WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif.

In the lonely monotony of High Desert State Prison, there were no visitors and little mail for Renwick Drake Jr., so the letter was a curiosity when it arrived in the summer of 2020.

It told Drake about a new law, meant to undo too-harsh sentences. Maybe, it said, the district attorney would take another look at his case after 11 years of incarceration.

But maybes are dangerous in prison, dealers of counterfeit hope. The letter felt like another false flag from the system that had put Drake behind bars at age 15, when he was a skinny skater who thought he knew everything until, too late, he realized he knew nothing. Little Ren to the family he left behind, hed been inmate No. AL9471 ever since.

A letter wasnt going to get him out, he thought, and neither was the D.A. who put him here. There was only patience and himself.

Drake put the letter aside and went back to serving his time. He had 12 years to go.

But the maybe had ahold of him.

::

Yolo County Dist. Atty. Jeff Reisig was three years into his first term when Drake was arrested in 2009.

Yolo County Dist. Atty. Jeff Reisig stands under the motto of his office.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Reisig hadnt planned on being the top cop of this semi-agricultural county northwest of Sacramento. His boss came into his office one Friday afternoon to announce he was retiring and wanted Reisig, a prosecutor, to run.

Reisig sometimes wonders how life would have been if he wasnt a politician. Easier maybe, less stressful. There were a lot of haters, a lot more to the ugly underbelly of politics than he had realized going into that initial race. It was so bad, he said, that the campaign broke up his first marriage.

A former bodybuilder with a linebackers shoulders and close-cropped gray hair that makes him look like Pixars Buzz Lightyear, Reisig had come to Yolo to study the business of agriculture at UC Davis. Growing up in Gilroy, hed worked on a flower farm owned by his sisters husband, spending more time in the office going over numbers than among the larkspur and belladonnas. But at Davis, he found the law more interesting than crops. He landed an internship with the Yolo County Public Defenders office and went to law school.

He had a rebellious nature that relished being the underdog in the courtroom, Reisig said, always had a little bit of a fight the man streak.

A person walks by the Superior Court of Yolo County.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

At the same time, it was an education in how the justice system really worked. Being a public defender, all you do is go in and shoot holes in the wall, Reisig said. To have an impact, a dramatic impact, you had to be a prosecutor.

So, in 1997, after a boring stint in agricultural law, he applied to the Yolo D.A. at the height of Californias tough-on-crime era.

In 1994, a year after 12-year-old Polly Klaas was kidnapped from her own home and killed by a felon not too far from Yolo, then-Gov. Pete Wilson signed the Three Strikes law, propelled by the activism of Pollys father. In 2000, voters passed Proposition 21, increasing penalties on youth offenders, and allowing more children to be tried as adults.

Reisig felt for the victims of violence, he said, at a time when violence seemed rampant. He went after drug dealers, he went after thieves, he went after gang members with a zealousness that brought controversy. He won prosecutor of the year awards multiple times.

Reisig said he tried to balance his duties with what he learned as a public defender, but the overwhelming message that young prosecutors were getting at that time throughout California was that criminals are nails and we were the hammers. Hammer away.

::

For Drake, Nov. 20, 2009, would be a wrong place, wrong time, wrong decision day. He did not like math, so that Friday, he cut class, like he had before.

Renwick Drake Jr., center, shown with his friend Chardonnay Blakes, left, with her son Amir Blakes, 27 months, and his younger brother Joseph Drake in West Sacramento.

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

He was the new kid in 10th grade, and missed friends back in the San Gabriel Valley, where hed gotten in enough trouble to land himself on probation, according to court records. His family had moved a few months earlier from Rowland Heights to West Sacramento because his father, Renwick Drake Sr. Big Ren got a good job at an Oakland car dealership.

Little Ren was rebellious and independent, and maybe a little adrift. His mother, Rachel Frye, recalled that their house could be chaotic and crowded.

I was lost, Drake said. I made it hard on myself because I was trying to be grown up too soon.

