We are hosting a Spring Retreat on June 3rd-7th here at the Allsta Gård farm. The retreat is designed for professionals and leaders to step back and connect with what matters. It’s space to get in touch with yourself, your body, and what wants to emerge in your leadership and life.

In the hectic pace of everyday professional life, it can be hard to carve out the time and space required to actually feel and listen to yourself. By spending three full days in the tranquil countryside of Northern Sweden, you’ll have the chance to step into a different rhythm. 

There will be space to breathe, reflect, and let go. We’ll uncover some of the deeper emotions and messages that lie beneath the surface of your challenges. We’ll move our bodies and hands in meaningful ways on the farm. You’ll get an embodied experience of what it means to live (and lead) regeneratively. We’ll grapple with mystical teachings and practices that push the envelope of what modern society considers to be possible. And we’ll see what happens when we try to listen more deeply to our hearts and souls.

Throughout the retreat we will enjoy nourishing and nutritious meals, featuring organic ingredients from the garden as well as from other local producers.

If you feel called to this retreat, click here to read more info and apply.

The weather can be quite extreme up here in the north. This week the temperature dropped to -32°C. In late December there was an extreme storm that caused power outages for days. A week later one meter of snow fell overnight. 

I had expected the winter to be a time for contemplation and cozyness, in contrast to the intensity of the summer tourist season. This has proven to be partially true, but the winter also has an intensity of its own. Shoveling snow, brushing snow off solar panels and greenhouses, making sure that chickens are warm, and piling wood all take time and attention. Still, as the snow gently falls outside and fire crackles behind me, it feels like a good time to reflect and share a bit of what I’ve been up to over the past year. 

We moved into Allsta Gård on December 16th, 2024. Since then, it’s been a wild ride. We’ve continued with the Bed & Breakfast in the beautiful hand-crafted Eco House, which we’ve updated with our own touch. We’ve hosted group retreats, conferences and offsites, a winter café, vegetarian Christmas dinners, a Yellow event, solo weekend retreats, concerts, yoga massage sessions, and held workshops and family constellations. We’ve sold sourdough bread and pastries at local markets. We’ve sown, planted, and harvested vegetables. We set up bee hives with a local beekeeper. We built a mobile chicken wagon, bought 36 chickens, and built up an egg subscription business. We constructed a 52 square meter greenhouse to house chickens in the winter and vegetables in the summer. We made a new website (twice). And we’ve enjoyed the area’s stunning nature, gotten to know wonderful new friends and neighbors across all ages, and received no lack of support from our local communities. 

Alongside all of this, I have continued to run my coaching, therapy and speaking business. It certainly gives a nice contrast to the daily rhythm. And it’s the work that feeds my soul. But as you can imagine, doing all of this while also parenting a three-year old can be…quite a lot sometimes. 

At a friend’s wedding a decade ago, the mother of the bride advised the wedding couple to “learn to love the everyday chores” in her speech. I think of her words often. Some parts of running a farm and hospitality business are idyllic: harvesting vegetables, collecting fresh eggs, and welcoming excited guests from around the world. Other tasks are less glamorous: cleaning toilets, shoveling manure, and moving chicken wagons at 5am. 

After the first few months of idealizing everything, resistance began to creep in. Here I am cleaning toilets, with a university degree and a career working with big companies and leaders…and all of this to end up cleaning toilets and changing bedsheets? All of this to work harder than I’ve ever worked before and, on an hourly basis, earn less than ever? The temptation was to righteously claim that I was better than this. Resistance ran rife. Privilege, spoiledness, and ego-identifications were all right there, staring me straight in the face. 

With time and contemplation, these observations morphed into a shedding of layers of identifications and attachments. Like becoming a parent connects you with humanity in ways you could never have foreseen, so has running this place. I have a different understanding of, connection with, and respect for the millions of people who don’t sit in front of a computer all day doing “knowledge work”. You feel part of humanity, part of life in a different way when you’re more involved in the processes of what it takes to actually live in world. When you have to put wood in the furnace to heat your home, when you have to harvest vegetables to feed your family, when you have to empty the urine tank to fertilize the fields…everything just makes sense despite (or perhaps because of) the effort involved. In our case, many of these tasks are choices and not necessities, and we could revert to more commonly convenient methods of living in most cases. But as my teacher Thomas Hübl once said: we are not here in this life to be comfortable. 

Convenience can be a trap. It can be a way of separating oneself from life in the guise of having “made it”. Pleasure and enjoyment are wonderful things, but must they depend on a minimum of friction and engagement with life? (Conversely, keeping things difficult for the sake of it being difficult is also a trap, and sometimes a surprisingly alluring one.) Living here is a constant invitation to question and rethink what pleasure and enjoyment can be. It’s a daily practice—to enjoy and wholeheartedly embrace every task I undertake—and it’s one that I don’t always succeed with. But immediate success is not the point. 

When people visit us here, they often report of a deep joy that comes with helping out on the farm. Carrying wood, shoveling snow, harvesting food—it all invigorates people in quite profound ways. It’s clear there is an appreciation, and even a yearning, for these types of experiences: to get more in touch with the body and with physical, practical, purposeful life. Going to the gym just isn’t the same as chopping wood. I count myself lucky to be able to live in this way, and I am grateful to my former selves that made the choices that led us to being here. In the near future, we will be creating more opportunities for people to come and enjoy not only the tranquil beauty and farm-to-mouth food, but also the chance to get out of the mind and into the body, hands, and soil.

Our first year’s strategy was to say yes to everything. This second year is about asking ourselves deeply what we want and what we want this place to become. Rather than it being a continuation of what was here before, we will focus on what wants to happen here under our stewardship. What do our souls yearn to do, offer, and become in this context? This is very much a life’s work, but it’s the work of our life this coming year more than ever. 

You can follow along with what we’re up to at Allsta Gård here:

• www.allstagard.se
• www.instagram.com/allstagard
• www.facebook.com/allstagard

In my younger years, the day was an excuse to party. Since then, I haven’t taken part in the celebrations as I have mostly lived abroad. But apparently it is customary for someone from the community to hold a spring speech. As luck would have it, this year I was asked to hold the speech for the celebrations in our village of Bjärtrå.

Below follows a few clips of my coach/therapist/wanna-be-philosopher/aspiring-farmer’s attempt to honor the spring (01:00-04:55). A transcription of the full speech in English and Swedish can be found further below. 

There is much more to share about the beginning of our life up here at Allsta Gård at 62 degrees north. More will come in the weeks and months ahead. For now you can follow along with we’re up to on Instagram or Facebook.

Cheers to the Spring. 

English

I’d like to start to speak tonight about grammar. I was never been very fond of grammar, but in school there were still a few points that stuck. One of them was the difference between indefinite and definite form. “A tree” and “the tree”, for example. 

When I was asked to speak tonight, the following question was asked: “Can you imagine giving a spring speech?” Indefinite form. I therefore imagined other people would be giving speeches too. Several spring speeches, short and concise, without much thought required.

So you can understand my surprise when I saw posters in the village announcing that a certain new neighbor will be giving “the spring speech”. Definite form.

Regardless, it feels joyful to stand here today and talk with all of me. Me, Jana, and Rio moved in to Allsta Gård on December 16th. Even though there has been lots to do and learn (bed and breakfast, café, market gardening, hens, wood stoves, pellet stoves, getting yoga massage and sourdough bread enterprises up and running, getting started at preschool…the list goes on) it has still felt fun. And it feels like home already. That is in no small part due to so many of you who have visited and welcomed us in different ways. We will be forever grateful for that.

So, the spring speech. What is a spring speech? I don’t have the faintest clue. When I was a teenager, Walpurgis was mostly about drinking in the bushes. Since then I’ve mostly lived abroad, so I’ve never seen a spring speech. I have decided to interpret the task freely. I will talk a little bit about the spring what we can learn from it.

When I think of spring, I think of: liveliness, blooming, expression, the beautiful, expansion, connection, hope, light and future. I find it fascinating that precisely the same concepts are important for us humans too, which becomes very clear in my job as a coach and therapist. People want to feel alive, light, hopeful, connected, able to self-express, and be a part of one’s surroundings.

So tonight I will talk about three themes about spring, from the perspective of biology and agriculture and what that can mean for us as humans.

—

1) Spring is about life and liveliness

Flowers become flowers, grass grows, the snow melts away. When we think of spring, we think a lot about what is visible. But what we are able to see is dependent on what is not visible. While the snow lies on the ground during the winter, seeds have been lying under the surface of the ground. A plant does not just appear like that, but is dependent on what has come before.

I have heard of places where oak trees haven’t grown for decades or even centuries. Then you take a group of pigs there, and all of a sudden oak trees start growing there. The fact that pigs stomping around and do there things somehow brings buried acorns to life. The pigs are a signal to the whole system that it’s time to wake up and expand.

So we can ask ourselves the question: How can we become a pig in our own lives? How can we awaken what is beneath the surface, waiting for the right opportunity and the right conditions to emerge?

—

2) Spring is about opening up and reaching out

You can imagine a flower or a tree that opens up in all sorts of ways during spring, stretching outward and upward.

For me, it reflects what we as a family have experienced here since we moved here in December. So many people have opened up and reached out, everything from old friends to Hans and Inger, the previous owners, to neighbors and other people in the community. It has contributed to us feeling welcome and at home so quickly. 

I have also heard from a few people that they have perhaps driven past our home and thought “I’d like to stop by and say hello…but I don’t want to disturb, I don’t want to intrude”. I’ve had similar thoughts myself many times in my life. But these anecdotes have provided an important lesson for me today. Every time we had a visitor over the past couple of months, it has been incredibly nourishing. Regardless of whether we were busy moving in or cooking, the fact that someone opened up and reached out a hand enriched our day and our sense of being where we are.

So the spring invites us to ask ourselves: How can we listen to the signs of spring within, and open up and reach out to those around us?

—

3) Spring is a symphony, not isolated solo acts

In spring, it is easy to think about the individual things that stand out. The single beautiful flower, or the single magnificent tree. But that is only one way of looking at it. The flower also depends on so much more than the flower itself. It’s dependent on the soil and minerals. It’s dependent on the microorganisms and fungal networks. It’s dependent on the ecosystem at large and the exchange with animal species that flow through it. The flower is not just one thing. It is part of a whole symphony.

These two perspectives reflect our way of seeing reality. We have two brain hemispheres. The left hemisphere isolates and breaks things down into parts so that we can manipulate and affect our world with tools. The right hemisphere sees harmony, context, connections and wholes, and understands metaphor and poetry. It is seductive, in our culture particularly, to isolate things and break them down into their component parts. But we cannot respond appropriately in our complex world nor can we experience beauty if we cannot learn to see and relate to the whole.

This applies not only to space, but also to time. The flower depends on what has happened before its current existence: the winter, previous seasons and years, and all that has happened before. This also applies to the place where we live, for example. That we can live at the beautiful place we call home depends, among other things, on all the decisions that have been made by previous owners and people who have influenced it, for which we are incredibly grateful.

This stance means that we all have not only an opportunity but also a responsibility and even an obligation to be attuned to future people and ecosystems when we make decisions today. As difficult as it may be, without such a stance we cannot contribute to creating a more beautiful world.

So a final question that spring invites us to consider is: How can we tend to not only the individual things we see, but also the larger wholes that we are all a part of?

—

I’d like to close the spring speech with a few words from the famous Sufi poet Rumi. He said: “Don’t turn your head. Keep looking at the bandaged place. That is where the light gets in”.

Again, when spring comes, it is easy to focus on what stands out: the flowers in bloom, the colors and the expressions that stand out to the naked eye. But then we often forget what is beneath the surface. It’s easy to turn away from that which needs a little more care, closeness, and love. But spring calls us to make room for these parts, to make room for what we are in too much of a hurry to look at or that we distract or numb ourselves from. Because it is right there, in those dark and covered places, where true growth, openness, and love emerge.

So with that, I would like to thank you for attention and care here today. I see this as the beginning of a conversation that can continue both over a hot dog here tonight and at other occasions in the future. Thank you and Happy Walpurgis.

Svenska

Jag tänkte börja med att prata lite grann om grammatik. Jag har aldrig tyckt särskilt mycket om grammatik särskilt mycket. Men i skolan så fanns det några punkter som fastnade ändå. En av dem var skillnaden mellan bestämd och obestämd form. “Ett träd” och “trädet”, till exempel. 

När jag blev tillfrågad att prata ikväll, så ställdes frågan: “Kan du tänka dig att hålla ett vårtal?” Obestämd form. Då tänkte jag att det fanns nog andra människor som också skulle hålla ett vårtal. Flera vårtal, korta och koncisa, utan särskilt mycket tanke som krävdes.

Så ni kan ju förstå min förvåning när man går på stan och ser affischer som annonserar att en viss nyinflyttad bybo ska hålla “vårtalet”. Bestämd form. 

Men jag står här idag och det känns ändå väldigt roligt att få prata med er och träffa er alla. Jag, Jana, och Rio flyttade in den 16 december och trots att det har varit mycket att göra och lära sig (5-6 olika typer av verksamheter, café, bed and breakfast, odling, djur, vedpanna, pelletspanna, få igång yogamassage och surdegsbröd, skola in på förskola och allting annat) så har det ändå känts väldigt roligt. Och det känns som hemma redan. Det är mycket på grund av många av er som har hälsat på och välkomnat på olika sätt och bara varit allmänt trevliga. Det kommer vi evigt vara tacksamma för.

Men det är det här med vårtal då. Vad är ett vårtal? Jag vet inte. När jag var tonåring, så handlade Valborg mest om att dricka i buskarna. Sedan dess har jag mest bott utomlands, så jag vet inte vad det här går ut på. Så jag har gjort det till min egen tolkning.jag kommer att prata lite grann om våren, och mitt sätt att se på våren och vad vi kan lära oss av den. 

För er som inte vet så har hamnat här efter en lång resa. Ett år har vi rest runt i landet för att leta en plats där vi kan kalla hem men också ett ställe där vi kan arbeta och bjuda in människor för olika tillställningar. Så här i början på våren kan så känns väldigt passande att vara med en stor grupp människor och prata om det som komma skall. 

När jag tänker på våren, så tänker jag på: livlighet, det som blommar, att komma till uttryck, det vackra, expansion, hopp, ljus och framtid. Jag tycker att det är fascinerande att precis samma begrepp är viktiga för oss människor också, vilket blir väldigt tydligt i mitt jobb som coach och terapeut. Man vill känna ljus och hopp, man vill känna sig levande, man vill uttrycka sig, och vara en del av ens omvärlden. 

Så ikväll kommer jag prata om ett tre teman om våren, både utifrån biologi och lantbruk och vad det kan innebära för oss som människor. 

—

1) Våren handlar om liv och livlighet

Blommor blir blommor, gräs kommer fram, snön smälter bort. När vi tänker på våren tänker vi mycket på det som syns. Men det som vi kan se är beroende på det som inte syns. Snön har legat över vintern, fröna har legat under markytan. En växt uppenbarar sig inte bara sådär, utan är beroende på det som har kommit förut. 

Jag har hört platser där det inte vuxit några ekträd överhuvudtaget på decennier eller årtionden. Sen tar man ett gäng grisar dit, och plötsligt så växer det ekträd. Bara av att grisarna går och nafsar och trampar runt så väcks begravna ekollon till liv. Grisarna blir som en signal till att vakna och expandera. 

Så vi kan ställa oss själva frågan: Hur kan man bli ett gris i sitt eget liv? Hur kan man väcka det som finns under ytan som bara väntar på rätt tillfälle och de rätta förutsättningar för att komma fram? 

—

2) Våren handlar att öppna upp sig och sträcka ut sig

Man kan tänka sig en blomma eller ett träd, som under våren öppnar upp sig på alla möjliga sätt och sträcker på sig utåt och uppåt. 

För mig speglar det det vi som familj har upplevt här sedan vi flyttade in i december. Så många människor har öppnat sig och sträckt ut sig, allt ifrån gamla vänner till Hans och Inger, de tidiga ägarna, till grannar och andra lokalbor. Det har bidragit till att vi känner oss välkomna och att vi känner oss som hemma redan nu. 

Jag har också hört från några att man har kanske kört förbi och tänkt “jag vill hälsa på, men jag vill inte störa, jag vill inte tränga mig på”. Så tänker jag också i mitt eget liv ibland. Men dessa anekdoter har varit en viktig lärdom för mig. För jag kan garantera er att varje gång vi har fått besök, så har det känns så viktigt och bra. Oavsett om vi de gångerna var upptagna med att flytta eller laga mat eller ta hand om någon på bushumör så berikade mötet vår dag, att någon öppnade sig och sträckte ut en hand. 

Så det är också en fråga vi kan ställa oss. Hur kan vi lyssna på vårens tecken och öppna upp oss och sträcka oss ännu mer mot människor runt omkring oss? 

—

3) Våren är inte enstaka solonummer, utan en samlad symfoni

På våren är det lätt att tänka på de enstaka sakerna som sticker ut. Den enstaka blomman som är så fin, eller det enstaka trädet. Men det är bara ett sätt att se på det, för blomman beror på så mycket mer än bara blomman i sig. Den beror på jorden och mineralerna. Den beror på mikroorganismerna och svampnätverken. Den beror på ekosystemet och utbytet med djurarter som finns runt omkring. Blomman är inte bara en sak, den är en del av en samlad symfoni. 

Dessa två perspektiv speglar vår sätt att se verkligheten. Vi har två hjärnhalvor. Den vänstra hjärnhalvan bryter ner saker till beståndsdelar och isolerar så att vi kan manipulera vår omvärld med verktyg och handlingskraft. Den högra hjärnhalvan ser harmoni, kontext, sammanhang och helheter. Den förstår metafor och poesi. Det är så lätt hänt att man försöker isolera saker och bryta ner dem till beståndsdelar. Men vi kan in förstå vår komplexa omvärld och vi kan inte uppleva det som är vackert om vi inte kan lära oss att se och relatera till helheten. 

Detta gäller inte bara i rum, men också tid. Blomman är beroende på det som har hänt tidigare: under vintern, tidigare årstider och allt som har hänt förut. Det gäller också platsen där vi bor, till exempel. Att vi kan bo på den fina platsen där vi bor idag beror bl a på alla beslut som har tagits tidigare ägare och människor som har påverkat platsen, vilket vi är otroligt tacksamma för. 

Detta innebär att vi har inte bara en möjlighet men också ett ansvar och till och med en skyldighet att värna om framtida generationer och människor och ekosystem när vi tar beslut idag. Svårt må det få vara, men utan det kan vi inte bidra till skapa en vackrare värld. 

Så det är också en fråga som våren ställer oss: Hur kan vi värna om inte bara de enstaka sakerna framför oss, men också de större helheterna som vi alla är en del av?

—

Jag vill avsluta med ett par ord från den kända poeten Rumi. Han sa: ”Vänd inte bort ditt ansikte. Fortsätt att se på det plåstrade eller övertäckta stället. Det är där som ljuset kommer in.” 

Igen, när våren kommer är det lätt att fokusera på det som sticker ut: blommorna som blommar, färgerna, nyanserna som vi ser med blotta ögat. Men då glömmer ofta bort det som finns under ytan, det som behöver lite mer omtanke, närhet, och kärlek, som vi har tryckt bort eller avdomnat oss själva ifrån. Men våren kallar oss till att ge plats till dom här delarna, att ge plats för det som vi har för bråttom för att titta på eller som vi distraherar oss ifrån. För att det är just där, i de övertäckta ställena, där den sanna tillväxten, kärleken och öppenheten finns.

Så med det vill jag tacka för mig. Tack för att ni har lyssnat. Jag ser det här som början på en konversation som kan fortsätta både över en korv här ikväll och vid senare tillfällen framöver. Tack och Glad Valborg!

Earlier this week, my partner Jana and I received the keys to Allsta Gård. It’s an integrated Bed & Breakfast, event venue, and organic farm outside of Kramfors, Sweden.

It’s slightly baffling that we’re finally here. It’s been quite the ride.

Almost one year ago, we decided to leave the settled normalcy of city life in Stockholm. We felt the intuitive call of the future: A place where we could call home, but also where we could live out our work and interests fully. A place to bring people together to heal and evolve. A place for our son to grow up with a daily connection to nature. A place to connect with and even regenerate the land. A place to contribute to weaving a cultural fabric of connection, restoration, and life.

We started searching in August 2023 for a property. Six months later we sold our Stockholm apartment – to go all-in for the search but also to learn some of the skills we would eventually require. This brought us to a farm at the stunning Värmländsnäs peninsula in western Sweden and the equally stunning Åredalen up north. We learned a lot about ourselves, the country, and what the countryside has to offer in the process.

But this autumn, coming up on a year of searching, our patience was starting to wear thin. At some point, something in me gave up. Or rather, something in me let go. I was tired of trying to brute force our way forward. And it was around that time, as is so often the case, that the opportunity revealed itself. One late October day, a sequence of seemingly chance events brought us to Allsta Gård. A couple of weeks later we had signed the papers to take it over.

We couldn’t have imagined that this would be where we ended up. At first glance, you might think that it’s the middle of nowhere: an almost 5-hour drive from Stockholm, and 25-minutes to the closest proper town (Kramfors) with less than 5,000 people. But as we’ve learned about the country through our year’s travels, there is an abundance of culture and connection and if you only take the time to look. The farm is right next to Höga Kusten (the High Coast), a beautiful stretch of coast home to world-renowned hiking trails. There are plenty of craftsmen and thriving local businesses in the village, including a famous whisky distillery. There are regular train connections and even daily airplane flights to Stockholm 15-minutes away. And it’s home to an inspiring landscape that forms a fitting backdrop for everything we want to create.

We’re lucky to have the chance to build upon a solid foundation. The previous owners, Ingrid and her late husband Hans, made Allsta Gård into somewhat of a local destination. People from near and far have come to stay in the B&B building that is built with ecological materials and to enjoy the homegrown organic breakfasts.

Now it is our turn to take the reins and evolve it further. We have a long list of ideas and plans which include: Continuing to run the B&B with local produce. Hosting and running events and retreats within personal and spiritual development, bodywork, and art. Welcoming clients for in-person coaching and thai yoga massage. Hosting writing residences, leadership retreats, and Yellow events. Offering events for the local community, like concerts, talks, men’s and women’s groups, family constellations, and pizza nights. Continuing to grow vegetables, fruit, and berries. One day integrating sheep or other animals to add to the handful of hens and contribute to regenerating the land. And eventually even restoring the older buildings to host larger events and maybe even an extra-curricular “school for life” for children.

Somehow, I will also (try to) juggle all of this with continuing to run my coaching and therapy practice. Yes, we’re going to be busy. We have more than enough of ideas to last a couple of lifetimes. We will be happy if we realize only a fraction of what we imagine. But this is the adventure that is calling us. We follow that call humbly and excitedly.

We have not made this move to be isolated in the woods, quite the contrary. We hope that Allsta Gård becomes place that bubbles with people and with life. We see a future where people come and go at different durations, taking the chance to leave an imprint while leaving affected in turn. So we’re open to ideas on how people would like to visit and be involved in the months and years to come. 

For now, though, our focus is on more immediate concerns. Boxes need to be unpacked, hens need to be fed, and snow needs to be shovelled. There is much to do, and there is so much to learn. And that is a wonderful thing. 

You can follow what we’re up to at Allsta Gård here:

• Instagram
• Facebook
• Newsletter

You can even see this in quips like “happy wife, happy life”. I burst with laughter when I heard that the first time. It seemed so uncomfortably true!

Now, I feel differently. “Happy wife, happy life” is a condescending stance, to both parties involved.

This might seem like a strange thing to claim. What could be wrong with trying to make a loved one happy?

The words of the modern mystic Thomas Hübl can help shed light on this. A couple of years ago he said something in a lecture that rocked me to my core:

“If I can’t disappoint you, I can’t truly love you.”

This can take some unpacking to fully grasp.

When we are full selves, we will inevitably stretch other people. We will trigger them, annoy them, or disappoint them at times. We can never be fully aligned in our needs and wants with another person. Occasionally we will push people’s buttons. This is unavoidable.

If our focus is on making others happy, then we will twist and contort ourselves into smaller versions of ourselves to prevent that kind of disappointment from happening. We will define the boundaries of our permitted behaviors according to what prevents the other person from being trigged.

This is painful and tiring. It takes energy to keep our authentic responses at bay, and it hurts the soul not to be real. What’s more, it deprives the other person from getting to know our full selves.

Also, if we focus on making others happy, then we are depriving the other person from experiencing the full range of their own emotional life. We are preventing them the chance to be angry, sad, hurt, disappointed. Although it doesn’t necessarily seem like it, we are trying to make sure that they remain smaller than they are.

Only when I allow myself to disappoint you can I truly love you.

When I try to make you happy, I am attaching my own happiness to your happiness.

When I try to make you happy, I am minimizing myself in order to appear in a particular way, so that you will be happy, so that I can feel OK.

When I try to make you happy, I am preventing you from seeing the full me.

When I try to make you happy, I am not respecting the validity of your human experience. I am treating you like someone who needs to be made happy.

When I try to make you happy, I am saying that you are not OK as you are.

When I try to make you happy, I am not allowing you to be the full you.

When I try to make you happy, I am making both of us unhappy.

Occasional disappointment and annoyance in other people is the consequence of allowing ourselves to be fully ourselves.

For those of us who grow up in environments where all emotions are welcomed, seen, and respected, we learn this automatically. I do not have to define myself by how others respond to my aliveness. I don’t have to prejudge or constrain myself. People respect my authentic expression. I learn that I can be all of me in all of my glory; how others react is about them, not me. I also know that if I trigger other people, then we will find ways to repair the rupture and emerge from it even stronger together.

