Dalai Lama Foundation Study Circle Montreal

We deceive ourselves when we fancy that only weakness needs support. Strength needs it far more. — Anne Sophie Swetchine

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Good News of the Day:
“As an executive coach interested in exploring what drives people to successes and failures, I have worked with hundreds of ambitious people including business executives, sports legends and Nobel laureates. One key discovery I made repeatedly over the last fifteen years is that there is a common driver to the successes and failures of the people I studied. I call this driver, the ‘Signature Strength’ and its downside, the ‘Core Incompetence’. A signature strength forms in a person when a certain competence matures in a person due to his nature and/or nurture. I found that the initial successes produced by the signature strength make people mistake a particular manifestation of the strength for the strength itself. They then convert that manifestation as a success formula and apply it to all of their goals. When this behavior continues indiscriminately, it becomes a Core Incompetence.”
http://premiere.whatcounts.com/t?ctl=1697698:A2F402742563B09AB03A245C8AF7244BB4B847859706E37D&

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Be The Change:
Reflect on where your own strengths might subtly be becoming weaknesses.

**Share A Reflection**
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The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds. — Theo Jansen

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Good News of the Day:
Beautiful art can inspire a person to see life in a totally new way. Theo Jansen is the Dutch creator of what he calls “Kinetic Sculptures,” where nature and technology meet. Essentially these sculptures are robots powered only by the wind. Amazingly, these machines are made completely of recycled items. The ‘stomach’ of the sculpture is made with retired plastic bottles that capture the air pumped by the wind. To harness the wind, Jansen employs bicycle pumps, plastic tubing and rubber rings! Witness beauty through ingenuity in this short video.
http://premiere.whatcounts.com/t?ctl=1697630:A2F402742563B09AA1E5F4B48FE1880AB4B847859706E37D&

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Be The Change:
Watch Theo’s TEDTalk on the development of his art.
http://premiere.whatcounts.com/t?ctl=1697631:A2F402742563B09AA1E5F4B48FE1880AB4B847859706E37D&

**Share A Reflection**
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The only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself. — Washington Allston

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Tip of the Day:
Competition, according to author and lecturer Alfie Kohn, is defined as any situation where one person can succeed only when others fail. Kohn is convinced that we’ve all bought into dangerous myths about the value of competition in our personal lives, workplaces, society, and economic system. He laid out his arguments in his 1986 book No Contest: The Case Against Competition, and he’s been spreading the word ever since. He insists that competition is not human nature; it’s something we learn. “The message that competition is appropriate, desirable, required, and even unavoidable is drummed into us from nursery school” he writes. And according to Kohn, competition undermines self-esteem, destroys relationships, thwarts productivity, and discourages excellence. Here are six tips gleaned from his writings and talks, backed by hundreds of studies.
http://premiere.whatcounts.com/t?ctl=169731F:A2F402742563B09A63E0D676AC93F55EB4B847859706E37D&

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Be The Change:
“Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be first in love. I want you to be first in moral excellence. I want you to be first in generosity.” Martin Luther King Jr.’s perspective on healthy competition.
http://premiere.whatcounts.com/t?ctl=1697320:A2F402742563B09A63E0D676AC93F55EB4B847859706E37D&

**Share A Reflection**
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Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible. — Dalai Lama

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Good News of the Day:
“Through some incredible good luck no one was seriously hurt but the experience was very frightening. There was so much smoke that my first thought was to just get out of my car as fast as I could. I could hear the children from the car behind me screaming and crying as I was trying to claw my way out of my car. When I got out, I could see their mum was frantically trying to comfort her shaking crying children and move them away from the smoking cars at the same time. I kept thinking ‘Oh my God, these children are so young,’ and I felt so bad about colliding with them. I thought that the parents would probably be so angry and upset at me. But instead of being angry the mum simply said to me ‘Come here. You need to join in our hug.'” So begins a real world story of true kindness.
http://premiere.whatcounts.com/t?ctl=1697165:A2F402742563B09A8808E364CC787930B4B847859706E37D&

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Be The Change:
The next time someone makes a mistake, try surprising them with forgiveness and kindness.

**Share A Reflection**
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Abundance doesn’t follow giving until giving becomes its own reward. — Jan Denise

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Good News of the Day:
Every week they provide food for as many as 1,500 households in Marin County (CA). They don’t charge for the food. Nor do they get paid themselves. Who are these people and why do they do this? They are two community elders, Ruth Schwartz and her husband Curt Kinkead, supported by a team of about 100 volunteers. They do it because Curt “gets fed by the joy he sees in the people who come to collect the food he delivers.” Ruth adds, “If we [Ruth and Curt] do something together where we face out into the world and make a contribution, that is a key piece of having our relationship thrive.” Respecting Our Elders started in 2005 when Curt and Ruth, residents of a subsidized housing development, noticed that some of their neighbors weren’t getting enough to eat.
http://premiere.whatcounts.com/t?ctl=1696EC1:A2F402742563B09AADA7EA61BC7D8AD8B4B847859706E37D&

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Be The Change:
Write Ruth and Curt a note of gratitude and support.
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**Share A Reflection**
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The integrity of beauty is that inner straining towards goodness and completion. — John O’Donohue

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Good News of the Day:
“Why does beauty exist? What’s the point of marveling at a Rembrandt self portrait or a Bach fugue? To paraphrase Auden, beauty makes nothing happen. Unlike our more primal indulgences, the pleasure of perceiving beauty doesn’t ensure that we consume calories or procreate. Rather, the only thing beauty guarantees is that we’ll stare for too long at some lovely looking thing. Museums are not exactly adaptive. Here’s my (extremely speculative) theory: Beauty is a particularly potent and intense form of curiosity. […] Put another way, beauty is a motivational force that helps modulate conscious awareness. The problem beauty solves is the problem of trying to figure out which sensations are worth making sense of and which ones can be easily ignored.” This Wired Magazine article offers an insightful look into the neuroscience of beauty.
http://premiere.whatcounts.com/t?ctl=1696D73:A2F402742563B09A1A9E86090071DDE2B4B847859706E37D&

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Be The Change:
“There is a wonderful urgency within things to realize the dream of their individual fulfillment. Nothing is neutral, everything is on its way.” John O’Donohue shares beautifully in this short passage.
http://premiere.whatcounts.com/t?ctl=1696D74:A2F402742563B09A1A9E86090071DDE2B4B847859706E37D&

**Share A Reflection**
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Do not suppress it – that would hurt you inside. Do not express it – this would not only hurt you inside, it would cause ripples in your surroundings. What you do is transform it. — Peace Pilgrim

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Good News of the Day:
“The word emotion comes from the Latin emovere, meaning to ‘move through or out.’ So in its original form, there isn’t any trace of clinging to, or rejecting, these movements. But instead of allowing emotions to move through and out of us, we often feed them with negative thoughts and end up giving them long-term residence. In short order, the guests take over the house, leaving us reeling and unable to truly be in control. So how do we turn this unhelpful pattern around? The key to any pattern is repetition. But in the case of such reactivity, this repetition is actually happening below the radar of our conscious mind. By the time a situation escalates to the point of emotion, we often find ourselves overpowered. The challenge, then, comes in sharpening our awareness so that we become sensitive to smaller versions of these same emotions.”
http://premiere.whatcounts.com/t?ctl=1696A96:A2F402742563B09A7D12E67B826C1755B4B847859706E37D&

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Be The Change:
Try allowing emotions to move through or out of you today.

**Share A Reflection**
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