Tag Archives: depth

What is Your Internal State?

by on August 14, 2015 in insight, leadership, Paradox, personal energy, Psychology, purpose, Uncategorized, unconscious, Work

As a wise colleague once said, “If you want to find something on the outside, you must first find it on the inside.” Or, in other words, “wherever you go, there you are,” a saying popularized by Buckaroo Bonzai. While coaching executives and with my ongoing work with myself, the truth is that our internal state is the most important aspect of our lives to attend to and manage. And we can manage it. By doing so, we can direct how we perceive our world, what we get done, and what (and who) we attract.

What is your internal state of being? How do you feel right now? How do you usually feel? What is the noise inside your head?  Are you covering up negative feelings with food, alcohol or some more sophisticated gamesmanship where others are the blame for your problems? With what are you surrounding yourself?  With whom? How are your family and friends with their internal state? What is your purpose? Check-in with yourself and others, you might be surprised how you’re feeling. You can change how you think about things. Your reaction to the world is in your control.

A lotus is the most powerful of flowers as it makes its way through the murkiness to the light. Much like our hidden feelings, they too must make their way to the light. Without this process, they remain ever present, controlling us, sometimes choking and stifling us in ways that we don’t understand and keeping us from seeing the light.

A Brain the Size of a Golf Ball

by on August 11, 2014 in insight, leadership, personal energy, Psychology, purpose, Work

“If you have a golf-ball-sized consciousness, when you read a book, you’ll have a golf-ball-sized understanding; when you look out a window, a golf-ball-sized awareness, when you wake up in the morning, a golf-ball-sized wakefulness; and as you go about your day, a golf-ball-sized inner happiness.
But if you can expand that consciousness, make it grow, then when you read about that book, you’ll have more understanding; when you look out, more awareness; when you wake up, more wakefulness; as you go about your day, more inner happiness.” – David Lynch

Leadership – leading others, your family, or yourself requires consciousness, so the best way to improve your leadership is to expand your consciousness. How do you expand your consciousness? It starts with understanding that you may not have the full picture of reality, or understand other peoples’ perception of reality. This is the primary way that conflict arises: numerous people can view the exact same situation with vastly different perceptions.
Leaders often become leaders because they are comfortable making decisions. They have a level of confidence in their own perception of reality that gives them this ability. Often this confidence is perceptible by those who are unsure about what is happening, and the unsure gravitate toward those who appear surer.
This same attribute can backfire when that confidence continues in new, ambiguous and even chaotic situations. Great leaders continue to increase their consciousness as they become more senior through involving and gathering a broader range of perceptions so that they expand their conscious awareness of what is really going on.
How do you expand your consciousness as a leader? The number one best way is to remain curious. This is especially true when you feel the most sure of your own view. How do you do this? Ask questions. Probe deeper. Listen to the silences, if any, after you speak. Do people feel comfortable sharing their real thinking with you, or do they stammer and hedge their opinions? Has anyone yelled at you or acted angry with you? If not, mostly likely others are holding back around you. By being curious and encouraging other to share their minds and hearts with you, you will ensure you continue to expand your own consciousness, improve your leadership impact and grow your brain bigger than the size of a golf ball.

Native Wisdom Part 1: If you do something long enough, you must like it

by on July 25, 2014 in Paradox, Psychology, unconscious

My Father used to say, “If you do something long enough, you must like it.” These were wise words from a part Cherokee truck driver, born in the hollers of Western North Carolina. His belief was that life is full of mysteries and paradoxes, and that people inevitably did what they wanted. He also believed that people’s behavior spoke louder than their words and that while free will was everyone’s right, few took advantage of it.

The paradox he was speaking to was the difference between people’s professed intentions and their actions, or more clearly stated the difference between what people said they wanted and how they acted. He was fascinated by this observation and so came up with his own explanations of human behavior, independent of psychology or any other academic schooling. For these nuggets of Native Wisdom, I’m eternally grateful and I’ll share them in this blog.

Let’s take an example. A friend of mine was upset about how her children and their families have come to dominate her life. She repeatedly complained about this dynamic and conveyed dismay at how they routinely took advantage of her. While her children, now in their 20’s, are able to manage their own lives, they instead relied on their mother to care for many of their wants and needs. She took care of their pets, fixed lunches, and loaned them money. They also repeatedly come and go from her house at all hours, with the expectation that she take care babysitting, washing their laundry and making them meals. She claimed that she disliked her children’s behavior, yet when observing her actions, the contrary seemed to be true. Her actions shouted that she loved being involved and relied upon. According to my Father, though she claimed that she was unhappy with the situation, it was obvious she didn’t want things to change because she liked things as they were.