But for those of us who grow up in environments where certain emotions are judged as annoying or too much, we learn a different lesson. We learn that it’s better to hold back and push down emotions that aren’t approved of. We learn to judge ourselves for our unpermitted emotions, and start to live behind a mask of judgement, shame, and resentment. We become internally terrorized by the slightest threat of disruption in the relationship, and become masters at walking on eggshells without a sound.

Yet all the while we think we are being empathic and morally good. I’m focusing on the other person’s happiness after all, aren’t I?!

Despite appearances, trying to make others happy is ultimately a narcissistic stance. It’s an attempt to ensure our own OKness at the cost of our own and others’ fullness. Because we don’t know how to be OK with relational disruption, we try to prevent others from feeling anything that could trigger that. It looks like it’s all about you, but it’s actually all about me using you for me.

Integrating and resolving these patterns is therefore crucial for our culture. Whether in schools, families, companies, or cultures at large, when we (consciously or unconsciously) teach our children to make other people happy, then we are unwittingly planting the seeds of an even more narcissistic future to come.

The alternative to trying to make others happy is to play a different game altogether. It’s about creating the conditions to welcome our aliveness, whatever emotional flavor that might entail. And it involves developing the capacity to stay – to stay grounded, present, connected, even just to physically stay in place — when tensions rise between us.

Rather than focusing on happiness as an outcome, we can set our attention and intention on how we want to be disposed toward life.

I can choose to bring a loving disposition to all of my interactions.

I can choose to honor the energy of my authentic responses in every moment.

I can choose to be here with all of me, always.

Whether our dispositional choices lead to happiness or not is not the point, nor is it ours to say. Life is far too complex for us to know what the outcomes of our actions will be. As the classic mystic Hindu text the Bhagavad Gita says, we should “perform every action sacramentally…and be free from all attachment to results.”

I can only set the intention to orient towards life in a way that honors the life flowing through me in each moment. The rest, as they say, is up to the gods.

It started as an intellectual curiosity, first inspired by Will Rolph’s work with Two Fields, a regenerative oil olive producer. In an early Yellow session he explored regenerative agriculture through the lens of the question: “What brings us alive?” In the years since, I have spent days and weeks at a time on farms throughout Sweden, getting my hands in the soil and getting rammed by rams (literally). I am doing what I can to get a first-hand picture of what it takes to help steward thriving ecosystems. 

This might seem strange for someone who works with people as a coach and therapist. I’ll admit that I am as surprised as anyone else. But in my explorations so far, one thing has become clear: human development and ecosystem development are two sides of the same coin. Both are ultimately questions of aliveness. 

Regenerative agriculture is a stance toward life. It’s an approach of working with an ecosystem that seeks to increase its vitality over time. 

This is how I see my work with people, too. It’s about supporting people to increase their sense of aliveness. It’s about creating the conditions for people to come home to themselves and thereby be more of themselves in the world. 

The more fully we are ourselves, the more fully we are alive. 

Regenerative agriculture does not consist of prescriptive methods or practices. It’s an applied philosophy, where everything is contextual and nothing is set in stone.  

If a practitioner helps to increase the vitality over time in their socio-and environmental ecosystem (referred to as their “holistic context”), then their work can be considered to be regenerative. If vitality decreases in their holistic context over time, it is degenerative. 

Most conventional agricultural is firmly degenerative. You see this when driving on highways and passing bare and exposed fields. When farmland is stripped bare, photosynthesis will struggle, which means life will struggle. Practices like monoculture crops, extensive tilling, pesticide use, and the eradication of animal and plant diversity are often (but not always) sure ways to diminish the flourishing of life. These practices allow for short-term productivity gains, but lead to disastrous long-term consequences, including soil erosion, flooding risks, lack of carbon sequestering, biodiversity loss, and reductions in the nutritional density of our food.

When you try to separate, control, and dominate nature, you might be able to squeeze a few extra barrels and years out of the land, but eventually, it will give up. You cannot dominate your way into long-term thriving of an ecosystem. 

The same is true of ourselves as human beings. When we try to control our wills into submission with judgement and pressure, we are doing long-term damage no matter how “productive” we might think we are in the moment. When we try to force ourselves to be something we are not, we are squeezing the life out of our very being.

Vitality and aliveness can seem like difficult words to define. But we know it when we see it, and we know it when we feel it. 

When you feel alive, there’s a sense of expansiveness and connection. You have access to clarity and insight. There’s gratitude and excitement for what each moment brings. Choices feel obvious. Everything flows naturally. You feel aligned with yourself and with the movement of life. 

On the flipside, experiences of lifelessness are just as easy to identify. There’s a sense of stuckness and inertia. Everything feels effortful. Resistance and obstruction dominate your experience. You feel depleted with no access to spark or joy. Choices feel impossible. Ideas are hard to come by. Everything feels frozen, hard, and forced. 

We feel drawn to aliveness, whether we come across it in a person, a landscape, or a culture. In a vital landscape you can feel the richness of the environment affecting you. You feel connected and settled in your bones. 

Unfortunately, many of us have grown up in cultures that are chronically lifeless. Dehumanizing work, excessive technology usage, and unnecessary bureaucracy are just a couple of ways in which lifelessness is institutionalized in our society.

This state of affairs might seem normal, but it is not the way things can or should be. Life does not want to be lifeless. Life wants to beget more life. Life is the process of becoming becoming, as Kevin Kelly says.

When we thwart the flow of life and try to control it into submission, we pay the price. Symptoms ranging from a sense of difficulty and stuckness to physical illnesses will emerge. When we go against the flow of life, the Nature of Things, what the Taoists call the Tao, we will suffer. One could even say that going against life is what suffering means.  

As it says in the classic fourth-century mystic text Tao Te Ching: 

Those who try to control…
go against the direction of the Tao.

…

When man interferes with the Tao, 
the sky becomes filthy,
the earth becomes depleted,
the equilibrium crumbles,
creatures become extinct.

Our tendency to limit our aliveness is tragic yet understandable. 

When we grow up in contexts that don’t allow us to be ourselves, we are forced to make a choice. Either we try in earnest to be ourselves and face exclusion and judgement, or we turn down the dial of our authentic expression in the hope of belonging to the group.

Most, if not all of us, choose the second option. We learn to keep our mouth shut to stay out of trouble. We learn to hold back our anger to keep the peace. We learn to suppress our own needs to not be annoying or demanding. We make the necessary yet heartbreaking tradeoff of giving up our aliveness in exchange for the safety and belonging we require.

Over decades, these strategies become crystallized in frozen patterns of behaviors, feelings, and thoughts. We tell ourselves it’s better to stay hidden in the shadows, and that we don’t deserve to be seen. We numb our emotions and bodies, reducing the amount of lived sensation we have to tolerate. We buckle down and “work hard” without ceasing, in the belief that the more we achieve, the more “goodness” we can accumulate, all in the hope of one day finally being accepted. 

Clearly, this is a trap. No one can accept us in ways that truly matter other than ourselves. And “working hard” is a relationship with oneself defined by ceaseless pressure and judgement, under the trappings of capitalistic virtue. Exhaustion and alienation are the inevitable results. It’s the equivalent of plowing your fields to death in an effort to be more productive. There might be short-term gains, but in the long-term it spells ruin. 

The remedy is not to force oneself to change nor to judge oneself as wrong. This would simply be a repetition of the prevailing patterns. Instead, regeneration is a path of gentle and compassionate inquiry. It includes recognizing all the ways in which we obstruct our aliveness, and then feeling the inevitable pain of living under such conditions. It’s a process of making the unconscious conscious, and noticing how we put a lid on our spontaneous expression. It’s about listening to the body, heart, and soul and letting our inner voices speak. 

By listening deeply, without trying to change anything, regenerative change organically unfolds.

The main focus of regenerative farmers is to increase soil health. They see crops and meat not as the primary output of their operations, but as beneficial byproducts. The focus is on cultivating the conditions for life; productive output takes secondary fiddle. But luckily, in so doing, productive output will typically be greater than could be imagined beforehand. You do what you can to remove obstacles, then you step back and allow the intelligence of life to unfold. 

There is an opportunity here for leaders to work in the same way and become conduits of increased vitality in their organizations. By meeting and transforming their own lifelessness, they can set examples for others to follow. They can help their teams to become curious about any stuckness they notice in themselves or the team, and then use those fragmented places as opportunities for expansion of life. They can show what the true hard work of mastery looks like by demonstrating dedication to their craft without compromising the needs of themselves or others. By focusing on creating the conditions for life to thrive, they can achieve more by shifting their attention to the “soil health” of the organization rather than its productive output.

Just as a regenerative farmer will likely adhere to the adage “Don’t disturb the soil”, a regenerative leader will likely say “Don’t disturb the people.” This is not a blind and laissez-faire abandonment of responsibility. It’s a stance of maintaining continuity of contact with their holistic context without unnecessary intervention.

As the Tao Te Ching asks: 

Can you love people and lead them
without imposing your will?
Can you deal with the most vital matters
by letting events take their course?
Can you step back from your own mind
and thus understand all things?

Giving birth and nourishing, 
having without possessing, 
acting with no expectations, 
leading and not trying to control: 
this is the supreme virtue.

…

The Tao nourishes by not forcing. 
By not dominating, the Master leads.

Biologically, increased vitality and aliveness is what it means to be more healthy and productive. 

Psychologically, increased vitality and aliveness is what it means to experience well-being and flourishing. 

The same is true in so-called spiritual matters.

Spiritually, increased vitality and aliveness is what it means to be spiritually aligned and connected.

The more we are alive, the more we are aligned with that which religious traditions have referred to as God or the Divine. As the second-century St. Irenaeus of Lyon said: “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.” 

The path to the Divine is inward, and the more integrated we can become with ourselves and our own aliveness, the closer we experience the sacred nature of Being. “When you’re together with yourself,” says the modern mystic Brother David Steindl-Rast, “you are together with that which people have traditionally called God. … God is that with whom or with which we are together when we are together. When we find our heart, that is where we are, together.”

From whichever dimension we look at it, creating the conditions for life to thrive is a universal longing and a powerful force. Unleashing that power requires us to allow the depths of our heart to be heard. Getting in touch with our deepest humanity is what allows us to feel more connected with our greatest possibility.

When we are in harmony with ourselves, we are in harmony with the Tao: 

In harmony with the Tao,
the sky is clear and spacious, 
the earth is solid and full,
all creatures flourish together,
content with the way they are,
endlessly repeating themselves, 
endlessly renewed.

Life wants to renew. Life wants to regenerate. Living in harmony with life, with the Tao, is how we play our part in a regenerative symphony that is desperate to burst through the seams, always knocking at our door. 

When we are fully ourselves, we are simultaneously, and quite magically, allowing everything we encounter to be more of itself, too. Allowing ourselves to be fully alive is an energetic invitation, a granting of implicit permission to everything we meet to do the same in kind. 

By nourishing our own soil, we become a walking fertilizer in the world. With intention and grace, life comes back to life – a process to which the only appropriate response is to stand back in wonder and awe. 

We tend to the soil, watch life unfold, and bow. 

When I present my views, there is one particular idea that always seems to spark discussion. This has happened enough times that I thought it would be worth sharing here, too.

In short: The notion of “stress management” is a false promise. And “stress management techniques” (like physical exercise, cold showers, and ice baths) can be more of a drug than a remedy.

To explain why, it can be helpful to think of the nervous system as a container. This container can process a certain amount of internal activation. Under some conditions, however, more activation builds up in the nervous system than we have the capacity to digest. This is what we typically call being stressed. If we then go for a run, it gives our body a chance to release much of that activation.

This sounds great in principle. But it does nothing to address why the stress and activation arises in the first place. And the release itself can become an addiction. If when I feel stressed I go for a run, I will feel better short-term, but eventually I will get stressed again, so I will have to go for a run again…the cycle simply repeats without anything becoming sustainably different. Exercise becomes a drug like any other.

I know this from personal experience. The period in my life when I stressed myself the most was also the period I worked out the most. Going to the gym felt necessary to discharge all of the stress and pressure I was putting myself under.

There is a time and a place for doing what’s needed to get through the day. And physical exercise and ice baths will no doubt increase a baseline capacity of tolerating a certain amount of activation.

But no matter how much you work out and no matter how many ice baths you take, it won’t do anything to address the underlying triggers. If you feel that you can’t say no, if you put pressure on yourself to be perfect, if run away from conflict…these are the triggers that ignite deeper layers of unmanageable activation that we call stress. No amount of physical exercise will be able to dissolve these emotional sources.

The only sustainable way of addressing stress is to dive into it. When stress arises, you follow the triggers to their roots. You become aware of how stress lives in you and you identity the situations that are triggering the activated response. Then you try to understand and resolve what those triggers are about. You view triggers as generous invitations for your continued evolution.

By doing the work to integrate and deactivate these triggers, you increase your capacity to stay grounded in more situations. This inner work can consist of contemplation, conversations, therapy, coaching, group work…the list is endless. In workshops I guide teams through several “collective trigger deactivation” practices they can use to process stress in more productive and sustainable ways.

Whatever the format, we can’t do it alone. When we stress ourselves, a large part of the stress comes from the belief that we have to deal with it by ourselves. The mere act of reaching out can be a big step in itself.

If we try to run away from stress, we will keep running forever.

If we instead turn toward what triggers our stress, we give ourselves the chance to truly evolve.

Download (PDF)

We find ourselves in a “time between worlds” – an epoch in which the old paradigm is cracking and new horizons beckon from beyond (Stein, 2019). In such transformational times, leaders face the challenge of how to provide direction, clarity, and inspiration in a world that is falling apart.

Within the current paradigm, the go-to solution in such predicaments has been to improve logical reasoning capabilities and to accumulate more information. Epistemologically, so-called objective facts, data, and “irreducible brute matter” (Whitehead, 1967) have been prioritized by the post-modern materialist worldview. The modus operandi is to expand frontiers and achieve growth and progress above all else (McGilchrist, 2021). A utilitarian ethics has followed, which, exacerbated by technology, has positioned every choice as a means of achieving other instrumental ends (Schindler, 2018; Tyson, 2014).

Many are beginning to sense the limits of the prevailing paradigm. Crises ranging from the mental health crisis (Evans et al., 2018) and the meaning crisis (Vervaeke, Mastropietro, & Miscevic, 2017) to the overarching meta-crisis (Rowson, 2021) are making themselves known. Clearly, the ontologies and capacities that have us got us “here” won’t get us “there”. More effective and appropriate ways of being and knowing are called for in leadership and beyond.

Since the Enlightenment, concepts like “feeling” and “embodied” have been deemed irrelevant obstructions or subjective illusions (McGilchrist, 2021). However, thanks to developments in cognitive and complexity sciences, feelings are coming to be considered as prerequisites for effective action within complex adaptive systems. 4E cognitive science has demonstrated the inextricability of embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended capacities with cognitive reasoning (Newen, De Bruin, & Gallagher, 2018). Complexity experts describe emotions and feelings as “warm data” (Bateson, 2021) and the “dynamical patterns” (Hufendiek, 2016) that allow a system to be sensed from “within”, rather than talking “about” it from a distance (Bateson, 2021; Scharmer, 2009). Emotions are described as “forms of judgment” (Nussbaum, 2004) that open the possibility of “attending to the possible relational processes within [a] system and between that system and its “environment/s”” (Bateson, 2021). Slowly but surely, academics and practitioners are coming to the realization of what has been unquestioned knowledge in many cultures since the dawn of time: feelings are an inextricable part of what it means to be a living being (Salami, 2020). As neuroscientist Antonio Damasio (2017) writes:

“Feelings accompany the unfolding of life in our organisms, whatever one perceives, learns, remembers, imagines, reasons, judges, decides, plans, or mentally creates. Regarding feelings as occasional visitors to the mind […] does not do justice to the ubiquity and functional importance of the phenomenon. […] There is no being, in the proper sense of the term, without a spontaneous mental experience of life, a feeling of existence. The ground zero of being corresponds to a deceptively continuous and endless feeling state.”

Clearly, a life without feelings is not a life at all. Being able to feel is very much what being and living entails in the first place. Emotions are not an add-on, but are an indispensable part of how we make our way through the world. They are necessary both to what are considered the “soft” skills of relating and communicating as well as the “harder” skills of analysis and decision making (McGilchrist, 2009). Contrary to many assumptions of modernity, the structure of emotion has been shown to be prior to the structure of thought (Stein, 2018; Damasio 1994). Emotions and feelings are prerequisites, not obstacles, for rational analysis and decision-making (McGilchrist, 2009; Mercier & Sperber, 2017). Without feelings there is nothing that gives weight to the options on life’s menu (Buchheit & Schamber, 2017). Feelings are the means through which we sense and discern our surroundings and the systems we are part of.

In the context of leadership, sensing and responding appropriately is of paramount importance. In order to respond more adequately to the systems they are embedded within, leaders require capacities that allow them to sense and feel more of the embodied data at their disposal. For leaders to think and choose better, they need to be able to feel more.

In organizational settings feelings are devalued and often unacknowledged. Leaders assume that they should suppress their feelings and avoid being vulnerable (Inam, 2023). Lifeless machines, robots, and computers are some of the primary metaphors used to structure organizational language, which eradicates the need or even the possibility to speak about feelings (McGilchrist, 2021). These isolated examples of organizational numbness are in turn symptoms of deeper phenomena, which the lenses of lenses of psychology and trauma can help to shed light on (Maté & Maté, 2022).

Numbness is a normal and natural outcome of the trauma-response (Mollica & Hübl, 2021; Thompson-Hollands, Jun, & Sloan, 2017; Schauer & Elbert, 2010). In traumatic situations of emotional and sensory overwhelm, the nervous system enters a shut-down “dorsal vagal” state, which curtails all but the most essential bodily functions (Porges, 2011). Depressed aliveness, dissociation from the body, and numbness are the result, which dilutes the magnitude of otherwise unmanageable sensations (Thompson-Hollands, Jun, & Sloan, 2017; Schauer & Elbert, 2010). The benefit of this response is that pain is numbed. The cost is that a separation from one’s body, feelings, and environment ensues (Maté & Maté, 2022; Eisenstein, 2013). When exacerbated over decades, this distancing from oneself, one’s feelings, and the world at large becomes lodged as frozen belief structures (Thompson-Hollands, Jun, & Sloan, 2017). People grow up learning, for example, that the world is “over there”, that the body is merely a vehicle for moving the brain around, and that we are ultimately separate individuals (Eisenstein, 2013; Hübl, 2023; Hübl, 2020).

Numbness can appear to be an absence of feeling, but a more precise definition is that it is an active process of not-feeling (Hübl, 2021). Numbing oneself is not an error or a fault; it is rather an ongoing suppression of unmanageable emotion. This continuous process of not-feeling demands resources. Much like a refrigerator that requires energy in order to keep food chilled, numbing oneself requires energy in order to keep our feelings numb (Hübl, 2021). Many of the energetic resources that could be used for other means (such as creative thinking, presence, compassion, and more) get continually re-invested in a process of keeping oneself numb, distant, and cut-off from the subtleties of the emotional and somatic realms (Maté & Maté, 2022).

The numbing aspect of the trauma-response is, perhaps despite appearances, relevant to leadership. Studies have shown that two-thirds of people report having been subject to at least one adverse or traumatic childhood experience (Dube et al., 2001; La Greca et al., 2008). Growing up in a society that systemically separates and neglects human needs has a traumatic effect in itself (Maté & Maté, 2022). Leaders are molded within these environments as much as anyone else – and some studies suggest that leaders have been relatively overexposed to trauma in their lives (Gloria et al., 2022). Separation and numbness are inevitably part of programming under the hood of today’s organizations and leaders (Hübl, 2020; Eisenstein, 2013; Janni, 2022).

Addressing the prevalence of numbness in leadership is necessary in order to develop more appropriate responses and interventions. If leaders are numb, then part of their capacity to sense their surroundings will be compromised (Janni, 2022). Their decisions will lack an embodied awareness of the contexts they are operating in. Solutions will come through logic and the intellect, but will lack attunement to the prevailing situation and systems (Hübl, 2023). Responses to challenges, ranging from small-scale internal conflicts to global predicaments such as environmental destruction, will remain distant, obtuse, and out-of-sync with the needs of the moment. Leading through numbness in these ways perpetuates societal and organizational permafrost: layers of toxic stress, unresolved conflict, and power-over dynamics will remain frozen and unaddressed. Only when the numbness is noticed, felt, and included can the ice of not-feeling begin to melt (Hübl, 2020).

Being aware of one’s numbness is a notoriously challenging task. Yet it is the first step on the path of dissolving frozen layers of numbness, separation, and defense mechanisms (Hübl, 2023). This process is one of “healing through meeting” (Buber, 1923), which means noticing, honoring, and becoming curious about the numb parts in oneself. As these wounded inner parts are met with precision and care, numbness and separation start to subside and increased feeling and connection ensue (Heller & LaPierre, 2012; Schwartz, 2021). Whether with trained therapists and coaches or in group settings where people simply witness the person speaking, establishing an ecology of relational practices can transform numbness into feeling and embodiment (Vervaeke, 2022). These practices invite the originally wounded and exiled parts of oneself back in from the cold, giving a home to more of oneself again (Schwartz, 2021).

By doing the inner and relational work required to dissolve numbness, people being to sense the nuances of relationality and the “entanglements of living” (Tsing, 2015) of the systems they are embedded within (Hübl, 2020; Scharmer, 2009). By “descending into the abyss” and “straightening oneself out” (Buber, 1923), leaders can move from separate, reductive, instrumental stances to more relational, inclusive, present modes of knowing and leading (McGilchrist, 2021). An epistemological revolution takes place, as information which was invisible or deliberately ignored before now comes into the foreground. Mood, tone, and energy become fundamental data sources for systemic coherence. An ethical restoration follows, as what was previously numb can be felt with emotional and moral weight (Hübl, 2020). Finally, in doing this inner work themselves, leaders develop the capacities to offer the same spaces of healing and transformation for others (Janni, 2022).

Given the state of the world, it is clear that the prevailing paradigm of leadership must evolve. Command and control models of leadership defined by numbness and separation are insufficient to meet the demands of our current predicament, and are a contributing cause to the challenges we face in the first place (Machado de Oliveira, 2021; Hine, 2023). The world requires leaders who are emotionally skilled and attuned enough to sense themselves, their organizational contexts, and the systems they are embedded within with precision and care. By melting the frozen numbness within, leaders can help to unleash rivers of creativity, compassion, and clarity on the parched grounds of our inner and outer worlds.

Sources

Bateson, N. (2021). Aphanipoiesis. Journal of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the ISSS, Virtual, 1(1).

Buber, M. (1923). I and Thou. T. & T. Clark.

Buchheit, C., & Schamber, E. (2017). Transformational NLP: A New Psychology. White Cloud Press.

Damasio, A. (1994). Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. Avon Books.

Damasio, A. (2017). The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures. Vintage.

Dube, S., Anda, R., Felitti, V., Chapman, D., Williamson, D., & Giles, W. (2001). Childhood Abuse, Household Dysfunction, and the Risk of Attempted Suicide Throughout the Life Span: Findings From the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study. JAMA, 286(24).

Eisenstein, C. (2013). The Ascent of Humanity: Civilization and the Human Sense of Self. North Atlantic Books.

Evans, T., Bira, L., Gastelum, J., Weiss, L., & Vanderford, N. (2018). Evidence for a mental health crisis in graduate education. Nature Biotechnology, 36, 282-284.

Fox, S., & Spector, P. E. (2002). Emotions in the workplace: The neglected side of organizational life introduction. Human Resource Management Review, 12(2), 167-171.

Gallagher, S. (2004). Understanding Interpersonal Problems in Autism: Interaction Theory as An Alternative to Theory of Mind. Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology, 11(3), 199-217.

Gloria, N., Zeaghe, K., Tutu, N., Mbe, M., & Ermeco, S. (2022). The Nexus between Childhood Trauma and the Emergence of Leadership. Open Journal of Leadership, 11, 333-355.

Heller, L., & LaPierre, A. (2012). Healing Developmental Trauma: How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and the Capacity for Relationship. North Atlantic Books.

Hine, D. (2023). At Work in the Ruins: Finding Our Place in the Time of Science, Climate Change, Pandemics and All the Other Emergencies. Chelsea Green Publishing.

Hufendiek, R. (2016). Embodied Emotions: A Naturalist Approach to a Normative Phenomenon. Routledge.

Hübl, T. (2020). Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds. Sounds True.

Hübl, T. (2021). Principles of Collective Trauma Healing. Inner Science LLC. Hübl, T. (2023). Attuned: Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma—and Our World. Sounds True.

Inam, H. (2023). To Lead And Influence Powerfully In Complexity, Practice Attunement. Retrieved from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/hennainam/ 2023/09/18/to-lead-and-influence-powerfully-in-complexity-practice- attunement/

Janni, N. (2022). Leader as Healer: A New Paradigm for 21st-Century Leadership. LID Publishing.

La Greca, A., Boyd, B., Jaycox, L., Kassam-Adams, N., Mannarino, A., Silverman, W., . . . Wong, M. (2008). Children and Trauma: Update for Mental Health Professionals. American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Trauma in Children and Adolescent.

Machado de Oliveira, V. (2021). Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism. North Atlantic Books.

Maté, G., & Maté, D. (2022). The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture. Avery.

McGilchrist, I. (2009). The Master and His Emissary The Divided Brain: and the Making of the Western World. Yale University Press.

McGilchrist, I. (2021). The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. Perspectiva.