The day he skipped math, he got caught and his parents were called into the principals office. Big Ren told him to go straight home from school and stay there, but he didnt. He went out with his skateboard he was good enough to dream of getting sponsored and ran into a 16-year-old gang member he had met weeks before.

The boys went to a skatepark, where three other teens were hanging out one had just been paid and had an envelope full of cash. The gang member pulled out a .22 and pointed it at the head of the boy with the money. Drake reached into the victims pockets and took $240 and his cellphone.

The gang member fired a shot as he and Drake ran off, but the victims gave chase thinking the revolver was a cap gun, according to court documents. The gang member fired again, but the boys caught up at a parking lot and demanded the phone back. Drake slid it to them across the pavement, but the gang member handed him the weapon and told him to shoot. Drake pulled the trigger, hitting the trees above the victims.

Drake was arrested that day. He remained in a juvenile lockup until he was convicted in 2012 by a jury and sentenced to 24 years for robbery with an enhancement for using a gun an improvement, he believed, from the deal Reisigs office had offered: 39 years. The gang member received more than 37 years.

When he was transferred at age 18 from county jail to state prison, Big Ren gave him some advice: Man up. Drake remembers riding the bus to the prison in Tracy and asking the men shackled around him what to expect. He got no answers. He was later sent to High Desert in Lassen County north of Lake Tahoe, remote and too far for visitors.

I was lost. I made it hard on myself because I was trying to be grown up too soon.

Renwick Drake Jr.

Isolated and a kid in a world of violent men, he figured out what he needed to do to survive. He kept his head down, stayed in his lane, as he puts it. He drew, portraits of people he met and those he remembered. Having earned his GED while in juvenile hall, he started college computer courses.

He also read a lot: thrillers by John Grisham until he grew bored with them, language books to teach himself Spanish, then self-help books that all said the same thing take responsibility.

In 2016, he started a self-help group, Truly Redefine Yourself (TRY), leading weekly workshops focused on running life like a business thoughtful, methodical, drama-free. But mostly he figured out what it meant to man up, past the fear, past the anger.

Renwick Drake Jr., right, with his father, Renwick Drake Sr., in West Sacramento. Renwicks dad flew in from Los Angeles the day before to see his son.

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

The rebellious kid who hated being still and thought he knew everything learned patience. He practiced, hour by hour, day by day, how to be quiet, even in his mind. He learned to physically be motionless, sitting like a statue with only his thumbs twirling round and round each other, the only sign that patience is hard, a discipline.

He stayed out of trouble and focused on freedom, receiving only four write-ups in 12 years. He tried to avoid anyone or anything that would keep him locked up one extra day.

But the letter from Yolo gnawed at him. Hed ignored a similar letter more than a year earlier. But what if?

He looked up the new resentencing law and wasnt impressed. It gave the district attorney the power to ask for his sentence to be reduced. What D.A. did that?

He asked a few friends what they thought. It cant hurt, said one.

Drake wrote back.

::

Yolo District Attorney Jeff Reisig.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

Reisig was in his second term when Drake was convicted, and he was resentful. He had been for a while, ever since his vicious first campaign, one that devolved into nastiness, and left Reisig with a bitterness he couldnt seem to quell.

The whole experience scarred me, he said. Constantly under scrutiny and attack, I had to figure out how do I survive in this job and not let it eat me alive.

He realized, Reisig said, that he had to forgive the people he felt had wronged him, professionally and personally. He thought about his mother, a public school teacher who taught at a continuation high school, filled with people looking for another shot.

She had this deep belief in this ability for people to be redeemed, for people to get second chances and turn it around, and she talked about it a lot, Reisig said. She also believed, he said, that everybody can choose their destiny, and sometimes they need some help along the way to figure it out.

Column One

A showcase for compelling storytelling from the Los Angeles Times.

At the same time, the justice system was changing. A small group of prosecutors were examining their roles and asking what they could do to reform the system from within. It interested Reisig, but he didnt see himself reflected in their political ideologies.

But the guy who liked poring over the numbers on the flower farm studied statistics from his department and saw that the data on recidivism were terrible, especially with drug-related offenses. People he was convicting for a dime bag of dope or a petty theft were serving long sentences but quickly reoffended after release.

