MIT OpenCourseWare http://ocw.mit.edu PE.550 Designing Your Life January (IAP) 2007 For information about citing these materials or our Terms of Use, visit: http://ocw.mit.edu/terms.Designing Your Life (IAP 2007) Lauren Zander and Gabriella Jordan Lecture/Discussion 1: Elements of Living an Extraordinary Life David Mindell’s introduction • Background of this class o Lauren and David conceived of this class o Handel Group works mostly in corporate world, helping CEOs work on balance and leadership. o Now, they are bringing the course to MIT to address grad student issues.  MIT focuses on coursework, but doesn’t think about helping people as people.  After the 2006 IAP course, students didn’t want the course to end. Thus, the Handel group extended the course into the summer, and started a new introductory class in the fall. They are building up the EL community. o Handel group is doing this pro bono right now because believe in development. How to scale up and integrate into MIT life/curriculum? Lauren Zander’s introduction • She is the owner of 2 companies o Corporate  Go to Vogue, etc.  Works with executives  The Private Coaching Division of The Handel Group assess the drama, dysfunction, politics within a company/corporation.  Then makes everyone deal with it.  Pins it on the boss. Top-down approach. o The Private Coaching Division includes individuals (130 people) in business since 2005. • This course is based on a philosophy developed by Lauren o Lauren was a hell-raiser. Her goal as a child was to get people to hate her. o Then into her teens she was a party animal, a bad girl and overweight. o Then she realized that she needed to author her life  She sorted things out. o Now helps other people. She spent 15 years working with people as a coach. o Wild and fabulous things: advise officials in the republic of Georgia • Her goal for the participants: to get us to shift how we relate to our own lives. o Get us all to work on our philosophies, our brand of what is happening to us in life. • Her job: to poke at us. • For those people who were consistently an 8, 9, or 10 on their homework. o Are you really an 8, 9, 10? o Are you settling for something vs. getting what you REALLY want? o Are you really daring and fulfilling your life? o Take down your suffering. • No one is coming to save your life except YOU. • For those of you who are unhappy, you CAN do something about it. • She doesn’t buy bullshit. o You can be late, but must pay the consequence. • She doesn’t say “poor you”, because it doesn’t help.• It is tempting to try to convince yourself that you ARE happy. But this will do nothing. o Push yourself to see what ELSE is possible. How to look at your life • You picked your life. o You are not an accident. o You picked your parents, and where you were born. o You picked every issue, every problem. It’s not random. o Change the story. You picked it. o Because the minute you change the contexts (from victim to leader) then you are responsible for dealing with it. o It’s convenient to think you didn’t pick this life, because then you are “doing the best you can.” Then you feel that you are “off the hook.” o Instead, realize that you are here on purpose with your life. • Question from audience: If you picked it, then didn’t you have good reasons for picking it? So why would you want to change? o Lauren’s response: Try to understand why you picked what you picked. What did you go for, what did you give up?  It’s hard to see beyond this when you evaluate what you want to do. • We have a bizarre aversion to working on ourselves. • Example: Going to the gym o Question: “Why aren’t you going to the gym today?” o Answer: “I have too much work.” o Question: “But you’re surfing the Internet now.” o Answer: “Well… yeah. But I have a lot of work.” o Then you feel bad. • Example: Kabbalah o The soul comes in at the moment of conception. o Your soul experiences whatever is going on between your parents at the time of your conception. It sets the stage for the rest of your life. o The harder your time in life, the older your soul and the more things you need to work on. • Lauren’s take on “mystical” things like Kabbalah: You can’t prove or disprove them. You can believe what you want to believe. • Nothing that happens to you is an accident. • We don’t like to do a lot of things. Life is about conquering this. • Example: Internal dialog is a good indicator of what you really think. o A person may say: “But I don’t care what I look like!” o But, if you put a microphone in her head, you would see that she talks to herself about her appearance all the time. • You picked your life, so you’re here to deal with it. Design your life, or be a victim of it. • Question from the audience: What about accidents, like losing a parent? Did I choose the accident? o Lauren’s response: There’s nothing more profound than losing a parent. o No matter where your parents are, they are in your life. You are in a relationship with them your whole life. o The most important thing is what you make the death mean and how you honor the relationship. o All incidents in your life shape your life. Figure out how you interpreted that event into your life. Get to know yourself about it. The WAY I INTERPRETED IT is not an accident. Designing Your Life (IAP 2007) Lecture/Discussion 1 Lauren Zander and Gabriella Jordan Page 2 of 8o You have natural instincts of how to deal with events in your life. Figure out what those are. • Did you shut her out? o Then figure out how you want to deal with it. Design.  Write a letter to her once a year.  What do you want to do?  YOU author what it is to lose mom at the age of 21.  We all have opinions of what life should have been. Skip that.  What do we want life to BE? o No matter if dead or alive, you have to clean up your relationship with your parents. o So yes, the participant picked how this death was for him. The event is all about the perception. • Question from the audience: The participant has a kid in San Diego. He is worried that he is not in the kid’s life because he is here in Massachusetts. He is worried about how he deals with his sexuality with respect to his kid. o Lauren’s response: Happiness is about conquering fears and