Mercier, H., & Sperber, D. (2017) The Enigma of Reason. Harvard University Press. Mollica, R. F., & Hübl, T. (2021). Numb from the news? Understanding why and what to do may help. Harvard Health Publishing.
Newen, A., De Bruin, L., & Gallagher, S. (2018). The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition. OUP Oxford.

Nussbaum, M. (2004). Emotions as Judgments of Value and Importance. In R. Solomon, Thinking about Feeling: Contemporary Philosophers on Emotions (pp. 183-199). Oxford University Press.

Porges, S. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.

Rowson, J. (2021). Tasting the Pickle: Ten flavours of metacrisis and the appetite for a new civilisation. In Dispatches from a Time Between Worlds: Crisis and emergence in metamodernity. Perspectiva.

Salami, M. (2020). Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone. Zed Books.

Scharmer, C. (2009). Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Schauer, M., & Elbert, T. (2010). Dissociation Following Traumatic Stress: Etiology and Treatment. Zeitschrift für Psychologie / Journal of Psychology, 218(2).

Schindler, D. (2018). Love and the Postmodern Predicament: Rediscovering the Real in Beauty,. Goodness, and Truth. Cascade Books.

Schwartz, R. (2021). No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model. Sounds True.

Stein, Z. (2018). Love in a Time Between Worlds: On the Metamodern “Return” to a Metaphysics of Eros. Integral Review, 14(1), 186-220.

Stein, Z. (2019). Education in a Time Between Worlds: Essays on the Future of Schools, Technology, and Society. Bright Alliance.

Thompson-Hollands, J., Jun, J. J., & Sloan, D. M. (2017). The Association Between Peritraumatic Dissociation and PTSD Symptoms: The Mediating Role of Negative Beliefs About the Self. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 30(2), 190-194.

Tsing, A. (2015). The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton University Press.

Tyson, P. (2014). Returning to Reality: Christian Platonism for Our Times. Cascade Books.

Vervaeke, J. (2022). How a philosophy of meditation can explore deep connections between mindfulness and contemplative wisdom. In R. Repetti, Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Meditation. Routledge.

Vervaeke, J., Mastropietro, C., & Miscevic, F. (2017). Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis. Open Book Publishers.

Whitehead, A. (1967). Science and the Modern World. The Free Press.

Bloated, stuck, and slow. Distracted and preoccupied. Snappy and short-tempered until the discomfort subsides.

When our gastrointestinal system doesn’t digest properly, it’s hard to be fully present.

The same is true of our emotional world.

When we don’t digest our emotional experiences, symptoms arise. Stress accumulates. Resentment builds in our relationships. We start carrying emotional weight that prevents us from meeting the moment as it is.

It’s like a glass of water. When the water is muddy, it’s hard to see clearly in the relationship. The more muddy the water is, the higher the chance that judgement and resentment sets in.

When we do the work to digest our emotional experiences, we keep the water clear. The clearer we are with ourselves and each other about our emotions, the more our relationships flow.

Clearing the water is what it means to be relationally mature.

Unfortunately, this is a message that most organizations don’t want to hear.

When suggesting that organizations can become better at welcoming emotions, I often hear the following responses:

“It’s not professional to bring your emotions to the workplace.”

“It’s not a manager’s or leader’s job to be a therapist”.

“It’s not helpful to give people license to vomit their emotions on everyone else”.

These are telling statements that exemplify just how robotic, inhumane, and emotionally unskilled the modern business world has become.

Emotions and feelings are not only a part of who we are. They are what it means to be a living, breathing being. Take away emotions and you’re left with nothing but a hollow, lifeless shell.

A fundamental principle of our emotional reality is that emotions need to complete themselves in order to move on.

If, for example, you feel anger about someone else’s behavior, suppressing it or ignoring it will lead to an accumulation of tension and stress. You’ll become distracted and curt, which will seep into situations outside of work. Your loved ones will suffer as a result. The tension will linger no matter how hard you try to push it down.

The same is true of any charged emotional experience. When we try to suppress, ignore, numb, or deny what we feel, we create an emotional debt for our future selves. The longer it goes on, the higher the interest payment becomes.

It’s when we don’t digest our emotions that outbursts and tantrums occur. It’s when we don’t give space for our emotions that they eventually become disproportionate to the situation at hand.

Showing emotions doesn’t have to mean uncontrollable tantrums. Listening to people compassionately doesn’t require being a therapist. And if there’s anything that is unprofessional, it’s depriving your organization the chance of becoming a more mature, respectful, and high-performing place to be.

Emotions are valuable radar signals to ourselves about the situations and systems we’re embedded within. They are “warm data”, letting us know when a boundary has been crossed (anger), when we’ve lost something precious (sadness), or when safety is being threatened (fear).

We avoid these signals at our own peril. Without honoring our emotions we become rudderless, left with nothing but the false gods of money, power, and status to orient by.

Relationally mature teams are committed to processing their emotions. They have a set of relational and individual practices that allow them to keep the water clear. This can take several forms.

When inter-personal issues arise, they take ownership for their experience without finger-pointing or blaming others. They understand that while others’s behaviors might have triggered an internal reaction within themselves, they know that they are still responsible for their own experience. They avoid claims like “You are annoying” or “you are irresponsible”. Instead, they distinguish between people’s behaviors and their own emotions: “When you don’t deliver as agreed, I feel disappointed”. They know that sharing their emotions is a vehicle for creating deeper safety and trust. And they know that clearing the water makes the relational space more effective to work within.

They also have a regular frequency of digestion spaces. This can be a weekly session where the team gathers to process the week’s experiences. Or it might be a monthly triad practice, where colleagues meet in small groups of three people to share where they are. The people listening don’t need to answer: they can simple be there, holding space and witnessing the person speaking. Regardless of the format chosen, they have a culture of creating spaces to share, hear, and digest the emotional reality of the organization.

And they commit to individual digestion practices as well. Whether it’s meditation, contemplation, or intermittent breaks, they know the necessity of creating space in a busy day. With back-to-back meetings, it can be easy to lose track of oneself along the way. So they devote time on a regular basis to check-in with their inner world and gauge where they are. By committing to “space practices” individually, they create the conditions to show up with clarity and openness collectively.

These types of practices allow organizations to operate with greater presence. Rather than dealing with the accumulated emotional debt of the past, they can be more fully here, now.

This type of work is a gift to ourselves, our families, our coworkers, and the world at large. So many of the issues in our world stem from unprocessed emotional experiences. To create a different world, we need to give ourselves an honest chance of inviting a better future.

If we don’t digest and process our emotions, the future will simply be a repetition of the past, or worse.

But if we give ourselves the gift of individual and collective digestion practices, then we might just have a chance of inviting a different and clearer future for us all.

Most of us define freedom as an absence of limitation. The fewer constraints we have, the more free we think we are. Obligations or dependencies are considered to be obstacles that block the path to more freedom. 

I hear these words from entrepreneurs who assume that when they have made enough money, then they will finally be free. I hear these words from friends who tell me that they don’t want to start a family because they don’t want to lose their autonomy. I hear these words from technologists who relentlessly push limits and expand frontiers in the name of profit, impact, and choice. And I hear these words from my former self, who longed for a day when I would finally be good enough to be free to be me. 

These sentiments might seem entirely normal and unavoidable. Indeed, the notion of freedom as an absence of constraints runs deep in our cultural fabric. It played a large part in the liberal and democratic trajectories in the past three hundred years. And it influenced the past centuries’ unprecedented technological progress. But the darker consequences of this approach to freedom are now becoming clear. 

Limitless freedom on smartphones is contributing to a mental health crisis. The belief that “I can be anything I want to be” is fragmenting culture. Limitless growth and consumption in the name of convenience and self-actualization is pillaging the planet (the Stockholm Resilience Center recently shared that six of the nine planetary boundaries within which humanity can survive and thrive in the long-term have been exceeded). Some people are even proposing to expand beyond the greatest limitations we have—our bodies and the planet—by uploading our minds into a computer and moving our civilization to another planet where we simply can continue as before.

We can’t seem to help ourselves from trying to become free of boundaries and limits, regardless of the consequences to ourselves and the world.

But it wasn’t always this way. 

Many ancient philosophies and spiritual traditions held a very different definition of freedom.

They claimed that freedom is not an absence of limits, but is rather what lies on the other side of self-discipline and self-limitation. They saw constraints as conditions to be embraced, not as obstacles that impede who we are. 

These traditions, says author Patrick Deenen, “sought to foster an ethic of restraint. [They] recognized that humankind was singular among the creatures in its capacity to choose among numerous options, and so in need for guidance in that condition of liberty. This liberty, the ancients understood, was subject to misuse and excess: the oldest stories in [these] traditions, including the story of humankind’s fall from Eden, told of the human propensity to use freedom badly.”

These traditions taught that many of our choices in life are not quite as “free” as we think they are. The way in which choices present themselves to us do not emerge in a vacuum. Our choices are influenced by our immature and unintegrated baser instincts, the defense mechanisms we adopt in response to the environments we grow up in, and the political and corporate interests that affect how life’s menu of choices are presented to us. When we face modern life’s barrage of options without discernment, we will struggle to choose well or freely.

Freedom, more deeply understood, is therefore a liberation from what the ancients referred to as the “passions” – the distortions, corruptions, and cravings that infiltrate our consciousness. Freedom is a chiseling away of what is not us to allow space for more of us to be here.

This process is called kenosis in mystic Christianity. It’s a form of spiritual exercise (askesis) that means self-emptying. As opposed to the notions of “destroying the ego” that are popularized in commercialized forms of some spiritual traditions, kenosis is a detoxification of the passions and a letting-go of our survival patterns of the past.

The Orthodox theologian Pavel Florensky referred to this inner work as “purification of the heart”. In classical Greece, Plotinus described it as a process of continuously sculpting your own statue. “Go back inside yourself and look,” he wrote, “remove what is superfluous, straighten what is crooked, clean up what is dark and make it bright, and never stop sculpting your own statue, until the godlike splendor of virtue shines forth to you.”

When we do this inner work of kenosis, we create more space for something deeper within us to be present. Presence itself becomes more present. And something greater, more ineffable than our individualism has space to come forth. We become more intimate with the nature of things, or what in Chinese mysticism is called the Tao. 

The Tao is commonly translated as the Way, but could also be described as Life Force, Spirit, Intelligibility, the Divine, or the Light. To speak too much of the Tao misses the point, since “the Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao”. But a few words nevertheless allows us to point towards an essential part of life which often escapes our grasp as participants in modern life. 

The Tao is “the reality beyond predicates,” said C.S. Lewis. “It is Nature, it is the Way, the Road. It is the Way in which the universe goes on, the Way in which things everlastingly emerge, stilly and tranquilly, into space and time.”

When we live in alignment with the Tao, then life flows more freely. Challenges don’t disappear, but the ease through which they are embraced transforms. When we do the work to sculpt our own statue, then we open ourselves up to this inner wellspring of life.

This is what philosopher Martin Buber called the “grand will”, in contrast to the more egoic “self will”. “The free man,” said Buber “is he who wills without arbitrary self-will. … He must sacrifice his puny, unfree will, that is controlled by things and instincts, to his grand will … He must go out with his whole being. … Then he intervenes no more, but at the same time he does not let things merely happen. He listens to what is emerging from himself, to the course of being in the world; not in order to be supported by it, but in order to bring it to reality as it desires, in its need of him, to be brought—with human spirit and deed, human life and death.”

As Buber points out, learning to listen to the Tao or the grand will is not an elimination or reduction of who we are. It’s the opposite: it’s a shedding away of the thought patterns and defence mechanisms we have identified ourselves with, but that shield us from getting into contact with the deeper layers of our humanity.

“This,” said Plotinus, “is the real goal for the soul… to touch and to behold this light itself, by means of itself. … Eliminate everything [that is not light]!”

This path of kenosis and inner work can be practiced in every moment of our lives. We don’t need to go to leadership workshops to develop in these deeper ways. Every moment can be my practice. Each interaction can be my gateway. Every moment can be my path. 

Freedom then becomes, somewhat paradoxically, a process of submission, obligation, and connection. Dependencies are not in the way of freedom – they become the way. Obligations to family, community, and life itself transform from obstacles blocking freedom into the very fabric through which the tapestry of freedom becomes woven. By sinking deeper into our relational dependencies, we begin to crack our hearts open to the intimate reality that makes up inter-relational existence.

There is a liberation that comes from accepting and coming to terms with the obligations and conditions of our place in this life. That our past was the past. That the pain we experienced occurred and that we survived with a story to tell. That we were born into the flesh and blood of our bodies. That we depend on each other. That our planet is our home.

Accepting these limits doesn’t mean settling or staying passive. Rather, it’s an acknowledgement that our potential is contained within our constraints. It’s the recognition that the tree holds within it its fruits and its seeds, and even with all of that potential, the tree cannot be a flower. Our challenges are our path. Our earth is our only home. We cannot escape who we are; we can only try to do so in vain.

The sooner we come to terms with our limits, the sooner we might start to taste something like freedom. 

People meditate “in order to” be focused and productive. Teenagers study “in order to” get good grades and have successful careers. Entrepreneurs start businesses “in order to” make a profit and have an impact. Many of us try to live more sustainably “in order to” save the planet and/or humanity itself.

There is nothing inherently wrong with these justifications. But when all of our choices are made “in order to” achieve something else, then we are never actually “here”. Every choice becomes a way of getting “over there”. Life turns into a never-ending race of looking ahead rather than confronting what the moment calls for, now.

In school, I used to think that ethics was a boring, irrelevant subject. Now I think differently. I believe it’s one of the most important disciplines a human being can devote themselves to – especially in today’s world.

Ethics is the study of making good and effective choices. Depending on your philosophy, there are different definitions of what a good choice is.

One approach is instrumentalism. According to instrumentalism (similar to utilitarianism or consequentialism), a good choice is one that maximizes the outcome according to whatever the metric of success is, like money, pleasure, happiness, fame, convenience, etc. Options are filtered through that lens to determine which has the highest utility and use. Choices are seen as tools and means to ends. In instrumentalism, every choice is made “in order to” achieve something else.

Take the following short story by Ursula LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, as an example. In Omelas, thousands of people live happy, beautiful, perfect lives – but only as long as a single child is held prisoner in a tiny cell. The child eats nothing but half a bowl of cornmeal and grease per day, with not even a toilet to use or a bed to lay in. Most people in Omelas ignore the child; some visit without saying a word. But all of them know the terms of their predicament: if they bring the child out into the sunlight, feed it, comfort it, even speak to it, then all of the prosperity and delight of Omelas would be destroyed. “The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child,” LeGuin writes.

What should one do?

According to instrumentalism, keeping the child locked up is a difficult yet necessary choice. Thousands of people’s well-being is on the line. One child’s imprisonment may be a painful fate, but it’s all in service of the greater good. The child is kept prisoner “in order to” ensure everyone else’s comfortable lives.

This line of reasoning might seem unavoidable. But it’s not the only way to define what a good choice is.

Another ethical approach is deontology. The word comes from the Greek deon, meaning “duty”. According to deontology, you base your actions on what is “good in itself”. It’s based on moral obligation, which does not necessarily lead to the calculably best outcome. Instead, doing good in the moment is what matters. Ends in themselves take center stage. The basis for choice is simply what is good, now.

According to deontology, allowing the child’s torture in Omelas is an unacceptable choice under any circumstances. There are moral obligations that carry greater weight than our own pleasure and well-being. Human life and rights are held as sacred. We are obligated to tend to other people with dignity and care, no matter the costs to ourselves. Under deontology, being content to look on as the child remains in the cell would not be a viable option.

These two different ethical philosophies yield two very different choices. There are other ethical approaches out there as well (an increasingly popular example being virtue ethics, which holds that the good depends on the virtues we aspire to fulfill). But the question here is not which of deontology, instrumentalism, virtue ethics, or any other ethical approach is better. All of them have their place in the ethical life. It’s rather a question of appropriateness: What ethical basis am I using to make choices right now? And is that the most appropriate choice?

LeGuin’s story paints of metaphorical picture of the world we find ourselves in today. Just as the people of Omelas left the child alone in its misery “in order to” guarantee their happiness, in our own instrumental world we make significant sacrifices in service of what we worship. Countless animal species are displaced and habits destroyed “in order to” extract resources for consumable goods. Millions of people work in deplorable, deadening conditions “in order to” make life more convenient for the rest of us. Plenty of other examples exist. Hardship, misery, and destruction seem to be the price we’re willing to pay “in order to” secure convenience and material comfort.

Even many environmental movements are under the throes of this instrumentalist paradigm. We’re told we should become more sustainable “in order to” save the planet, future generations, and humanity itself. Despite the good intentions, such appeals also make environmentally-friendly behavior into a means to an end. Eco-friendly choices are presented as ways of ensuring our survival and sustaining our current ways of living.

If we instead use a deontological approach, our choices become less about eco-friendly outcomes and more about how we relate to the world. It’s a process of coming into right relationship with the natural environment, regardless of the consequences or benefits that might result. Choices become the vehicles through which we tend to our surroundings with care, respect, and dignity – not because of what that care achieves, but simply because that is how our world deserves to treated.

Our ethical approaches influence not only what we choose and value, but also how we know.

Since instrumentalism is based on ethical calculus, it prioritizes knowledge that comes from forecasting, arithmetic, and numerical data collection. “Objective” data trumps all – the more “objective” data you have at your disposal, the better your calculations will be, and therefore the better choices you can make.

The promised land of this approach is Artificial Intelligence. Proponents paint pictures of a future where political decisions are outsourced to machines, eliminating human interference in service of more “objective” methods. These hopes are based on the assumption that better choices require more objective data and better processing capacities.

From a deontological perspective, however, it is not possible to calculate your way to an ethically good choice. Instead, it’s a process that requires feeling your way into it. This does not mean choosing what gives you the most pleasure or joy, nor about following your subjective whims. Rather, it means making the choice that feels least bad when factoring in the obligations and dependencies of the context in question.*

Telling the truth in a tight spot, caring for a sick child in the middle of the night, or dedicating one’s life to service do not necessarily feel good in the moment. But under deontology, not doing them becomes intolerable. 

The more one can actually feel the pain and the needs of the world, the more incomprehensible it becomes to not do anything about it. Our capacity to feel therefore lies at the heart of ethical choice-making. “To think well ethically, you have to feel appropriately about what is happening,” says educational philosopher Zak Stein.

The challenge for most of us, however, is that we’re numb.

If you’re numb you can’t feel, and if you can’t feel then you can’t respond appropriately to the situation. Since you don’t have the appropriate instrumentation to sense your surroundings, the information you’re basing your choices upon will be limited.

If we can do the work to heal, restore, and melt our frozen bodies and minds, then we can begin to feel more of each other and more of ourselves. We can start to notice our inherent nature as relational beings, feeling how we are inextricably bound up and entangled with everything we meet. We begin to feel that other people, animals, the natural environment, and the planet are all part of us and we are all part of it. When we’re able to feel these dependencies and interconnections, we become able to relate appropriately and make choices effectively.

This process of coming into right relationship with ourselves, each other, and the world is a path of ethical restoration. It’s a path of restoring our capacity to feel, to choose well, and to live in relation with the world.

What if we treated our natural environment with care, not because that lowers carbon emissions and increases the chances of humanity surviving, but simply because that is what it means to relate appropriately with our world?

What if we related to businesses as places of mutual flourishing, not because that leads to higher employee retention and higher profits, but simply because it is Good?

What if we respected children’s interests and feelings, not because that provides them with better career prospects, but simply because that’s what it means to be in right relationship with another human being?

In the story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, nobody stood up to the prevailing system. No one violated the terms of their agreement, and no one galvanized protests to stand up for the child’s rights.

But as the story’s title alludes to, a few people chose to walk away. After seeing the child in its tortured state, they walked home in a stunned silence before leaving Omelas forever. These sole dissenters walked alone through the city gates without looking back.

“Each alone they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.”

Sometimes the ethical choice is to walk away from what we cannot live with anymore, following nothing but the faint whisper of the Good we can hear in our hearts.

Footnotes

* As astute readers will have observed, deontology is traditionally presented as a set of universal moral laws. In this piece I am pointing at something slightly more nuanced. As opposed to an abstract set of principles, I am attempting to convey that living ethically means aligning oneself with what the mystics called Natural Law, the Tao, or Rta, or the Way. This cannot be achieved through adherence to a defined set of rules. Instead, it’s about living in alignment with the Good in every moment.

You can buy the paperback version here or the digital version here. (These are US links – see below for a full list of countries).

The book is about the relational nature of reality, and how we can embody different stances toward what we meet in leadership and the rest of life.

It’s inspired by the work of philosopher Martin Buber (1878-1965). His ideas hit me hard when I read them a few years back. His claim—that we are always relating, all of the time—provides a powerful lens with which to view both our society at large and our interpersonal relationships closer to home.

Much of modern life is defined by objectifying relationships. We easily treat ourselves as machines, other people as objects, and the planet as a resource to plunder.

But there are other ways we can relate with what we meet. Whether we’re a leader relating to employees, or a citizen of the world relating to the planet, we have within us the capacity to relate in more intimate, even sacred ways. The only question is how.

From the philosophical to the practical, this book is a culmination of what I’ve learned working with relational approaches in coaching, facilitation, and therapeutic trauma work. With additional inspiration from the likes of Iain McGilchrist, Otto Scharmer, Thomas Hübl, Carlo Rovelli, and Lao Tzu, the book lays out how to engage in more transparent communication and genuine dialogue – with yourself, others, the world, and life itself.

And, worth noting: it’s a slim volume, designed to be readable in one or two sittings.

You can download Chapter 1 free here.

Here are links to the get the book:

• Australia: Paperback | eBook
• Canada: Paperback
• France: Paperback | eBook
• Germany: Paperback
• Italy: Paperback | eBook
• Japan: Paperback | eBook
• Netherlands: Paperback | eBook
• Poland: Paperback
• Spain: Paperback | eBook
• Sweden: Paperback
• UK: Paperback
• US: Paperback | eBook

Let me know if you decide to read it. I’d be excited to hear your response.

As usual, it was a wild ride.

For the first three or four days, I found myself in an endless loop of recurring thoughts. I tried noticing the thoughts non-judgmentally. That was proving easier said than done. Despite having a steady meditation practice at home, I got lost in thought for hours, judged myself for my distraction, and fell asleep countless times.

Eventually, I remembered my teacher Thomas Hübl’s advice.

I asked myself: What are the feelings and sensations underneath these thoughts? And what would happen if I allowed myself to actually feel those feelings?

Soon I realized that the feelings underneath were anger and pressure. I got curious about the pressure and how it lived in my body. I gave space for the anger and allowed it to be there. I tended to the tight and tense parts of myself like I might with a young child, feeling tenderness and compassion for the pain of living under ceaseless self-imposed pressure.

Tears flowed.

Then, soon enough, the previously recurring thoughts dissolved. The pressure melted. More space opened up.

And all without me addressing the content of the thoughts at all.

When we experience unhelpful or challenging thoughts, our instinct is often to try to remove them by solving the problem. We believe that if we can just find the right answer, then the thoughts will go away.

But more often than not, recurring thoughts are projections of underlying sensations and feelings.

If we’re scared, we’ll project all kinds of thoughts that stem from the fear underneath. We’ll be worried about not having enough money, scared that our partner will leave us, paranoid about the stock market crashing, regret missed opportunities in life…the list goes on.

In these cases, the thoughts themselves have a low signal value. They’re not representative of what’s actually going on in our lives. But they still hold a seed of truth within them, which is the feeling underneath.

So much of life can become an endless chasing of ghosts of thoughts. We waste psychic energy in their pursuit without moving an inch. And we end up building a ghostly world in their ghostly image.

If we instead listen to what we’re feeling and honor the experience underneath, then the ghosts of thoughts have no choice but to fade away before our eyes.

In coaching sessions, I regularly ask people what they are thinking, feeling, and sensing.

Most people are experts at thinking.

Feeling and sensing is harder. Often people will respond in the following way: “I feel that nothing is working.” Or, “I’m worried that I won’t be successful.”

In both of these examples, the responses are not statements of feelings. They are statements of thoughts.

Anytime we say that we “feel that…” or “feel like…”, we’re not referring to a feeling. We’re referring to a thought.

Statements of feelings are simple. “I feel angry.” “I am scared.” “I feel sad.” “I feel disappointed.”

I am feeling something. Period.

While this might seem like a simple distinction, it can become a deep and lifelong practice. The more awareness we can bring to what we’re feeling, the more effective we become. We increase our capacity to respond appropriately to what we meet, rather than chasing ghosts of thoughts down cul-de-sacs to nowhere.

This becomes particularly important in leadership. Do we try to solve the problems of our recurrent thoughts externally, or do we meet the feelings underneath internally? Do we take the bait of other people’s recurring thoughts, or do we create spaces for each other to get in touch with our collective emotional realities?

So-called “uncomfortable” or “difficult” thoughts and feelings are precious gifts. They are signs to ourselves that there is something within us requires closer attention and care. They are expressions of places within ourselves that are overwhelmed and beyond our current capacity to feel. If we have the presence of mind to stop, listen, and sense—ideally in relation—then the feelings will take us right to where we need to go.

Following the feeling underneath is a practice in humility. It means being open to how little we control and even know about ourselves. When we give ourselves the space to feel, we don’t know where we will end up. All we can know is that it will take us to a more deeper, more intimate relationship with ourselves, each other, and life itself.

It goes something like this: The man’s partner is emotional or facing a challenge. When the man hears about it, he tries to provide a solution. It seems like the most natural thing to do: something is wrong, so he explains how to fix it. Problem solved, he thinks.

