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This Is What Happens When Your Idea of Yourself Starts To Look Important

Truth post photographLet me be honest.

This post is nothing like the one I began to write for you. Nothing at all.

In fact, I’m not sure that I’m going to be writing the same kind of posts again that I’ve been writing over the last few months. I say “not sure” because I don’t ever like to be definitive about these things. All I can tell you right now is that something has changed and that you’re going to notice it.

See, this year, and indeed since I revamped this website and started writing here instead of over on A Different Kind of Work, I’ve been writing articles in quite a logical way. I got the Livingston Consulting creed down and then I thought – great idea – let’s take the creed’s themes and drill into them. One theme a month. I’ve been doing that. And, when I’m not on holiday, writing an article a week which I send out to my list.

As it turns out, I have been on holiday the last few weeks and so there have been no new articles but today was “writing this week’s article day”, and so I dutifully went back to my schedule to see what I’d planned out to write about.

Truth Clarifies

The theme I’d planned was Truth Clarifies. What, I thought, could I tell you about the truth? Spent a couple of hours surfing the internet for some inspiration, but all I could come up with felt somehow hollow.

Unable to come up with any meaningful, pithy content, I was really sweating it.

What would you think of me if I didn’t keep my commitment to post weekly? And post in accordance with how I said at some prior point I would?

Why is that important? Well, so much of it goes to the thing about integrity I keep going on about. It’s important to me that if I’ve said I’ll do something, I honor my commitment to it. I want to be a Servant Leader to the people who read and work with me. I want to serve.

But today, and after a conversation with John El-Mokadem, I’m seeing it a little differently. What’s changing is some greater insight into the nature of what’s going on for me here.

It was kind of funny. Today I turned up for my session with him with a list of things to talk about. It had to be the first, maybe the second time, that I’ve actually had an agenda. Normally I just turn up and we allow the conversation to take its own shape. Those conversations have been immense. Without fail, something important turns up and bites me on the bum in a way I hadn’t expected.

Consistency vs meaningfulness

But today was right down in the dirt of stuff. On the list: consistency versus meaningfulness. I told him of my thing about doing a post a week, and that, when I’d sat down to keep to my schedule today, I couldn’t get the words to flow.

As John said, “In the moment, the feeling was off.”

I think “off” was the polite way to put it!

Anyway, the way John helped me see it, at some point in time Thought took form – and if you don’t know what I mean by this, go check out this post here – and what that looked like was the idea that I should write weekly; that that was somehow “good”. I’d imagined that I was doing that from a clear, insightful place. And maybe I was. But come earlier today, I was caught up in figuring that getting that post written would somehow make me “okay”.

“If I can get this post out – oh, and let’s make sure it’s a wow post – it’ll mean something amazing about me. And then I can be happy.”

We had some conversation too today about structure generally. What it means if you have to turn up and operate within a structure. I had been holding onto some thinking that structure somehow suffocates me. And sometimes it does. But then it would if I have that belief since life only ever works inside-out.

What happens if I choose not to buy into the “structure suffocates” belief – what happens if I can see that’s just an “off” piece of thought form? Can I write here weekly? Not in some preconceived way, but in a more creative, in the moment way?

If I don’t need my turning up – or not – to mean anything, can I turn up and flow?

I don’t know.

Whatever, what’s clear is that my idea of myself has been looking important. I’d been looking at things in quite an egotistical way and putting shape around some concept of “Christine” believing that I am Christine and that I could self-invent. In fact, I’m not Christine.

Sure, you may think I’m Christine (actually, if you don’t quite get what I’m saying on this, you may also think I’m smoking!), and we may talk of one another as if personality is fixed and our lives very self-determining.

But it’s really not fixed. And we’re really not self-determining. Oh, sure, we can set ourselves what appear to be very me-centred goals – and maybe we’ll achieve them too if we push hard enough. But if we’re not allowing of something bigger of ourselves in the process, we’re going to feel exhausted. And produce little of any enduring value.

What has this got to do with you, your life, your business?

Well, everything.

I’ve been out of it for a couple of weeks and coming back in I see it more clearly. So, so much of our lives – whether work or play, and even if we run our own businesses or have quite autonomous leadership roles – is about fitting into some pre-agreed plan. It may or may not look that way. But so much of the time we’re trying to squeeze ourselves into some mold of our own or someone else’s making.

