On a recent episode entitled “Pure Imagination,” the judges challenged the contestants to recreate the magic of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. And create they did, as they gave free rein to their imaginations. Soon a wonderful world of edible wallpaper and chocolate waterfalls appeared, amidst a supporting cast of cream-filled mushrooms, gigantic lollipops and chocolate-covered “carrots” buried in Oreo dirt. In the space of an hour, I found myself transported back to that sweet enchanted fantasyland that had captivated me as a child.

I was primed for another such magical instance when my eleven-year-old son told me about a school experiment keeping him busy these days. They had been charged with talking for three minutes a day to plants to see if they thrive differently. I was ecstatic, seizing the beautiful moment to elaborate on the universal lessons so apparent to me, i.e., that what you pay attention to grows; neglect kills the spirit, etc.

“Mom,” he interrupted, somewhat aghast. “Didn’t they teach you that it’s because of the CO2 you’re breathing onto them, that’s why they grow?”

Ouch! I was quickly brought back to reality by my preteen!

Sometimes magic and science collide, just like that. Amidst the to-do lists and scheduling demands of day-to-day living, reality threatens to suck the air out of possibility, drain us of our creativity, and tie us down to the realm of the mundane. Is it possible to transcend science, reason, efficiency . . . and needing an explanation for everything? I believe it is, if we choose to be intentional about finding and living in those magical moments.

We can also, of course, spread the magic around.

Try This: Set aside half an hour to write out five cards to far-away friends or relatives. These don’t need to be long essays—just long enough to let them know “I’m thinking of you.” Not only will you experience your own magical moment as you reconnect with what’s important to you, you will also be sending the potential of such moments out into the world.

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If you’re in need of time and space to recreate some magic moments and recapture the shining and transcendent in your life, consider joining me at the debut of “Whooshing! Up,” an event oriented to spirit, meaning, and identity, meant to reconnect us to the sacred and meaningful moments in our everyday lives.
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note: a version of this piece will appear in November at the blog:  Wise Women

You may be asking, “What is Whooshing! Up?”  Whooshing! Up are marvelous, meaningful moments that tie us directly to others, to our communities, to ourselves, to our work, to our families, to our faiths and beliefs, and to the clarity of living.

Whooshing! Up—our new public workshop—came about after a number of clients and colleagues asked us for something focusing on spirit, meaning, and identity.  “I’m doing so much. Time’s flying by…a day of grounding and recentering would be helpful.”

So, we partnered with our colleague and friend, Pastor Terry Timm, to create our new offering: Whooshing! Up: Recognize and Embrace the Shining and Wonderful in Our Whirlwind World.

We debut, in Pittsburgh, on Nov. 12th.

We are very interested in your take on this event/offering.   Thoughts, comments, suggestions, insights, responses most welcomed. Looking forward to seeing you.

Best regards…

Also:  Two open, public forums to hear Naridus’ Leanne Meyer in Colorado:

1. Wednesday, October 26, Leadership Summit, Montrose, Colorado.
   Keynote address: “Leadership in a Changing World—Starting from the Self.”
   Information/registration: +1 970-249-3900, e-mail, Melanie Hall.
2. Thursday, October 27, Western Colorado Women’s Leadership Event, Grand Junction, Colorado. Keynote address: “Strong Leaders, Strong Stories.”
   Information/registration: +1 970-241-1139, e-mail, Suzanne Keith.

And here in this reflective space, far enough along I-79 North that the passing scene had turned spring-green pastoral; I received a call from my mother.

She had an agenda to push. There she was—in her pose of Granny, the great defender of her grandchildren—sensing a gap and my vulnerability, seized to illuminate what she found to be a few inconsistencies between my  “talk and my walk” my beliefs and my actions.

She just had a quick question or four to ask—

• One: “Had I not, for years, criticized the supposed eternal, unrelenting pressure she had placed on me to indiscriminately perform in all spheres of my life?”
• Two: “Did I not claim to be burned out by 17?”
• Three: “Was I not the person, who said it was inappropriate for a mother to consistently repeat the mantra we are going to build the best sand castle on the beach while on vacation?”
• And Four, the kicker:  ”Had I not made great testament, on more occasions than anyone could count, to the fact that I would not make the same mistakes with my own kids?”

My answers were, “Yes. Yes. Yes. And, Yes.” Not entirely sure where this interrogation was heading, but I knew I was clenching my jaw and strangling the sacred out of the steering wheel.

With perfect, punchline timing she asked,

“Then why, darling, do I keep receiving photos of the boys in different poses of achievement?” (Her Mother’s Day installment had clearly arrived).

She had them up on her screen: There was my youngest all toothy grin with his piano guild medal. There he was, again, with a math competition certificate. There was the eldest, in all leggy awkwardness, almost grown up, grimacing and serious with a tennis trophy.

