Courage Labs Blog

Coaching the world with software and wetware tools.

[couragelabs-blog]

6 Reasons we love coaching (And You Should Too!)

With stats like '74% of coachees make significant progress towards their goals,' what is going on behind the scenes that makes this work?  Let’s take a look.

Time focusing on your goals Most of us are vague about our goals.  We know in the back of our minds that we want better work-life balance AND we want more money.  Those goals don’t have to conflict, but many times they do.  When we’re faced with 1,000’s of little decisions day in and day out, we go the route of least resistance.  That’s the path we’ve traveled before.  It’s our default.

In coaching we take a step back and we define goals.  If you want work-life balance AND money, not a problem.   We ask how are you going to balance these goals.  Can you find ways of integrating time with family that also helps make money?  You can be intentional about what goals you want to work on and pick goals that are going to make the biggest difference.

...And paying attention to your progress on your goals We all make vague and nebulous goals.  You’re probably making more money than you were a few years ago.  But do you know how much?  Did you reach or pass your target income a long time ago, but kept the goal of making more money by default?  It’s both easy to make too much and too little progress on goals when we’re not paying attention.  You get what you measure.  

If you keep track of your progress in a meaningful way, interesting things happen.  You realize that your focused attention is actually getting you to where you want to go faster.  Or you realize that the current tactics you’re trying aren’t working.  Either way, it’s useful info.  You would have realized these same things in time, but you wouldn’t have realized them as fast.

Someone to help hold you accountable This is one of my favorites.  Who’s the person that’s holding your feet to the flames in coaching?  Well, most of the time it’s you.  Yet, spoken commitments are far more powerful, and when spoken to someone else, they’re even more powerful.  This is strengthened by the fact that you defined your goals AND the actions.  The only thing that can hold you back is your limited time.  I’m always amazed how much people will get done in the 1-2 days before a coaching session.  They know they want to make progress towards their goals.  A deadline of a meeting is just the inspiration that helps push something from ‘Yeah, I want to do that at some point’ to ‘OK, I’ll do that right now.’

...And someone to pick you up when you fall down It’s just as easy for us to start beating ourselves up as soon as we don’t do what we said we would do.  Sometimes it’s that we don’t give ourselves enough credit.  For instance someone said ‘I didn’t do anything towards my goal of brainstorming a list.  I feel horrible.  I’m going nowhere on this.’  OK.  Where are you now?  Well, I thought about the list, and I came up with these 20 ideas.  Then I talked to several people and they gave me lots of ideas.  So did you actually do nothing?  ‘No, I guess I got about 80% of the work done.’  

Even if you didn’t do it, beating yourself up will likely make you less interested in continuing on.  You need to leave the past in the past.  Pick up insights and learnings, and apply those going forward.  Leave the negative emotions behind as much as possible.  Coaches are trained to help you make forward progress not dwell in the past.

A time for self-reflection We all need some dedicated time to take and process learnings from our week, our month, or even our life.  Coaching gives you the time where you can self-reflect and start processing those lessons.  You can also take those lessons and figure out how you’re going to apply those insights in other areas.  This transfer of learning is wildly powerful.

...And someone to point out your blind spots Some patterns you have you need a little nudge to be able to see.  Are you over committing to more action items than can be done in a week over and over again?  Are you always having conflict with new bosses or new coworkers?  

We need something to change the frame for us to be able to recognize our blind spots.  We also need to trust the source.  You’ve likely heard about blind spots you have from other people.  But if it came from a source you didn’t trust, you likely didn't act on it.  With a coach, their only goal is for your success, so you don’t have to worry about what their ulterior plan is.

Pulling it together You’re thinking about getting a coach because you want to improve your skills, focus on your development, or learn something new.  You can get there by finding insights, finding your motivation, and moving past your stumbling blocks.  Is a coach right for you?  You’re the only one that knows for sure.  If you’re looking to explore more, you can always reach out to me for an initial free session and explore it more here.

[couragelabs-blog]

Are You Making These 4 Mistakes Hiring a Coach

We have other articles talking about Why Coaching is Good.  We are going to focus on the flip side of that same question.

I won’t cover the benefits of coaching.  You can see that here.  

A lot of people write about this, but they then go into why their specific coach failed.  Most of the time these articles talk about something that feels like bad coaching to me.  The coach missed something, or the person should have been getting a therapist.  We’re not going to talk about that either.

We'll talk about the most general case where coaching could be used, but they're not the best solution.  