I was looking at it thinking, God, these people are totally sick and addicted and they werent hurting anybody, violently anyway, and we are sending them off for double-digit terms.

Reisig has two nephews who were caught up in drugs. One died of a drug-related death. The other has been addicted to heroin and living on the streets for eight years, he said. They seldom leave his mind.

In 2012, he visited a neighborhood court started by Kamala Harris when she was district attorney of San Francisco. It centered on restorative justice, the idea that victims, perpetrators and communities could work together on a kind of redress that served everyone involved by rehabilitating offenders and helping them make amends to, or at least peace with, those harmed without jail. Reisig started a similar program in Yolo, increasingly emphasizing redemption rather than punishment.

His efforts, he said, have occasionally earned him internal rebukes from others in the D.A.'s office, including, Here comes Jeff in his Birkenstocks.

::

Prisons are filled with thousands of felons whose offenses would net different punishments if committed today girls whose convictions are tied to being forced into into sex trafficking, offenders who have served their main sentence but are working through years of enhancements, nonviolent offenders who took their addictions and mental illness with them behind bars.

I dont care which side of the aisle you are on. Cant we agree that people can earn a second chance?

Yolo County Dist. Atty. Jeff Reisig

These days, a teen likely wouldnt be charged as an adult as was Drake. And that teen almost certainly would not be sentenced to decades in prison.

But little has changed for those convicted before reforms went into effect, in part because there are few ways to reduce a sentence once a judge closes a case. Only state prison officials and a short list of others had the power to recommend an early release.

Prosecutors have all the power to send people to prison but no power to get them out, said Hillary Blout, a former prosecutor.

In 2018, California passed a first-in-the-nation law, dreamt up by Blout, that effectively gives prosecutors the power to undo their own harshest work if they believe the outcome no longer serves justice.

Under the law, only about 100 people nearly all men have seen their time cut so far, said Blout, now executive director of the nonprofit For the People. Persuading prosecutors to second guess their records has been a tough sell for many reasons the effort to vet a candidate for early release, money to fund the work, the unpopularity of letting people out of prison in an era when some crime is rising.

In the hopes of putting more energy in the law, this years state budget includes $18 million for a pilot project to help prosecutors seek out cases that may warrant another look in nine counties: Yolo, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Clara, San Francisco, Riverside, Contra Costa, Merced and Humboldt.

In L.A., Dist. Atty. George Gascon opened a resentencing unit in April, and his office estimates it has 20,000 cases to review.

Reisig, head of California District Attorneys Assn., insists that he is not in the same category as progressives like Gascon. But he hopes he can bridge an increasingly acrimonious fight among Californias 58 county district attorneys about how far is too far when it comes to mercy.

I dont care which side of the aisle you are on. Cant we agree that people can earn a second chance? he asked.

::

For a year after Drake answered the letter, his life at High Desert remained mostly unchanged.

He had little idea that, based on his answer, the public defender and Blouts staff had put together an argument for freeing him that Reisig was considering.

It was a careful, cautious process, said Reisig. It included making sure Drakes victims felt OK with his release.

It turned out that Drakes efforts to stay in his lane had paid off. Reisigs office filed a petition with the court in August, in effect asking for Drakes sentence to be cut to time served.

The court moved quickly. Drake was informed a judge would consider his case within weeks the maybe that had been stuck in his mind slid into his heart. The day of a virtual hearing, a paperwork snafu prevented him from attending. He was convinced failing to appear had ended his chances.

For hours, Drake didnt know what happened. Finally, he was able to call his mom, who had spoken with the woman who had first written Drake about resentencing.

She was Sara Johnson, an attorney working at the Yolo County Public Defenders Office as a paralegal, the only available job despite her training. Drake called her pushy for all the letters she wrote him after his first reply, and he was grateful for it.

Johnson had news for Little Rens mother: He was coming home.

He had paid his debt, more than he owed, Drakes mother told him. The judge had set him free.

I felt numb a little bit, Drake said. Because I didnt know how to feel about it.