But of course, the partner doesn’t want to be fixed. The partner wants to be heard, listened to, and understood.

Often, the man knows this in theory. But in practice, he struggles. So, he either freezes, goes numb, distracts himself, zones out, gets angry, uses logical argumentation, or reverts to providing solutions.

He either fixes or leaves.

Whatever our gender, many of us will have found ourselves in similar situations. I know I have. Whether it’s our own emotion or that of others, staying with the trouble can be a challenge.

When feeling out of one’s depth, it’s natural to reach for tried and tested tools. One of our favorite tools is fixing.

We live in a world that venerates fixing. In daily life it goes by a more respectable name: “problem-solving.”

In principle, there’s nothing wrong with problem-solving. Fixing a bike, solving a math problem, or debugging code are necessary and worthy endeavors. But the subjects in question are inorganic, mechanical, and dead.

When you try to fix something that is alive, it ceases to be an appropriate or even possible task. You can’t fix a person. You can’t repair an animal. You can’t solve an ecosystem.

Yet this is what we so often do when we encounter emotional difficulty. We try to fix the issue. We try to solve the problem. We try to make the pain go away.

The assumption underlying these patterns is that emotional difficulty is wrong. We believe we shouldn’t be sad, angry, troubled, confused, irritated, or grief-stricken. Only happiness and positivity are permitted. Everything else should cleaned up, disposed of, and eliminated.

These assumptions stem from our own difficulty in meeting and regulating our own emotions. If we’ve grown up in environments without sufficient attunement and support, then moments of overwhelming sadness, anger, fear, or joy will remain unaddressed. When there’s chronic mis-attunement—a defining feature of our society—then we learn that the only way to deal with overwhelming emotion is to avoid it.

We become experts at numbing, ignoring, and fixing.

The alternative starts with a simple word: meeting.

Meeting is a process of welcoming what arises in yourself. When emotional difficulty shows up, you notice how it lives in you. You don’t resist numbness or fixing impulses. Instead, you get curious. You become interested in staying with yourself as much as with the other person. You become a connoisseur of your inner landscape, diving deeper into it rather than trying to escape it. If you find yourself trying to avoid what’s arising, you notice that, too.  

With increased awareness comes the possibility of bringing it into relationship. So, when you notice a fixing impulse arise, you include it in the relational space. You own your difficulty in staying present, and you communicate that if and when appropriate. You notice the impulse to fix, but you don’t give in to it. You see it, but don’t succumb to it.

We can’t force our emotional states to change on demand. All we can do is to be honest and transparent about what we’re experiencing.

Responsibility means taking ownership for our experience, in relation.

Often, that is all that is needed for emotional challenges to melt, move, and flow.

These dynamics apply as much at the workplace as they do in intimate relationships.

When emotions run high in an organization, the quality of leadership becomes apparent.

Immature leaders will reactively try to solve people problems, fix issues, and get rid of emotional difficulties. Or they will hide.

Mature leaders will meet their inner and outer turmoil. They will notice and explore their own emotions as rich sources of information, and even share from their inner world when appropriate. They will acknowledge and listen to other people’s experiences with hospitality and care – not because it’s good for business, but because it’s the respect that anything living deserves to receive.

The mature leader sees emotional challenges not as obstacles blocking the path, but as the footprints of the path itself.

Whatever our gender, and whatever our professional position, we face a choice of how we meet ourselves and each other.

We can choose to avoid, override, and escape our experience.

Or we can turn toward what we’re experiencing, and be there with the care and attention that life deserves. It’s the choice to stay still as the storm rages inside and outside, remaining openhearted yet unperturbed in our sense of who we are.

Without reaching for a fix or a cure, we embody care by simply being there.

The longer we stay, the further we go.

Peek into any standard business meeting today, and you’ll hear the following phrases:

“Quick wins and must-win battles”. “Frontline operations”. “Expanding empires.” “Sales campaigns and targets”. “Strategies to beat the competition and take over markets”. Even “war rooms”. The business world is steeped in military and colonial metaphors, often without second thought.  

The same is true in medicine. “The war on cancer”. “The fight against disease”. “The immune system’s ability to defeat invading cells”. And it’s no different in how we talk about the environment. “Eco-warriors must mobilize in the fight against climate change.”

These observations might seem like quaint yet irrelevant curiosities. That would be to mistake the tip for the iceberg, however. How we do anything is how we do everything. As Mark Johnson and George Lakoff describe in Metaphors We Live By, the metaphors we use shape the world we create.

“Metaphors may create realities for us, especially social realities,” say Johnson and Lakoff. ”A metaphor may thus be a guide for future action. Such actions will, of course, fit the metaphor. This will, in turn, reinforce the power of the metaphor to make experience coherent. In this sense metaphors can be self-fulfilling prophecies.”

The more we use metaphors based on war and colonialism, the more our actions will follow in kind. We’ll take sides, entrench our positions, and fight till the death until our markets are conquered, our enemies are defeated, and our missions are accomplished.

Ironically, there’s no actual war going on in these cases. Since these battles can never be won, we’ll keep fighting forever. A military-based metaphorical worldview is a one-way ticket to burning ourselves out, polarizing society, and pillaging the planet.

We can do our best to clean up our language. Like many of us have tried, we can change every “but” to an “and”, and every “should” to a “want.” While this can be a helpful starting point, linguistic changes will remain hollow if they’re not part of a deeper and wider shift in who we are. As I’ve written about previously, if we don’t change our worldviews, our world won’t change.

Ultimately, it’s not about the words themselves. It’s about where our words are coming from.

War metaphors make sense if our relationship with the world feels like a desperate zero-sum competition where we must be better than others to have the right to exist at all.

If our relationship with the world is instead one based on connection, symbiosis, and collaboration, then different metaphors will emerge organically. They will sprout amongst the undergrowth, fresh from the fertile soil that the “entanglements of living” provide. They will flourish and fade with the seasons, ebbing and flowing with the tides of our times. If we cultivate the conditions for life at their roots, they might even regenerate into seeds of more beautiful worlds—and words—to come.  

She runs an architecture firm, and she’s been interviewing people for entry-level architect positions. Most of the candidates are fresh out of architecture school. 

During the interviews, the typical candidate will present some of their previous work. They will be quick to cite the technical specifications and functional requirements. 

Then my friend will ask, “What feelings were you hoping to evoke in the room or building?” 

Most of the time, the candidate will just stare back in silence. 

Eventually they’ll say something like, “I don’t understand what you mean.” Or simply, “I haven’t really thought about that.”

In Yellow, my colleague Rob and I are in constant creative response to what emerges. Because the program is not planned beforehand, we are always designing new sessions in response to what happened in the previous ones. At this stage we’ve run close to 200 online gatherings, each one of them unique. 

If you were a fly on the wall when Rob and I design a session, you’d hear the following language:

“Oh yes, that feels good.”

“That doesn’t feel quite right.”

“I am so excited by that idea.”

“It feels like we could use some more spice here.”

“I notice I’m a bit hesitant, but I’m not sure why. Maybe we’re missing something?”

We’ve learned that our radar for what is good – in the sense of quality and suitability – is how we feel about it. Our embodied sensations are reliable indicators for what choices to make. After the fact, we’re able to rationalize whether our choices make sense or not. But our first and most reliable data points are our feelings.

In university, I would roll my eyes when professors talked about “epistemology.” I couldn’t for the life of me understand what it was or how it could be relevant. 

Times have changed. There aren’t many questions I would consider to be more important right now than epistemology. 

Epistemology refers to “how we know.” It’s our filter for what we determine knowledge to be.

The young architects mentioned above have an epistemology that defines knowledge as rules, requirements, and constraints. Feelings are not considered to be knowledge, so they’re ignored completely. 

This is not to say that newly graduated students should be expected to have learned all there is to know about their craft. Subtlety and depth come with time and age. But what kind of world are we living in if architecture students aren’t taught to consider how spaces might make people feel? 

Similar trends are everywhere. Facts, objective measurements, specifications, deliverable outcomes, and KPIs are what are considered “real” in business and culture. Feelings, sensations, intuitions, instincts, are, at best, considered to be interesting yet unreliable add-ons. At worst, they’re written off as delusions that we should rid ourselves of. 

In today’s climate, knowing “about” things is the gold standard. But this is only one form of knowing. There is also a knowing “from” or “within”, which requires participation, engagement, and being aware of what you feel. Step into a random business meeting today and chances are people will be talking “about” things “over there.” There will be very little speaking “from” their embodied experience. 

Cognitive scientist John Vervaeke calls the “about” type of knowledge propositional knowledge. While acknowledging propositional knowledge’s value, he proposes that there are three other types of knowledge: procedural (knowing how to do something), perspectival (knowing through perception of context), and participatory knowledge (knowledge through participating). The latter three cannot be reduced to propositions or factual statements. They must be enacted and experienced first-hand.

Life consists of all types of knowledge. Propositional knowledge is just as important as the others. But we get into trouble when we only value one form of knowledge over the others. Everything is then all about surface, and not about depth or participation. Life becomes a flatland, stripped of its vibrance, aliveness, and movement. 

The consequences of these trends are clear. Look at any current crisis in the world today, and the depreciation of our capacity to feel, and to value those feelings, is involved. If we don’t feel ourselves, then we burn ourselves out. If we don’t feel each other, then we treat our fellow humans as tools, machines, or enemies. If we don’t feel the planet, then we relate to the world as a garbage heap. 

Spaces that allow and encourage all forms of knowing can therefore have restorative effects. By exploring different ways of knowing and increasing our embodied capacity to feel, we become capable of sensing more subtle information. Nora Bateson calls this Warm Data. It’s data – just not the cold, objective kind. It’s contextual, relational, and sensory. If our embodied instrumentation can notice more of this nuanced data, then we have more information at our disposal. We can then respond more appropriately to the challenges we face, individually and collectively. 

The solution is not, however, to simply force ourselves to feel more. There are plenty of good reasons why we’re not able or willing to feel more – reasons including everything from individual traumas to collective cultural expectations. 

Whatever the reasons, the first step is to feel how we don’t feel. Although this might sound like an impossible paradox, not feeling is an active process that drains internal resources. As Thomas Hübl likes to say, just as you pay the electricity bill to keep your refrigerator cold, you pay your own internal energy bill to keep yourself numb. By bringing attention to the process of freezing our feelings, we light the first flickers of a flame that can begin to melt the ice.

Which takes us back to the story of architecture students. Far from being a story of criticism or shame, it’s an example of realization and insight. Becoming aware of one’s numbness or blindness is always a step toward more aliveness and agency, no matter how uncomfortable it may be. A spark of consciousness enters the frozen world of unconscious numbness. Blurry sections on the map of reality come into sharper focus. The fog starts to lift.

Big Tech likes to claim that we need better technologies to see further and clearer. But maybe the technologies we need aren’t only the cold, hard, dead realms of satellites, processors, and code. 

Maybe the warm, pulsing, alive technologies of our very flesh and bones can take us further into the depths of reality than any microscope ever could alone.

In the first session, the other person (whether a seasoned CEO or an up-and-coming leader) will start by saying that they want to be more focused and disciplined. They find themselves distracted at work and at home. With so much demanding their attention, they feel scattered and stretched thin. They’ve realized that they’re not fully present with their colleagues and families. Something needs to change.

I then ask them what they hope to get from the coaching process. They say that they want tools to deal with their distraction. They want better routines and new habits to support them in becoming more disciplined and focused.

Now, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with tools and routines to address distraction. Sometimes they can be transformative. If they work – great.

But so often attempts to “fix” inner issues with outer tools don’t succeed. The solutions don’t stick. The band-aid falls off. An endless cycle repeats.

These days we talk about distraction as though it’s an inevitable, ubiquitous phenomenon of modern life. While there is something to be said for such claims, much of the distraction we consider to be normal is also a symptom of underlying pain and dis-ease. There’s a deeper pattern going on. If we don’t address the root issues, the symptoms won’t go away.

What we call “distraction” is more precisely an inner sense of restlessness, agitation, and activation. It’s easy to project these feelings and sensations onto social media, notifications, and work. But ultimately many of us are chronically activated in our nervous systems, meaning we don’t feel safe and settled in our own skin – regardless of how many outside distractions there are or not.

If we want to experience more stillness, settledness, and focus, the question is therefore not: “How can I deal with my distraction?” The question is instead: “How can I resolve the activated parts within myself?”

Addressing the latter question is a slow, gentle process of deep listening and attuned awareness. It’s an approach that addresses the root of the restlessness, rather than dealing with its symptoms.

You give yourself the space to sit still for a moment, and notice what is happening inside. You slow down, and notice the thoughts, sensations, and emotions that go along with the restlessness. Maybe you notice fear, anger, or even numbness. Regardless of what emerges, you listen for the texture and flavor of what is happening within.

It’s a process of digestion and detoxification. You become a space that can host and be with the sensations that otherwise seek alleviation through so-called distractive behaviors. Without trying to remove the activation, you get curious, getting to know how it lives within you.

Crucially, you don’t only do so alone. You bring your fear, anger, or unsettledness into relationship. This can be through professional 1-on-1 support, or in group settings where participants give each other the space to feel and share what’s arising for them.

Many of us learned early on to hold on to our fears alone, since it didn’t feel safe to share our difficulties with others at the time. But if we can provide pockets of receptivity to each other today, then the parts of us that have been frozen in activation for decades can finally breathe out.

By allowing what’s here to be here, distraction starts to lose its grip. Slowly but surely, presence emerges – and along with it, discipline and focus. Not the hard, forced kind of focus, but the natural, organic state which arises when we pursue what’s important to us from a place of embodied presence.

Distraction can be distracting if we try to get rid of it. If we instead try to get to know it, we can see it for the precious gift that it has the potential to be.

And in the process, we might just find ourselves less distracted, too.

The question might sound absurd. Modern life seems to tell us, rather relentlessly, that we need to get somewhere. Fast.

Climb the career ladder. Become more successful. Accumulate more. Fix and improve who we are. 

It can seem like a natural, unquestionable state of affairs; a necessary part of life. 

It’s not. 

In Yellow, we gather people together in small groups that gather for an online session every two weeks for six months. 

It’s not a pre-scripted program. There are no learning objectives or desired outcomes set in advance. 

It’s a space where we listen to what’s emerging, and respond together. 

Naturally, my colleague Rob and I don’t show up empty-handed to the sessions. Instead, we bring a starting point based on what happened in the previous session. That might be a theme to explore through conversation. Or it might be a painting to look at. Perhaps a guest to bring in. Or an embodied exercise to play around with. 

But these are merely starting points. What happens from there is anyone’s guess. Sometimes we end up deepening the themes we’ve been exploring. Other times we wander off in new directions, following the energy as it takes us into uncharted territory.

Wherever we go, we don’t know where that is or what that looks like beforehand. 

Being in constant creative response to what’s emerging can feel both scary and energizing. Yet this is what makes anything feel alive. It’s when you don’t know exactly where you’re going that you have to rise up and meet the moment. The philosopher Martin Buber spoke of going out with your whole being. To be in constant creative response is a continuous bringing forth and unfolding of what lies dormant within. It’s an encounter with more of who you are. 

Not trying to get anywhere is, for us, a practice in faith and trust. If we trust people to find what they need, then goals and desired outcomes cease to have a crippling effect. And if we have faith both in our convictions and in what is wanting to emerge, then we don’t need to be concerned about where we’ll end up in the future, right now. 

Of course, this is a practice – filled with wobbles and intermittent stings of fear and doubt. Yet it still feels like a practice worth pursuing, for no other reason than the aliveness and connection that seems to come with it. 

Where that takes us? Who knows. 

We’ll see when we get there. 

We’re currently speaking to people interested in joining the next Yellow cohort, which begins in August. Reach out or apply to learn more.

When there’s a conflict, you might become scared and anxious.

If someone questions your decisions, perhaps you get angry and resentful.

Or when a colleague is emotional, maybe you feel frozen or numb.

Whatever the context, we all come across situations where we get triggered. In these moments we are reacting without awareness in a disproportionate way to the situation at hand. We’re not capable of noticing or enacting what the moment is calling for. In fact, when we’re triggered, we are not responding to the moment at all. Instead we’re reacting impulsively based on the patterns of our past.

What can we do in these situations? We can take responsibility.

Responsibility is often associated with weight, burden, and taking the blame.

But as has been often pointed out elsewhere, perhaps a more helpful definition is that responsibility is the capacity of being able to respond. It is being response-able to what the moment is calling for.

The first step of being responsible in this sense is to recognize when you are getting triggered. You notice that you are reacting disproportionately, and then, if possible, you take a breath and respond in the most appropriate way you can.

But—and here is the crucial part—responsibility doesn’t end here. Responsible leaders not only notice the moments when they get triggered, but they then consciously explore those triggers later on.

When an internal or emotional difficulty shows up, they take note. Then they take it to a coach, mentor, or friend. They get under the skin of their experience in the presenting situation, and they find the underlying pattern that has been frozen in time, often for decades or longer. With compassion, they see what their old patterns have been trying to take care of, all the while respecting the intelligence of their learned strategies. They give themselves permission to feel the entirety of their stuck emotional experience. They then complete what was incomplete, allowing them to be fully present with what is here right now.

By working through their triggers, responsible leaders develop the ability to respond to what life brings them with awareness, range, and choice. Space opens up for more options in their responses to complex situations. Greater freedom emerges.

Responsible leaders do not resist moments where they get triggered. They are able to respond to these challenging moments by using them as fuel for their own development.

Indeed, responsible leaders are eternally grateful for their triggers. They see them as calling cards, signs that point them toward their next step of development. Rather than trying to push them away or blame themselves for their faults, they embrace each trigger as a gift that shows them the next step on their path.

They realize that their inner obstacles are not in the way—they are the way.

What’s more, they believe that it is their ethical responsibility to address the triggers they come across inside. They know that if they don’t acknowledge what they see, then they are preventing their own and others’ possibility for growth and flourishing. By ignoring their own triggers, they are inflicting future hurt upon others and themselves.

When leaders adopt this stance of total responsibility, their world starts changing. They realize that they don’t have to fight against others or themselves all the time. They get on their own team. Of course, challenges and difficulties will arise. But they recognize that their internal challenges are not flaws to be resisted. They are opportunities to be embraced.

In doing so, a responsible leader sheds light upon what was previously dark. What was hidden in unconsciousness now comes into the light.

According to psychologist Carl Jung, the human being’s task is “to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious … to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.”

As he further points out: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

By facing our triggers, we shed light upon what was previously dark. We make the implicit explicit and the unconscious conscious. In this expansion of our conscious world, we give ourselves the opportunity to lead and live with more choice, possibility, and freedom.

The alternative? A future that is nothing but a repetition of the patterns of the past.

A responsible leader does not settle for such a repetitive fate.

A responsible leader heeds the call of the future, by meeting and resolving the triggered patterns of the past, here and now.

This essay was published by Perspectiva.

Read the essay here or download a PDF version here.

It’s common these days to hear calls for new worldviews. New paradigms are sought after and better futures are longed for. Many people are realizing that the worldviews we hold are not adequate to the realities we face.

The logic appears sound. How we see the world determines what we do in the world. If we want to see a new world brought into being, we need a different worldview.

However, calls for new worldviews are often accompanied by a condemnation of the current ways of thinking, doing, and being. Whether the subject in question is neoliberal capitalism, reductionist materialism, or partisan populism, existing paradigms are routinely ridiculed for the ill-effects they have on systems, souls, and society.

The impulse within these protests is important. Without it, there would be no energy to bring a better future into being. But the outright rejection of current worldviews means that a crucial part of the transformational process is overlooked.

My claim is that every worldview is attempting to take care of something. And if we don’t acknowledge and respect these aspects of our current worldviews, then they won’t fundamentally change.

In this essay, I first shed light on the structure of worldviews and metaphysics. Then I explain what it means to acknowledge and appreciate what worldviews are attempting to take care of. Finally, I share a few thoughts and personal anecdotes on what that process could look like.

Read the rest of the essay here or download a PDF version here.

It can’t help but flow, towards the sea, towards greater unity and harmony. It’s soft and it’s strong. If its path gets obstructed, it will find new ways to get to where it wants to go.

We are like water.

There is a flow, an aliveness to us. There’s an instinct to move, to be in the world and to express oneself fully. There’s a yearning to belong to a greater whole. And when faced with obstacles, we find new ways to reach where we want go.

But, like water, we can freeze, too.

When we’re frozen, we can’t move. We’re stuck in place. There’s no room to maneuver, and no space to think. We’ll feel blocked from moving forward and from being who we want to be.

No matter how hard we try.

I view my coaching work as helping people to reconnect with their aliveness.

People say they sign up for coaching because they want to find or achieve their goals. But in our work together, it becomes clear that the deeper longing is to access more of who they are.

There’s a desire to tap into more energy, ingenuity, and vitality. To access a deeper state of presence. To feel more fluid and connected with oneself and others.

To feel less stuck.

Often, we attempt to combat stuckness by trying harder. We work longer hours. We read more books. We start new habits, diets, and workouts, and take on more than we can bear.

In a cultural paradigm that resolves around “hard work,” it’s easy to tell oneself to keep pushing, forcing, and defeating the enemy within.

But the harder you try to break the ice, the more it cracks and falls apart.

When you hammer what’s frozen, you’re left with nothing but sharp edges and cuts on your hands and legs.

A year ago, I started Yellow with Rob Poynton. It’s an online space of learning for a complex world. There is no set curriculum — we respond to what is emerging from the groups and design as we go.

The participants don’t “work hard” to learn. Neither do we.

There is no homework. There are no defined learning objectives, deliverables, or defined outcomes. Although we design each session beforehand, there is no strict agenda. Often, we’ll throw our ideas and plans out the window, because something more current, more real, more alive emerges from the participants on the day.

These principles don’t come from a place of laziness (although there is something to be said for that). When you give people the space to be themselves, with care and attention, they’ll find what’s needed to grow and learn themselves—without “trying hard.”

“The all too common idea,” says educational philosopher Zachary Stein, “that learning is something that requires professional guidance and state-sanctioned materials is profoundly misguided. … Your mind does not need to be coerced to learn—learning is its natural state.”

In Yellow, we’ve experimented with everything from conversations on truth and noise, to embodied practices like breathwork, to playing with messy art, Shakespeare, and poetry. These activities circumvent the controlling, analytical mind—the Berlusconi of the brain, as Iain McGilchrist says—and allow people to tap into a different way of knowing and of being.

By including and welcoming more of the human, the participants are able to reconnect with more of who they are. They’re able to to get in touch with parts of themselves that have been stuck, hidden, or blocked.

They’re allowed to move and flow as they are.

As frustrating as is it to feel frozen, it’s important to recognize that ice is always taking care of something. Often it’s protecting something in the past, right now.

For a one-year-old, managing terrifying overwhelm by numbing and freezing the body is the only viable solution in the absence of fully attuned caregivers. It’s more manageable to feel nothing than to feel all of one’s overwhelming fear and pain.

Similarly, for a three-year-old, limiting oneself in the frozen state of “being a good boy or girl” makes sense, if the only way to secure safety and belonging is to make sure others don’t get angry or annoyed.

These strategies are intelligent, necessary trauma responses for a child. They get us through the day. Tragically, however, we can end up living our lives, decade after decade, on top of strategies that were designed to protect a three-year-old child, not a thirty-year-old adult.

This is not only sad — it’s exhausting. Limiting aliveness drains energetic resources. Energy that would normally flow freely instead gets devoted to managing, constraining, and restricting oneself. The result is physical symptomology, psychic exhaustion, and a broken heart that longs to open wide.

Trying harder to break the ice on top of that doesn’t help.

Ice only becomes water by melting.

Melting ice requires heat.

Heat is movement and increased connection. The more molecules of hydrogen and oxygen that get in contact with each other, the more liquid the ice becomes.

Ice melts when it reconnects with more of what it is.

The same is true for us. Melting happens when we allow ourselves to get in touch with more of what we are.

“A failing system needs to start talking to itself,” says Margaret Wheatley, “especially to those [parts] it didn’t know were even part of itself.”

This process of reconnection can come in a number of forms. It could be by getting more in touch with the body. It might be by allowing your messy side to express itself through art and play. Or it could be by getting to know the wounded child within.

Even grief is a process of reconnection and vitality. “There is some strange intimacy,” says Francis Weller, “between grief and aliveness, some sacred exchange between what seems unbearable and what is most exquisitely alive.”

Reconnection, whatever its form, is a process of turning toward what is here, and meeting it full on.

It’s getting to know, intimately, the neglected or veiled parts of oneself.

It’s a melting of the ice in body, heart, and mind.

Drip by drip.

Trickle by trickle.

Then, one day, as you turn your head, you might just hear the faint beginnings of water surging forward, unleashing its whoosh and its roar. Without trying hard.

In an attempt to help, I try to pinpoint the issues, the reasons for their existence, and who or what is the cause.

Despite my good intentions, I am falling into a trap.

I am pointing to the system and its problems over there, as if it was all separate from me.

But what is the ‘system’, if not you and me?

If we were to remove all human beings from the earth, what of the system would remain?

We are the system, and the system is us. I am the system and the system is me.

I wonder: what is my part in the world and the society we live in?

What here is mine to take care of?

Schismogenesis.

That’s a mouthful of a word. Thankfully, it’s easier to grasp than it sounds.

Complexity scientist Gregory Bateson coined the term to refer to how systems fall apart.

There are several forms of schismogenesis. One is when power hierarchies become increasingly entrenched. Another is when competition ceaselessly ratchets up. In both cases, given enough time, such systems will eventually fall apart.

As relevant as these examples may seem, there is another form of schismogenesis that stands out for me.