She went on gleefully, relentlessly. “Have you lost the plot? Are you pushing too hard?”

My first response? ­ Blame the husband!

“Well, Ma, as you know and something you without fail bring to my attention—I am the worst communicator in the entire world.” So, of course, those pictures were not from me but Chris.”

Then, I had to quickly score an additional barbed point. “Besides, your son-in-law understands that you find the achievement pictures of more interest and value than photos documenting the boys’ attempts at, say, mixing baking soda and vinegar in glass bottles.

Not my finest hour. I understand that.

Sigh….

Truth be told, my response was not only immature it may have been a bit deceitful.

For, you see, I failed to share with her the note that I received on Mother’s Day scribed by my youngest-of-bloods: “You are the most kind, enthusiastic Asian mother I know. ”

Let’s be very clear. This was not a reference to my ethnicity but rather, to the provocative book, The Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother.  A book about driven, obsessive mothering!

“Mom, I must go. I’m here. I’ll call you later.”

Had I become my mother?

That awful question pinched my ear.

I park my car, forget to put on lipstick and fumble with my business cards, and head straight into a small group discussion to take up my place at this serious conference.

Becca Chapman starts off the conversation with “you are what you celebrate.” I participate in the discussion, but the real dialogue is in my head to myself:

Is this what we have inadvertently become as a family? Do we celebrate achievement for achievement’s sake? Do we celebrate what we do and not who we are? Have my children come to understand themselves and feel valued through a list of neat achievements? Success as defined by what? Our neighborhood? Their schools? The cultural milieu?

If so, this is not walking the talk. My work is antithesis to this!  I work alongside others, helping them gain clarity and articulate who they are and where they come from and what they imagine and aspire to for their futures. This is the beginning point for all leadership development, for all organizational development, for all plans to help individuals live and work and lead in an engaged fashion. And this is difficult work. Many of us have come to understand ourselves and be valued only for what we do or bring. It is a struggle to know who we are outside of this.

Coffee break and polite chitchat interrupt internal dialogue.

Then we move into my first experience of a Lectio Divina, led by Terry Timm. We are instructed to read, then listen deeply and allow ourselves to be claimed by words or phrases from select biblical texts. We are given time for sense-making. The purpose, to discover in our daily life an underlying spiritual rhythm.

I’m not sure if I should be grateful to Terry and his earnest prayer for illumination, or thankful for the opportunity of immersion in some quiet space. But in the throws of Lectio Divina, my internal mothering conversation starts taking shape, informed by the guiding parameters of the texts we reflect on.

I learn that the Hebrew verb avad means “to work.” But it also means “to serve” and to “worship.” So the same word is used to convey getting the job done as well as what it means to assist others or to praise one’s maker. There seems no separation between the sacred and the secular in the Hebrew idea of what we do in life.

So the same spirit of character that guides how my child helps another or shows reverence to his God should, in my mind, inform how he takes up his “work”—tennis or piano or for that matter a spelling test.

And how he aligns and uses his gifts and capabilities will reveal the holy, the sacred.  That how he chooses to take up “work” is an expression of how he serves and worships.

What’s my hope and intention? That the boys learn to work and serve and worship with joy and fulfillment.  A type of passionate production, if you will.

For me, this is about how in our everyday life, in all that we do, we live as another provided text directs: “With all your heart and all your soul.”

In my mind this is not about pushing someone; it’s not about pressure nor performance. It’s about “working” passionately to fully express and live out something deep within us in all that we do. This is energizing, not exhausting. It is expansive. This is not about laboring. This is not about what we do but about who we consistently are across the facets of our life. It’s about living out and stretching, right up to the edges of who we are. The more we live into this the more successful, I believe, we shall be.

So yes, at times there may be trophies and accolades.

They are byproducts of engaged doing. But as purpose, as end, misses the point.

Work and service and worship are not about standards or expectations or rewards that stand outside of who we are. To me my mother-work is about helping my kids as each of them reveals, discloses and lives their possibilities. When they do this they honor (and not blow off or take for granted) the bounty that they have been given. There work is to take their powers and stretch and grow into the brightness of who they are.

High on this understanding inspired by my new Hebraic wisdom, I call my mom back as I drive home. I share with her this wonderful new insight that I, in fact, have not lost my way down the obsessive path, and that I am no “tiger mother,” but really should have been born a Jewish mother.

Her response, “Oh great, now you have something else to blame me for!”

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Note: a version of this article recently appeared on the blog Wise Women

We are excited to announce that Bonnie Wenk has joined Naridus as Director, Global Business Development. That’s Bonnie’s official title, but really she’s our relationship czarina.