Failure #1 - Avoiding hard conversations The most common problem is using coaches as a substitute for difficult conversations, often around performance.  Some people think if the coach handles it, then I don’t have to.  Coaching is NOT a substitute for having difficult conversations.  Actually it should be the exact opposite.  It should help people have MORE of those difficult conversations.  That’s where the real progress in organizations happens.  It’s where we take different points of view and find something that’s better than anyone had ever thought before.

Failure #2 - Coaching instead of training The next most common overuse of coaching is as a substitute for proper training.  Coaching should help enable people leverage the knowledge that they already have.  

This is a serious problem I was guilty of committing often as a first time sales manager.  I’d get some useful training, and realized that it could benefit the rest of my team.  Instead of giving them the same basic training, I would try and coax it out of them through some form of experiential learning.  While this was well intentioned, it often failed.  

A much better approach that I used later was to send someone on my team to the training.  Then they would come back and give us some homework, such as reading a book on ‘The Challenger Sale’ for instance.  After that, then we could work together on the experiential learning as a team.  That was decidedly more effective.

Failure #3 - Coaching instead of internal communication Another place I see coaching being used is as a substitute for building up internal relationships.  This is especially true for new Directors and VP’s that join large organizations.  They don’t know who they don’t know.  It’s not true what they say.  What you don’t know CAN hurt you, especially here.  

These coachees are conscientious, good people.  They build great relationships with their coach.  They also build up great skills that help them be successful with their team.  Yet they don’t look outside their team enough.  Their team needs them to be the periscope out into the rest of the organization.  In most organizations, the necessary connections can’t be learned from reading an org chart.  It takes good old fashioned walking around, being humble, and asking to get to where you need to go.  This isn’t to say a coach can’t ASSIST in this process.  They absolutely can.   It just can't be a substitute for building internal relationships.

Failure #4 - Coaching instead of mentorship Finally, coaching shouldn’t be used as a substitute for proper mentorship.  This ties in with the idea of building internal relationships.  Mentors in the organization can give you insight into how the organization works that someone who is meant to reflect your own ideas can’t and shouldn’t.  Mentors can give you the clues about subtle biases people have, ways they work, projects that are crucial and ones that are likely destined for failure.  This advice is invaluable, especially as you climb the ranks or join a new company.  Don’t assume since you have a coach you don’t need a mentor as well.  

Have you had other failures?  I’d love to hear about them.  Leave your comments and thoughts below.

[tpmarsh]

Everything stopping you from getting a professional coach

Do I really have the time to invest in a coach right now?  Things are going pretty well already.  I’ve just got that promotion, and my career is on the right path.  Besides I don’t even know where to start looking for a coach.  Even if I found one, I won’t know if they’re helping me.  I doubt The company will pay for it, and I can’t afford it if they don’t.

Any of these excuses sound familiar to you?  If you’ve thought about getting a professional or career coach at some point, I bet these reasons not to get a coach came in right behind them.  Your brain is wired to negate new ideas.  That’s what prevents you from making mistakes, so it’s useful.  This ‘feature’ of your brain is also what slows you down from finding the upside.  

Your brain is best at finding problems in a few situations. 1.  When ideas are nebulous 2.  When you don’t have previous experience 3.  When there are many steps in getting where you are to where you want to be.   Guess what.  Finding a coach is all 3.

One way I tackle this blockage is to break problems into pieces.  Let’s take a few of the most common objections.

I don’t have the time to invest in a coach right now Coaching feels like a big investment, and there’s no doubt it is.  Yet, it pays dividends like compound interest.  Every minute invested now will pay dividends for the rest of your life.  I thought the first 2-4 years of my career was my chance to learn.  After that, I needed to be delivering results with all my time.  Yet, at 34, 12 years into my career I still had 30+ years of productive work in front of me.  I was still learning vast amounts.  It was ridiculous to think that I should stop investing in myself.  

It was even more ridiculous to think that the company didn’t want me to invest time in improving myself as well.  If I could learn something that I could apply just once a month and save an hour, then an hour spent learning that would have an 1100% ROI for the company within a year.  Looking at it that way, it’s obvious that if you can find something that helps you improve even an hour a month, then you need to take it seriously.

I just got a promotion, or I’m about to get a promotion, so this seems like a bad time for coaching This thought is similar to the above.  It’s the concept that ‘I need to be spending my time learning my new role/delivering results, not trying to improve’.   These transition times are dangerous times.  There are all sorts of new skills that are needed in a new role.  You need to focus time to figure out what is going and learn how to be successful.  Almost always though you’re not going to get all the support you need internally.  It might be because your boss is new, or there is a reorganization, or this is a new role.  The beginning period of a new role is also the most critical.  Getting some outside advice during these important times is actually more important than when things are calm.  