It’s called systems hold-back.

It refers to when an actor in a system holds back from contributing what it can. Eventually, this too will lead to the system falling apart.

The reason is simple: when one actor holds back, so will the others.

“Why should I give my all if no one else is? What’s the point of contributing fully if I’m the only one doing so?”

Because everyone holds back, no one contributes fully. Everyone has what is needed, but no one gives what they’ve got.

It’s an endless loop, with no happy endings in sight.

Where am I holding back?

Over the course of the spring I launched a new venture called Yellow with my friend Rob Poynton. It’s a (mostly) online space for learning, thinking, and exploring.

In a recent Yellow group gathering, we had a riveting conversation about language and buzz words.

We discussed how common it is to talk about people as ‘bottlenecks’ or ‘stakeholders’. How so much of work revolves around ‘deliverables’ and ‘KPIs’. How notions such as ‘purpose’, ‘authenticity’, ‘resilience’, ‘transformation’, and ‘empowerment’ become stripped of their real meaning and get co-opted as idealized quick-fixes to complex problems.

Understandably, many of us get irritated by such uses of language.

But the question is: what do we do about it?

Despite our misgivings about these buzzwords, our standard response is to get annoyed. We complain to ourselves. Maybe we chuckle about it with friends and like-hearted colleagues. Then we get on with our lives.

Although we would like to see a different world come to be—with more precise, empathetic, and human language, for example—far too often we don’t do anything about it.

Instead we play the game that’s being played.

We put ‘deliverables’ into our proposals, because we think that’s what the client wants. We talk about people as ’bottlenecks’ in meetings, because we assume it makes us sound professional. We give in to our client’s need for measurable ’KPIs’, because we value sealing the deal more than we value the meaning of what we do.

We play along, even though we want to play a different game.

We give in.

We hold back.

In doing so, we are perpetuating the very system we’re desperate to change.

Where am I holding back?

Integrity, although itself a buzzword in many contexts, is a word with solid foundations – quite literally.

In architecture, the structural integrity of a building refers to how much it can hold together under pressure.

The Latin root of integrity is integer, meaning whole, intact, complete. And in mathematics integer is a whole number. No decimals or fractions. Wholeness.

Integrity is oneness, wholeness, intactness. It’s about being all there, especially under pressure.

Like the structural integrity of a building, personal integrity is not proven during a calm day. It is demonstrated in the depths of a hurricane or in the midst of a storm.

We prove our integrity when we stand for what we feel is important – especially when it is difficult to do so.

When we hold back, we are not standing up. We are giving in. In doing so, we are co-conspiring to extend the lifespan of the system we want to change. We’re pouring cement on the structures we don’t want.

“What is needed most in architecture today,” said Frank Lloyd Wright, “is the very thing that is most needed in life – integrity. Just as it is in a human being, so integrity is the deepest quality in a building … If we succeed, we will have done a great service to our moral nature – the psyche – of our democratic society … Stand up for integrity in your building and you stand for integrity not only in the life of those who did the building but socially a reciprocal relationship is inevitable.“

We can talk about disrupting systems, global transformation, and other sweeping large-scale changes all we want.

But maybe it’s just as much about the little things too.

The words we choose to use. The concepts we embody. The looks, the glances we give random strangers. The tone and timber of our voice. The length of pregnant moments of silence. The quality and the nature of our own thoughts.

The little things are the big things.

But how often we let the little things slip! In dreaming ourselves away into a better future, we allow the small things to slide … until one day we realize that all of life has become a daily slipping away of possibility and potential.

All so close, yet so far away.

In Jose Saramago’s harrowing novel Blindness, set in a world taken over by a virus (!), humanity quickly descends into a world devoid of any semblance of goodness and virtue.

“Dignity,” Saramago wrote, “has no price … When someone starts making small concessions, in the end life loses all meaning.”

The small things are the big things.

Where am I holding back?

The small concessions we make form an ongoing, ever-present invitation to ourselves to look at our integrity. To examine the structure of ourselves. To revisit the areas where we are holding back.

This is not a call for self-judgement or blame. We are not perfect, nor should we expect ourselves to be.

Nor is this a call to ‘share everything’ or ‘full disclosure’. It’s not about divulging every little thought and feeling in every moment.

Integrity, and not holding back, is instead about noticing the moments when you’re holding back more than what the moment is asking you to — and then bringing forth what you’re called to bring forth.

“Integrity,” says Nora Bateson, “requires a willingness to go forward without someone else’s instructions. … It means staying alert, paying attention, and resisting the itch to rest in the familiar. Integrity has something to do with knowing that I will, with all I can muster, show up.”

To have integrity is to show up, fully.

Philosopher Martin Buber would call this “going out with your whole being” – a process of listening to what’s emerging from yourself “in order to bring it to reality as it desires”.

What is being called of me, here, now? What am I being asked to bring forth?

What is important in this moment?

What is being asked of me right now?

Where am I holding back from that?

What are the ideas that I’m holding back from the world?

Where do I censor myself out of a desire for politeness, belonging, and inclusion?

Where do I submit to the language of the customer or friend, and hold back the truth and power of what I do and why?

Where do I give in, let slide, and speak falsely?

Where and when do I speak in a way which is detached and disconnected from my emotional experience?

Where do I put on a smile, when I’m actually hurting inside?

Where do I hide my interests, my passions, my contributions, out of a fear of what others will think of me?

Where do I look away when crossing paths with a stranger, rather than offering my presence and availability of human connection, daring to face the pain or the shyness or the joy in the corner of the stranger’s eye?

Where do I hide behind the frontier of what life is asking of me?

Where am I holding back?

When we stand up for what’s important, we are allowing the parts that we’ve held back to come into the light. We are connecting our hidden parts with the rest of who we are.

We’re connecting more of ourselves with ourselves.

This is the foundation of health and healing.

“When a living system is suffering from ill health,” said complexity scientist Francisco Varela, “the remedy is found by connecting with more of itself.”

The more we hold back, the more we prevent ourselves from connecting with ourselves and each other.

The more we lose our sense of integrity, the more we are denying access to the remedies we long for, individually and collectively.

Where can we connect more of ourselves with each other?

Where can I connect more of myself with myself?

Where am I holding back?

Overcoming.

I hear the word and its synonyms often.

Getting over our fears. Winning the fight against the crisis. Overcoming our inner struggles.

Our culture is thick with such phrases and metaphors. 

This all might seem natural and obvious enough.

But I wonder. What does it all mean? What does it lead to?

Dare I ask: Must we overcome?

Any time a problem arises, we want to remove it. We seek to overcome the obstacles that stand in our way.

Whether it’s our own lack of confidence, our business’s strategic issue, or a societal crisis, our inclination is to overcome it.

We assume that once we overcome what’s in our way, then things will be better.

“If only I had more confidence and my team was more talented, then I’d be fine.”

So, we dedicate our efforts to strategizing, problem-solving, and fixing our way out of our challenges.

This urge to avoid and remove undesirable experiences is, of course, a natural and important reaction.

Indeed, someone who doesn’t flee a burning building won’t get very far in life. And wanting to improve things for ourselves and others is a quality that we would do well to cherish and cultivate more of.

But there is another, darker side to our urge to overcome – especially when it becomes the default, immediate, and unquestioned answer to anything that we don’t like.

When we seek to overcome, we resist and look away from where we are right now.

In seeking to overcome, we live where we’re not.

In myths and stories, the hero confronts an obstacle.

The hero wants to achieve the dream, find the treasure, defeat the opponent, and return home. But something stands in the hero’s way. Naturally, the hero seeks to overcome that obstacle.

But more often than not, the hero’s desire of overcoming leads, at first, to failure or avoidance. The hero either tries and fails, or becomes disheartened and prematurely quits.

It’s only when the hero truly faces the challenge, at its root, that it is finally overcome.

The transformation only happens when the hero faces the dark abyss. The hero looks at the real challenge point blank in the face, allowing the seeds of the new beginning can sprout. The hero confronts the naked truth, sacrificing all that he or she holds dear, bringing forth the death to the old and the birth of the new.

At this dramatic, climactic moment, the hero doesn’t look beyond the challenge.

Instead, the hero stares straight at it.

The hero faces it.

Facing and overcoming might seem similar enough.

We cannot overcome until we have faced. And any facing implies a subsequent overcoming.

Yet they are two worlds apart.

The difference between facing and overcoming lies in where and how we place our attention.

Overcoming focuses our attention beyond what is immediately in front of us.

Facing, on the other hand, focuses our attention on where we are right now.

When we face, we meet the challenge. We greet it, confront it, and get to know it.

When we seek to overcome, we are saying goodbye before we’ve said hello.

Overcoming and facing are two different stances towards life.

Do I look out into the world wanting to overcome everything, in an implicit stance of opposition?

Or do I approach the world with the stance of facing, meeting, and acknowledging what is actually happening around me?

When a problem arises with my spouse or partner, do I immediately seek to overcome it by looking for faults, fixes, and solutions? Or do I face it fully, by opening my heart to what we are both feeling right now?

When a challenge arises within myself, do I avoid and look away from my critical self-judgement and seek to overcome it with “more confidence”? Or do I face my inner critic—an intelligently crafted protection mechanism, which itself sits on top of worry, and perhaps a deep fear of aloneness? Do I face the wounded child within me?

When a conflict arises within my team, do I seek to assign blame, determine fault, and fix the problem myself in order to feel the relief of overcoming it? Or do I face the inner states and feelings of the people on my team? Do I face the fear in the room? Do I face the worry in my colleagues’ eyes? Do I face my own version of what they are facing within myself?

A crying child doesn’t want to overcome its tears. It wants love, attention, comfort, closeness, food, or whatever is needed at the moment.

Tears are a signpost of wanting to be acknowledged and met. The child wants to be faced in its tears.

Telling the child to “stop crying,” or to “get over your tears” will never work. It will merely perpetuate the problem.

Only when the child is fully met and faced in its tears will the tears be overcome. Only when the child is acknowledged, consoled, and faced in what he or she is facing, will the current state begin to relax, melt and flow.

The same is true for us as adults. Although our collective and individual stories appear to tell us that we want to overcome our fears, deep down we don’t.

We want to be met, first. We want to face and be faced. Then, and only then, will we overcome.

Our struggles are not faults or errors.

They are intelligent signposts, inviting us in to be faced, met, held, completed, and ultimately dissolved.

Our challenges are not blocking the path.

They are the path.

Facing can feel frightening.

As the word implies, facing brings us literally face-to-face with what we are avoiding.

Facing puts a face on our struggle. We feel the feelings that have been in perpetual exile. We face the monsters in our closet. We bring the secrets we’ve locked away out into the light.

Yet, as terrifying as this might be, it is also intimate. It is honest and truthful. We invite what is hidden out into the light, out into an embrace, out into the world, one compassionate and inviting look at a time.

Like sinking into a lover’s eyes, or like dropping into a moment of deep immersion and flow, it is all right there. There is no need to get anywhere. 

Despite its appearances, facing is not nothing. It is an act of embracing the inter-subjective nature of ourselves and reality itself.

And all by simply being there, facing the face in front of you, and bringing more of your own face into the light.

Must we face?

No. We mustn’t do anything. We can and should only face what we are ready to, and we cannot face alone.

But if we would like to bring forth the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible, for ourselves and for others, it will not be a question of how much we can overcome.

It will be a question of how much we can face.

Ultimately, changing society—or changing anything—is not about changing out there.

It’s about facing in here.

Our planet, our society, our culture, our economy, are not separate from us.

We are it. It is us.

“We can never speak of nature,” says physicist Fritjof Capra, “without, at the same time, speaking about ourselves.”

What are we facing?

What are we not?

This post was originally published in my newsletter, The Question.

I stand by the stove and stir the soup.

Aromas of ginger, onion, garlic, and coriander rise up and meet my nose.

As the heat increases, small bubbles emerge at the soup’s surface. The bubbles soon become larger in size and greater in number.

I become mesmerized by these bubbles.

What are the bubbles telling me?

These bubbles, these bursts of soupy energy, are not separate from the ingredients.

Without the ingredients, there are no bubbles.

But the bubbles are not the ingredients, either.

They are a response to heat. They are a response to movement.

The bubbles are a coming forth of potential, an expression of what lies beneath.

What bubbles and expressions in life am I not letting out?

The bubbles are not the ingredients.

But the bubbles are not the heat, either. And yet without heat there are no bubbles.

Bubbles are what heat looks like, from the outside.

They are the outside of what’s on the inside.

What is on the inside of the bubbles I see in life?

A heated soup without bubbles would eventually explode, in one giant exploding bubble.

So the small bubbles make sense. They are the most appropriate solution to the prevailing conditions of heat.

If there is heat, the bubbles must happen. They are inevitable. The only question is their timing, size, and quantity.

The bubbles resolve the increase in movement. They are a solution to the heat.

What are the bubbles in my life solving? What are they a solution to?

When bubbles emerge in the soup, any direct attempt to remove them will fail. New bubbles will simply emerge somewhere else.

Again, the bubbles are not merely bubbles. The bubbles are a solution to heat.

So, if we want to change or remove the bubbles, we must look at where they are coming from.

What bubbles in life am I attempting to get rid of in vain?

When the soup is ready, we turn down the heat.

A completed soup does not require heat anymore.

The heat is there for a reason: to complete the soup.

A completed soup means there is no need for heat – only then will the bubbles will stop.

We must complete the soup for the bubbles to cease.

Where I see bubbles in life, what is it that is not completed?

Bubbles easily capture our attention. But it’s not really about the bubbles.

It’s about where the bubbles point us. The bubbles are signposts, informing us that a soup is still on the hot stove, and is therefore not complete yet.

As uncomfortable as our bubbles in life may be, they are actually compassionate calling cards, inviting us to become more intimate with the areas of life that are waiting to be completed.

The bubbles are life’s way of saying: “Hey! Look at me! I am trying to tell you that something is incomplete! Look at where I’m pointing you! I am begging to be completed!”

We all have individual soups that are bubbling. And we have collective, societal soups bubbling, too.

Some of our collective soups have been bubbling for hundreds, if not thousands of years. But instead of confronting the uncomfortable task of completing these lingering soups, we still find ourselves trying to squash the bubbles that we see.

If we want to, we can continue to try squashing bubbles like an eternal game of Whac-A-Mole.

But if we’d like different outcomes, we are invited to make a different choice. We can finally accept the invitation to follow the bubbles — to complete what is incomplete, thereby opening up new futures, and new soups that we put on the stove.

Only when the incomplete has been completed will new soups become possible.

Where are the bubbles pointing me?

What if I dared to complete what is incomplete?

I return to the soup.

The flavors, textures, looks, tastes, and smells all tell me that the soup is now complete.

I turn off the heat, and take the soup off the stove.

I take a spoonful, blow on it carefully, and allow myself to taste the depth and the fullness of the completed soup.

The soup is now in me. It is now part of me, completely. Bubbles and all.

The bubbles have led me to integration of what was once incomplete. The soup is now me, completely.

And now, I can move on — to future soups, and future possibilities.

What are the bubbles telling me?

This post was originally published in my newsletter, The Question.

Life seems to follow a twofold movement.

One is an outward movement. It moves from inside to outside. We take something from “in here”—our ideas, thoughts, dreams—and, through words and actions, give form to them outside of ourselves. It’s a bringing forth, a folding out.

The other movement is an inward one. It moves from outside to inside. We receive something from “out there”—sensory stimuli, people, music, news, art—and we allow it to enter into us and to become us. It’s a bringing into, a folding in.

We can’t help but take part in this twofold movement. We give and we receive, back and forth, day after day.

We can, however, approach this twofold movement in different ways.

How do we unfold?

And how do we infold? 

We are all bakers, kneading the dough of work and our lives.

Dough is a simple enough composition: flour, water, yeast, and a pinch of salt.

Yet important as these ingredients are, they remain nothing but materials without two crucial additions.

Time and movement.

Dough is alive. The yeast holds within it the seeds of the bread’s life. And, like any life, it needs air, time, and movement to breathe and to grow.

The same is true for us. Our dough is alive. We need more than just the right ingredients to grow and to become. We need time and movement, too.

If we don’t roll out our dough, it will remain a hard ball of unfulfilled potential.

If we don’t fold the dough back in, it will remain a flat, static surface.

So, we knead our dough.

We express outwardly and we learn inwardly. We change how things look outside and we update what they mean inside.

We fold out and we fold in.

That is what we do. This is what we are.

That is not nothing. Perhaps it is close to everything.

“As the music unfolds, the meaning infolds,” says Bonnitta Roy.

Each unfolding note changes the infolded meaning of the notes that come after.

Some of us play notes without listening to what they mean. Constantly expressing and creating, we don’t stop to integrate what it all means.

Others of us listen with open ears, making deep meaning of what we hear, but never daring to play the music that is ours to make.

We live in a world which promotes folding out.

We forget about folding in. Instead, we seek to express and change, craving constant improvement and fixing.

It can seem like a good enough idea on the surface. Who doesn’t want to make things better? Who would argue that improvement isn’t good? Who wouldn’t want to remove the nasty, uncomfortable bits of our experience?

But our lunge toward fixing at the earliest sign of a problem is more often than not a movement of exclusion.

It’s all expression, with no inclusion. It doesn’t fold in what is actually happening.

Fixing, improving, even creating without folding in is steamrolling over the nature of things. It’s a blind attempt to change a reality that isn’t there.

When we immediately and instinctively leap to conclusions and judgements about others—whether it be politicians, government responses, our bosses, our partners—we steamroll ourselves and our world.

We exclude. We deny. We separate.

What if we dared to include?

Folding in is the movement of inclusion.

As with dough, it’s the act of bringing it all back together again – even the smallest and stickiest bits of dough that cling on for dear life on the cutting board.

Inclusion is not a passive stance. It’s participatory.

The mere act of inclusive acknowledgement and observation changes things. Literally.

An electron is a wave until we observe it. Then it becomes a particle.

With intention and awareness we bring form to potential. No intention and no observation means no matter.

To bring forth in form, we must include.

Our relationships matter.

And, as the electron shows, our relationships make matter.

As we relate and include, we bring out and we bring forth. “We midwife reality into being,” as Iain McGilchrist says.

Folding in is folding out.

What if we folded in more?

What if, when faced with challenges, we included them as information?

What if we fully appreciated the existence of our difficulties – not to stop change from happening, but to allow for change to unfold more fully?

What if we folded out more in response to what we fold in?

How might our own worlds, and the world, change if we folded out even more of what we are, and of what we include?

What are you folding out?

What are you folding in?

What are you not folding out?

What are you not folding in?

This post is an extract from my newsletter: The Question.

The building blocks of many a modern life.

One after another, our days take place through these things we call meetings. 

We sigh. Not another meeting.

Drained, bored, frustrated, we seem to be allergic to a primary method of working life. Especially in times of quarantine and Zoom calls, meetings can drag us down more than they bring us up.

Must it be this way?

What does it mean to meet?

How do you meet?

When I meet, I come together with.

To meet is to face. It’s a facing up to. 

It’s two or more fronts coming together, creating a space and a rhythm that emerges in the dance between the two.

Two becomes not two.

To meet is to come face-to-face — often literally, always metaphorically. 

A typical meeting appears to be two people coming together. 

But a deeper look yields a different picture. 

More often than not, it is our ideas that are meeting. We come together analytically. We meet intellectually. 

Do we ever meet the whole person we’re facing?

How often do we confront the underlying fears and unspoken dreams in the room?

When do we take the time, the space, the breath, to look into the book of life that sits in front of us?

Do we ever fully meet in our meetings?

Perhaps meeting isn’t a noun. 

It’s more of a spectrum. In every interaction, we can be living in a higher or lower degree of “meeting.” 

We’ll call this the spectrum of meeting. 

“Low meeting” is when you’re closed. You speak with detachment. You keep things on the surface. You’re open enough to have a conversation, but many parts of you are closed. You talk from head to head.

“High meeting” is when you’re fully open. You don’t shy away. You’re willing to confront and explore all that is happening. You bring awareness to what is there but is not being said, both the prevailing discomforts and the moments of joy. You have an intention for the meeting, yet no matter the outcome you dance in the inherent, intrinsic value of connection that is on offer. You meet—fully, intimately, nakedly.

We don’t need to be in full-on “high meeting” all of the time. There is an appropriate time and place for everything. 

But we have come to assume that “low meeting” is normal and right. Not only in business meetings but in all of life, we live in an ocean of “low meeting.” 

We have settled for what Marilynne Robinson calls “the poor, imperfect, deeply welcome comforts of evasion and concealment.”

“High meeting” is taboo. It’s reserved for psychologist’s couches, team-building retreats, and spiritual workshops. 

We rarely enact “high meeting” in our daily lives. 

This is how it has been. 

But this is not how it must be. 

What if we raised our average point on the spectrum of meeting?

A meeting is two mirrors facing each other. It’s endless.

You look into the mirror, and you see yourself looking at yourself, looking at yourself looking at yourself, looking at yourself looking at yourself looking at yourself … ad infinitum.

A meeting always holds within it infinite depth — into the abyss of you and the other. 

It’s a portal to the seductive mysteries on the inside of things. Whether by fully meeting the wave as a surfer, or by fully meeting the other person during a business meeting, it’s a process of getting closer to encountering the veiled mysteries of life. 

As you approach the wave, you get seduced in the fullness of it, losing yourself completely yet trusting absolutely in the rhythm and the dance that unfolds. You meet so fully that you become absorbed in the wave, with the wave. You and the wave align. 

You don’t resist the wave. You don’t fight against it. Instead, you grapple with it. You say OK to its existence, and then you respond in kind. 

It’s endlessly elusive. You sense there are bottomless depths available, calling you forward from just beyond, luring you out into more intimacy, more closeness, more facing up to. 

The depths of now never cease calling you out. 

“In reality we know nothing; for truth is in the depths,” Democritus said. “It will be clear that to really know what each thing is like is beyond our power.”

A meeting is a portal to tasting the eternal, unknowable depths of now.

When we fully meet, are we actually meeting the other? 

Or are we really meeting ourselves?

Who is really meeting whom?

Meetings can be meetings as we know them: nothing more than necessary methods of work and surface-level socializing.

Or, meetings can be gateways.

Meetings can be spaces where we fully meet the other. 

Meetings can be openings where we meet ourselves. 

Meetings can be portals that afford us glimpses of the hidden yet endlessly longed for depths of who and where we are.

“All real living,” said Martin Buber, “is meeting.”

How will you meet?

Download this essay as a PDF

“There is deep wisdom within our very flesh,
if we can only come to our senses and feel it.”
– Elizabeth A. Behnke

“And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And to know the place for the first time.”
– T.S. Eliot

Where we are

We stand in a space between the new world and the old.

Yesterday lingers with the residue of the past. Tomorrow beckons with possibilities from beyond. Between the two, in a place we call today, we paint the future against the backdrop of what has been.

What will our future be? Who will we become?

We are asked these questions every day. But now, as the old world ruptures at its seams, the questions are being asked more starkly, more urgently.

Every act in these pivotal moments carries momentous weight. Even the faintest of actions can significantly shift the trajectory of what will come.

As we grapple with gravity of our choices, we realize that we can’t do it alone. There is so much to process, too much to hold. We need bridges, we need platforms that can support us through what unfolds.

We are yearning for leadership. We are longing for vessels that have the capacity to hold others, that can bring each other and tomorrow into being.

Leadership is not separate from us. We are the leadership we have. So, to bring forth the world we desire, we must be the leaders and the humans we seek.

We have everything we need to do so.

Hidden right beneath our fingertips is a finely tuned yet neglected instrument. It holds capacities that allow us to make sense of the world, to relate with ourselves and others, and to lead with compassion and conviction amidst complexity.

The time has come to reconnect with our overlooked capacities. What becomes of our future will depend on it.

Our hidden instrument is called embodied presence.

In a word: feeling.

We crave data, insight, and knowledge. Especially in times of increased uncertainty.

Like vultures we descend on facts and figures, devouring them all in the hope of knowing enough to survive and thrive.

Valuable as that knowledge might be, our obsession with external data blinds us to an entire realm of information that is closer to home and yet endlessly abundant: the felt-sense of our sensory perceptions.

As living, breathing human beings, we are always taking in stimuli through our senses.

What we sense is data about our world. Everything we see, touch, hear, taste, and smell is information.

A micro-expression on a colleague’s face. A gut feeling. A constrained throat. A sense of nausea or discombobulation. A sense of panic or despair. 

Together, our sense impressions form the composition of our reality. Our senses are the gates through which we receive the world. 

By taking in our external world, we create an internal representation of where we are. The outer enters into us, forming an internal multi-dimensional map. From this ever-shifting inner map, our own rules of engagement, we interact with the external world.

We can’t help but take part in this continuous relationship, this constant conversation, between ourselves and life itself. In our meeting with the fabric of life, we weave a tapestry of reality, one sensory thread after another. 

The tragedy, however, is that we mute, dim, even cut ourselves off from this vital conversation. 

We don’t value, and we don’t even notice, what it is that we sense and what we feel.

We are always feeling, all of the time.

We cannot not feel. Our body-mind is always absorbing ceaseless amounts of information.

This sensory information is felt. We don’t neutrally take in stimuli. We feel what we receive.

“Feelings accompany the unfolding of life in our organisms, whatever one perceives, learns, remembers, imagines, reasons, judges, decides, plans, or mentally creates,” says neuroscientist Antonio Damasio. “Regarding feelings as occasional visitors to the mind … does not do justice to the ubiquity and functional importance of the phenomenon. … There is no being, in the proper sense of the term, without a spontaneous mental experience of life, a feeling of existence. The ground zero of being corresponds to a deceptively continuous and endless feeling state.”