You will quickly find Bonnie to be a sincere, insightful, talented, and committed colleague and partner. She brings to all of us the benefit of 25 successful years of HRD consulting and business experience. We anticipate that with her energy and insights Naridus will reach new levels of service and delivery for clients.

That said what really sold us on Bonnie—and why we welcome her with open arms—is her clear focus on the success of others.

Please join us in welcoming Bonnie to the team!

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I am a South African living in the Northern Hemisphere; it’s mid-April and I cannot remember the last time I felt the sun on my neck or the need to wear sunglasses. Right now, I don’t want to write or think or work in earnest. I don’t want anything to do with anything of BIG consequence or import to many. It is supposed to be spring. I’m thinking of home.

I long to pick out my favorite petit fours—all pretty in their pale-pink and green-and-lavender glace’d uniforms, secret-creamy plump, primping in their frilly paper wrappers, all neat and aligned, row after marching row, in shiny cases at Anglo Swiss Bakery. My hometown bakery, where wrap-around cloth awnings work to shade displayed cakes from the baking afternoon sun. Where the chrome-on-glass door is cool to the touch and heavy as the bell tinkles and the marble comes to meet your feet.

And on a whim I Google, get a number, and phone: “Hello.” “Anglo Swiss Bakery?”  He hears a little bit of the international phone line static; he is gentle with me when he says, “they closed 15 years ago.”

“Who are you,” he asks? “What’s your name?” “Yes, that’s right; I remember your parents.” It’s Tim Mason. He owned the men’s clothing store down the road. Tim has now moved the store into the old bakery space.

He tells me I wouldn’t recognize Benoni anymore; “Nothing is the same.” But then indulges me. “What do you feel like from your Anglo Swiss Baker, today?”

“I want the smell of baked sugar. I want the perspective of a seven-year-old looking at bright magic. I want to take a box of petit fours home fastened tight with white string.” He wants “a custard slice.” We both laugh and pause.

Thank you, Mr. Mason, for a magic, spring moment when everything felt warm and that knowing it was all going to be ok.

Now to work.

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Anybody else had a special moment today? An experience when it felt that things opened up for a bit? When following feelings and inclinations allowed the magic to appear? When things were suddenly more meaningful, more sacred?

We note Ms. Ruddick as a reconfigurer. She offered a context through which mothers could see, understand, and take themselves up differently and more honestly. She championed a way to alter the style of mothering. Ms. Ruddick shifted the focus away from motherhood as a social institution or a biological imperative to a responsive experience based on the attentive, day-to-day practices of educating and rearing a child.

Ms. Ruddick, from our perspective, understood motherhood as a relational activity. That is: shared, meaningful, and fluid practices that integrally shape the identities of both the child and mother. She promoted a being-with that required attention, an understanding of beliefs and values, and the realization that consistent, grounded practices, and genuine responses to a child’s demands created pathways for the choice-driven, love-founded development of child and mother.

Ms. Ruddick, a longtime professor of philosophy and women’s studies at the New School for Social Research, provided a means to reframe motherhood from a socially configured role, complete with sets of abstract quality requirements that teased one to chase perfection, to a person-to-person, moment-to-moment lived experience founded on articulated passions, driven by meaning making, and manifest in and through concrete actions and doings.

Her insights support a position of nonviolence: mothers by and through their nurturing practices and activities cannot accept or admit violence in social or workplace settings. Thus, mothers, by and through lived experience and passionate practices, must naturally resist militarism and war.

Further, in her re-articulation of motherhood and its relational, existential definition, Ms. Ruddick made a place for men as “mothers.” Since, motherhood is founded on the relationship and the practices that lead to growth and nurturing, motherhood is, from her perspective, sex-neutral. And with this comes a reframing of traditional male roles and the nature of masculinity and the paternalism.

Thank you Sara Ruddick; we are grateful for your trailblazing.

For more:
See William Grimes’ New York Times obituary of Ms. Ruddick.
A review of  ”Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace.”
Or investigate our Naridus 5-Minutes Helper Book™ , a tool on the power of relationships and passions.

We explore the quest to be “perfect” and the stifling effect it has on individual identity, passion-driven living, and meaningful relationships during our From Perfection to Passion process. The desire to be “the perfect mother,” without fail, is one of the most difficult to address. So it is of no surprise that Almond reports and confirms what we witness in our workshops and coaching: the “expectations for good mothering have become so hard to live with, the standards so draconian, that maternal ambivalence has increased and at the same time become more unacceptable to society.”