I don’t know where to start looking for a coach This is a great point and one that many people run into.  It’s also a challenging one that has a lot of answers.  We’re writing an entire blog post just about that here.  The short version is you should be able to sort this out in 20-30 min of work, but it will depend on your goals.  Focus on quick, specific actions instead of endless research and you can put this one to bed quickly.  

How can I tell if this is helping me? This is one of my favorite questions, maybe because it was one of my big questions when I got my first coach.  The secret is to do some thinking about this ahead of time.  Do you have goals you already know and are working on?  If so, are they SMART goals?  Then you’ve already got a way to measure those.  

More likely you don’t have goals, or they’re less measurable than you would like.  Would just defining goals or making them more measurable feel like solid progress?  You should be able to get to that in 1-2 coaching sessions, sometimes even during a free introductory session.  Once you have goals that are measurable, then determine how much progress you want to make.  Honest self-evaluation on your progress can often be enough of a barometer.  Set challenging but realistic amounts that you want to progress in order for you to feel like you’re getting a good ROI.  If you’re not getting the progress you want, be honest with your coach, and let her know you’re not OK continuing.  That’s fair.  You are also just as likely to find that you’re progressing far faster than you expected.  That means you’re getting far more value than you thought you would.

The company won’t pay for it This is one that you won’t know unless you ask.  Many coaches will help you have the (potentially challenging) conversation with your boss about this.  It’s in every coach’s best interest to make sure there is a support system internally to help you succeed.  Even if the company won’t pick up the entire tab for coaching, many bosses are so inspired by people taking development into their own hands that they’ll do whatever they can to help.  They can arrange work schedules, offer discretionary bonuses or do various other things to help make life easier for you.  Until you have the initial conversation though, you’ll never know where you stand.

Pulling it all together So which of these problems is your biggest barrier?  Were these ideas helpful for you?  Were there other problems that come up for you?  Please leave your comments about your own ideas below.

[couragelabs-blog]

6 Reasons we love coaching (And You Should Too!)

With stats like '74% of coachees make significant progress towards their goals,' what is going on behind the scenes that makes this work?  Let’s take a look.

Spend time focusing on your goals Most of us are vague about our goals.  We know in the back of our minds that we want better work-life balance, AND we want more money.  Those goals don’t have to be in conflict, but many times they are.  When we’re faced with the 1,000’s of little decisions day in and day out, we go the route of least resistance.  That’s the path we’ve worn out before.  It’s our default.  

In coaching we take a step back and the first thing we do is define goals.  If you want work-life balance AND money, not a problem, but how are we going to balance these goals.  Can you find ways of integrating time with family that also helps make money?  You can be intentional about what goals you want to work on now and pick goals that are going to make the biggest difference.

...And you pay attention to your progress on your goals We all have vague and nebulous goals.  You’re probably making more money than you were a few years ago.  But do you know how much?  Did you reach and pass your target income a long time ago, but kept the goal of making more money by default?  It’s both easy to make too much and too little progress on goals when we’re not paying attention.  You get what you measure.  

If you keep track of your progress in a meaningful way, interesting things happen.  You realize that your focused attention is actually getting you to where you want to go faster.  Or you realize that the current tactics you’re trying aren’t working.  Either way, it’s useful info.  You  would have realized these same things in time, but you  wouldn’t have realized them as fast.

Someone to help hold you accountable This is one of my favorites.  I’m a coach, I’m here to help and to support.  Who’s the person that’s holding your feet to the flames?  Well, most of the time it’s you.  Yet, spoken commitments are far more powerful, and when spoken to someone else, they’re even more powerful.  This is strengthened by the fact that you defined your goals AND the actions.  The only thing that can hold you back is something else popping up and your limited time.  I’m always amazed how much people will get done in the 1-2 days before a coaching session.  They know they want to make progress towards their goals.  A deadline of a meeting is just the inspiration that helps push something from ‘Yeah, I want to do that at some point’ to ‘OK, I’ll do that right now.’