Since she had known my Father and his many insights, I quoted him one day, during a visit. In the middle of one of her complaining sessions, I imitated his Southern accent and his wry sense of humor to provide some gentle teasing about her dilemma. She laughed, thankfully.

While, she loved her children and deeply wanted to be connected with and involved in their lives, being intimately connected on a daily basis was proving to be stressing for her. Both her and her children had learned behaviors – habits that had been developed years ago that met the needs of the times for everyone in the family. But now, though she had evolved, and her children had evolved, both still lived their lives through the behavioral system that each had outgrown.

My friend knew that change in the family dynamic was needed, but changing is hard. Why? The behaviors people learn, are learned for a reason. Behaviors develop because, even if only temporarily, they work to provide an answer to a problem. Then, new problems are encountered, and we try to force fit an old solution on a new circumstance. When we become conscious of this, it forces us to confront the fact that what was once the best that we could do, is no longer good enough. This causes pain, so we avoid it be letting the awareness of this go unconscious again. The paradox is that it’s the pain that provides the space for growth. If we are aware of what no longer serves us and could sit with the pain just long enough, we can change our behavior, so that we can create better alignment between what we say and what we do.

Working through her behavioral system was tough, but she was up for it. She spoke with her children and has re-contracted behaviors and boundaries and unexpectedly positive changes have enriched all their lives. All thanks to gentle Native Wisdom from my Father, “if you do something long enough, you must like it.”

How about you? What is no longer serving you well? What actions are not aligned with what you love? What can you change today to bring you closer to your real potential? It might be painful to examine, but you’re up for it, right?

The Forest and the Unconscious Realm

by on June 13, 2014 in Jung, Psychology

“I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees. All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness. All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with the luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.” -Sleeping in the Forest by Mary Oliver

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The Gravity of Shame

by on May 28, 2014 in Jung, Psychology, unconscious

With the May snow swirling outside my window, I watched a newly emerged spring green leaf fall helplessly to the ground, as if to say, “too much! I can’t bear being exposed any longer and I want to die.” As I watched the drama, I imagined the full life this leaf might have lived. She would have enjoyed a warm summer with the pleasurable feeling of energy being pumped through her veins. She might have lived out her purpose of turning sunlight and water into a magnificent tree all the while dancing with her sisters and brothers in the calm breezes as well as storms. At the end of her life, she might have turned into a bright orange blaze in the hush of fall before winter brought her death.

This thought lingered with me, and as a staunch friend of both projection and anthropomorphizing, I began relating to this. What can make us shudder from exposure and make us wish we were dead? What makes us fall from our true purpose? “Shame is a soul eating emotion,” Carl Jung once observed. Shame makes us feel vulnerable and exposed to the harsh elements of other’s cool judgment real or perceived, or worse, our own cold judgment of ourselves. We hide from it and avoid situations where it might, like some ever present menace, be provoked.

There is a price to this hiding and avoiding. We miss out on some of life’s joys and avoid experiences that would make our lives richer and more complex. For many of us, it is not the abuse that others do to us that causes our shame; it is our own internal scripts that are reflective of our self-perception and our perception regarding how the world perceives us. From the smallest of self talk to something bigger, we gut check ourselves moment by moment each day to avoid risk, humiliation – shame. Often these scripts go unexamined as they are part of our belief system, and we are as sure about them as we are sure about gravity.

Whether coaching leaders, teams or individuals, part of the real work is helping them to uncover what holds them back from their highest purpose. There are many theories about this including limiting belief systems, fear of failure or even fear of success, but I believe that at the root of these resides shame. Shame that we might be unworthy, shame that we are inadequate, shame that others might see who we “really are” and that might not be good enough, smart enough, or tough enough.

What holds you back? What makes you hide yourself from others? When do you do a gut check before speaking your mind? Find a friend or sounding board and talk it out, or write, draw, or create the emotion so that it sees the light of day. Shame survives best by being hidden, unexamined, and by the belief that you are the only one feeling this way. Ignoring it will not make it go away and can make it grow. Becoming conscious of your own shame and sometimes, just sometimes, merely asking and answering “what makes me feel shamed?” can help shame defy gravity and float away like the May snow.