Sometimes that can feel suffocating. We can believe that we have to turn up in a certain way. That only one way of turning up will be acceptable.

We kick against the context but it’s not the context that truly constrains us. It’s our own thinking about our context.

Honestly, when I couldn’t find the words earlier to write, I thought I was going to have to mail my readers and tell them I was having an off day. Or share something I’d written before. Or make some excuse. But when I popped the Thought-bubble that had me in its grip I saw the best place to act from was truth.

Which reminds me of some other words I found recently care of Michael Neill:

“Before learning the truth, the mountains appear as mountain. When one begins to study truth, the mountains seem to disappear. After accepting the truth, the mountains again appear as mountains.”
– Zen proverb

Photo attribution: Copyright: / 123RF Stock Photo

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Frustrated With Your Results? Check Out This Simple Mind Shift!

The Power of Choice

Shining your light often means digging deep into yourself and pushing past your barriers. Even when you think these barriers are outside you.

What do I mean?

Let’s look at three things I’ve heard people say this week:

  • “The market is just that way right now; what am I supposed to do?”
  • “Our Managing Partner is completely closed-minded. So, I just can’t influence him.”
  • “I just can’t sell. I wish I enjoyed it like you do. But I don’t, which means I’m always struggling to get business.”

These things were said by super-bright people, all of whom have big ambitions and big lights to shine, all of whom were frustrated about not making progress. Each of them believed they were relatively powerless to change things.

Now, I’m not saying that markets can’t be unpredictable, or that senior bosses aren’t sometime intransigent, or that some skills aren’t a ballsache to master.

What I am saying, however, is that, at every juncture in life, we have a choice about how we will deal with things.

Even when at first it might seem like we don’t.

Like Mandy Lehto says, inertia is an epidemic. It’s quite easy to sleepwalk through life at the relative mercy of your circumstances. Senior leaders and business owners are not immune.

Steve Chandler calls this way of being, the way of the victim. And he contrasts it to the way of the owner.

An owner is someone who owns their own spirit, energy and response in any situation.

A victim on the other hand see that forces beyond them dictate the direction of their life and the level of their happiness.

Owners use life. They are proactive. They come from a place of intention. They learn even from tragedies and mistakes. They allow life’s challenges to strengthen and build them. They choose what they’ll do – even if that sometimes means doing things they don’t like.

Victims infer that life uses them. You may hear them say things like “that’s life” or “life is unfair” in the process disempowering themselves even further than they already are. They do things that they feel obliged to do. There’s a lot of “shoulding”.

The vital difference is where they see the power lying for themselves and their lives.

Victims feel trapped by their personalities. Owners understand that, beyond their small egos they have limitless resource. They don’t say, “I can’t make this happen” like a victim would. They ask themselves:

“Who do I need to be to make this happen?”

And so they find the power within and beyond them to push through.

Of course, we can all morph from one state to the other sometimes, depending on what’s going on and how good our energy is.

Also, business and corporate cultures often have implicit invitations for you to play victim. Because for all their hype about change and transformation, they’re mostly invested in maintaining the status quo.

Watch that!

The key thing is always to remember that you have choice. Deciding to be an owner isn’t something you have to work at. You can make that choice at any time; in any moment.

When my examples switched their mindset from victim to owner, the results were profound:

  • “The market is presenting some challenging opportunities that I’m going to figure out and get on top of.”
  • “Knowing that my boss is that kind of guy, I need to show up differently in my relationship and conversations with him, so that I can serve him better.”
  • “I’ve decided that I’m going to learn to love selling – even if it kills me!”

You have a choice about how you turn up to life. On what you’ll focus attention. And who you’ll be in the face of this or that opportunity.

As you decide to get your beautiful bright light out into the world, how will you choose to turn up? Who will you decide to be?

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On Gratitude

Coffee in CopenhagenI’ve been in Copenhagen with Steve this week.

He’s been at a conference there and I tagged along for the ride. It’s a thing he’s had a leadership role in every year for the last five – always in different cities around the world. So I’ve come to know some of the other people who attend and, while I don’t go to all of the sessions myself, I do turn up to the social events and the whole thing is a lot of fun.