Four days later, too fast to wrap his mind around it, he was released from High Desert, leaving everything behind. His artwork, his books, his television he wanted none of it, no reminders of inmate No. AL9471.

Then he walked in disbelief and with hope through the checkpoints, through the gates, to where his little brother Joseph, who was 12 when Drake went away, was waiting for him in a borrowed car.

It had been so long, Little Ren didnt recognize him.

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12 years after this teen was locked up, the prosecutor who convicted him changed his mind - Los Angeles Times

Nov. 9, 2021

Every time someone tells me their backs been giving them trouble, I lower my voice before launching into my spiel: I swear Im not woo-woo, but

Let me rewind a bit. For more than a decade, I had a near-constant throbbing in my left piriformis, a small muscle deep in the butt. I tried treating it with physical therapy, ultrasound and Botox injections. At one point, I even considered surgery to cut the muscle in half in order to decompress the sciatic nerve that runs underneath.

Then, in 2011, I picked up a library copy of the 1991 best seller Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection. It claimed that, in order to distract the sufferer from repressed anxiety, anger or feelings of inferiority, the brain creates pain in the neck, shoulders, back and butt by decreasing blood flow to the muscles and nerves.

The books author, Dr. John Sarno, was a rehabilitation physician at New York University and something of an evangelist, touting a methodology bolstered by anecdotes from his practice and passionate testimonials from patients like Howard Stern or Larry David, who described his recovery from back pain as the closest thing that Ive ever had in my life to a religious experience.

According to Dr. Sarno, nearly all chronic pain is caused by repressed emotions. By undergoing psychotherapy or journaling about them, he said, you could drag them out of your unconscious and cure yourself without drugs, surgery or special exercises. I chose journaling and began writing pages-long lists of everything I was angry, insecure or worried about.

I appreciated the tidy logic of Dr. Sarnos theory: emotional pain causes physical pain. And I liked the reassurance it gave me that even though my pain didnt stem from a wonky gait or my sleeping position, it was real. I didnt like that no one in the medical community seemed to side with Dr. Sarno, or that he had no studies to back up his program.

But I couldnt deny it worked for me. After exorcising a diarys worth of negative feelings over four months, I was in spite of my incredulousness cured.

I didnt think much about Dr. Sarno after that until May of this year, when I found myself back in physical therapy for a pain in my inner thigh. My physical therapist assigned me a handful of exercises, and I did them every day. The whole time, I worried: If physical therapy failed again, would I have to go back to exhaustively cataloging my woes? Did Dr. Sarnos claims even hold water?

The idea is now mainstream that a substantial proportion of people can be helped by rethinking the causes of their pain, said Tor Wager, a neuroscience professor at Dartmouth College and the director of its Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab. But thats different than the idea that your unresolved relationship with your mother is manifesting as pain.

Dr. Wager said most scientists now believe that pain isnt always something that starts in the body and is sensed by the brain; it can be a disease in and of itself.

Approximately 85 percent of back pain and 78 percent of headaches dont have an identifiable trigger, yet few scientists would say that all or even most chronic pain is purely psychological. There are also social and biological reasons for pain. In most people, its some confluence of the three, said Daniel Clauw, a professor of anesthesiology, medicine and psychiatry at the University of Michigan and the director of its Chronic Pain & Fatigue Research Center. Im sorry, there are a bunch of people for whom Sarnos method isnt going to work.

Today, a similar approach to Dr. Sarnos method is emotional awareness and expression theory, in which patients identify and express emotions theyve been avoiding. Its not only been shown to significantly lower pain in people with fibromyalgia and chronic musculoskeletal pain, its also considered a best practice for treating chronic pain (along with massage and cognitive behavioral therapy) by the Department of Health and Human Services.

But how does the brain cause chronic pain in the first place? Dr. Sarnos theory that our brain uses pain to distract us from negative emotions by cutting off blood flow to the muscles is not backed up by science, according to Dr. Wager.

