When I view the business world and in particular the leaders of business I find that , like in life generally, people allow themselves to be led by their emotions. Now for most, that’s not particularly revelatory or indeed rocket science but what it means when it comes to leading constructively in tough times is that a courageous leader would be equipped with the ability to be emotionally resilient. (Note RESILIENT not RESISTANT). Which means that they would be able to fully experience the emotions moving through them that are sparked by what is going on around them but are plugged into a deeper, more grounded and still place inside which is un-shakeable. There’s a recognition that there is no point in avoiding the natural death and resurrection cycle of life within business and by being meta to the surface reality of what is going on, it gives you a leadership edge.
One of my favourite quotes is:
“peace. it does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. it means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart” unknown
What this says to me is that you can have all kinds of challenging situations and tough decisions, people and pressure going on around you but you are peaceful BECAUSE you are certain inside. Certainty inside is a process of remembering rather than a learning of new tools or strategies and can often be experienced as a peeling off of behaviours and beliefs long held to courageously open up to new perspectives and ideas. It’s an ability to KNOW that no matter how tough a situation appears, that everything changes and “this too shall pass”. If you as a leader allow yourself to forget that there is always a bigger picture going on and get stuck in problem solving, you are likely to use a lot of energy up wastefully and always be ‘managing’ a situation rather than transforming it. This certainty is magnetic and absolutely brings about a calmness amongst the chaos. It is always the energy of who you are being that affects what is going on around you.
A simple reminder to self when things are tough:
- Do whatever it takes for you to create space and get out of the reactive environment if needs be in order to get back into the observer of the situation rather than the subject.
- Remind yourself that ‘this too shall pass’ much like the seasons in nature and there is always a bigger picture context going on which will become clear in the fullness of time.
- If you as a leader can be in a grounded and certain place authentically, you will enable your team to also be there. Don’t expect others to turn up in ways that you aren’t doing yourself.
- Instead of berating the challenge on your plate, no matter how hard, be courageous and ponder on how the situation is providing an opportunity. This may be hard when all you can see is cost but you can do it anyway and get used to staying in that open minded position.
This is why I love what I do as a coach and intuitive mentor and why I have a mentor myself. Its invaluable as a leader to have a time put aside to be supported to stay real, open and vulnerable whilst at the same time, building emotional resilience and be reminded of the bigger picture, or context of what is going on. That way, you will experience the inherent ‘tough times’ of business life with more ease and flow, certainty and clarity.
I was speaking to a friend of mine who I had known for many years the other day. I usually would hear about her partners life and how his business was going and how overwhelmed with busyness he was and how important it was that he felt supported. When they went away together, it would be to do things that he wanted to do like intense rock-climbing expeditions and treks and she would go along with it, even at the risk of her health sometimes. All I would hear about her life was how she hated doing her job and how she felt compelled to keep doing it so she ‘kept up’ with him. I would hear about how he would make decisions about his career, including moving overseas without any concern for her and how she may fit into the move. She would often sit and try to be ok about the compromise and pressure this put on their relationship and even had moved over to be with him but no sooner had she done that, he changed his mind and they both had to move back to Sydney.
Fast forward two years later, the same thing happened and he has moved overseas to follow his career path but this time she has decided that she will finally take the leap and leave her job, apply for a work visa and move over properly with him. She is going through all the usual emotions and fear of leaving the safe harbour of her role and the wage that comes with it but has started to notice something happening for her.
She is the one who is left to pack up the house and sell off any stuff they didn’t want to store and has noticed that as she keeps taking each step towards what she wants, support keeps coming in. No matter how challenging or impossible each step of the move is, she keeps getting supported by people. The car that had been taking ages to sell, sold this week. The clutter around the house since her decision to jump has cleared, bit by bit. She is noticing that she is beginning to feel lighter and lighter about the whole experience. She has several job opportunities waiting for her to arrive and she is moving to a country where her 51 years is respected and admired, whereas she was experiencing ageism and glass-ceilings here in Sydney which contributed to her fear of leaving her job, believing that she will soon to be unemployable and irrelevant. She was talking about the very thing that we all know and love to experience and that is flow. Things falling onto place when we follow our heart no matter what the perceived challenges are. She leaves next week and feels good about it, regardless of the fear inherent in change.