Most days, other than the weekend, I did some kind of work. So, over the week, I’ve had a few coaching calls, and done some business development. Met up with my coaching mastermind group for a couple of hours online too.

But I had space and time, and so a couple of mornings I took advantage and wandered into town. It was my first visit to the city and I have to say I loved the atmosphere of the place, so any excuse really! And I found a great little cafe that did the most amazing soya lattes and was wonderful just to hang out in.

I was sitting there one day, looking out at the little cobbled streets with people cycling past on bikes, when this wave of gratitude crashed over me. This year alone I’ve spent ten weeks traveling, two of which have been holiday. And somehow I’ve managed to keep the business ticking over alongside.

“How lucky am I?” I found myself asking.

Some years ago I had a sense that I wanted to create things this way. To build in the flexibility to visit different places round the world while still being able to work. And bit by bit it has become so.

And I sat there just savoring a sense of how rich my life is and how blessed I feel.

Which in turn got me thinking about gratitude.

So, last week I was talking about integrity and how it’s a missing quality of our time. But, you know, I think gratitude belongs in the same bucket.

Heck, it was Thanksgiving Day in the US yesterday and, I don’t know about you, but I saw more evidence of consumerism in my email stream than I did about heartfelt thankfulness.

What has become of that built-in moment to pause and reflect on what’s good?

And it’s an interesting one. Some folks – like the positive psychologists – say that gratitude is something you can learn like a skill. Look at any of the popular happiness books and you’ll find lots of tools to get you practicing. Keeping a gratitude diary is a popular one.

But I wonder if that kind of thinking puts gratitude at the level of a technique, when actually I believe it’s available to us in every single moment. That morning in the coffee shop, I wasn’t using any gratitude tool to experience that wave of greatfulness. It just came.

Came because I was hanging out – physically and mentally – and had cleared the space for it.

In the coming weeks and months I’ll say more about creating a work and life that jives for you, about the business case for gratitude, and where gratitude really comes from. But for today I want to share this beautiful Tedx SF Talk from Louie Schwartzberg on the subject.

Enjoy!

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The Secret to Stress Free Work (It’s Not What You Think!)

2555332_mlOverwhelm.

It seems to come with the territory these days.

No matter what kind of work you do, there’s the propensity to feel beyond stressed about it.

What’s stressing you out?

Here are 3 examples I’ve heard recently:

  • My boss is a control freak. She’s micro-managing everything. It’s stressing me out.
  • I get more emails a day than I can handle, and I have to spend most of my time in meetings. I don’t feel like I’m getting to my real work and it’s driving me crazy.
  • I’ve hit a brick wall in my small business, and am not making the money I want to make. I’ve no idea what to do to turn the situation around and I’m drowning in panic and despair.

Does any of this sound familiar?

And, if so, what’s the secret to solving it?

It’s not what you’re thinking

Chances are you came to this page looking for a quick fix. Some reframes and clever “how to’s” to get you back on track.

I have no magic bullet to offer.

Instead, I’m going to invite you to step back and consider how your experience of life is created. Because it’s having this level of understanding that’s going to make the lasting difference.

Inside Out

Until now, pretty much everyone, including me, has worked on the assumption that the world works outside-in:

You affect me.

If you’re nice and treat me well, I’m happy.

If you’re nasty and behave badly, I’m not.

Our circumstances dictate our moods.

When everything is fine on the outside, we feel good.

When things are difficult, we feel bad.

Turns out that it doesn’t actually work this way.

Instead our ability to experience anything starts inside-out.

It’s through our powers of perception, and our brain, that we experience anything at all. In terms of pure cognition, everything out there is neutral. But in our minds, and thanks to thought, that we give things meaning. Good and bad.

Our feelings come from our thinking.

If we’re stressed or anxious, it’s because we’re having stressed or anxious thoughts. I know that it looks like your overwhelm is coming from your circumstances. But it isn’t.

It’s coming from whatever you are making of them.

Let’s look at this in the context of the three earlier examples.

The guy with the control freak boss?