Instead of blood flow, scientists now look to the nervous system to understand chronic pain that isnt caused by nerve or tissue damage. Basically, your brain circuitry malfunctions, prolonging, amplifying and possibly even creating pain.

Dr. Wager said we dont fully understand the mechanisms of this, but we do know that stressors can promote inflammation in the spinal cord and brain, which is linked to greater pain sensations. Early adversity, such as child abuse, economic hardship, violence and neglect, has also been linked to chronic pain.

2. Exercise helps. If you have chronic pain, you canstill exercise. And, in many cases, it might just helpyou reduce feelings of discomfort and raise your pain threshold.

5. Use helpful descriptive language. Using different metaphors or second languages to talk about your pain can actually change how much you feel it.For example, swearing outright may be more beneficial than using substitute words.

Complicating things further: Pain can beget more pain. For example, an injury may turn up the volume on your pain response to future injuries. Stress may cause pain to persist long after an injury has healed. And if your back twinges and you start imagining all the ways it could get worse, that fear can magnify your pain, which may lead you to avoid physical activity, which then makes the pain even worse. Experts call this the pain cycle.

Here, Dr. Sarnos notion of the brain triggering pain was partially right. Research shows that catastrophizing can turn acute pain into chronic pain and increase activity in brain areas related to anticipation of and attention to pain. This is one of the reasons clinicians are starting to treat pain disorders similarly to, say, anxiety disorders, encouraging patients to exercise so they can overcome their fear of movement. Whereas a socially anxious patient might take small steps toward talking with strangers, for instance, a patient with back pain might start jogging or cycling.

The bottom line, according to Dr. Howard Schubiner, a protg of Dr. Sarno, is that all pain is real, and all pain is generated by the brain. Today Dr. Schubiner is the director of the Mind Body Medicine Program in Southfield, Mich., and a clinical professor at the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine.

Whether pain is triggered by stress or physical injury, the brain generates the sensations, he said. And this is a mind-blowing concept its not just reflecting what it feels, its deciding whether to turn pain on or off.

So, by this rationale, all pain is in both the body and the brain. Which is why, when my adductor stopped hurting in July after eight weeks of physical therapy, I didnt expend too much mental energy trying to figure out what had worked: the exercises themselves, my physical therapist giving me the go-ahead to keep exercising, the once-a-week opportunity to talk with her about my recent move and the other stressors potentially contributing to my pain or (most likely) all of the above.

In the end, Dr. Sarno was right about exercise aiding, not hampering, recovery and about the link between emotional and physical pain. But not all chronic pain is psychological. Dr. Sarnos Freudian treatment is far from the only one that works. And few scientists would say that our brain uses pain to distract us from negative emotions (and definitely not by cutting off blood flow to muscles).

I still think of Dr. Sarno as a savior, and I continue to recommend his books to friends and family; some have read them and had success while others have politely declined. Yes, Dr. Sarno almost certainly oversimplified and overemphasized the psychological origins of pain. But he also helped me see that both the mind and the body are responsible for our physical suffering. And that were not powerless to change it.

More:
I Have to Believe John Sarno's Book Cured My Chronic Pain - The New York Times

Editors Note

The Red & Black has published two versions of this article,one in Englishand one in Spanish.

The Red & Black ha publicado dos versiones de este artculo,un en inglsy un en espaol.

The Athens-Clarke County Mayor and Commission received a detailed update on efforts to redraw the countys commission districts to be in line with population changes from the 2020 census during a Tuesday evening work session.

The new map draft, which was created by the ACC Geospatial Information Officein conjunction with the county Board of Elections, would see changes to the boundaries of Districts 1, 2, 4, 7, 8 and 10, while the remaining districts would not be changed.

Joseph DAngelo, the countys geographic information officer, said the county is now composed of 1,809 census blocks, up from 1,797 10 years ago due to overall population increases. Census blocks are small statistical areas bounded by either visible features such as roads, streams and railroads, or nonvisible boundaries such as property lines, school districts or county limits, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

In total, with the new draft map, 26 census blocks would shift into a different district, representing 2,824 residents whose county commission district would change.