...And someone to pick you up when you fall down It’s just as easy for us to start beating ourselves up as soon as we don’t do what we said we would do.  Sometimes it’s that we don’t give ourselves enough credit.  For instance someone said ‘I didn’t do anything towards my goal of brainstorming a list.  I feel horrible.  I’m going nowhere on this.’  OK.  Where are you now?  Well, I thought about the list, and I came up with these 20 ideas.  Then I talked to several people and they gave me lots of ideas.  So did you actually do nothing?  ‘No, I guess I got about 80% of the work done.  

Even if you didn’t do it, beating yourself up will likely make you less interested in continuing on.  You need to leave the past in the past.  Pick up insights and learnings, and apply those going forward.  Leave the negative emotions behind as much as possible.  Coaches are trained to help in just that.

A time for self-reflection We all need some dedicated time to take and process learnings from our week, our month, or even our life.  Coaching gives you the time where you can self-reflect and start processing those lessons.  You can also take those lessons and figure out how you’re going to apply those insights in other areas.  This transfer of learning is wildly powerful.

...And someone to point out your blind spots Some patterns of behavior we need a little nudge to be able to see.  Are we over committing to more action items than can be done in a week over and over again?  Are we always having conflict with new bosses or new coworkers?  

We need something to change the frame for us to be able to recognize our blind spots.  We also need to trust the source.  You’ve likely heard about blind spots you have from other people.  But if it came from a source you didn’t trust, you likely didn't act on it.  With a coach, their only goal is for your success, so you don’t have to worry about what their ulterior plan is.

Pulling it together You’re thinking about getting a coach because you want to improve your skills, focus on your development, or learn something new.  You can get there by finding insights, finding your motivation, and moving past your stumbling blocks.  Is a coach right for you?  You’re the only one that knows for sure.  If you’re looking to explore more, you can always reach out to me for an initial free session and explore it more here.

[couragelabs-blog]

Online Meditation Spaces

I'd like to build something. But I don't know how many people would like it.

Imagine: you're on Facebook or Twitter or something, an ad comes up saying, "Want to know if meditation is for you? Take this quick assessment?"

You're curious. Why not? So you click over and the assessment asks, "Can you feel yourself breathing right now?" If you answer yes, the survey says, "Congratulations! Meditation is probably for you!" The next line down is a button that says, "Join a Meditation Group Now, Free."

Couldn't hurt. So you click the button.

A list of groups with upcoming meditation sessions scrolls up. One happens to be starting in 3 minutes (they seem to be spaced out every 15 minutes). Next to it you see, "10 minute meditation." You can manage that! You click that one and immediately see 5-6 other faces staring into cameras, eyes downcast, ready to start meditation. You can see they are from all over the country, and some are even international (you know this because there are little flags next to their names)! How cool!

The host of the group (you can tell because there's a star by her name) says, "Thanks for joining. If you'd like, you can click 'Share Camera' so others can see you. Feel free to get comfortable, relax, and start to settle in your chair. We'll get started in a couple minutes."

So you share your camera. These folks seem friendly.

A couple of minutes passes. It took longer than you thought. In the corner of the screen, a video starts with a meditation teacher giving instruction. There's a button to skip the instruction, but since you've never meditated before you figure you'll listen to it.

In a couple minutes you find yourself feeling very still and calm. Before you know it a bell rings. Time's up!

The host invites everyone to have a short conversation about their practice. Everyone seems very respectful, and a few have useful insights to share. You've learned a lot!

As the conversation winds down, you click "Leave session" and a box pops up asking you for feedback. It asks a few simple questions:

How was your meditation practice? (open text box)

How likely would you be to come back? (scale of 1 to 5)

Would you be interested in hosting a meditation session? (Yes or No)

Are you interested in hearing about more opportunities for deeper meditation practice? (Yes or No)

What is your email address? (text field, optional)

You fill out the survey quickly, and it clears, saying, "Thanks for your feedback! We'll be in touch. This service is completely free, but we rely on donations from meditators to stay running. We hope you'll consider clicking the donate button below." There's a big button labeled "Donate," with a single text field, prepopulated with $5.

Would you click that button? Please leave a comment in the box below. If enough people leave feedback about this story we'll start to build it!

[couragelabs-blog]

We’re having another #CodeRetreat!

This time for 2 days. It'll be on May 30th and 31st from 9am to 5pm.

Here's the structure we will be practicing. Day 1 we will start with planning, and day 2 we will end with a short retrospective.

We can accommodate 2 more attendees if folks are interested! There's no cost to attend, and you must be interested in hanging out with people writing Clojure code for a good cause (supporting radically self-organizing companies).

Oh and meditation. In Chicago.

Send an email to [email protected] if you're interested.

