But unless we slow down to see, hear, and process what's already in our world, we may miss these gifts. In your groups, model this by inviting your participants to assimilate fully meaning and consequences of every activity.

- Of Relationships. We rush around so often focused on "getting stuff done" that we sometimes neglect our most precious resources --our friends, associates, coworkers, and family. The benefits in good will, emotional support, new connections and ideas, very often offset time spent cultivating and maintaining these existing relationships.

- Of Customers. Balance your expenditure of energy on seeking new customers with efforts to deepen and enrich your relationships with existing customers. It takes a whole lot less effort to cultivate these existing relationships where some trust already exists. Share your gratitude for them being in your life, appreciate their trust in you, and seek to deeply understand and respond to their needs. Become so familiar with their situation that you can act as a trusted advisor and in turn help them assimilate tidal wave of information bearing down on them as well.

- Of Ideas. If you're anything like us, you're a life long student of personal growth and have hundreds of books on your bookshelves. Just imagine what might happen if instead of picking up yet another new title to read, you were to study principles from just one chapter of a favorite you've already read and actually apply them for next 30 days? This, my friends, is called assimilation.

Create a learning plan with specific goals for next six months. Include both informational and learning goals into this plan. And, only include that which you know you can assimilate with minimum effort so that you have time to really make information a part of your very being instead of just being a walking index pointing people to this book or that website.

- Of Food. During at least one meal this week...you may even want to experiment with (big) one this Thursday, try eating slower than usual. Chew your food just a little bit longer. When you're talking or listening to someone, stop eating. Take time to really assimilate your food and experience with family. Try just doing one thing at a time. Enjoy rainbow of flavors and textures, each bite a miniature world of experience.

- Of Experience. We're all tempted to accelerate our pace of life to match that of our increasingly frenetic culture. But this is a personal choice. Most of time, we can choose to slow down and carefully select our inputs, experiences, and speed at which we subject ourselves to them.

There are ways to help make this choice easier. Commit to a practice of "being fully present" for a few minutes each day. Use whatever method appeals to you. Some choices are meditation, yoga, quiet walks, prayer, tai chi, marshal arts, sitting alone quietly, journaling, etc. Or just look out window with all of your senses. Focus on what is before you and allow it to really enter your being.

These kinds of practices are more and more important as world accelerates around you. They give our inner selves time catch up with, reconnect with, and properly assimilate with our outer experience.

Now go forth and assimilate!

About Author Steve Davis, M.A., M.S., is an Facilitator's Coach, Infoprenuer, and free-lance human, helping facilitators, organizational leaders, educators, trainers, coaches and consultants present themselves confidently, access their creativity, empower their under-performing groups, enhance their facilitation skills, and build their business online and offline. Subscribe to his free weekly ezine at www.MasterFacilitatorJournal.com. Contact him at mailto:steve@facilitatoru.com.

Copyright 2003. FacilitatorU.com. All rights reserved.

No intelligent person wants to acknowledge that they may have a bias in terms of race. We know in our minds that it is unfair, unwarranted, and detrimental to have a negative view of someone on basis of race. We also know it's politically incorrect. We like to think we're smart enough to outwit any insidious form of racism that may be lurking in back of our brains.

Well, our brains don't know that. These tests measure what's going on in our brains, not what we want to have going on. The results can be quite shocking.

I guess good news is that there's a part of our brains that is trying to behave properly! This study was done with educated, intelligent, fairly progressive white students at Dartmouth College. Though it isn't mentioned in report, I'm guessing that these students didn't consider themselves racist. What happens if same study is conducted with those who readily admit their prejudice?

If we know better, and we want to avoid being racist, how do we go about doing so? We assume that more contact with individuals of other races will help us overcome our prejudices, but that sometimes backfires. Integrated communities are rarely racism-free.

Contact doesn't eliminate racism--greater understanding and positive relationships do.

Think about your brain and your own bias regarding race. The first step is to be honest: virtually every single person on planet has a racial bias of some kind. The next step is to take a test to find out for yourself where you stand.

And then? What next?

We learn racism. We know enough about brain and how it works to recognize that whatever we learn we can also unlearn. Absorb everything you can about other ethnicities and cultures. Read, travel, see movies, listen to music, try new foods--do everything possible to develop a voracious curiosity and robust enthusiasm for people of all races.

Stimulate your brain in an effort to render that "executive control" area irrelevant. Train your mind while building relationships with individuals of other races. Outsmart your brain's racism by becoming colorblind.

Thinkers know better than to be racist. The challenge is to free our brains of lingering doubts. Immerse yourself in richness of world. It'll make you smarter--and more excellent--in every way.