Our never-ending state of feeling is how we make sense of our senses.

Feelings are communication signals to ourselves about what we are sensing. Feelings inform us of what is beautiful, threatening, dangerous, or desired. Without the ability to feel, we would take in endless data but wouldn’t be able to make sense of it.

To feel is to make sense of. To feel is to know.

William James, the psychologist and philosopher, said that depths of feeling “are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making.” The dancer Yvonne Rainer agreed: she titled her autobiography Feelings Are Facts.

Feelings are facts—real facts about our world and our making of it.

In our modern world, we have swept feelings under the rug. We have banished emotional states into eternal exodus.

We have lifted our entire sense of self into our heads, giving sole arbitration of what’s real, worthy, and right to the mind.

We value only what we think. We identify exclusively with our thoughts. Pure, rational, logical thinking is the modern world’s highest good.

We assume that the less we feel, the more rational and perfect our decisions will be.

But the absurdity of this attempt to strip away feelings from decision-making is that decision-making is feeling. 

Feelings are how we make choices. It’s the mechanism that tells us whether something is right or wrong. Right feelsvery different than how wrong feels. Even when solving a mathematical equation, the feeling of the right answer is how we know we have reached completion.

Without feeling you can’t decide, because you cannot know what option feels better. Feeling is how we know what to decide, regardless of the logical and rational nature of the problem at hand.

Studies of people who have suffered damage to the orbitofrontal cortex—the part of the brain that connects analytic reasoning capacities with emotional states—are revealing. Subjects end up in never-ending rational argumentation, weighing and scrutinizing all available information. But they can never get themselves to make a decision. They aren’t capable of weighing the difference between the different options on their menu.

Our objects of mind have weight, and that weight is determined by how they feel. Without feelings there is no weight. No feelings means no deciding.

So, when we discount our feelings to make better decisions, we are discounting the actual tool and arbiter of decision-making itself. 

From an early age, we learn to negate what we feel and to distrust our emotions. 

When we’re scared as children, our parents tell us:

“Oh, that’s nothing to be afraid of, my dear.”

When we admit our insecurities, our friends tell us:

“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that, everything will be fine.”

These responses, as well-intentioned as they are, don’t acknowledge the fear or the worry. Even though our insecurities might not be “rational”, in the moment we are nevertheless still scared or worried. The responses we receive dismiss our fear. They negate what we feel.

We aren’t met where we’re at. Instead, we’re met where other people think we should be.

The constant, reinforced message that “there’s nothing to be scared or worried about” teaches us that we can’t nor shouldn’t trust what we feel.

We learn that what we feel is wrong, and what we somehow “should” feel is right.

This discounting of feeling—through schooling, parenting, and culture—is the result of a several millennia-long movement upward. We’ve pulled our entire sense of self up and out from our bodies and into our heads. 

In this upward movement, we’ve cut off what Candace Pert, neuroscientist and pharmacologist, described as the “the nexus between mind and matter”: our emotions. We have severed our bodies.

We have become dissociated. 

Dissociation, in psychology and psychiatry, is a state of separation and disconnection. It’s a natural response to trauma.

Not all painful experiences lead to trauma responses. Trauma arises when there’s a lack of an appropriate emotional capacity to integrate a painful experience. Children, for example, require attuned parents to regulate the emotions in their own nervous systems. Without attunement and regulation, painful emotions become overwhelming.

The body’s instinctive reaction to unmanageable, unregulated overwhelm is to cut off access to its felt experience. The person dissociates from their body and their feelings.

Despite the difficulties that dissociation can later entail, it is an elegant, intelligent response in the moment. A traumatizing event is, per definition, overwhelming. It’s too much to bear given the person’s internal capacities and external circumstances. So severing the link to strong feelings is what makes life manageable.

“Traumatized people are often afraid of feeling,” says psychologist Bessel van der Kolk. “It is not so much the perpetrators (who, hopefully, are no longer around to hurt them) but their own physical sensations that are now the enemy.”

Physical sensations have become the enemy. 

This, in a sentence, is the tragedy of our modern world. 

We live on the surface, constantly hovering on top of what we feel but never sinking into it. We’re terrified of feeling our feelings, just as we are terrified of feeling other people’s feelings, too.

This is a necessary, learned response to the world we’ve grown up in. But we leave so much of life on the table. Since we never sink into ourselves, we are always hovering on the surface. And we end up living in an alternative, semi-hallucinated reality.

“If an individual is deprived of sensory stimulation for a length of time,” says psychologist Alexander Lowen, “he will begin to hallucinate. … The decrease of body sensation caused by the absence of external stimulation or internal motor activity reduces the person’s feeling of his body. When a person loses touch with his body, reality fades out.”

In our fear of relating to others and ourselves, reality has faded out.

Disconnected.

Negated.

Severed.

Dissociated.

Hallucinated.

This has been the state of our world.

This is the state of most leadership today.

Will this be the state of our future?

Coming Home

We are called to come home—to ourselves, to our bodies, to our feelings.

Coming home is a reconnection with the birthright of our sensory apparatus, the inner radar, that’s been there all along. 

It’s a clearing away of the cultural cobwebs that devalue feelings, and healing the frozen patterns of fear and overwhelm that remain.

It’s a journey of seeing and feeling more clearly what is always and already being felt.

It’s a process of arriving more fully and deeply in our natural home.

“We need to come home to the temple of our senses,” writes poet John O’Donohue. “Our bodies know that they belong … it is our minds that make us homeless. … The senses are generous pathways which can bring you home.”

To be a leader outwardly, we need to come home inwardly, first.

The path to go out is to go in.

Coming home to ourselves is to come all the way in to who we are. It is to settle, to lovingly and tenderly feel every last nook and cranny of the most intimate and only true home we will ever have: our naked body.

“There is a strong identity,” says Juhani Pallasmaa, “between naked skin and the sensation of home. The experience of home is essentially an experience of intimate warmth.”

This sense of intimate warmth is that of the motherly embrace.

When a bare child settles into its mother’s arms, it can fully settle and relax. The child can let go of any fear that lingers because it knows it doesn’t have to protect itself anymore. The child is protected and connected by the intimate warmth.

The child is at home.

To come home as adults is to invite the archetypically feminine and motherly aspects of ourselves into our own experience.

“The first sound that every human hears,” John O’Donohue writes, “is the sound of the mother’s heartbeat in the dark waters of the womb. … The sound of the drum brings us consolation because it brings us back to that time when we were at one with the mother’s heartbeat. That was a time of complete belonging.”

In our state of disconnection, we’re missing that sense of complete belonging. We long for the drum, the rhythm of the motherly beat.

“Utshani obulele buvuswa wumlilo umami,” the Zulu say. The dead grass is awakened by the fire mother.

We are but dead grass.

To come alive again, we must receive the rhythmic warmth of the fire mother, drumming us awake and welcoming us back into ourselves.

The tragedy of our modern world is that its foundation is dissociation.

Richer and fuller versions of reality are available. But they will remain mere possibilities unless we do the inner work of integration to uncover them.

“If the problem … is dissociation,” says Bessel van der Kolk, “the goal of treatment would be association: integrating the cut-off elements of the trauma into the ongoing narrative of life, so that the brain can recognize that ‘that was then, and this is now.’”

By learning to integrate with our cut-off parts, we can begin to sink into our bodies. We start updating our notion of time, and increasing our sense of belonging to our bodily home.

This process is a gradual, ongoing practice. There is no finish line.

We are not flawed if we don’t feel at home. Nor are we faulty if there is work left to do.

The question is not whether we’re at home or not.

The question is simply if we would like to expand our capacity to feel.

If we so choose, there will always be more comfort, more information, more relational capacity available. That path will never end.

With respect and curiosity, you gently get to know your instrument better, more intimately, one nuance and one sensation at a time.

To associate means to reconnect, to find again.

Finding and recovering. Associating and reintegrating.

It’s a remembering of our way back home, a waking up to a richer, fuller picture of leadership and life.

The more alive and awake the body is, the greater the capacity to feel.

The greater the capacity to feel, the more of the world can be taken in and responded to.

As capacity increases, new fields of information become available. More of the incoming sensory data can be distinguished and understood. Your map of reality expands.

By sinking into your body, and expanding your own internal map, you begin to sharpen your instrument of leadership. You become increasingly adequate to the task at hand: knowing other people.

“Nothing can be known without there being an appropriate ‘instrument’ in the makeup of the knower,” said E. F. Schumacher. “The understanding of the knower must be adequate to the thing to be known.”

The thing to be known is the internal state of others.

The instrument to do so is your internal state.

So as you develop your instrument, your knowledge of the external world opens up, too.

What was previously hidden now becomes subtly felt, informing and directing you about what you’re experiencing. Your inner radar picks up signals that couldn’t be detected before.

You notice the flavor of your colleague’s sadness. You can sense the age of your co-founder’s fear.

More color becomes available in your world. The resolution of your screen of life gets upgraded from black and white to technicolor. Everything becomes more alive. Everything starts making more sense.

“To make sense is to enliven the senses,” says David Abram. “To make sense is to release the body from the constraints imposed by outworn ways of speaking, and hence to renew and rejuvenate one’s felt awareness of the world. It is to make the senses wake up to where they are.” 

You wake up to the informational abundance of where you are.

Leadership is about capacity—to guide, to decide, to shepherd, to hold.

A leader is the vessel for others. As a leader, you are a container with the capacity to hold the tensions around you, thereby helping to transform that friction into energy and action.

A leader dares to hold it all.

If others are in pain, if they’re scared, if they’re buckling under pressure, you sit with it. You take it on board, feeling it with your entire nervous system.

By feeling it all, it all becomes information.

You take it in, feel it, and let it marinate, allowing the hidden implications to take form and inform you.

This doesn’t paralyze you or freak you out, because you’re grounded, you’re rooted. You are OK.

Just as a tree is OK being a tree, and a lion is OK being a lion, you are OK being you.

If you’re able to fundamentally assume that you’re OK, then nothing can get to you. You are OK. No matter what. 

This doesn’t mean that you’re stoically unfazed. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. You feel everything.

When your colleague is sad, you feel her sadness. When your friends are elated, you feel their elation with them. 

You laugh, you cry, you grieve. You feel everything, but it doesn’t trigger you into defensive, reactionary responses.

Since your fundamental assumption is that you’re OK, your system can feel it all without becoming scared, threatened, or overwhelmed. You don’t flee from the sensory information you’re steeped in. You swim in it.

You’re at home. You’re grounded and settled, with yourself and with others.

And because you’re settled in your body, you are able to respond rather than react. 

To lead is to meet the fabric of reality. A leader doesn’t work with reality as it should be—a leader plays with what is.

Leadership is a radical act of acknowledging. It’s an embracing of whatever arises with all-encompassing gratitude. As the Fremen say in the novel Dune: “Be prepared to appreciate what you meet.”

This does not mean supporting or condoning everything that happens. It simply means meeting and receiving what occurs with open arms, without preconceived judgement.

When an event or an emotion is acknowledged and met, it can be felt. And when it’s felt, it can be dealt with and responded to. 

Too often we close our eyes to what’s unfolding. We override, we neglect, we turn away, we push ahead, we avoid.

When we avoid—by denying, banishing, rushing, resisting—we freeze. Avoidance locks-in unprocessed energy and emotion, which then has no option but to repeat itself until it has been completed.

What we resist, persists.

Only by including—by appreciating all that we experience, by witnessing, by beingwith—can resisted emotions be completed. When they are included and welcomed, they begin to shift, melt, and flow. “They actually start to take on a kind of seasonality,” the poet David Whyte says. Emotional winter turns to spring. Ice melts, rivers flow, and plants blossom. Aliveness blooms.

Being able to hold, meet, and be with what is—without pretense, without needing to get anywhere, without judgment, without criticism, without looking for anything in particular—is the most sacred form of change.

“As long as we are trying to figure out how we can escape from our present situation, we can’t notice much about it,” said Chogyam Trungpa. “Only when we feel that this is it, this is how it is right now, without any clutching toward something different, will our intelligence really come alive.”

It hinges on our ability to be with what we sense and feel. It depends on our capacity to be with our emotions, and those of others.

If we can embrace and learn to thrive in these spaces, we will not just become better humans.

We will become leaders that bring each other home, turning the repetitive patterns of the past into new possibilities of the future.

This is leadership.

“What are you experiencing?”

This is the most beautiful of questions. It invites both parties to become more attuned to what is happening right now.

Indeed, what is so refreshing about the body, emotions, feelings, and the felt sense, is that it is all happening right now.

What is happening on the inside, is, per definition, happening right now.

The more intimate we are with what we are feeling, the more present we become. 

The greater the precision, the greater our resolution of reality becomes, and the greater our chances of getting where we want to go.

“The remarkable thing about human beings, I find,” says David Whyte, “and the merciful thing about human beings is that you only have to articulate exactly the way you feel … and as soon as you have articulated that exactly as you feel, you’re on your way home. You’ve started the journey to the place you want to go.”

Coming home is to be present. Coming home means being here, in your body, right now.

It’s to synchronize and update our notion of time. We bring our mind, body, and emotions into alignment with the current moment.

It’s a collective upgrading of our operating systems. We leave our old, outdated, legacy programming behind, and we opt-in for new updates as they become available.

The degree to which we can come home to ourselves tells us the state of our own homes.

If home is a comfortable, up-to-date place, then we will feel OK being there.

But, “if home is painful,” says modern mystic Thomas Hübl, “we are constantly journeying.”

The constant journeying we do internally is reflected in our external choices. Our outer world is a mirror image of our inner homes.

So many of us are constantly journeying, always travelling, never here right now. We’re always on the way to other places, other feelings, other times. We’re even on our way to other planets.

The world becomes what we make it.

We, as leaders, are vessels for the future.

If we are running outdated software in our homes, tomorrow will be the past.

If our internal software is up-to-date, then tomorrow will be the future it can be.

Leadership is not only an outward journey.

It is an inner exploration.

We lead to come home again.

As T.S. Eliot said:

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And to know the place for the first time.

Exploration is coming home, again and again.

There is no destination. There is no point at which we can say we are finally at home. There is only the process of learning to find our way home more intimately.

Again and again.

Home is an inner belonging.

A belonging to ourselves—to our body, our own temple of the senses.

A belonging to each other—determined not by how much we agree, but on our capacities to attune to and feel each other.

A belonging to life itself—to what Mary Oliver calls our “place in the family of things.”

Coming home is a path of reclaiming the birthright of your bodily instrument.

It’s a path of developing the capacity to hold and be with your own emotions and those of others.

It’s a path of being the vessel for turning darkness into light.

To come home again and again, in every waking moment. It’s a giving birth to oneself, to each other, and to life, in each and every instant.

This is creation.

This is leadership.

This is life.

Sources and recommended reading:

• David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World
• Tara Brach, “Relaxing the Over-Controller”
• Carl Buchheit and Ellie Schamber, Transformational NLP: A New Psychology
• Antonio Damasio, The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures
• Wade Davis, The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World
• Laurence Heller and Aline LaPierre, Healing Developmental Trauma: How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and the Capacity for Relationship
• Thomas Hübl, “Celebrate Life Festival 2019 – Summary”
• Nicholas Janni, “From Absence to Presence”
• Alexander Lowen, The Betrayal of the Body
• Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
• John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book Of Celtic Wisdom and Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong
• Mary Oliver, Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver
• Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses
• Candace Pert, Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine
• Peter Senge, Otto Sharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers, Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society
• Robert Stolorow, World, Affectivity, Trauma: Heidegger and Post-Cartesian Psychoanalysis
• Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma
• Boyd Varty, The Cathedral of the Wild: An African Journey Home
• David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity

But a gift implies receiving and taking. It suggests that all we have to do is put out our hands and unwrap the opportunities on offer.

This is a static, passive stance. It waits for the answers to fall into our lap.

The alternative is to hear the questions we are asked.

If we listen closely enough, we’ll find that the questions we’re asked are no normal questions.

They are invitations.

An invitation has several distinct features.

An invitation can be accepted or declined. It demands a response.

And it doesn’t end with the response. An invitation requires enactment. You don’t just accept an invitation. You go. You show up.

An invitation is a portal. It requires a stepping through. It’s a doorway with its own gravitational pull, daring you to cross the threshold into new frontiers.

Within the invitation lies new possibilities that did not exist without it.

Sometimes we’re invited directly. Other times, we have to search for the hidden, veiled invitations that are waiting to be noticed.

What invitations have you received?

What invitations have you missed?

And how will you respond?

This is the moment.

This post is part of a new series:

• A Few Thoughts on Half-Time Breaks
• A Few Thoughts on Expectations
• A Few Thoughts on Pessimism vs Optimism
• A Few Thoughts on Emotional Decisions
• A Few Thoughts on Crisis

Teams could, if they wanted to, watch Netflix, wait out the time, and then go back to playing as they had done before.

Alternatively, they could just keep playing, acting as if there was no break at all.

But teams don’t view the break as something to get over with, nor as something to ignore.

They use the half-time break.

They ask themselves: Where are we? What do we need to change to achieve what we want? Is this even the game we want to play?

Each individual asks themselves the hard questions, too: What game do I want to play? What do I need to adjust? Is it time to stray from the gameplan and sing to a tune I know to be truer—even if it means going against the grain?

A break is a space between. It’s a nowhere that holds everything to come, a moment in time that bubbles with the possibility of the future.

A break is not nothing.

It’s a pregnant pause that determines what comes next.

The future becomes what we make it. It’s the result of the seeds that are planted today.

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

How will you use the half-time break?

Will it be nothing but a break?

Or will it be the start of everything?

This is the moment.

This post is part of a new series:

• A Few Thoughts on Expectations
• A Few Thoughts on Pessimism vs Optimism
• A Few Thoughts on Emotional Decisions
• A Few Thoughts on Crisis

The dreams we had, and the memories we looked forward to having, all get erased in a flash.

As our plans get disrupted, so does our sense of certainty.

We get angry, frustrated, scared. We despair over the hope for a certain future that’s been lost.

Much of this frustration comes from our expectations, and particularly from how we hold them.

Tightly held expectations create attachment, and attachment creates suffering.

Attachment is suffering, the Buddha said. Our responses to the disruption of established models and structures show how attached we have been.

So what can we do? We can’t get rid of expectations and plans, after all. They will always be necessary.

But what if held our expectations lightly?

What if we didn’t cling to past as a blueprint of the future?

What if we still had dreams and goals, but didn’t base our self-worth on their attainment?

What if we welcomed everything that arises?

Welcoming everything that arises, in this sense, doesn’t mean supporting or condoning what happens. It simply means receiving what life presents, and meeting it head on.

It’s a stance of willingly engaging in a conversation with reality, rather than denying its appearance.

It’s the ability to use the here-and-now as the map, rather than persisting with outdated expectations that no longer apply.

It’s a process of being born again into the reality of each and every moment.

This is the moment.

This post is part of a new series:

• A Few Thoughts on Pessimism vs Optimism
• A Few Thoughts on Emotional Decisions
• A Few Thoughts on Crisis

Part of a new series. See A Few Thoughts on Crisis and A Few Thoughts on Emotional Decisions for more.

Tense situations seduce into two camps.

Some become pessimistic. “We’re doomed!” The pessimist is a stickler for staring down the barrel of the pain of reality.

Others become optimistic. “We’ll be fine!” The optimist hovers above the surface of reality, forever floating on clouds of potential and possibility.

Both stances have their virtues. But they are both avoidant, too.

If we get bogged down in the reality of today, we become paralyzed and corrosively cynical about tomorrow.

And if we cling only to dreams of future possibility, we become irrelevantly idealistic and blind to the reality of where we are now.

Both options pull us out of the action.

So, we are called to stand in what Parker Palmer calls the tragic gap.

In the tragic gap, we have one foot planted in the realism of today, and the other foot planted in the future we want to create.

As the name implies, it’s not easy to stand here. There is a constant tension, between the stark reality unfolding and the dream of a better future that isn’t guaranteed to come.

Those who stand in the tragic gap play with this tension. They own it. They take responsibility for being the bridge between today and tomorrow, a vessel through which a better future can unfold.

The deeper one stands in the tragic gap, the more tension there is.

The more tension there is, the greater the change that can occur.

Seldom has there been a better time to stand in the tragic gap.

Seldom has there been a better time to be a vessel for taking the next step.

This is the moment.

Part of a new series. See A Few Thoughts on Crisis for more.

People say, “you shouldn’t make decisions out of fear or panic.”

We tell ourselves to “avoid emotional decisions” and to “remain calm.”

While this advice can be helpful, it also gets in our way.

We’ve concluded that emotions are “bad”. We think that fear and panic are dangerous. We sweep the tiniest trace of emotion under the rug.

But when an emotion isn’t fully felt, it remains frozen. Actions taken based on unacknowledged, stuck emotions are reactionary: impulsive comments, disproportionate outrage, hubristic downplaying and avoidance … these are surface-level reactions, not deeply felt responses. And they repeat the past, again and again.

There is another way: it’s to actually feel what is going on.

It’s possible to feel fear without being impulsive.

It’s possible to feel overwhelm and panic without flipping out.

To feel demands giving space to what is there. It requires taking a breath, and having the courage to engage in a conversation with your inner world about what is arising.

What’s it trying to say? What does it need? What might it be trying to protect you from—either today or in the past?

Once it’s felt, the system begins to move. Frozen energy starts to melt. New space opens up.

And then you act.

We are called to feel everything right now—both within us and around us.

The greater our capacity to feel, the more nuanced the information we’ll have about ourselves, our organizations, and our world.

The greater our capacity to feel, the more degrees of freedom we can respond with.

The greater our capacity to feel, the clearer our actions will become.

This is the moment.

This can certainly be true. Often, people and systems do emerge more resilient after challenging times.

But this is a passive stance. It assumes that the crisis will magically take care of the post-traumatic growth by itself.

An active stance to crisis has a very different flavor to it.

To have an active stance is to use the crisis. You receive every challenging situation as an invitation to rise up.

You view the crisis as a mirror, that constantly asks you questions about who you are.

Under high stress, how do I make decisions?

When plans get changed, how do I react?

When tensions mount in my organization, how capable am I of holding people’s discomfort?

When I feel fear, how much inner space do I have to respond rather than react?

When faced with uncertainty, do I numb myself out of the action and pretend that I’m above it all? Or do I allow myself to feel the distress around me?

Am I able to really feel what is going on within me and outside of me?

Who am I really? Who do I aspire to become? And what world do I hope to create?

A crisis asks us these questions. And it invites us to answer them with our actions and our lives.

This is the moment.

There’s mountains of data to analyze. There’s the paralyzing pressure to get it right. And there’s the discomfort in not knowing how the future will unfold.

Yet as challenging as these aspects can be, they fail to account for one of decision-making’s most difficult and overlooked dynamics.

Decision-making is never just about the decision itself. It’s a vehicle for expressing our need to be separate and still belong.

Attachment and the need to be separate and still belong

Let’s reel back the clock to the the first year of life.

As an infant, our reality is determined by where people place us. Whether we’re in our mother’s arms or on our father’s shoulders, we don’t decide our physical location. Since we can’t move around on our own, we assume that our immediate environment is all there is. We can’t distinguish between what’s us and what’s other than us—so we assume that we are one with it all.

But between 6 to 12 months into life, our world starts to change. We learn to crawl, then to walk, and eventually to start verbalizing. With our new abilities we’re able to explore on our own. We can move away from our loved ones, and then return when we desire.

As we move ourselves around, we increase our sense of individuation. By choosing our own position in space we begin to learn that we are a separate self. And when we put words on our own thoughts and feelings, we add another layer of differentiation to our sense of who we are.

At this young and tender age, we start to feel separate as autonomous individuals.

And, at the same time, we want to feel safe and belong with those we come from, too.

We have a need to be separate and still belong.

Under good enough conditions in the home environment, the child’s need to be separate and still belong will be accommodated. Parents will act both as a secure base from which the child can explore, and a safe haven to which they can return. The child receives encouragement to venture out on their own. And since they can sense their caregiver’s attunement and sensitivity, they know they’ll receive comfort when required.

A child raised in this circle of safety—between exploration and reassurance—will develop what psychologist John Bowlby called a secure attachment. The child learns to trust in themselves and to be trusting of others.

But in stressful conditions in the home environment, the need to be separate and still belong can get compromised. The caregiver will be emotionally unavailable or inconsistent in their responses to the child. Sometimes it’s the caregiver who seeks comfort and validation from the child, rather than the other way around. And in the most heartbreaking of cases, the caregiver is unable to affirm the child’s existence at all.

Whatever the circumstances, a child raised without a circle of safety will develop an insecure or disorganized attachment. They will learn to be anxious, untrusting, or fearful in all types of interactions and relationships.

Problematic as this might seem, the child’s learned response is an excellent coping mechanism for their situation. It makes sense of the only world they have known until now.

As a result, the child might feel pulled towards separateness and isolation, because they’ve learned they can’t trust others’ behavior. They might feel the need to always scan their environment, and be on lookout for signs of disapproval or threat. Or they might desperately cling to others, because they’ve learned that being alone is a threat to their existence.

Either way, when the need to be separate and still belong is compromised, it will always be a challenge to regulate between the two.

Can I be separate and still belong?

What attachment means for decision-making

Now, fast-forward to today.

You’re faced with a decision.

It could be an important business decision. It might be the decision of where to apply for a job. Or it could be the choice of what to have for dinner.

Whatever the decision, and no matter how many people it will affect, you will be dealing with more than the decision at hand.

Take the example of making a decision about business strategy.