[couragelabs-blog]

Will I get a good ROI from a career coach?

This is a question I get all the time.  I’ve answered this on Quora with a very similar answer.

Will you get value out of getting a coach? Most likely.  

Will that value justify the cost of both time and money?   That is less obvious and will depend on other factors.  Here are the biggest factors in my experience.   1.  Are you the type of person that believes that you can change? You wouldn't hire a physical trainer if you thought that your body was going to stay the same afterwards.  Along those same lines, you shouldn't hire a coach if you don't believe that you can make dramatic change.   Carol Dweck has done some phenomenal research identifying that people often have 1 of two common mindsets.  One possibility is a 'fixed mindset' suggesting that people have a set amount of intelligence set at birth, and the rest of our life is an expression of that intelligence.  The other possibility is a growth mindset, which suggests that we can change and grow.  A grow mindset also suggests that Fixed vs. Growth: The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives.  It's important to note that nobody is either all one or all the other.  I personally try and live in a 'Growth Mindset' to the best of my ability, but I constantly find areas where I unintentionally live in a 'Fixed Mindset' to this day.   2.  Are you willing to take the time and put in effort towards change Again, comparing a career coach to a personal trainer, you're not going to get the ROI out of the trainer unless you're willing to work hard when you're with the trainer and continue working hard when the trainer isn't there.  Will you get better results than working alone?  Probably, but certainly not the highest ROI you could get.  If you have other major priories in your life, for instance if you have just gotten married or had a child, then consider whether you have the personal bandwidth to dedicate to a career coach.  It's absolutely possible to have the bandwidth for both, or for it to be important enough in your life to prioritize both.  Just recognize the what you are getting yourself into. 3.  Are you the type of person that feels like change would be important to get to your goals, whatever those might be? Career Coaches are best at catalyzing change.  If you're not looking for change and you're feeling pretty happy with your current trajectory, you're more likely to be looking for incremental value.  It's possible to get enough incremental value to justify the ROI, but it's more likely to get good ROI when there is a big pivot in your values, beliefs, or actions.   4.  How effective is your relationship with your career coach? This could be in part due to how good of a coach you have, but it is also very personal.  You could have the best career coach on earth, but if you don't personally connect with her, then it might not be your best chance to get the ROI you need.  I highly recommend talking with your career coach ahead of time and judge if your styles mesh well before committing to a longer term engagement with them.

[couragelabs-blog]

Our Code Retreat is rapidly approaching on April 11th. The intro call is March 28th at 2pm. We will be working on a project we decide on together using our new workday structure.

If you're interested in joining us, drop a line to [email protected] and we'll send you further info.

This retreat is completely free! You do have to pay for your own lunch, though.

[coreagile-deactivated20180405]

[couragelabs-blog]

(Thanks to @KentBeck for the inspiration)It’s going around again — the pair programming questioning. I’m glad we’ve moved on from the TDD questioning. Kent’s great explanation reminded me of some of...

[coreagile-deactivated20180405]

One thing that really turns people off about Holacracy is the legal jargon and super strict process. However, everyone I’ve talked to that’s been a part of a failed implementation has said that they really appreciate the clarity of role definitions and bias toward action. What if there was a...

[coreagile-deactivated20180405]

It appears I invented a new highly-motivating coaching tool today. A client was having trouble making progress on one of the goals they set (my framework requires we set 3 powerful goals at the beginning of an engagement), and during debrief it dawned on me that perhaps all the background tasks...

[couragelabs-blog]

I changed the website design

Simplify simplify simplify! Turns out you can refactor a website mercilessly, as well. Instead of waiting on feedback from very busy friends, I decided just to push forward and see what happens.

[couragelabs-blog]

Operating Agreement Revamp.pdf

This is my final draft of the Operating Agreement Revamp. I have signed it and will be asking each of the partners to sign it in the next week.

[couragelabs-blog]

My intro to our new #agile book's first draft is ready for review.

As an exercise in clarity, before my co-author and I have even agreed on an approach, I decided to start writing my own introduction to our book. We haven't even agreed on a title yet. I think it should have something to do with "Agile Heart" or something.

But that's beside the point.

I've gotten 7 pages (according to Google Docs) written, and I'm ready to receive your critique! If you're interested in being a reviewer, and are ready to read my business-life story and how it makes me as confident and agile as I am, join in!

Simply write a message on this blog post and I'll add your email address as a commenter on the draft. Please read and comment quickly! Everyone who provides some feedback will be mentioned in the acknowledgments.