Well, it looks like the boss’s micro-managing is causing the stress. But, ask a few more questions and you’ll understand that the source of the uncomfortable feelings is the guy’s own thinking. Which runs a bit like this: my boss is controlling me, therefore I can’t do things the way I want to do them. I’m looking stupid to my people and my colleagues. And because she’s my boss there’s little I can do to change the situation. Besides I don’t want to piss her off. So I feel totally helpless.

What would happen if this guy could see that his helpless feelings were coming from his helpless thinking?

The person overwhelmed by the sheer volume of his work?

In her case too it looks as if the workload is the cause of the problem. Dig further and you’ll hear: I could just ignore some of these emails but I hate people to think bad of me. And I could decline the invitation to a lot of the meetings but my colleagues will think it’s odd if I’m not there.

I know what my priorities are. But if I go after them in a real focused way, I’m afraid of being judged too single-minded. So I feel out of control.

What would happen to this woman if she could see that feeling out of control was coming from out of control thinking?

The small business owner who has hit a brick wall?

In this case it looks as if a downturn in the economy, or some loss of business may be to blame for the guy’s stress. Keep listening to what he says, however, and you’ll hear: I thought I had such a good idea for the business, but it’s just not catching on. And I’m feeling less enthused about it than I was in the beginning. I’m worried that I’ll never get past this and people will think that I’m a failure. Or that, if I change tack, they’ll think I’m flaky. I’m really feeling uncertain about things.

What would happen to this guy if he could see that feeling uncertain was coming from uncertain thinking?

Grasp the relationship between thinking and feeling, and you’re on your way to de-stressing.

Understand that you’ve not got a stress problem, you’ve got a thought problem, and you can begin to let it go. As I said in my habits post, our minds have a built in orientation to health. So you don’t need to overlay your stressful thought with anything else. You just need to notice you’re having it.

Your mind and your wisdom will then do the rest.

Insecurity

But it’s worth understanding why our minds generate such superstitious thinking.

In large part it comes from insecurity.

We’re so accustomed to believing that our happiness comes from outside of us, that that’s where we continue to look for it. The boss’s approval; our colleagues’ endorsement; the market’s backing.

We’ve forgotten that happiness is our innate nature. Just look at children.

However, as I once heard Syd Banks say, “Insecurity is the biggest game in life.” And I really think that’s true.

But what if you chose not to play it?

What if you chose to see that who you are, and your well-being aren’t dependent on anything outside of you? No matter what that is?

Sure, it doesn’t necessarily mean that anything on the outside changes.

But you change.

The less you’re thinking about anything, the calmer you’re able to be.

The more calm you are, the more resourceful.

And the more resourceful, the better and easier your results.

Results

Talking of results, let’s go back again to our three examples and see how these people fare when they realize the role their own psychology is playing in their experience of stress.

So, the person with the control freak boss understands that it’s his own helpless thinking that stressing him out. When he lets go of thinking, hence feeling, helpless, he sees ways he can work within the situation. He even develops some compassion for his boss which allows him to interact with her with less tension.

The girl overwhelmed with stuff has no less stuff to deal with. But because she’s understood how much her own mind is making up stories about what’s going on, she’s neutralized a lot of it. Allowing her to become far more attentive to what really matters.

The small business owner grounds himself in the understanding that, succeed or fail, his happiness is never in doubt. Then has an insight about a creative direction in which to move next. And the energy and confidence to run with it.

It’s not what you’re thinking?

Okay, maybe the title really was a play on words. Turns out stress is entirely about what you’re thinking.

Mastering that possibility, however, holds the key to you having a completely different experience of work.

And indeed of life.

I’d love to know what insights you have as you read this.

How it strikes you.

What is opens up for you.

Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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What If The Struggle For Worklife Balance Was Always Only Ever Inside Your Head?

Gear symbol in the head of a thinking silhouette woman conceptI suppose it’s why I ended up being so drawn to worklife writers and the whole worklife balance movement.

The quest to create a life that actually had some life in it, and wasn’t just all about work.

But I must admit that for me the whole thing has been a bit of a headfuck.

How as a professional person, with a deep sense of vocation, and a need to earn well, do you make life your number one priority?

Your well-being? Your happiness?

How do you dare, through one lens, let go of the grip that work has over us, create life on your terms and have faith you’ll be okay?