We see maternal ambivalence as one among a host of other ambivalences and confusions that women face. For decades women have been told they can and should “have it all”—family, career, social life, spiritual grounding. It’s the myth of super mom or super woman. Chasing perfect—not only perfect mom, but perfect boss, spouse, caregiver, neighbor, church member, etc.—often leads to anxiety, guilt, exhaustion, and sometimes depression, but always to a distancing and disconnection from the passions that claim a women and the relationships and activities through which those passions find expression and meaning.

Almond believes that it is critical for a mother to recognize the mixed emotions of loving-and-hating she feels for her child as affirmation that she is in real a relationship with the child. Likewise, we suggest that the ambivalences and confusions that women confront are clear signals to attend to the heartfelt, to reconnect with and attest to the identity-giving meaning and value of the relationships and practices of her life.

Chasing perfect denies us the mixed-emotion drama of living and being with others we love and care for. Ambivalence and confusions are beacons guiding us away from the disaster of perfect to the safe harbors of rich relationships, fulfilling practices, and engaged living.

The Institute provides an innovative approach to change and gender initiatives by offering workshops and classes to decision-makers and practitioners that promote both hands-on and structural change.

We were asked to bring thought leadership to the decision-making side of the curriculum. We reframed the gender question from a women’s issue to a business imperative—Gender is a Strategic Business Concern, Not a Women’s Issue. In making a strong business case for women, managing partners came to understand how unquestioned assumptions about women, leadership, and workplace best-practices affect decision making, the ability to attract, develop, and retain high-quality female talent, and ultimately the growth and sustainability of their firms in a quickly changing and highly dynamic marketplace.

Congratulations to the Allegheny County Bar Association for it top-priority efforts.

We suspect she is on to something and thought that by sharing her tale, you might recognize the situations and relate to her insights.

Read on to see if your career or job resides within Grim Fairy Tales….

The Too Common Tale of Senior-level Cinderella:
Do all the chores, never get invited to the ball!

Are you a Senior-level Cinderella?

You are super talented at getting things done. It does not matter whether you are given the resources or enough work-time to complete these objectives, you get the job done.

You are driven by the belief that as you continue to reap success from the most barren of situations, you will prove—beyond doubt—that you are willing and amazingly capable.

Can you identify with the following Senior-level Cinderella situations?

Talented Trouble Shooter: Given mice and pumpkin to get a tall task done. Cinderella has an excellent track record. She has delivered on all the objectives—be it business development, budgets, or team development. As a reward, she is moved into another trouble-spot in the organization so she can work her magic and clean things up. Take away: No promotion, no raise, not even additional resources…a lot of praise, yes (its free!). Cinderella consistently falls for this because she is a team player and she sees opportunity. She tells herself, “Surely if I get this done I will be invited to the ball.”

Not the Right Fit: Prince Harming gave you the wrong shoes…then gives you the “not right fit” or “not ready” or “you are not that person” speech.

Once again you have exceeded expectations, gone above and beyond what was outlined in the task (in fact you may have crossed the limited imagination of Prince Harming as he set your obstacle course), and have done so with few resources and little support. It is review time and you expect a handsome reward. Instead, Prince Harming gives you another pair or wrong-sized shoes (bad raise, no promotion, another leper assignment) coupled with one of the following talks:

“Cinderella, in order to get the job promotion/plum assignment you have expressed interest in you needed to have managed more than pumpkin and mice. In ‘that’ job you will have to manage horses and charioteer…you do not yet have that experience.”

“You were really amazing; the President/CEO of the company has taken notice and personally mentioned to me that your work was great. Due to your extraordinary ability, we want to give you this next (leper) assignment…and since you worked so well with mice and pumpkin in your last assignment, we will let you continue with those resources.”

“Congratulations, you did very well. I fought for a higher raise than my budget allowed because you got the job done, in spite of it being challenging. As far as the promotion, it is just not possible at this time. You do not have the right background. You see, Prince Flashy Smile has an MBA from Harvard and we have not given him the title yet. Ah yes…you are right. He did not have to do what you did, but had he been given the assignment, he would have done it well, too. After all, he ‘did’ go to Harvard….”

Are you in a Grim Fairy Tale? If so, please share your stories/experiences….

And…should you be a Fairy Godmother, we all would love some help with these questions:

• Where can Cinderella change her strategies/approach to work?
• What professional conclusions can Cinderella draw from her situation?
• Does she stay or leave?

In her new book, “The Twisted Sisterhood,” Kelly Valen reveals that 88 percent of the women she surveyed felt “currents of meanness and negativity emanating from other females.”

We often encounter a flavor of mean girl behavior when we see women not supporting, mentoring, or collaborating with other women in the workplace. By not supporting one another, women perpetuate old patterns and limit opportunities for growth and positive change for all.

We are curious about your experiences and welcome your thoughts: Have you suffered from “mean girl” behavior? What flavor? Are we really mean?