Then she shared with me that she had heard from her partner last night and that he wasn’t feeling so great about the move and that he wasn’t sure about staying there. She initially started to go into her usual role of concerning herself about his mental state and about how he was feeling under-challenged in the role and how he was bored. But then….something clicked inside of her as we spoke. She realised that she no longer had the energy left to keep worrying herself about his problems and choices and certainly not for his frame of mind. She realised that she had been walking around on eggshells with him for as long as she could remember, afraid of his reactions and worried about his mental health history, worried about his moods and temper. She had put aside her love of TV and Media, a role she had when they first met and was awesome at and had effectively made herself small next to him so that he didn’t feel bad or challenged by her. What clicked for her was quite profound because what she realised was how none of this had anything to do with him! She had been the one to choose to put his requirements ahead of her own. She had made the decisions based upon her judgement of him not being able to handle himself emotionally. In her attempt not to upset or challenge him, she had given him no choice but to turn up like he did and seem to take advantage of her like he did. But no-one can be taken advantage of unless they unconsciously let that advantage be taken. She had hit a point of release where she knew that for her to continue to feel the flow of life around and through her, she would have to make the choice to move overseas FOR HER, not for him and that she was the one who was able to take responsibility for herself and let him take responsibility for his choices.
It was beautiful to witness as years of self-judgement and weariness began to fall away. It doesn’t mean that the next while will now be all hearts and flowers and that it wont come with continued courageous steps and challenges in the story of their relationship but it does mean that their relationship can now become more of what it truly is. Each of them no longer able to continue to turn up the same way as before, a new, more real and authentic experience awaits.
So I ask, as a point of reflection and pondering, who is it that you are caretaking? Who do you put your life on-hold for and concern yourself about their well-being above your own and keep yourself small as a result? Who do you use as an excuse for not living your life? and what justifications do you keep telling yourself about why you do it so you feel like you have no other choice?
The news of comedian Robin Williams passing and the flurry of pithy memes about depression and anxiety on Facebook have inspired me to share a personal perspective with you. I share from the perspective of someone who at the age of 21 was almost diagnosed with manic depression (now termed bi-polar disorder).
To explain why “almost”, I was fortunate enough to be referred to an excellent GP who was also trained as a naturopath/dietician. When presented with my symptoms and story, she explained that had I gone to a conventional doctor I would have been labelled as manic depressive and put on long-term medication. She however saw the opportunity to support me first through her naturopathic and dietary expertise and asked for my total commitment for a minimum of 3 months to work her way. I had been plagued with bouts of inexplicable “black cloud” days, every 4-6 weeks, ever since my mid-teens. I had managed these moods simply through conventional methods of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), psychology sessions and well- intentioned love and support from friends and family. Whenever I reached out grasping straws to gain an understanding of why I was feeling so wretched, it had seemed the only way. So when she asked for 3 months of commitment, I really had to dig deep to find the reserve to truly give her approach all I had. Suffice to say, it was an approach that started me on a thankfully non-mainstream approach to taking responsibility for what was occurring in my life rather than a diagnosis which disempowered me and made me believe that I was at the mercy of life and victim of bad luck or bad genes, rather than my own head with its thoughts and emotions.
With this weeks news, I just can’t see the long-term value in simply “managing” depression and I was reflecting on my own past experience of depression and anxiety and realised that if the best I could do in my life was to “manage” it , I really would rather not be here at all. It’s like I would be living my life as if there was a wolf by my door and that just isn’t a way to live for me. It would take up my space and be constantly draining of my energy which in turn would add to the cycle of heaviness and depression. I don’t believe the current way of looking at depression actually supports people to move through what is happening but rather labels them as damaged and broken people. Even worse, in more recent years with the advent of Prozac and other similar drugs, normalizing it in a way by handing out anti-depressant pharmaceuticals as soon as anyone displays any sadness or imbalance of emotions at all. It’s as if we are all supposed to go around feeling happy! happy! joy! joy! all the time regardless of what is occurring in our lives and independent of the often self-sabotaging and unconscious choices we are making.