DAngelo broke down the changes to each district. With the draft map, District 1 would receive 10 new census blocks totaling 859 residents that are currently part of the eastern side of District 2, near the airport. District 8 would receive five census blocks from District 2, totaling another 296 residents.

District 10 received only a minor edit, with one census block of 78 residents shifting into District 7. District 4 had 10 census blocks containing 1,591 residents moved to District 7.

DAngelo said the districts are considered balanced as long as the districts raw populations are within 10% of one another. With the new map, District 10 would be the most populous district, with 13,535 residents, and District 5 would be the least populous with 12,243 residents.

We feel pretty confident that this is the most minimally-disruptive set of edits that we couldve hoped for, DAngelo said.

District 4 Commissioner Allison Wright thanked the Geospatial Information Office and Board of Elections for their work, but expressed concern over the part of District 4 that was removed in the draft.

This is not the area that I wouldve trimmed away. The population explosion, I believe, is more on the Barnett Shoals side of my district, and this area, in particular Gran Ellen, to divide that street, a persons mailbox is going to be in one district and their house in another district, Wright said.

District 3 Commissioner Melissa Link thanked staff for trying to be unobtrusive with redistricting, but noted that the current districts were drawn by the state legislature a decade ago. She felt they were drawn with purely political purposes in mind.

District 10 Commissioner Mike Hamby argued that the political nature of the current districts meant the map should be changed more.

These maps were, as I suppose [Link] stated, drawn for political purposes, Hamby said. But if theyre still the same maps, are they still not drawn for the same political purposes, but now theyre OK? Are we OK with the status quo?

Hamby asked if any more majority-minority districts had been added in the new map, or if more accommodations had been made for them. He said the county should ensure it acts to promote equity and equality.

DAngelo noted that as the drafts are drawn, Districts 2, 3 and 9 are majority-minority and District 5 is on the cusp.

Residents can view more detailed information about the redistricting on the countys website, as well as access a public comment form regarding the issue.

The new map will need to be approved by the commission and the state before the new districts go into effect.

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Athens commission receives deep dive into county redistricting efforts - Red and Black

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One of the most important books Ive read is called Zen Mind, Beginners Mind by Shunryu Suzuki. Ill give you a short summary of the book, from the book: In the beginners mind there are many possibilities, but in the experts there are few. The entire goal of Zen according to Suzuki is to remain a perpetual beginner. Zen is all about living (actions) and less about life (ideas/interpretations about living). So, why should someone strive for the perspective of the beginner? Beginners are eager, inexperienced, patient, curious, creative, and open-minded. They arent yet stuck in habitual patterns; they are free in ways that the experienced person is not. When you started your business, you were a beginner too.

Related:7 Proven WaysMeditatingPrepares You for Success

Entre means to enter, begin,start. Pre means before. Neur is related to nerves, as in neurological. Essentially, the word entrepreneur means to enter something before you allow your mind to make you nervous; to dive in with both feet before you second guess yourself. To be an entrepreneur is to be living in a state of Zen. The word entre-pre-neur broken down in this way is, in essence, the goal of Zen. Whatever state of mind you were in when you had the audacity to think your idea was good enough to succeed was a state of Zen. To live in a state of Zen is to deny the mind its interpretations of reality and simply live reality, from moment to moment. It sounds simple, but it isnt easy. Over time, the same Zen state of mind which was the creative impetus to start the business has been altered by a whole mess of problems related to being a business owner. The honeymoon period is over, and the excitement slowly fades. It has officially become work.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

from "Little Gidding" by T.S. Eliot

Beginners take nothing for granted, while experienced people tend to overlook everything which has become ordinary. I bet there is a stapler or something at your desk which has been there for years and you dont even notice it. Every day you look at it, but you dont actually see it. The word discriminate means to notice differences. The human mind is built to notice differences, so the simple fact that the stapler is always there is why you stop taking notice of it. However, if someone were to move it, suddenly youd notice. We take so much for granted simply because it becomes routine and ordinary. When we get used to doing things in a certain way, stagnation occurs. Stagnation is the enemy of creative thinking.

