Listening to Donna Shalala today in New York at a Robert Wood Johnson fellowship conference who gave a brilliant address to a room full of national health care innovators. In one of her remarks responding to a question, she reflected on her amazing political and academic careeer of leadership, saying: “I love transitions. It forces me to pay attention.” Simple beauty of truth.

Interesting conversation yesterday in Manhattan with one of the leading biomed researchers globally, the kind of person who mentors young Nobel prize winners, asking him about the role of metaphor in the design of experiments.

It was an easy query to field for him, saying that it’s the new metaphors used to shape experimental design, often migrated from other disciplines and therefore out of the box, that sparks the breakthroughs in basic and translation sciences that are now breathtaking, and not many years from market.

Listening this morning to a lecture on biomedical research at Roosevelt University where cross-discplinary, and very complex collaborations are driving amazing work in infectious disease. The key is making sure there are people cross-trained and cross-languaged who can “bridge” the groups together.

Should we talk about failure if we can talk about success, should we talk about weakness when we can talk about strength, should we talk about grievances when we can talk about dreams?

Today I am grateful for people with large hearts who dare to make a difference in their world. Their passion is the passion of big self that fortunately see beyond the timid hopes and wishes of small self.

It’s more a matter of intention than ultimate impact. A solitary monk sitting with an intention to liberate all sentient beings acts with far more courage and vision than someone who feverishly fights to just get through the week. Both have their place in the universe; one sees the universe in its infinite potentiality. That’s the domain of big self.

Give yourself permission to stop altogether listening to small self.

There is no need to hide our beauty,
no need to dim our voice,
or disguise our hearts.

We will always be received
by those with the capacity to
drink in the truth of who we are.

Even though every second, our brain processes about 400 billion bits of information about ourselves and our world, we’re only conscious of about 2000 of these bits produced by our brain. This tiny fraction of “reality” that we’re aware of is shaped by habit, and so the importance of the habit of lens we develop. What we call “reality” is always this very tiny slice of all that is.

And so the vital importance of which 2000 bits we use to come to the conclusions and actions that we do. The good news is that if we want a different view, we have 399.99999 or so billion bits of other data to draw from.

A coaching client is a firm believer in the power of meditation in helping him as CEO act with amazing clarity, creativity, and confidence. Without knowing how it works, he has ample experience that it does work.

In our conversation this week, he easily agrees with the Buddhist metaphor of pond clearing. Imagine a large pond filled with koi, symbolizing ideas, solutions, and opportunities swimming in abundance. Our natural deficiency mind keeps stirring up the pond in search of answers to the problems we obsess on. The stirring keeps the pond so muddied that it becomes literally impossible to see the koi who are in abundance and out of sight completely.

In meditation, we quiet our deficiency mind, opening an appreciative eye. When nothing is stirred up, the mud naturally settles, water clears and all possibilities become visible in abundance.

Now that it’s spring, I swear I hear small peeps and murmurs emerging from the trunk of my car. I’ve decided it’s either struts on the loose or my golf clubs pleading to be liberated from winter hibernation and set free on greens and fairways.

Or it’s my inner golfer ready for another season of playing with beginner’s mind (but hopefully not beginner’s swing). Once again, I will enter a season listening to other golfers drool and swoon over the next generation of high-tech clubs, balls, and shoes. As if golf were the domain of the tools rather than the mind of the craftsperson.

I remind all of us again. Go to any country club in the world where plush locker rooms sport that course’s 1940’s visiting pro score cards. Notice the same top scores you’d seen today and then visit the show cases of their clubs and balls that were crudely wooden beyond anything you can get at a garage sale today. Then repeat three times: It’s not the clubs, it’s not the balls, it’s not the shoes. It’s the quality of my attention.

It’s interesting for me to daily observe the inner workings of people at executive levels in profit, non-profit, and public sector organizations. There are many people who are very capable leaders. And there are those who are experts or sycophants but certainly not equipped for leadership. This is not criticism of them, more a statement about how organizations allow the placement of the unprepared. The worst cases are elected officials who take positions for which no entry criteria existed as framework for public voting.

The defining factor for the unprepared is their passion for learning. Those who have it, make it. The implication is that assessing for learning passion is as critical as assessment for technical and people skills. Everyone who takes on leadership roles learn their way into these roles.