I don’t deny that some people appear to have more challenge around their emotions than others and that it isn’t an arduous and seemingly impossible task to build up your own emotional resilience (something that seems almost to be being bred out of our western society). By emotional resilience i mean a person’s ability to know and feel grounded and safe within, regardless of the thinking and emotions and external circumstances surrounding them. Instead it seems we are breeding a generation for whom pain isn’t a natural part of living – I’m often reminded of the fabulous futuristic animated movie, Wall-E where humans, after exhausting the earth and it’s resources, live in a space station where they have machines waiting on them hand and foot and don’t even get out of their chairs and are unhealthy and over-weight and being told what they should think and feel by media… sounds scarily familiar doesn’t it?!
This continual cycle of making the external things easier on the emerging generations seems to give a more and more divided response. The ones who relinquish their responsibility and therefore weaken their emotional and physical resilience and the ones who choose to stop avoiding the challenging and painful situations inherent to being human and use them as opportunity to dig deeper to their innate power and resilience within.
The latter approach is why I was drawn to do and love what I do today. If I hadn’t experienced the extraordinarily challenging emotions and head-games in my earlier life, I truly believe that I wouldn’t have found who I truly am and be doing what I love, certainly with as much awareness and depth as I have now. I couldn’t be authentic in my support of people moving through the challenges of their own limited judgments, sad,angry, ‘not good enough’ thoughts and emotions that flood their body if I hadn’t been through that challenge myself and carved a pathway through to the other side.
Strange logic as this may seem, but my feeling is that Robin Williams, like so many of the people we collectively hold in such high regards (Whitney Houston, Marilyn Monroe etc) and give responsibility to for making us happy and entertained, had been ‘managing’ his depressiveness for a very long time. Resulting in so many of our public figures simply self-combusting, self-sabotaging, numbing with alcohol and drugs and food and sex all to try to keep that metaphorical wolf away from the door. And my feeling is that after giving so much to the world, as testified by so many messages from his fans of how he helped them through tough times, is offering his one final gift of showing the world that managing doesn’t work. And not to be fooled by the smile on a clowns face…
“We heard a joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he’s depressed. Says his life is harsh and cruel. Say he feels all alone in a threatening world.
Doctor says, “Treatment is simple. The great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go see him. That should pick you up.
Man bursts into tears. “But doctor…..I am Pagliacci”
It’s easy to have your head convince you of separateness when you don’t have a practice of being present. The thoughts and emotions can take you over and convince you in an instant.
I’ve noticed this happening for many people particularly in the past couple of weeks where the tendency to buy into the story of fear and judgment has been strong. I feel a link between that and the increased amount of fearful media and spreading of propaganda which stirs up the primal fight or flight response in many.
Stepping out of the story and being selective about what you listen to and surround yourself with goes part of the way in building your resilience but also a practice of mindfulness and stillness is invaluable.
The more there is a critical mass of people choosing to drop out of their heads and into their feeling, the more we will be following what is true for us rather than following the pied piper blindly.
#courage #buyingintofear #presence
The consciousness mind is you awareness at the present moment. You are aware of something on the outside as well as some specific mental functions happening on the inside. For example, you are ware of your environment, your breathing, or the chair that you are sitting on.
The subconscious mind or the preconscious mind consists of accessible information. You can become aware of this information once your direct your attention to it. Think of this as memory recall. You walk down the street to your house without consciously needing to be alert to your surroundings. You can talk on the cell phone and still arrive home safely. You can easily bring to consciousness the subconscious information about the path to your home. You can also easily remember phone numbers that you frequently use.
It is possible that some of what might be perceived to be unconscious becomes subconscious, and then conscious (e.g. a long-forgotten childhood memory suddenly emerges after decades). We can assume that some unconscious memories need a strong, specific trigger to bring them to consciousness; whereas, a subconscious memory can be brought to consciousness more easily.
The unconscious mind, consisting of the primitive, instinctual wishes as well as the information that we cannot access. Although our behaviors might indicate the unconscious forces that drive them, we don’t have easy access to the information stored in the unconscious mind. During our childhood, we acquired countless memories and experiences that formed who we are today. However, we cannot recall most of those memories. They are unconscious forces (beliefs, patterns, subjective maps of reality) that drive our behaviors.
Corsini, R. J., & Wedding, D. (2011). Current psychotherapies (9th ed.). Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.
and Thanks to StarOverSky.com
…For anyone who is burdened or tortured by their minds.
S- STOP
T- Take three breathes and smile throughout your whole body
O- Observe your body
P- Proceed with Love and Kindness to break the pattern
