buddhist thinking - it works?!?!?!

On Monday I implemented my new Buddhist thinking plan at work to see if I could change things with my micro managing boss. My experience with Buddhism consists of an hour and a half documentary I watched, and an email from my brother Steve:

If you really would like to understand the Buddhist mind, you should find a teacher who teaches Transcendental Meditation (http://www.tm.org/).  You may want to read Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s book, but it’s really quite bad and full of nonsense statements.  A better book of meditations is Dr. Wayne Dyer’s Change Your Thoughts Change Your Life.

 

But you have a fundamental misunderstanding.  The practical Buddhist is one that can, “Let those things that truly do not matter slide,” as described by Tyler Durden.  

 (side note: I wonder if he was joking about the transcendental meditation thing, he's a republican)

So, not actually knowing how to officially Buddhistically implement a plan I decided to take Steve's "let things slide" idea and mash it with the "relieve human suffering" idea and then I created a plan:

1. start every interaction with my new boss in the most positive way possible by complimenting something about him
2. ignore the negative things he says (let things slide, he's negative because he's suffering), and when he says negative things...
3. conjure an image of him sitting in a restaurant surrounded by good food with soothing music playing in the background (his favorite thing to do is go to nice restaurants and eat good food) and project this image at his brain (basically make him think my thoughts are his own thoughts)
4. if more negative comments continue add a water feature in the restaurant, then a fish tank, and maybe more food since I'm not sure the food dishes I put on the table at the beginning of my meditation thing are food dishes he likes
5. if that doesn't work, imagine a giant lobster serenading him with Frank Sinatra standards- I know for a fact he loves to eat lobster

While all this meditation does make it hard sometimes to follow the conversation, I've found, since Monday, that my plan works! In Monday's interaction I had to go to step 5. Tuesday, I only got to step 4, water feature. And I found that when I get to the water feature now he might be negative but he also is at least listening to me.

In fact today I had a goal review meeting with him, which I was dreading, and it went really well (confession: I went straight to the singing lobster because I had to pay close attention in that meeting). He even said he wants to schedule more meetings with me since I'm his only remote (not in california) person. And I made some suggestions to improve (i.e. make less dictatorial) some administrative processes he's put in place and he not only agreed with me but even sent out an email updating the processes after my call with him.

So, I'm pretty much all about the Buddhist thing now. Except that when I was talking to my mom she said something about Buddhists being vegetarians. Which would mean no more pepperoni pizza or bacon for me. I'm going to have to meditate on that.