine my intentions, writing, or view.
Cultivating motivation takes patience, discipline, and practice (topic for another blog). This life-long process lives in self-discovery to help us reveal unconscious, shadow, or competing motivations.
Like intention, motivation can be aspirational. It drives and informs — and can align — our intentions, thoughts, attitudes, and views. For instance:
This envisioning process can help align and cultivate motivations.
Inquiry:
Walking on the Ground
In the face of volatile changes in technology, society, and culture, combined with an excess of information and even disinformation, we can find ourselves lost, isolated, and reactive.
One more text can tip the scale.
Developing contemplative practices, such as “pausing,” can help bring ourselves back. With this practice, we stop, connect with the ground (earth or object), and breathe deeply.
At that point,?becoming grounded is required. As Lama Rod said,?“If we do not accept something before trying to change it, the process becomes like trying to walk without your feet being on the ground.”
Employing our?short framework here ?supports?what’s so?to discern situations,?intentions to examine our thoughts, and?motivations to investigate what moves us.
Aligning these conditions will, over time, reduce stress, preserve energy, and align us with our potential.
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Tony Zampella ?is a consultant and practitioner at Bhavana Learning Group, a learning community serving coaches, educators, and entrepreneurs. His work integrates?ontological inquiries ,?Buddhist psychology , and?Integral meta-theory ?to develop learning cultures that cultivate conscious leadership.