Or, through another lens, how can you dare be so selfish in a world where work is king?

Where the unwritten expectation is that you’re at your desk, virtual or not, and contactable 18 hours a day, 5 days a week, and sometimes at weekends too?

The Great Work Life Balance Hoax

Oh, I know there’s a ton of stuff out there about achieving that state. But as I’ve written before, I don’t really hold with the with the concept of balance – at least not in the way many of the worklife gurus talk about it. Bottom line: it’s a corporate idea that has adopted a new age word in the hope that it will be experienced as having holistic intentions. But its real objectives are to keep you in the system, whether that serves you or not.

And I’m not saying that employers can’t get a lot smarter at managing the pressure their people are under.

People are feeling stressed out.

But at the end of the day, I think the whole worklife thing goes a lot deeper than even the very best HR policies can ever cater for.

Because there is still such angst about it. For heaven’s sake, I experience it, and I’m self-employed.

WTF?!

The Challenge Of Making Work Fit Life

The dilemma for me goes like this:

If I throw myself entirely into my work, I can achieve loads, for sure. And, boy, because I love what I do, there’s a tendency in me to do just that.

But I then lose connection with the people in my life who matter to me.

My health suffers because things like my diet, exercise, rest and sleep all go tits up.

I end up resentful about just what work is doing to me and, paradoxically, my performance is not as strong overall as I like.

On the other hand, when I put life first, as I strive to do, I get caught in this place of tension.

That I’m somehow not being a proper “professional” because I’m making up my own work patterns.

That I’m phoney because I’m making client calls from one of my leisure travel destinations.

That any moment I’ll be exposed because I earn well in relation to the hours and time I put in.

Not that it stops me, but the whole time I have kind of felt like I’m running some kind of gauntlet. And I’ve assumed that that just came with the territory.

What If The Struggle Was Always Only Ever Inside Your Head?

But the other day I had this huge realisation.

All the feelings that I have of guilt, shame, feeling that I’m less-than?

What if I’d made them up?

What if I’d given something of myself over to some fantasy in my own head of how I imagined things were?

I don’t actually know if a corporate client calling me out of the blue at 10am on a Tuesday morning and finding me unavailable because I’m in the gym, or worse, still in pyjamas, would smile or frown.

The unexpected call is emotionally neutral. But I cringe at the thought of being judged for bunking off.

I don’t know whether my ducking out of a team dinner mid workshop because, as the coach, I feel the need for space and to rest is laughed at or not.

Again, the action is neutral. But I burn at the thought they think I’m a social wimp.

I don’t know whether the words I put out here impress you or not.

My posts are just me being me. But in the past at least, as I was writing last week, I have cared what you thought.

And people might frown, laugh at, or disregard me. Let’s face it, we all live in the same world view that puts more emphasis on what happens outside of us than on our own internal well-being.

But whether people do or don’t is not my business.

Only I can ever affect what I think and feel.

This challenge has been mine and mine alone. Because, no matter what else I make up, I’m actually pretty self-determining.

And thank you, God, that in our society, if we choose, we do have freedom to act. Much more freedom than I think we ever realise we have or give ourselves.

I cannot tell you how it has enhanced my sense of well-being since I had this revelation. Bizarrely, I’ve done less work in the last little while, but been more impactful and productive.

Less work, more productive

Take just writing this post. In the first instance, I sat down and the words wouldn’t come. Or rather, words came, but they weren’t forming in the way that reflected the knowing I was sitting with. For a while I persisted, all the time thinking, “I really must exercise today, but not until I get this post written. It has been over a week now since I wrote my last one, and I committed to turning up here more.”

Then I heard something deeper saying, “that’s bollocks. Nobody cares about any of this. And what if the best way to get the post written was to go exercise first?”

So I did. Beautiful autumn day here, so I eschewed the gym in favour of a walk. And it was just gorgeous to feel part of the whole countryside as its colours change, and the season makes its presence felt.

I got the first line for the post as I was walking. It just came. Once home the whole post wrote itself in about half an hour.

I’ve still really to get my head round the wider implications of all of this. But for now I just wanted to share it.

Does what I’m saying here resonate? What insights did it prompt in you as you read?