The Battle for Alignment

by on April 25, 2014 in insight, leadership, personal energy, Psychology, purpose, unconscious, Work

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” – Dwight Eisenhower

I think of this quote often. I live it daily and so do my partners and clients. Not only do I consult to leadership in a variety of different organizations, but I also lead within organizations in which I’m employed. I have made this choice, as opposed to being an independent consultant, because I think there is great value in the insight gained from being a leader in a complex organization when you consult to leaders within complex organizations.

Without fail, there is a time each week when this quote comes to mind. Although I’m someone who enjoys spontaneous and evolving conversations, I prepare in advance as much as I can. I do this through reading, talking to colleagues and in general, collecting and organizing a variety of points of view so that I feel I understand the landscape – as I think it is going to be – in an upcoming “battle.” In this instance, I liken gaining alignment between people to a battle as sometimes it can feel that way. I find this to be the essential requirement of leadership, to bring others together for the sake of getting something done in a certain timeframe. Underlying this is energy engagement, which I feel is what a leader “really” does, but that is a topic for another day.

Even after the alignment is created, which can be a battle in and of itself, the plans that are created don’t work. People change their minds, other priorities emerge, technology doesn’t work, one person is left off an email, or perhaps organizational priorities shift. Clausewitz once opined, “Everything in war is very simple. But the simplest thing is difficult.” The same is true in getting things done in organizations.

What do I recommend to clients and what have I learned to do myself?

  • Be clear about and “in love” with the effect you want to achieve.
  • Maintain emotional distance and do not be “in love” with a specific way to achieve it. It is OK to shift and do things differently even if the decision has been made to do it a certain way. Consciouly chose the right path, not the default path.
  • Take your own emotional pulse – if you fall “out of love” with what you’re trying to achieve, others will too and maybe your intuition is trying to tell you something. What is shifting your focus?
  • Be prepared for wildcards and the unpredictable, something unplanned will happen. Knowing this can take the emotional edge off when things go astray.
  • Be open to new information to build or shift your vision

The battle for alignment is an ongoing process that requires renewal and revisiting as the twists and turns of execution unfold. Eisenhower had it right, planning is necessary while plans go astray. And they always will. How we adjust to it is what organizational life is all about.

The doors of perception.

by on April 10, 2014 in Jung, Paradox, Psychology, unconscious

“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.”
― Aldous Huxley

When I first heard about The Doors in the 70’s as a grade schooler, I had no idea why a band would name themselves after something so simple as a door. I pondered what kind of door could inspire a band? Was it the pure simplicity of opening and shutting a piece of a wall that was so compelling? Was it a brown door, a white door or a glass door? And then I completely forgot my questions as I trudged through my teenage years reading gothic romances, historical fiction, and Mad magazine. Then, I discovered Carlos Castaneda. Reading his first three books felt deliciously adult and shifted the way I perceived my life and how I wanted to live. From that point on, I was mystified by perception and how different people saw things so completely differently. This is when I also realized I wanted to be a psychologist. Perception has been a lifelong muse ever since. One of my most treasured quotes from him is this: “The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.” To me this is the essence of perception. We determine how we look at things, and we must do this consciously, and whether or not you do think consciously, the work of life is the same. Why be miserable? Change your perception of what is happening.

 

If only it were so easy, but perhaps it is just that easy. Having witnessed death in family and friends where long-term illnesses wreaked havoc on people I loved, it is easy to slide into despair and rant about how hard life can be, how cruel a fate, how physically painful, and how fickle it is in whom it blesses with health, and whom it does not. My family and friends chose to be happy even during horrendous and challenging struggles, perhaps because they knew their life was so short. Could I not do the same? It was a matter of perception, what is real and what is not.

 

As an executive coach, my own life experiences cannot help but inform how I work with clients. Perception, my muse, is often the blind spot that hurts many leaders. Their ability to “see things as they are” is difficult when they only see things from their perspective. A leader’s ability to integrate multiple viewpoints and perceptions into a mosaic whole that makes sense is an art that few master. Sometimes I feel my job is to eliminate “how did I not see that?” from my client’s expressions. I do this by helping them to open their own doors of perception about who they are, what matters most, and by expanding their understanding of their current realities through multiple perspectives.

Oh, and The Doors? I get it now.