In this issue:
Don’t Think Of An Elephant
Zen of Coaching: Course for Executive Coaches
A Poem. If You Knew, by Ellen Bass
Half Day Meditation Retreat, October 12th
Coaching In Complexity, Paradox, and Insight: A Free Webinar, October 10th
How many times each day do you think about Donald Trump, or in the past week Charley Kirk? (On this topic, I’m guilty as charged!)
I’ve been reflecting on George Lakoff’s excellent book, Don’t Think Of An Elephant where he speaks about the importance of “frames” and of how we (and those that want to persuade us) use language, and how we think about and view ourselves and the world.
It’s nearly impossible to avoid the daily news cycle. Each day, headlines scroll across our phones, televisions, and conversations. For many, the figure of Donald Trump—whether dreaded or simply exhausting—sits at the center of the storm. And if it isn’t him, it’s another story that pulls our attention, fills our bodies with tension, and makes it hard to focus on anything else.
But what if there are ways to step back, not by ignoring reality, but by finding some peace within the storm? We can’t control the daily barrage, but we can influence how much real estate it occupies in our minds. It all depends on the frames, perspective, or context. We do have a choice.
Two Practices: Compartmentalizing and Expanding Your World
1) Compartmentalizing: Building Mental Rooms
Imagine your mind as a house with many rooms. Some are cozy and nourishing: time with family, walks in nature, meaningful work. Others are noisy, crowded, and chaotic: breaking news alerts, social media feeds, endless debates about politics. If you allow the noisy rooms to dominate, your whole house feels unsettled.
Compartmentalizing doesn’t mean denial. It means creating healthy boundaries. When you choose to limit the space current events occupy, you make more room for peace and perspective.
Practical steps for compartmentalizing:
· Designate times for news. Instead of letting it flood in all day, choose one or two windows when you catch up. Then close the door.
· Focus on activities that are satisfying - listen to music, dance, watch a documentary, go for a walk.
· Create rituals of closure. After reading the news, do something grounding: stretch, drink tea, or step outside. Mark the end of “the news room” and re-enter the rest of your life.
2) Expand Your World: Making The Storm Look Small
When you expand your world, you gain perspective. You remember that Trump, or any political figure, is not the universe. They are a character in a much bigger play.
Expand your world by zooming out. The world, our minds and bodies are enormous, complex, and mysterious. Then, the loudest news story often shrinks. What feels enormous in the moment—this speech, that trial, the latest outrage—becomes just one speck in a much larger sky.
Ways to expand your world:
· Step into history. Read about another era. The noise of today echoes the noise of yesterday. Realizing this can soften the drama of the present.
· Engage the natural world. Spend time with mountains, oceans, or trees. Their timescale makes political storms seem brief.
· Broaden your inputs. Balance political reading with art, poetry, science, or stories of other cultures. Nourish your imagination.
· Do satisfying activities. Plant a garden, listen to a book, play or watch a sport. Taking action can expand your sense of meaning beyond the headlines.
· Explore deep questions like: Who were you before your mother or father were born?
Expanding your world doesn’t make current events disappear—it places them in context. The loudest voice grows quieter when it’s just one voice in a chorus.
Practice: Living In Many Worlds
Compartmentalizing and expanding are complementary. One closes the door on noise so it doesn’t spill everywhere. The other opens a window to a larger view, where the noise becomes one small part of a vast horizon.
Together, they create space for sanity.
When you practice compartmentalizing, you remind yourself: I am more than today’s news. When you practice expanding, you remind yourself: The world is more than today’s news.
And in both reminders, you reclaim your freedom.
Zen of Coaching: For Executive Coaches: Transforming Others, Becoming Your Best Self, Changing The World (Register now, by October 10 to save $100.)
An online course, beginning October 24th
Coaching is a way of helping others find the deepest places of their hearts.
Program Overview
Zen of Coaching is a transformational program for executive coaches and leaders who want to deepen their presence, expand their impact, and build a coaching practice rooted in wisdom, not just performance. Blending Zen principles, mindfulness, and real-world leadership experience, this course—created by Marc Lesser, the Zen teacher and CEO who helped bring mindful leadership to Google—supports you in cultivating stillness, navigating complexity, and coaching with greater authenticity, clarity, and purpose.
To register and for more information.
A Poem
If You Knew, by Ellen Bass
What if you knew you’d be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line’s crease.
When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn’t signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won’t say Thank you, I don’t remember
they’re going to die.
A friend told me she’d been with her aunt.
They’d just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt’s powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.
How close does the dragon’s spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?
Half Day Meditation Retreat, Sunday, October 12th
In person, in Mill Valley, and online.
In our world of busyness, of more/faster/better, this half-day retreat offers time to stop, reflect, and renew. We will explore the practices of effort and effortless as a path to well-being and “stepping into your life.” Together we’ll follow a gentle schedule of sitting and walking meditation, a talk, and some discussion. Anyone looking to begin or deepen a meditation and mindfulness practice is invited to attend.
Coaching In Complexity: Paradox and Insight: A FREE WEBINAR
Friday, October 10th, 12:00 - 1:00 p.m. PT
This free webinar is an opportunity to explore how to coach with more presence, curiosity, and trust — even when things feel complex or unresolved. We’ll explore how paradox can become a doorway to insight, and how to meet complexity not with fear, but with grounded awareness.
Register here.
Warmest regards,
Marc