Inner Fitness Content - Leading from Within

Module Ten – Inner Fitness

Start Here

With the many demands on our time each day, often we unwittingly push aside the complex questions in our lives.

We know that within those questions lie the answers to what we need to feel alive, to evolve, and to contribute in meaningful ways to our families, communities, and the world.

Life around us doesn’t slow down, so it’s up to us to schedule time to work on our inner fitness – to discover what matters most to us, and to nurture ourselves and our dreams so we can step courageously into each new chapter of life.

Joanie and Scott Kriens
Founders – 1440 Multiversity

Meet the Experts

Jennifer Reitz

Jennifer is a Master Somatic coach with the Strozzi Institue, a methodology that encompasses the totality of our humanness and represents the unity of the whole human being. She is also a trainer and organizational consultant with 20 years experience in leadership, team development, and strategic planning. She has coached individuals and organizations to increase their personal and professional satisfaction and effectiveness by bringing their actions into alignment with their deepest commitments and goals. She is a certified Hudson Institute Coach, is Vice President of the DDJ Myers Advancing Leadership Institute, and has ten years of experience at Patagonia where she contributed to the design of a unique corporate culture.

READ + REFLECT

READ: Erica Murphy – 7 Things I Learned about Life from Completely Unplugging

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RESPOND

Do you check your phone 1,500 times per week (USA average)? Be aware of this distraction in your life!!!
When did you last send someone a handwritten note?
What ways could you increase face-to-face interaction in the coming week with people you care about?

READ: Shawn Achor and Michelle Gielan – Resilience is About How You Recharge, Not How You Endure

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RESPOND

What tactics do you (or CAN you) use to increase your INTERNAL and EXTERNAL recovery?
Would you consider using your next airplane trip as a time to be “work-free”? Try just relaxing, meditating, sleeping, journaling or listening to a podcast.

WATCH + RESPOND

Watch + Respond

Pico Iyer – The Art of Stillness

Respond

How do YOU experience more attentive/appreciative eyes for the world around you? What practices or situations help you make sense of the present/past/future of your life?
Would you consider an “internet sabbath” once a week? How might you use this “empty space”?
What (specifically) can you do to open up a space in your life for stillness?

Class Discussion

There is no class discussion this month.

Poet's Corner

Poet’s Corner

“For a Leader”

by John O’Donohue

May you have the grace and wisdom
To act kindly, learning
To distinguish between what is
Personal and what is not.

May you be hospitable to criticism.
May you never put yourself at the center of things.

May you act not from arrogance but out of service.

May you work on yourself
Building up and refining the ways of your mind.

May you learn to cultivate the art of presence
In order to engage with those who meet you.

When someone fails or disappoints you
May the graciousness with which you engage
Be their stairway to renewal and refinement.

May you treasure the gifts of the mind
Through reading and creative thinking
So that you continue to be a servant of the frontier
Where the new will draw its enrichment from the old,
And you never become a functionary.

May you know the wisdom of deep listening,
The healing of wholesome words,
The encouragement of the appreciative gaze,
The decorum of held dignity,
The springtime of the bleak question.

May you have a mind that loves frontiers
So that you can evoke the bright fields
That lie beyond the view of the regular eye.

May you have good friends
To mirror your blind spots.

May leadership be for you
A true adventure of growth.