[couragelabs-blog]

Organizational Commitment: Pig & Chicken - Part 2

What if everybody was committed? How might that change your organization?

[couragelabs-blog]

Courage Labs Workday Structure

This is what we are experimenting with lately! When we build open-source software together, we practice Agile Heart techniques, and attempt to validate that they work. Today was our first test. The interview that comes before this is the result.

We will be running another one in April. Stay tuned!

[couragelabs-blog]

Our First Courage Labs Workday

Bill: How did it go?

Stephen: I think it went really, really well. The structure was kind of irritating, but some of the things I noticed were that I felt energized at the beginning of every slot, and especially clear after the direct experience practice. As in, my mind felt open to new ideas. When I was stuck in a previous session, and having taken a long time to let things settle, I was able to come up with new ideas. Especially the tighter API structure that came to mind. How was it for you?

Bill: It was good. It's hard... there are a lot of differences from how I normally work. So it's hard to gauge what impact the direct experience practice had vs. all the other elements, including floobits, working with you, etc. The other piece of it was that I felt sluggish, so there was some internal variance.

Stephen: I think that's normal. Would you say that on a normal work day, having started pretty sluggish, you would have had such a positive outcome?

Bill: Right; no. I certainly think that I was more productive and thoughtful today than a normal workday. It's hard to tell how much of an impact the structure had because there were so many other factors that made this experience different from a normal workday.

Stephen: Which ones?

Bill: Working on freefrog and working with you (it's been a year since we last worked together).

Stephen: You're giving me a lot of credit.

Bill: It's different. I think it was a really good experience. I learned a lot. It was fun. I think that what we ended up working on was different from what we originally set out to work on, but I think that worked well. I feel much more comfortable with my tools, so the fact that we weren't using them was a bit of a hindrance. I also think I'm still learning a lot about web application development in general. OAuth, for example.

Stephen: So, do you think this environment supported you in that learning path? For example, working with those tools, learning some new Clojure web development libraries, etc.

Bill: Yeah. I think it was. Part of it was you have a good experience with those technologies.

Stephen: So it's hard to separate my contribution.

Bill: This was better than me working on my own, because I had someone to talk to, bounce ideas off of, feed off of energy.

Stephen: Sounds like an endorsement of pair programming, at least.

Bill: Yeah. I don't know. Given the right partner -- the other person has to want to be a part of the partnership.

Stephen: So I'll say that was a much better partner today than I usually am. I felt very able to flow with how things were going, and wasn't too attached to any particular outcome. Which might have made me a better partner. What do you think?

Bill: The work itself went really well. When you say, "better," I don't know what to compare it against.

Stephen: So it seems we need to control for some of that stuff.

Bill: What stuff?

Stephen: Like, me being in the mix. Perhaps it's better if we try the structure on an intact team and see how it shifts how they work together. Or, at least, a bunch of people on an intact team. How would that experiment play out, do you think?

Bill: I think it would be a good experiment to run. It depends on the people. It depends on their openness to all the ideas presented in the structure. The day was long, still, and even though I had plenty of energy, near the end I was certainly not able to focus as much.

Stephen: Good. I think that's great!

Bill: Why do you think that's great?

Stephen: It leads me to believe that we pushed you right to the edge of your useful energy, while making sure we made good use of the times when you had a lot. You didn't seem to be running out of steam until we blew past the last work block. If we'd stopped when we were supposed to I don't think we would have been so tired.

Bill: Yeah; I think that's true. I mentioned this before, but the Direct Experience practice was challenging; it was long. But I'm glad I did it. It's hard to pinpoint the benefit; I think I need to pay more attention to how it impacts me.

Stephen: What if you tried it for 10 minutes a day?

Bill: I try to do headspace, so it's a little different.

Stephen: That counts! So?

Bill: I do it 60% or so.

Stephen: Has it helped you?

Bill: I think so, but... it's hard to measure.

Stephen: Yeah. It's hard to tell how it's impacting how you respond emotionally to situations. But what it's supposed to do, really, is gradually reduce the amount of time you spend being "triggered" by situations. Something to think about, I guess.

Bill: Yeah. I think Direct Experience was even harder because when my eyes were open I was more prone to distraction or the urge to move.

Stephen: Seems common. Keeping the eyes open is definitely a different experience, but it allows more information into the Direct Experience Network, which is what impacts the part of the brain that does emotional regulation. So it might be something to check out -- what happens if you practice with headspace with your eyes open? So let's leave it at that. This was a long interview. Thanks for participating!