On the surface, it might seem like you’re facing a choice between two different strategic options. You analyze the business implications, and you take into account how the decision could affect key stakeholders. You’ll factor in the potential impact on people like the employees, customers, management, the board, and shareholders.

But on a much less conscious level, your brain will be occupied by something else entirely. It will be calculating how the decision could affect your sense of separateness and belonging.

“What will it do to my sense of belonging? What will my friends, family, and society in general think? Will I be like them in the right ways? Will I be safe if I’m not on my own? Who’s approval should I be looking for? Who will I let down if I go my own way?”

“On the other hand, if I go along with what others say I should do, how will that affect my ability to remain a unique and independent individual? Will I disappear? Will I be safe with the group? Will I be smothered?”

This back-and-forth goes on and on. Can I belong and stay separate and unique? Can I be separate and still belong?

This dynamic is at play even for the most solitary of decisions. Even if you’re simply deciding what to make for dinner for yourself, your system will be checking-in on its safety and belonging with others.

“If I go for a hamburger, will I be able to belong with my health-conscious friends? If I choose to make a basic salad, will I just be like everyone else then? How can I belong to society’s norms in my choice of meal? How can I also make the meal, and therefore myself, special? And who would I be disloyal to if I decided for myself?”

Now, this is a perfectly human and natural process. Our relational patterns are designed to keep us safe and regulated between self and others.

When this affects what we decide to eat when we’re alone, we can laugh at it.

But when we get blindsided by these forces in the big decisions of business and life, it’s tragic.

Whenever we make decisions, we are always superimposing the relational structure of our toddler self onto the decisions of adulthood. All of our decisions are made with old and outdated software.

So when you decide to go for the riskiest strategic option for your business, is it because it’s actually what’s best for the company? Or is it because it makes you think that you’ll finally be able to stick out from the crowd and be unique?

When you choose to apply for a job at the most prestigious company you can, is it because that’s what you really want? Or is it to prove to yourself and to others that you belong in high-achieving surroundings?

Decisions aren’t what they seem to be.

We have a need to secure the right amount of amount of uniqueness and belonging for ourselves, based on what we’ve learned to survive.

Decisions are our tools for doing so.

Making better decisions

In every decision we make, we use the content of today on top of the patterning of the past to determine what our future will become—whether we’re aware of it or not.

So how can we make better decisions to create better futures, given the forces at play?

1) Noticing your gravitational pull

Our world becomes easier and more manageable when we know about gravity.

The same is true in decision-making: the more we know about our pull towards separateness or belonging, the more manageable it becomes.

What you can’t observe, you can’t manage.

What is your relational style? What is your preference?

Knowing your relational style makes the world of difference. The more you notice your natural gravitational pull, the more power and opportunity you give yourself to decide freely.

So when you face an important business decision, now you slow down. Your urge has been to make the safer choice. But this time you stop for a moment to notice what is happening. Instead of merely going along with your first thought, you ask yourself what’s really going on.

“Is this really the best choice for me and for the business? Will this take us to where we want to go? Or is it my gravitational pull toward separateness that’s pulling me in that direction? What does the toddler in me want? And what does the adult of today actually think is best?”

The more you notice these dynamics, the more you’re able to create the space to choose freely, rather than getting forced into a decision by the legacy of the past.

The more you notice the pull of the past, the greater the space you open up for your intuition of the future to come.

2) Choosing to rest in the world

Even though decision-making brings to surface our outdated relational models, it is also the method for living above and beyond those structures.

It’s through the act of choosing and deciding that we have the opportunity to develop and grow.

So how can we develop the ability to decide for ourselves, and still belong? How can we expand our degrees of freedom when making decisions?

Our freedom in decision-making depends on our relationship with ourselves, others, and life itself.

Do you welcome the world? Do you welcome others? Do you assume that you’re welcome in the world?

These questions point toward a universal and unconditional sense of belonging to yourself, to others, and to life itself. You assume that you are welcome. You’re OK when you’re separate, and you’re OK when you belong—because you know that you are welcome no matter what.

When your default state is to welcome and be welcomed by the world, then your world will change.

You’ll make decisions from a place of contentment and abundance, rather than fear and scarcity.

Your decisions will become expressions of possibility, rather than mechanisms of compensation.

You’ll live into the future, rather than endlessly repeating the past.

Decision-making is more than just making decisions.

It’s the space in which we express our freedom to choose.

It’s the process of transforming our imagined desires into lived realities.

It’s the magic wand with which we create the future and ourselves.

What we decide is how we live—and how we live is who we are.

As we choose, so do we become.

I choose, therefore I am. 

What do you choose? How do you wave your wand of choice?

Whether it’s a dialogue between two people, or the interplay between the players of a sports team—greatness emerges from the interactions between the parts. The magic lies in the betweenness.

Whether we’re aware of it or not, we’re always giving and receiving with what’s around us. We’re in a continuous dialogue with other people, other beings, and other things.

Life is a constant conversation—between you and the world around you.

Leadership is a conversation, too.

Unfortunately, too often we forget this basic fact.

The outdated model

Most people view leadership as telling, controlling, and fixing.

This perspective assumes that people are robotic machines. Just give them the right inputs, and they will spit out the correct answer and act according to plan.

In this industrial worldview, every problem demands immediate repair and maintenance. Like a dead battery in a car, problems need to be fixed, fast. If you repair and replace the parts quickly enough, then everything will be OK.

Leadership, in this industrial and robotic world, is more of a monologue than a conversation. It’s a one-way street that force-feeds and deposits inputs, orders, and expectations into its robot armies of people.

This relational stance is confrontational at its best, and demeaning at its worst. If leaders are expected to control their teams like armies of robots, then they will always fail to meet those expectations.

Leaders and employees are human beings. And human beings aren’t machines.

So we shouldn’t be surprised when both leaders and employees find themselves tired, burned out, and deprived of purpose.

These are all symptoms of lifelessness.

That’s no way to live, and no way to lead.

The conversational nature of reality

Conversational leadership takes a very different stance.

It embraces the conversational nature of reality.

Our attention, perception, and relationship with our surroundings creates an ongoing conversation with the world around us. We shape it, and it shapes us. We affect and are affected by the conversation we hold with the world.

As a conversational leader, you deliberately engage in that continuous exchange—between you, your team, and the world.

You are in constant dialogue with what’s happening around you, and you adapt and shape your surroundings in turn. Nothing is fixed, everything is in flux, and you ride the dynamism like a bird in the wind.

Since you know that everything changes and that people aren’t robots, you play in the interactions between you and your team. You don’t deposit and force-feed knowledge into people, and you don’t shy away from difficult situations. You play in the betweenness—gently guiding and helping others to uncover their own solutions, without always knowing where you will end up.

Conversational leadership is a practice in not knowing.

This might sound frightening, unfeasible, or downright wrong. A leader should know, right?

Wrong. Engaging in the conversational uncertainties of leadership—between yourself, your team, and the world—is to work with reality, rather than struggling against it.

Here are three key themes of conversational leadership.

1) Conversational leadership is improvisation

Dancing and conversing have a lot in common.

When you dance, you sense into the rhythm of what’s there. You sink into the beat, and play off your partner to move forward in a common direction, without knowing where the end will be.

You dance with what’s in front of you, one move at a time. The only thing you know is that you can never know what comes next.

It’s all improvisation.

Conversations are the same. They are improvisational by their very nature: we don’t know—we can’t know—what will come next. If we did, we wouldn’t bother speaking in the first place.

The same is true for conversational leadership. It’s all improvisational.

Like great improv actors, you don’t pretend to know what’s coming next. You respect the ever-changing nature of reality, so you let go of the false sense of security that comes from pretending to have all the answers.

The only thing you know is that you can’t know everything. And since you know that you can’t know it all, you welcome everything that arises.

You’re not blinded by your own ideas and your own answers. Sure, you have ideas, opinions, and suggestions—but you hold them as hypotheses to be tested, rather than unquestionable truths.

You’re open. You listen and you improvise. You embrace the constant exchange of leadership, one fleeting moment and one interaction at a time. You listen and respond, and listen and respond again.

Leadership is not knowing everything yourself.

Leadership is an improvisational, relational conversation.

So how do you take on the improvisational conversation that leadership is?

2) Conversational leadership is not fixing

In great conversations, you’re not trying to fix anything. You’re exploring.

Sustainable and transformational change happens when people explore the issues—together.

If you immediately try to fix someone’s problem, you deprive the situation of the air it needs to breathe. You might solve the surface-level issue, but the real, underlying core of the challenge will remain.

Every time you lead by solving someone else’s problem, you’re perpetuating the very problem you’re trying to solve. You’re depriving the other person of the opportunity to find the solution on their own terms. You’re blocking and denying learning.

The urge to fix—to problem-solve, to find a solution and an outcome now—seems like it comes from a good place. The intention appears to be to help.

But more often than not, fixing is a way of avoiding the discomfort of being with the problem and looking at it. If you’re desperate to fix, it means you don’t trust the other person—and you don’t trust yourself—to sit and uncover the real issue, slowly but truly, together.

Like in epic conversations, conversational leadership is an exploration. And like any explorative adventure, you will only succeed if you believe and trust that you will find your way.

Conversational leadership demands patience and trust—in yourself and in others—to let other people find the solution themselves.

Leadership is not about solving other people’s problems.

Leadership is an explorative, curious conversation.

So how do you create a space of trust for the explorative conversation that leadership is?

3) Conversational leadership is presence

Conversational leadership is a practice in being present.

Only when you’re really “there”—when you’re attentive to what’s going on within you and between you—can you play in the conversational space between you and your counterpart.

When you’re present and immersed in a conversation, you’re not thinking about the laundry or the about taking out the trash. You are there, engaging with the other person. You rest in what’s unfolding, fully present to what is happening between you and within you.

If your head is elsewhere, you won’t be able to respond and explore what the moment is calling for.

And so to thrive in the difficult, high-stakes moments of leadership, it demands being present. To be able to respond effectively, you need to be aware of what’s going on in front of you and within you.

You need to be there.

When people talk about being present, they often talk about meditation, mindfulness, and other spiritual productivity hacks. But these techniques are pointless if they don’t help you to be present in daily working life. Sitting on the meditation cushion is all for nothing if you still panic in the heated, difficult moments of leadership.

It’s in those razor’s edge moments where you show your true colors as a leader. So, when you feel threatened, do you drift into panic or fear? Or do you take a breath, see the situation for what it is, and respond in the most helpful way you can?

Presence is the gateway to conversational leadership.

When you’re fully present, you’re able to process to what is happening when it is happening. You don’t reactively flee from pressure—instead, you use the razor’s edge to trigger you into higher states of focus and impact.

Leadership is not reacting blindly.

Leadership is a present, responsive conversation.

So how do you stay present to the conversation that leadership is?

Turning together with

The original Latin root of the word conversation means to dwell with or to turn together with.

Conversational leadership is a practice of turning together with each other into the unknown.

“Life is a creative, intimate and unpredictable conversation if it is nothing else, spoken or unspoken,” writes poet David Whyte, “and our life and our work are both the result of the particular way we hold that passionate conversation.”

Your life and your leadership are the result of how you hold the conversation between yourself, your team, and the world.

Leadership is a conversation, whether you like it or not.

The question is: What type of conversation do you want it to be?

Yet so often we forget this basic fact.

We strip the air from our schedules like it’s the plague. We sprint instead of walking; we react rather than daring to reflect.

As we push forward in our perpetual panic, we miss where we are. We don’t see the ground beneath our feet. We run past our lives, and then we wonder where it all went.

Giving more air to the seeds of our lives—to think, to feel, to be—is a task that stands before us all. Our lives, quite literally, depend on it.

There is a skill that can assist us in this pursuit. With cultivation, it unveils creativity, ingenuity, and strategic thinking. It allows us to embrace uncertainty and to dance with the unknown. And it’s a practice that helps leaders to lead and their followers to thrive.

This skill is called space creation.

What is space?

Space is the emptiness around a somethingness.

That somethingness can be an action, a thought, a feeling, or a task. It’s something you think, feel, or do.

Without space, everything becomes a lifeless string of repetitive events. One event leads immediately and inevitably into another. The past cannot help but repeat itself.

But when we create space, everything changes.

With space, new possibilities open up. There’s time to process new information. There’s room for different perspectives to emerge. There’s room to breathe, room to grow, room to live.

It’s the “freedom and space to hear things,” as Miles Davis said. You begin hearing the signal beneath the noise, the ideas beneath the surface, the creativity that lies dormant within.

With space, you have the freedom to shift your tempo, adjust your rhythm, and recalibrate based on what’s in front of you. You have the behavioral flexibility to adapt to your environment and work with it, instead of fighting against it.

It’s space to listen, to adapt, and to bring the unknown to life.

“In order for something of quality to take place,” wrote theatre director Peter Brook, “an empty space needs to be created. An empty space makes it possible for a new phenomenon to come to life…No fresh and new experience is possible if there isn’t a pure, virgin space ready to receive it.”

The fear of space

Most of us have a chronic space deficit.

We’ve stripped every last bit of space from our internal and external realms. We rush from task to task, from meeting to meeting, without pausing to breathe or to think. Even when we get an unexpected break in our schedule, we always find a way to drain that precious space away.

Why this insanity?

Because we are scared of space.

Space might sound like it’s open and airy. But to actually give yourself space—the space to really pause, to really think, to really feel—means confronting unknown and often uncomfortable realizations.

With the space to think and feel, you might realize that you’re desperate for a career shift but are afraid of what people will think. You might realize that you’ve been avoiding a difficult decision for far too long because of a fear of letting people down. Or you might realize that the pressure on your shoulders stems from a fear of being vulnerable enough to ask for help.

Although these inconvenient realizations might sting, you are finally confronting the truth.

This is creating space. It is a practice of seeing truth, and being with it.

It’s a confrontation with reality on reality’s terms.

The space within

Space can take several practical forms. It can be a mid-morning break. It might be the briefest of moments, where you step back from your thoughts and view them from a distance. Or it could even be a long-term sabbatical.

Whatever it looks like on the outside, creating space must start on the inside, first.

If you’re dependent on the external environment—your location, noise levels, the weather—then you’ll become a slave to those conditions.

The only space you will find on mountaintop is the space you choose to bring there, after all.

Space starts within.

Creating space by saying “OK”

How do you create space within?

By saying “OK”.

That’s it. No more, no less.

Saying OK is the act of acknowledging what is happening around you and within you. It’s the choice to meet and receive the observable facts of reality, without judgement or condemnation. No matter what is happening, you choose to say OK.

This is not the same as saying “it’s OK.” It’s not a question of supporting or condoning actions that contradict your morals or that hamper performance. It’s not about supporting evil actions or becoming a couch potato.

Instead, it’s about acknowledging and respecting that what is occurring is, in fact, occurring. What is happening is happening.

And by noticing and acknowledging your reality, you create space to think, feel, and act.

If you’re tired, you say OK to being tired. You don’t plow on, disregarding your state. You say, “OK, I am tired.” And then you adjust what you are doing and how you are doing it.

If you’re scared of making a tough strategic call, you say “OK, this is difficult for me. I can feel the weight.” You say OK to the fear of what might happen if you make the wrong call. And then you open up, ask for help, and move forward.

If you’re treated unfairly, you say “OK, this injustice happened.” You might not like that it happened, and you might not think it’s OK in any moral sense—but you say OK to the truth of what occurred. And then you proceed to take action from there.

Radical inclusion

Saying OK is an act of inclusion. It’s the conscious choice to include the reality of what is happening around you and within you.

When we don’t include, we deny reality. And if there’s anything that reality despises, it’s denial.

We have a well-worn toolbox of denial. Avoidance. Post-hoc rationalizations. Elaborate stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Even outright lies.

These strategies of denial served a purpose once upon a time in our lives: they kept us safe, kept our identity intact, and made sure we belonged. But since their sell-by date has long since expired, our denial does nothing but keep us frozen in a past that is no longer here.

As we deny, we resist—and what we resist, persists.

And so saying OK means catching up with yourself. It means saying OK to past and current troubles. You say OK not only to the lights of happiness and joy, but to the dark and resisted depths of pain, grief, and fear, too.

“I made a decision a long time ago,” says author Elizabeth Gilbert,“that if I want creativity in my life—and I do—then I will have to make space for fear, too. Plenty of space.”

By saying OK, you create space. By surrendering to your reality, tensions deflate and new horizons open up.

“As long as we are trying to figure out how we can escape from our present situation,” said Chogyam Trungpa, “we can’t notice much about it. Only when we feel that this is it, this is how it is right now, without any clutching toward something different, will our intelligence really come alive.”

Only when we’re able to say “OK, this is how it is right now,” then—and only then—are we ready to look and move towards the future. Only then do we have the space to ask ourselves what we would like our future to become.

Leadership as space creation

When we create space, we’re not only opening ourselves up. We’re doing the same for others, too.

When other people complain, it’s easy to take the bait. There are few things as seductive as competing in a round of “Who’s right?”. We swing swords of agreement or disagreement, jousting with blows of “Yes, you’re right” or “No, you’re wrong” until a winner has emerged.

The problem with competing in a battle of “Who’s right?” is that it doesn’t start with acknowledgement. It disrespects reality. It diminishes, squashes, and constricts those who get involved.

But great leaders don’t take that bait.

Great leaders start by saying OK to their peoples’ experiences and feelings. While they might not condone or agree with others’ behaviors, they unconditionally respect the other person’s experience. They say “OK. I receive you.” And then they act.

It might seem like the smallest, most semantic of details. But when leaders fully acknowledge and respect their people’s experience, tension dissolves. The atmosphere of frozen fear melts into a flowing river of movement, innovation, and action.

Leaders that create space are walking embodiments of being available.

This doesn’t mean that they don’t try to improve, nor does it mean that they are indifferent.

It simply means that they are unconditional in receiving other people. Since they’ve done their own inner work to create space within themselves, they are open and available towards others, too. They unconditionally receive their team by first saying “OK”, and then proceed to act accordingly.

They create an environment of psychological safety. Their team doesn’t need to waste energy on hiding, denying, or trying to look good for their leader. Instead, the team knows that they can show up with whatever is true at that moment.

By being comfortable in the discomfort of reality, these leaders create space for creativity, flexibility, and innovation.

They create space for people to grow.

Conclusion

Space is not a new concept. Yoshida Kenkō, a 13th century Japanese monk, wrote that:

“When a man is cramped for space, he is broken and crushed. When the activity of the mind is constricted and rigid, a man will come into collision with things at every turn and be harmed by disputes. [But] if you have space for maneuvering and are flexible, not one hair will be harmed.”

Space creation is not a new concept in leadership, either. According to Master Nan Huai Chan, the ancient Confucian leadership principles state that:

“If you want to become a great leader, you need to go forth into these seven meditative spaces…awareness, stopping, calmness, stillness, peace, true thinking, and attainment.…Before you can become a leader you have to understand yourself, you have to be sincere in your heart, you have to be unbiased.”

Space creation is a timeless act.

And it is a timeful act. By acknowledging our past sorrows, our current fears, and our future dreams, all right now, we open a portal to traveling through time without having to leave the present.

We respect what has been, we dance with what is, and we move into resonance with what can become.

By creating space, we release the well-worn shackles of self-imposed limitation, and set free all that has been waiting to emerge.

Space is freedom.

And it starts by saying “OK”.

You’re almost there, you tell yourself.

If you just put in a little more effort…if you think of a slightly better idea…if you work a little bit harder…then everything will be OK.

The Promised Land—a job, a career, wealth—feels like it’s so close. So, you keep doing more, and more, and more. 

This might seem like an ambitious and honorable approach. But an endless pursuit of an endless barrier is bound to end up in an endless place: nowhere. 

There is another strategy you can use. 

It is more effective in the long-term, yet it is also counterintuitive. 

That strategy is doing less. 

Removing to move forward

Tim Gallwey, a best selling author and coach, has proposed a formula for performance from his book “The Inner Game of Work”:

Performance = Potential – Interference

There are two ways to increase performance. One is to increase potential. The other is to reduce interference 

Most motivational advice focuses on increasing potential. Psychology books, TED talks, and inspirational blogs encourage us to learn more, to practice more, to do more.

Yet, as Gallwey’s formula shows, there is more to performance than increasing potential. For that potential to thrive, you can reduce interference, too.

Example of interference 

Interference shows up in all kinds of ways. You may have experienced one of these examples: 

Interference can be a need for immediate gratification

If you’re desperate for people’s praise, then you will do whatever it takes to receive a smile and positive feedback. 

You will always be busy, but without taking risks that could jeopardize other people’s opinion of you. 

You’re always active, but it’s not the kind of activity that helps you to grow, or that involves creative risks or innovative leaps. 

So, you do, do, do, all the while receiving praise, but without truly getting anywhere in particular.

Interference can be a fear of losing control

If you’re afraid of losing control, then you avoid delegating. 

You do far more than you need to, which prevents you from focusing on activities where you have high leverage on your output. 

To maintain your sense of control and perfection, you get bogged down in irrelevant details and tasks. 

People learn to trust you less because you never give them the freedom to experiment and take risks. 

So, you do, do, do, all the while staying in control but without leveraging your skills and without allowing others to grow.

Interference can be a fear of not living up to others’ expectations 

If you’re afraid of not living up to others’ expectations, you will only do what you think you should be doing. 

The longer this goes on, the more it feels like your inner compass has disappeared. 

You lose track of your ability to sense and declare what you want. You end up doing a lot, but never directed toward your own, purposeful and passionate pursuits. 

Every day will be a fight against yourself because of past choices, that were made to fulfill other people’s criteria. 

So you do, do, do, but without being on the path you want to be on.

Loops and code of discomfort

Those are just a few examples of how interference blocks potential and limits progress. 

If such obstacles stay hidden from conscious awareness, they end up directing your life in undesirable ways. They lead to loops of behavior that constrain your options.

As Anthony Hopkins’s character in the series Westworld, Dr. Robert Ford, says, “We live in loops as tight and as closed as ‘the hosts’ [the robots]; seldom questioning our choices, content, for the most part, to be told what to do next.” 

For robots, it’s their code that tells them what to do. For us humans, it’s our interference that too often directs our behavior. 

Instead of dealing with our obstacles and the discomfort that they entail, we look the other way. We circumvent our discomfort in the easiest way we know how: we do more. And so, indirectly, our fears end up directing our lives.

We avoid our discomfort through ceaseless doing. And we fall into the trap of mistaking movement for meaning. We think that as long as we’re moving forward, we’re fine. We make one fervent rotation of the hamster wheel after another. But sooner or later, we look back and realize we never got to where we wanted to be.

If these obstacles and interferences aren’t addressed, they will keep a lid on what you can achieve, no matter how hard you work. No matter how many hours you put in, and no matter how much you learn, the underlying unease will remain. 

Personal growth is not about “adding”—it’s about removing. You whittle away at the sculpture that is you, layer by layer. You respectfully, but deliberately, remove interference—defense strategies designed to protect the wide-eyed child within you, but that have now ceased to be helpful.

Once you reduce interference, then your full potential can come forth. 

And that’s where the magic happens.

Reducing interference

Interference gets in the way of good work. 

“Good work,” writes David Whyte, “is work that makes sense, and that grants sense and meaning to the one who is doing it and to those affected by it … [it] is a heartfelt expression of ourselves.”

Good work has intentionality behind it. It’s meaningful. It has a positive impact on you and those around you. And when it comes from a place of deep presence and awareness, it “can be shockingly effective,” according to professor of psychology Eleanor Rosch.

The goal is not to sit on a mountaintop and contemplate existence for the rest of your days. Instead, the goal is to do more good work—and less of the wasteful, meaningless busyness we do for busyness’s sake. 

Here are three ways to do “good” work: 

1) Stop and sit with the discomfort

That constant movement and ceaseless doing is an attempt to avoid the discomfort of stopping. 

You might be thinking, “What discomfort? What pain?” This confusion arises because it doesn’t always show up as discomfort—at first. 

When you stop, you might instinctively reach for your phone. Maybe you get up and do the laundry, or perhaps you sort through old folders. 

Whatever your response, your instinct will be to get moving again. You will reach for that false sense of security that the movement provides. 

Stop. 

When you stop, you might feel as though the world is crumbling around you. But it’s not the world that is crumbling—it’s your old worldview and self-image that is transforming. 

Sit. 

Your ability to sit in the discomfort is correlated with the amount of good work you will be able to do. If you can’t bear it, you will avoid it by meaningless doing. But if you can sit right there, you will have space and the patience to be intentional, present, and selective in your actions. 

This discomfort of sitting still can seem like it’s a curse of modern life. But this is not a new phenomenon. In the 17th century, Blaise Pascal wrote, ”The sole case of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.” 

Welcome to humanity. 

Sit.

2) Question the doing

As you stop, space opens up. As you sit, you create the mental bandwidth you need to ask yourself the tough questions. 

“What am I doing? To what end? What am I trying to achieve here, really?”

These are no small questions. There is a lot at stake. Meaningless busyness has an opportunity cost. You’re taking away time, effort, and power that could go into good work instead. 

So, we must assume that there’s a good reason that you are always busy. Whether it’s wanted or not, it is protecting you from something.

Ask yourself, “What if I didn’t do this? What would that lead to?“ 

Any answers that pop up here will be indications of your underlying belief structure. 

For example, your answer to “What if I didn’t stay busy?” might be, “Well, then I wouldn’t be ambitious.” 

Dive deeper. 

Ask yourself, “What if I weren’t ambitious?” That might lead to, “Well, if I’m not ambitious than I don’t deserve rewards.” 

Eventually, that could end up in the realization of, “Well, if I’m not busy and ambitious, then I don’t deserve anything. And if I don’t deserve anything, then I’m not worthy of love.”

