Gradual Enlightment

"It is through understanding (wisdom) that he fully understood others' suffering and through compassion that he undertook to counteract it. It was through understanding that he himself crossed over and through compassion that he brought others across"

Ócariya Dhammapåla's description of Buddha’s wisdom and compassion

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My last blog mentioned the importance of social support in attaining goals. I am fortunate to have a tremendous resource in that department. Erin is phenomenal in helping me achieve my goals and is an essential in achieving the goals I’ve set for my life. She was wonderful enough to drive ahead during a solo 5 hour loop to Fort Collins a couple of weeks ago and give me the occasional company and “keep going, honey”. Above are a few pics of the countryside she took along the way.

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After avoiding my boss’ attempt to send me to a Leadership Seminar for a couple of years, I relented. My reluctance was not one of indifference towards expanding my education, but one of my uncertainty towards my ambitions as a leader in academic medicine. Furthermore, the participants of the course were company executives, not academicians.

However, the successful completion of the course (www.leadershiptrust.org) changed my life. The unanticipated improvement in my personal relationships was tremendous, certainly equal to the gains I made in the workplace. Retrospectively, this is not surprising, as most of the obstacles we face in leading others are directly related to understanding ourselves and how we interact with those around us. Following this week, I initiated the process of nurturing the traits that I have that inspire others and eliminating those that discourage the learning process. I certainly have a long way to go, but I acquired the necessary initiation to self awareness.

Personally, I learned that my inner feelings of insecurity were often masked in an outward display of arrogance and indignation. As obvious as it is to me today, I didn’t realize that everyone else couldn’t “see” what I felt inside. Instead, I assumed everyone realized my deficiencies and insecurity and that my arrogance was in defiance of my shortcomings. Of course few people know you at that level and the unintended projection often created a barrier in getting others to respect my vantage point or consider my opinions. This made life very difficult as my primary role is teaching patients, medical students, and residents!

Equally important was the discovery that I taught through negative re-enforcement and public humiliation cloaked in a Socratic approach. This teaching method was likely a culmination of modeling my own education and a personal motivation to avoid public exposure of my deficiencies and insecurities. Realization of the demoralizing effect of this approach really hit home when we were given the exercise of considering how we treat employees/students and then applying whether we would want this same approach used on our daughters/sons or other loved ones. Whoa…this struck a chord as I contemplated the anguish and embarrassment my youngest brother might feel to be taught and treated in this manner as he was struggling to learn new concepts and information. I finally realized the importance of compassionate teaching. I'm sure both of my brothers wish I would have picked up on this concept earlier in life.

This reality check was what I needed to change the way I teach and continues today as I scrutinize the method in which I pass on information. I think many of us in an advisory role forget that our primary mission is to help others develop an understanding of concepts or ideas that we have already mastered, in a fashion that inspires and motivates. I find I often fall back into a tendency to subject my own twisted path onto those to whom I’m trying to relay information. I aspire to continually develop my role as a servant leader to help my students through enlisting methods they require to understand and learn concepts.

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So, how does this pertain to triathlon…? I believe increasing one’s level of self awareness translates to better performance in racing and training.

When I look at many of those I’ve had the privilege of training with the past few years, there are two distinct groups. There are those who seem to achieve a significant proportion of their race goals at every event. Others, it seems, always have some mysterious event that derails their attempt. . How many times do you hear “I don’t know what happen today during the _____ (insert race, training session, etc), all of sudden I was ______ (insert trashed, sick, completely boinked).”

It takes courage to practice the humility to address weaknesses and insecurities. The old adage “what you don’t know can’t hurt you” does in, in fact, hurt you. Ignorance and the inability to recognize our weaknesses prevent us from fixing what is broken.

When racing, many of us are uncomfortable with the level of commitment to fitness, the priority that it takes in our lives, or our physiologic make up. Therefore, on race day we try to outperform what is realistic based upon the decisions we’ve made. When our bodies try to tell us otherwise, we ignore these signals of eminent demise. We drive ourselves to failure and prevent our best race day outcomes. Of course, those around us see it clearly and so would we if we were observing someone else. Developing self awareness allows us to avoid self destruction. It isn’t easy…we have to be humble enough to accept the perceptions of those around us to visualize the truth. As I’ve been able to incorporate others visualizations of my performance into signals that that I recognize, my ability to perform has slowly improved.

Many of us lack self awareness in many aspects of our lives. I see this in myself more clearly with time. Hopefully, the road to enlightment will be gentle as I continue to proceed down its path. Resistance only makes the road more bumpy.