We all see life through a lens that is colored by our experiences. Significant experiences (or lack thereof) both positive and negative change the way we perceive reality. We all have a subjective experience of an objective reality, and no one is free of this. One definition of enlightenment is simply seeing things just as they are, without bringing our experiences and interpretations. One metaphor for the practice of meditation is a bathroom mirror collecting dust. Day in and day out, dust collects on the mirror. When the mirror gets too dusty it starts to distort reality. Meditation is the process of cleaning the mirror every day so that we can see everything the mirror reflects as it really is. Experiences can accumulate just like dust on the mirror. They can serve us or cause clutter in our minds, or both. If you are an entrepreneur, a business owner, or an aspiring entrepreneur, I would argue that you are already living in a state of Zen.

Related:WhyMeditationWorks Wonders for Better Workplace Productivity

A brand new mirror hasnt had time to collect dust. This is why the newest member of your team may have the most important perspective. Beginners dont know enough to be nervous about all that could go wrong. They take nothing for granted and they see things from a different perspective. Wait about two weeks for them to get acclimated and meet personally with each new person at your company. It will be well worth your time. Furthermore, they will be honored by the opportunity and will feel valued. As you are speaking with them, simply ask them what theyve noticed so far and if there are any changes theyd make to the way things are done, set up, systems, etc. Encourage them to speak freely and remind them that you are asking to make sure things havent gotten stagnant. I think youll be surprised at the perspective they bring and the information they provide.

How does one change their perspective, even momentarily? Well, the solution is probably what youve all been guessing. Get yourself a rubber band. Get yourself a rubber band and put it on the wrist of your non-dominant hand. Throughout the day, when you see the rubber band and are conscious of it, simply pause. Let the rubber band serve as a reminder of your new goals. If your goal is to gain the perspective of a beginner, simply allow your focus to shift and pretend you know nothing. Pretend it's your very first day at work, and youre still a bit wet behind the ears. The next time you walk to your desk, look at everything. Take the time to stop and look at whats around you and youll notice all the things which normally go unnoticed. This perspective shift may seem like a waste of precious time, but it will prove immensely valuable to your creativity in regard to solving problems and combating the stagnation we are all subject to.

Related:Why GuidedMeditationis Essential For Every Entrepreneur

If your goal is a practical application of meditation, pause when you see your rubber band and take three slow, deep (diaphragmatic) breaths. Youll soon realize that there is always time for three breaths. The world wont stop spinning if we stop to take three breaths. Problems wont actually pile up in the 10 seconds it takes to consciously breathe three times. Ive taught meditation to beginners and the most common problems I hear are the following: It just doesnt work for me or I dont have enough time. The problem was almost always the same when I asked them to elaborate on their experience. They downloaded an app and hoped for the best, or they set unrealistic expectations for themselves. Imagine going in for surgery from a surgeon who was self-taught, using an app. Youd be terrified! If a personal trainer wanted to start you out by running half marathons, youd never go back. Yet, we attempt to sit and meditate for 10 or 20 minutes, in an uninterrupted way, on the first try. We expect something to happen or to clear our minds. Thats just not how meditation works. It takes years to sit and meditate in a relatively uninterrupted manner. In this case, the expectations dictate reality, and the results are rather undesirable. I was taught using this rubber band method and not only was it successful but I have since used it to change other habits. I was wearing a rubber band on my wrist for over a year before I actually started to sit down and meditate. I was meditating all along, but doing it throughout the day in a more manageable way. Several years later I was teaching people how to meditate. So, whether youve never tried to meditate or if youve tried and failed, try again. This time you will go into the practice equipped with the practical tips and more realistic expectations Ive outlined in this article. And remember: Meditation is not about achieving anything. There are no goals. The experience itself is the goal. If youre doing it right, the more you learn, the more youll feel like a beginner. Oh, and Id highly recommend you wear the rubber band in the shower or you might forget to put it back on.

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Zen and the Art of Entrepreneurship - Entrepreneur

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Herd DL Burton heads home with mission in mind - Huntington Herald Dispatch