About the Author
Patti cultivates homegrown changemakers prepared to step into their power and work with others to create the world they want to live in. Get in touch to find out how you can grow the social changemaker in yourself and those you serve with Blue Roads Changemaker YOU.
Today we welcome Harriet Stein to the Blue Roads Changemaker Series that aired first on the WIN WIN WOMEN program “On Your Own Terms”. Harriet shares her story of how she first became interested in the practice of mindfulness including how it has changed her own life and the lives of others around the globe. I first met Harriet through “HPSGrad”. It's an amazing program offered by Michael and Amy Port through their business, Heroic Public Speaking, that supports speakers in their efforts to develop transformational speeches for a wide variety of audiences. I've been most grateful for the encouragement Harriet has given me throughout the learning process and I know that you, too, will be encouraged and inspired by her words.
Tune in to the video of our conversation here, listen to the podcast version and read the summary below to gain some of the many, many nuggets of wisdom she generously and enthusiastically shares with audiences far and wide.
Homegrown Harriet
Growing up in New Jersey and Pennsylvania gave Harriet close access to the Atlantic Ocean as a child.
There's an old saying that says if you're born with sand in your shoes, it never comes out.
That connection to the ocean has remained with Harriet throughout her life. She credits the rich experiences she shared with her grandmother on the beach as her very first experiences with mindfulness.
The first game any child who lives by the ocean is taught is when they take you to the water and you run away from the water and you go to the water and you run away from the water…I have that memory with my grandmother, taking the water showing me how to put it on my hand and how to take the cold water and rub it on each one of my arms and on my face. It's a wonderful way that I learned the importance of paying attention.
I am the person who loves the water and loves the beach!
When Harriet was a young adult, her mother became very ill in her 50's. Although she had lived a healthy lifestyle for the most part, she worked much too hard and took pride in never taking a sick day. As a nurse, Harriet was concerned that her mother had focused all of her energy outwardly which ultimately took a serious toll on her health. When her mom lamented having to miss work because she was in the hospital. Harriet recalls writing this important reminder to her mother:
Perfect attendance is being present for life. Not work!
Some time later after her mother passed away, Harriet had her own wake up call during an illness. She loved her job working in global health at Johnson & Johnson, but had to recognize that she wasn't taking good care of herself.
Sometimes it could be that you love your job, but you don't set the correct boundaries and you're working long hours and you're working on the weekend…That also impacts your body if you are not taking care of yourself…It was hardwired in me to put work first and I suffered because of it.
Solution-Focused Harriet
Thankfully, Harriet attended a life-changing training with the founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Jon Kabat-Zinn. The training didn't only give her the tools she needed to turn her own life and health around, she proceeded to become an enthusiastic advocate for the practice of mindfulness prepared to teach others what she had learned.
She started small with a weekly lunch program for her colleagues at Johnson and Johnson. That small offering kept going for nearly a decade! Over the years, Harriet has trained thousands of people in the practice of mindfulness. She learned an eight-week training program to teach the practice step by step, but she kept running into people who said:
Can you teach it to me NOW?!
Folks were eager to learn, but wanted an immediate fix to address their issues. To her delight and for the benefit of many, Harriet has developed a way to teach the basic strategies very, very quickly.
There are just small little tweaks that we can do in our day to make a really big impact.
She shares one example of a colleague who was gravely afraid of flying. Just before she was getting ready to fly, she asked Harriet for some tips to help. In just a few minutes, Harriet gave her some strategies for staying mindful of the present moment. When her friend reported the usual turbulence that occurs as part of air travel, this time she was much more comfortable.
She was thinking in the past – a past we can never change – or thinking in the future – which hasn't even happened yet – and then she realized, she was fine right there in the present moment.
This is the kind of “magic” that can happen when we simply learn to stay present in this very moment.
It's not my magic. It's the practice. The magic of the practice that's been around for thousands of years.
It's that simple, just sitting and just watching your breathing
Just noticing, breathing, not wanting it to be any different than how you find it.
Harriet's Patchwork
As a nurse, Harriet has worked with people from all walks of life. When she would return from work in a new setting, her old friends and colleagues asked her about “those people over there” as if she was going to report some new alien life form. But Harriet says what she's found is that people are basically the same everywhere she goes.
She chuckles that comedian Chris Rock says that wherever you find men and women, they will be fighting about the same things that men and women fight about everywhere.
The key to working across diverse perspectives and experiences is an essential ingredient in mindfulness practice, the practice of nonjudgment.
Mindfulness is this practice of moment-to-moment awareness with non-judgment. I'm very aware when I start judging a person's behavior for example.When I notice that I'm judging, I first ask myself, “Would I feel differently if I knew that person was up all night with a sick child?”
Harriet's World
I don't want people to think that they have to be anything because one of the attitudes we cultivate with this practice is non-striving – and realizing that if right now you're frustrated… okay.
Then maybe a few minutes from now, you'll be happy.
There is no need for us to always “be happy,” since sometimes we spill water on important papers. Instead, it is about being authentic and feeling what we feel in the moment. This is the entire practice.
Where is your attention best served? In the past noticing regrets that we can never change or worrying about a future that has yet to unfold?
Harriet credits Jon Kabat-Zinn with helping her embrace these truths. He once advised her on how to change her life.
You don't have to quit your job. He said, “Just do one little thing. Just put your big toe in the water and try one little thing.”
Harriet has taken that advice to heart. In fact, that's why her company is called “Big Toe in the Water.”
To learn more, reach out and connect with Harriet Stein via her website BigToeintheWater.com or via email at harriet@bigtoeinthewater.com.
You can certainly see how Harriet's work directly supports United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #3- Good Health and Well Being. Can you also see how mindfulness is foundational to the potential we have to realize the other 16 global goals as well? When we take care of our own wellbeing by focusing in the present moment, we are also able to see more clearly and do more intentionally. In this way, we increase our potential for effectiveness in all of our endeavors.
I hope you'll get in touch to let us know what YOU and people you know are doing to realize these Global Goals by the year 2030. We can sure do it if we all work together and take our place as Changemakers!
CHECK OUT our CHANGEMAKER YOU course to help you get started today!
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Patti cultivates homegrown changemakers prepared to step into their power and work with others to create the world they want to live in. Get in touch to find out how you can grow the social changemaker in yourself and those you serve with Blue Roads Changemaker YOU.