So there it is. Your constant busyness has been an attempt to secure attention and love. It is such an honorable, heartfelt desire. It’s a strategy that served a vital purpose for you many decades ago. But now, in your current situation, it has outlived its sell-by date.

As you sit still and dive into these questions, more strands of self-insight will emerge. With every realization comes a release, a relaxation of internal pressure. 

Step by step you acknowledge the parts of you that have been desperate for attention for too long—parts of you that have sought strategies like relentless doing, to provide you with a sense of self-worth, love, and belonging. 

Although these strategies might seem flawed, they got the job done once upon a time. But now the time has come for a new beginning. It is time to update the operating system. 

3) Decide and allow for aliveness

Once you stop and you start to see clearer, there remains a crucial step: the decision to do more good work, and less of the meaningless doing. 

Deciding can feel like a violent act. Indeed, the word “decide” comes from the Latin root de-caedere, “to cut away”. 

A voice within you resists this violent decision. Doing less? Your internal defense systems will raise the alarm. “No way,“ you think to yourself. “That might work well for people without goals, but I have things to do, accomplishments to achieve. I am under pressure to deliver. I have to keep doing.”

That voice may sound like it’s you. It’s in your head, after all. But it’s not you. It’s a composite of your old defense strategies, backed up by a chorus of downloaded societal voices. It’s a greatest hits compilation of internalized soundtracks, telling you what you are “supposed” to do. 

Achieving more by doing less comes down to allowing yourself to do so. 

It’s about dancing with the guilt that arises when you persevere despite the social pulls.

It’s about being OK with the choice to stay within your zone of genius, and not to get seduced by the pulls of the crowd. 

It’s about being with the discomfort of delaying gratification and sitting still in the mystery of not knowing. 

Allowing yourself to sit in that state of not knowing can feel scary. But it has a real, alive quality to it. Like any great adventure, you don’t quite know what the next step has in store. The journey is rhythmic and alive, a reflection of the underlying suspense that makes life such a mystery.

Certainty and control can seem to be attractive targets. But full certainty is nothing more than the background hum of a kitchen fan—dependable and uninterrupted, yet monotonous and stale.

We only notice how annoying the kitchen fan is when we turn it off. The same goes for what we do. Only when we sit still in the not knowing can new answers, real aliveness, and good work emerge. 

Be more and let the doing flow from there

Creating the conditions for good work is not about learning more. 

It’s a process of sitting still, looking inward, and respectfully but deliberately helping ourselves to uninstall outdated defense strategies. 

It’s a long-awaited updating of our operating system, assisting ourselves to become the people we want to be—so that we can do what we know, deep down, that we must do.

“You don’t need to do more to be more,” says sports psychologist Michael Gervais. “We need to flip that model on its head, and talk about being more, and let the doing flow from there.” 

The question is not: “What more can I do?”

The question is: “Who do I want to be?” And let the doing flow from there. 

The direction of every signpost on our planet points up. Climb the ladder. Scale the mountain peak. More fame, fortune, success, and happiness beckon from above.

But as natural as this upward direction may sound, it doesn’t reflect reality—it’s upside down.

The truth is—it’s not from going up that we grow, learn, develop, become, make progress in life, or achieve anything worth doing at all.

It’s from going down.

The Journey

The Greeks have a word called katabasis. It means “a going down”. It’s a descent into the underworld. A plunge, a dive, a sinking into what’s in front of you.

Joseph Campbell, a writer, professor and historian, knew more about katabasis than most. He studied the myths and stories of the world’s cultures across time and place. His research resulted in a model called the hero’s journey.

The hero’s journey is the backbone of every story you’ve ever read. No matter where you are or where you come from, it isn’t a story if it doesn’t follow the hero’s journey.

The hero’s journey begins with the hero hearing the call for adventure. Then the hero boldly accepts this calling and leaves security to pass into the First Threshold and into the unknown world.

In the unknown world, the hero faces a road of trials and challenges. It’s a continuous descent, with harder and more demanding tests arising along the way.

The descent comes to its conclusion in the abyss. There, the hero faces the Supreme Ordeal. It’s a dance with death and demise. Everything the hero knows to be true is on the line.

In the end, the hero triumphs. But in doing so, the hero gives up or sacrifices something. This is the Second Threshold. It’s a release of the old. But it’s also a moment of revelation and rebirth. The hero sheds the skin of the past, and gains the insight and wisdom needed to win the day.

With the old weight released and the new power gained, the hero returns home a transformed, more whole human being.

Real Life Fiction

The hero’s journey doesn’t only apply to fiction—it’s how we structure our own lives, too. We are the heroes of our own stories. We are nothing but our own life narratives. As we tell our life stories, we construct a narrative that makes sense of who we are, what we’ve been through, and what is to come.

In every life there is a range of peaks. And, without fail, there is at least one abyss. An ordeal. A fire.

We’ve all faced such periods, these valleys of darkness. You might find yourself in one right now. It could be a challenging project at work. It might be a troubling relationship. Or it might be a struggle to figure out who you are and where you’re headed.

If so, you’re faced with two options.

The first option is to avoid the valley and pretend like it’s not there. You might get temporary relief, but it won’t last. There will always be that persistent nagging, an eternal sensation that something’s not quite right.

The second option it to take on the valley, headfirst. You look it in the eyes and you plunge into it. You ride it like a bull, taking on the dragons and the monsters that await you on your journey.

You go down into the valley of fire.

Walking Through The Valley

1) Look Into the Flames

First, you look into the flames of the valley.

The raging fire might scare you, but remember that it’s the heat that will cook you. It’s the challenges that will provide the pressure needed to grow. If it’s uncomfortable—good. Then you know you’re onto something that has the power to transform you.

The path is not around the fire. The journey is not a helicopter ride from one peak to the next. Instead it’s a dive, a sinking into the fire. The cauldron is the path.

You are clay. If you avoid the fire, you will remain a heap of wet mud. If you instead plunge into the flames, you will emerge solidified, strengthened, more beautiful, more lasting, more resilient.

2) Taking the Desperate Leap

How do you collect the courage to plunge into the depths of the valley?

Only through desperation.

Author Henry Miller—for example—tells the story of when he was a struggling artist. For years he did nothing but fail and stagnate. It was only when he confronted this fact—his abyss, his valley, his fire—that he began to transform.

And that transformation only became possible by confronting the truth of himself, and what was on the line.

“To fail as a writer meant to fail as a man. And I failed,” Miller said. “I realized that I was nothing—less than nothing—a minus quantity. It was at this point, in the midst of the dead Sargasso Sea, so to speak, that I really began to write … I had to grow foul with knowledge, realize the futility of everything, smash everything, grow desperate, then humble, then sponge myself off the slate, as it were in order to recover my authenticity. I had to arrive at the brink and then take a leap in the dark.”

For Miller, there was no other option than to take a leap in the dark.

You will only take on the valley if there is no other option. The pain of not diving in must be worse than the pain of doing so.

If you can live without the dive, without going into the abyss and striving for what’s on the other side … then it’s never going to happen.

3) Reducing To The Core

After your desperate plunge into the valley, let the flames do their work.

It’s like the reduction of a red wine sauce. If you let the flame heat it for long enough, the alcohol fumes and water will evaporate. You’re left with nothing but the essence. It’s a cleansing, a purifying of the core.

Thomas Merton, monk and writer, writes how the cooking of those layers can feel like a downright tragedy at the time.

“What a holocaust takes place in this steady burning to ashes of old worn-out words, clichés, slogans, rationalizations,” Merton writes. “It is a terrible breaking and burning of idols, a purification of the sanctuary, so that no graven thing may occupy … the center, the existential altar which simply ‘is.’”

As you cook in the fire, the layers that you thought you needed, that you thought were part of you, release. They vanish, leaving that which simply “is”.

There is a shedding that takes place. There’s a lightness that emerges, but also strength.

Strength within the lightness, and strength because of the lightness.

There’s less weighing you down. You feel less burdened and you have more room to move and breathe. There’s a newfound nimbleness and a sense of flow. The light from within shines brighter, and the feeling of freedom expands.

Henry Miller recounts how his leap into the dark brought forth his own voice and his wholeness. “I began from scratch, throwing everything overboard, even those whom I most loved,” Miller wrote.

“Immediately I heard my own voice. I was enchanted: the fact that it was a separate, distinct, unique voice sustained me. It didn’t matter to me if what I wrote should be considered bad. Good and bad dropped out of my vocabulary … I had found a voice, I was whole again.“

Going Up By Going Down

We talk about making progress in life by climbing peaks and conquering mountains. But it isn’t about the mountain. It’s about the valley.

When you look into the depths of the valley, it can seem dark. But it’s when the night is at its darkest that the stars shine the brightest.

It’s in the dark of the night, in the heat of the fire where we’re made. And it’s in that “deep but dazzling darkness” that we begin to see clearly.

If you take on the valley of fire and let it cook you, you’ll feel the heat of the flames. But before you know it, you’ll realize that you’re soon on top of the next mountain. You’re stronger, you’re freer, you’re lighter.

It seems like magic—you’re up higher than you ever thought you would be.

And all by going down.

One of the morning activities took place on a picturesque farm. Overlooking the rolling hills below, we learned the basics of butchery from the master Michael Sullivan.

On the bus ride back into town, Dhani Jones and I discussed what we had learned. The more we talked, the more insights we realized we had gained.

These lessons apply to the kitchen. But, more importantly, they also apply to mastery, leadership, and life.

1) The Skin Noodle Principle

Utilize Your Asset

A pig is an investment. You purchase it from a producer, with the goal of selling the butchered pieces of meat for more than you bought it for. You generate a profit by adding value.

So the more of the pig you can use, the more you can earn.

A butcher with a charcutier background like Mike Sullivan will use every single piece of the pig. He turns sinew into salami, kidney fat into soap, he even transforms ears and skin into “skin noodles”. He doesn’t let anything go to waste.

Everything’s an offer, if you dare to look past convention.

→ Leadership: Make the Most of Your People

An employee is an investment. You hire people with the goal of maximizing their potential. As a leader, you support that process by creating the right conditions for them to bloom and thrive. By bringing more of their potential out, you leverage their value and add value to the business.

This requires allowing the whole human to come to the table. A human being is more than one’s well-formed strengths – it includes one’s quirks, fears, and shadow sides, too.

It takes a psychologically safe environment to feel comfortable enough to show those sides of oneself. But the integrative and aligned mindsets that result lead to a range of better outcomes. As Carl Jung pointed out, if we avoid our shadow sides, they “will only crop up as a hindrance elsewhere, not just at some unimportant point, but at the very spot where we are most sensitive.”

Instead of fighting against ourselves by trying to fit into molds, leadership of the highest order allows people to get more in touch with themselves. As biologist Francisco Varela states: “The way to make a biological system more healthy is connect more of it to itself”.

That means using it all, ears and sinews included.

2) The German Knife Heuristic

Know Your Tools

It’s essential for a butcher to grasp the tools of the trade. Knives, cleavers and saws vary in their size, strength, nimbleness, sharpness, and weight. Each tool has its place and use.

A tool’s effectiveness depends on its history and origin. Take Japanese knives, for example. Back when the traditions of knife-making emerged, large animals didn’t inhabit the country. Japanese knives were designed for handling smaller animals like fish and poultry.

Germany, in contrast, has always had an abundance of cows and pigs. Their knives became well-adapted for big bones and thick cuts of meat.

Even to this day, German knives are more suited for larger animals, and Japanese knives for smaller ones.

A butcher has a limited amount of variables to play with, so using the right tool is key. When cutting meat off the bone, a small and flexible boning knife is appropriate. Any urges to impress onlookers with massive cleavers are put to one side. A butcher won’t use an axe just because it’s larger and it seems more powerful. A butcher will use the right tool for the job.

And those tools will always be kept sharp. A butcher never stops honing his blades.

→ Leadership: Know the Tool of Yourself

A butcher’s tools are knives, saws, and cleavers. A pianist’s tool is the piano. A painter’s tool is the paintbrush.

But what is the tool of a leader?

You are your leadership tool. That means knowing the in’s and out’s of how you function. Your history and the story you tell yourself about yourself. What drives you and what triggers you. What causes you to get annoyed, and what makes you feel threatened.

This self-knowledge lets you know which blade of leadership is applicable for a given situation. You don’t scream and dominate when a more sensitive, empathetic approach is called for. Domineering and controlling might inflate the ego, but they’re rarely the right tool for the job at hand.

Constant and continuous self-awareness is the sharpening of your knife. By leaning into every moment with the intention of learning about yourself and perfecting your craft, you’re polishing your blade of leadership.

3) The Baby Back Fallacy

Leverage the Magic of Marketing

When you think of ribs, odds are it’s the baby back variety that come to mind. You’d think they are tastiest, most tender type of ribs, right?

Wrong. Baby back ribs come from high up of the pig, close to the spine and the loin. They have low fat content and a short length (the name referring to the size of the bone, not the age of the pig).

St. Louis-style spare ribs are much longer and flatter due to their placement further down towards the belly. They have more meat on the bone, and by all accounts they’re more flavorful and tender.

So why are the inferior baby back ribs more expensive than spare ribs? Because of marketing.

Food producers and manufacturers put marketing muscle behind baby backs because, not despite, they have less taste and meat. With a cute and approachable name, they stick in your mind, and even bring up associations of tender veal. The industry deliberately turned a weaker product into a more marketable offering.

They’re still laughing and licking their lips all the way to the bank.

→ Leadership: Turn Weaknesses into Marketable Strengths

As noted above, weaknesses and shadow sides can wreak havoc if they’re not welcomed to the table. But if you’re able to recognize and work with those aspects, then alignment and flow will follow.

With the right marketing, those weaknesses can even be turned into strengths of their own.

By acknowledging weaknesses, you’re then able to find opportunities and contexts where they can be of greater use. It’s product-market fit, and lateral thinking with withered technology, applied to people.

Marketing is the act of creating and communicating meaning. A weakness can be turned into a marketable strength by weaving a narrative that transforms what it means.

Take the example of Milton Erickson, the influential psychiatrist and psychologist. When he was 17 he contracted polio. Paralyzed throughout his entire body except his eyeballs, he was confined to bed for months on end. This didn’t stop his medical career. It forced him to observe people’s behaviors more closely. Day after day he watched his eight siblings interact, picking up the subtleties and nuances in their mannerisms. Soon he became an unrivaled master in perceiving body language and nonverbal communication, from which he built his career.

Not only did he turn his initial weakness into a competitive advantage, he turned it into a marketing hook in itself. He spun a captivating narrative throughout the rest of his career, never failing to recount stories of when he was paralyzed in bed as a youngster.

He wasn’t just a psychologist. He was the once-paralyzed psychologist who overcame life-threatening polio. He wove a narrative that set him apart from the crowd. And that made him remarkable.

Josh Wolfe, another participant and speaker at Capital Camp, has alluded to this previously. “Progress comes from change. And change comes from discontent,” he says. “That source of discontent? It might come from childhood, tragedy or troubles, rivalry or revenge, a grudge, a quest to disprove doubters…the bad stuff can often lead to the good stuff.”

Helping people to take that bad stuff and turn it into good stuff is leadership alchemy of the highest order. It takes their discarded, neglected assets and transforms their meaning into gold.

Just like the baby back.

“Happy the man who most resembles the animals, for he is effortlessly what the rest of us only are by hard work; for he knows the way home, which the rest of us can only reach through byways of fiction and hazy return routes; for he is rooted like a tree, forming part of landscape and therefore of beauty, while we are but passing myths, animated rag-doll walk-ons that represent futility and oblivion.” — Fernando Pessoa

In the bullfighting arena of life, our role seems clear.

We assume we’re the matador.

We feel like we’re the one in control, directing the play. Moving and sweeping with strong, confident steps. Responding to the bull’s occasional impulsive urges, but otherwise steering the action at our own will.

But this is an illusion. This is the illusion of life. It’s a cloak of deception, the greatest and most mischievous plan ever hatched. It’s an ever-present mirage, a magic trick of the highest order.

The truth is this: We are not the matador.

We are the bull.

The two (or more) selves

The self is a difficult thing to pin down. Who are you, and what are you made of? It’s hard to get a single answer to such a question. Indeed, much of the difficulty arises from trying to reduce the self down to one thing.

Many psychologists and philosophers have proposed distinctions of multiple selves. Daniel Kahneman’s System 1 and System 2, Jonathan Haidt’s the rider and the elephant, and Iain McGilchrist’s the master and the emissary…the list goes on. Whatever their labels, it’s clear there’s more than meets the eye.

We contain multitudes. We’re an orchestra of selves. “My soul is a secret orchestra,” wrote Fernando Pessoa, “but I don’t know what instruments – strings, harps, cymbals drums – strum and bang inside me. I only know myself as the symphony.”

Maybe there’s one you. Maybe there’s two. Or maybe your sense of you is just a seductive, emergent illusion.

Whatever the case, it’s clear that if there is a “you”, it’s something deeper and more nuanced than what we think.

Eastern spiritual traditions differ in many ways, but they tend to agree that you are not that constant stream of thoughts that clutter your mind.

You are what lies deeper than reason, underneath your thoughts, deeper than the mind.

So what are you? You are that force of energy that drives you. A gravitational force, a constant push towards. An instinct that moves you and sets you into motion, into life.

For lack of a better word, this force is desire.

Desire

It is through desire that it we reach out to life. Life is that stretching, the interaction with the world around us. It’s growth. It’s metabolism, transforming energy into heat and movement. It’s that ability to autonomically and autonomously know.

Desire, in this sense, does not refer to craving. Instead, it’s the desire of intuition, of instinct, of reaching. It’s a motor, a propeller, a force.

Desire is the flower facing south to receive the sun’s rays. Desire is the wolf that stalks its prey for days. Desire is the horse that gallops across the plains toward pastures new.

Life is desire. And if life is desire, then, one would think, it should come entirely natural to us.

But the power of desire lies beneath a heavy cloud for us humans. It’s shrouded by thoughts and cultural conditioning of shoulds and musts, a thick fog shielding the treasures that lie in store beneath.

What we’re all longing for is to dance with our intuition. To be free of our mind and to be one with ourselves.

If only we could learn to to crawl inside of our intuition and become one with it. To just know. To just do. To just be.

Like a tree has a certain treeness, and a mountain goat has a certain goatness, you have a certain youness.

To be that youness—and all its raw power, its vibrant energy, its creative intuition—is not a question of adding or learning anything new. It’s instead about getting the clutter out of the way, and letting that youness loose.

Which brings us back to the matador and the bull.

Becoming the bull

Many of us try to become a better matador. We learn the hacks and the skills. We try to meditate, exercise, and eat the right diet. We do everything we can to become a better controller of reality, a dictator of our own experience. Developing more control, more confidence, more discipline…more.

This sounds enticing. But it’s playing a false game. No matter how controlled you become as a matador, the bull will always be there. And the bull, primitive as it might seem at first glance, is smarter than you think. It will always find a way to catch up with your hacks. It might be one step behind, but it’s always up to speed.

So what if there was another way. What would it mean to play a different game altogether?

That would mean to cease to be the matador at all. And that means becoming the bull.

“Ah, that won’t work—the bull will rage! That’s unsafe! It will destroy everything in its sights!” you hear yourself think as you contemplate dissolving the matador.

The matador is clever. The thoughts you hear are the matador’s well-crafted defense strategy.

Of course the matador would say that, wouldn’t it. Its existence is on the line. Naturally it will try to convince you that it’s needed to survive. And, it seems to have a point. Looking back, there has been a perfect correlation between your survival and the incessant voice of the matador.

But correlation does not imply causation.

Bullness

To let the bull rage.

The thought strikes fear into our depths. If we let the bull out free, won’t it wreak havoc? Won’t it go around devouring everything in its sights? Can it be trusted at all?

Again: these are the rationalizations and defense mechanisms of the matador.

When the matador disappears from the arena—or at the very least is not deferred to anymore—and you let the bull free into the fields, things change. You’ll see that the bull is a very different beast than you first thought.

The bull isn’t angry. Its fury and rage came from its confinement, the despicable conditions it endured, and the abusive crowds in the arena.

And so when the matador and the crowd dissolve, so does the need for the bull to be angry, scared, and feared. It can just be.

The bull can just be the bull in all its bullness. Just like the tree can be the tree in all its treeness. The sky can be the sky in all its skyness.

And you can be you in all your youness.

The time has come to be a leader.

But you’re stuck, and you can’t figure out why. You feel frozen in place. It’s frustrating. You know what needs to change, but something’s stopping you. You’re not developing into the leader you want to be.

Although you feel frozen, your situation is not due to an icy lack of energy. The truth is the opposite. There is an overload of energy in your system—but it’s being devoted to a conflict with yourself.

You have one heavy foot on the gas, trying to steam ahead. Your other foot is slamming down on the brakes, resisting, at the same time.

Part of you is determined to change. But part of you, even though you can’t see it, is desperate to stay exactly where you are.

Talk about a pickle.

The Levels of Change

Change works at different levels. As I’ve written about before, there is the doing level and the being level. We realize we’re stuck when we struggle to change our behaviors on the doing level. For new actions to stick, the being level needs to change, too.

At the top of the being level are our metrics. These comprise the scorecard for our behavior. Depending on our context and roles, we have certain metrics that we aim for. We score ourselves accordingly.

At work, these metrics are often defined through KPIs. But in all of life we have metrics that we strive for—consciously or not. These metrics are determined by the identity we inhabit—by our idea of the person we want to be.

Our identity doesn’t just appear. Instead it’s a result of our beliefs. This level is made up of our assumptions for how the world works: what’s wrong and right, how things work, what’s fair, what’s possible, what we believe we deserve, and more.

The Doer vs the Leader

If you’re developing into the role as a leader, odds are it’s because you’ve been a top-notch “doer” for a long time. You’ve been ambitious, accomplishing results. For your whole life you’ve been productive and made things happen.

The trouble is, these are exactly the behaviors that will keep you from becoming the leader you need to be.

The doer’s metrics are action, productivity, and fast results. Seeing tangible progress, getting immediate feedback, receiving praise—these aspects make up the doer’s scorecard.

But the role of a leader demands a very different scorecard. The leader’s metrics are creating coherence, alignment, and long-term impact. A leader is more of a farmer than a sprinter; a cultivator of the future that causes  and sets in motion more than does.

You are aware of this, of course. You know, intellectually, that leadership demands different behaviors and a more long-term perspective. So your problem isn’t a lack of knowledge or information.

The problem lies at a deeper level. The issue is that the new behaviors aren’t valued. And you don’t value them because the foundation of identity and beliefs hasn’t changed—the foundation is still that of a doer.

Doers identify themselves, naturally, as doers. They see themselves as a person who makes things happen, solves problems, and reaches goals. They believe that these metrics are what make them valued, loved, and fulfilled. And they believe these metrics are the basis for everyone else’s evaluation, too.

Their identity becomes so wrapped up with those metrics, that if they don’t reach them—if they don’t solve problems, reach goals, move things forward, have answers, and receive praise for their productivity—then they are literally nobody.

Think about that. If they’re not busy and producing, then they’re afraid of becoming nobody. Vanishing. Disappearing. Gone. Poof.

No wonder their new role as a leader becomes tricky. The survival of their entire identity and everything they believe to be true about the world is at stake. The existence of the very person they thought they were is on the line.

And so it becomes an endless arm-wrestling match with oneself. Patience is impossible, because it goes against immediate action. Creating the space for trust is ignored, because it requires giving up control. Innovative and controversial decisions are avoided because they remove opportunities for immediate praise.

So the doer knows that it’s time to step into the new leadership behaviors, but the blocks remain. The new behaviors simply don’t fit into the existing worldview.

One foot wants to drive ahead and become a leader. But the other is slamming down the brakes, craving to remain in the identity as a doer.

In a fight between identity and beliefs versus behavior, identity and beliefs will win every time. And so the behavior remains the same.

What’s the way out? Through the tension. Through the pickle.

Grappling with Beliefs

The only way to the other side is to grapple with the hard questions. To dive into them. Not to avoid the competing internal forces, but to be in that space, and to ask the tough questions.

What part of me can’t let go of control? What am I protecting? What happens if I don’t change? What’s actually at stake here? What happens if I never learn to let go? How will that affect me, and how will that affect my team?

This is bottom-up change. It starts from the deep levels of beliefs, testing one’s assumptions and their validity like a scientific research project. Do the old beliefs hold up? Are they actually true?

By testing those assumptions, the more you realize that nothing is fundamentally and irrevocably true. Nothing is always right. The beauty about beliefs is that they’re all made up.

Therefore, everything becomes possible.

Coasting Along the Road

To change behaviors that are part of a new role and identity, pressing down the gas pedal is not enough. Without also releasing the brakes, you’ll never move forward.

Once the brakes are off, change has more space to breathe. There’s less futile struggle. And as a result, you can lighten the pressure on the gas, too.

It then becomes a whole new journey. You can coast along the road in your new role. You take on obstacles when they arise, but you do so with a lightness and receptivity instead of self-conflict and struggle.

Coast along the road? To the doer this sounds scary, I know. But such is the nature of the path ahead of you. That is the path of a leader.

We like answers. They provide us with a sense of certainty and control. In the pursuit of clear answers, we filter and compartmentalize, separating right from wrong. We see the world in black and white. But that’s not the only way to see the world.

There is another mindset that’s more open, flexible, and accommodating. It’s a perspective that’s suited to dealing with uncertainty, complexity and change.

And it’s a way of thinking that never has the right answer, but can always find a solution.

This perspective is called grayscale thinking.

Stages of Adult Development

Robert Kegan, psychologist and professor at Harvard, is the founder of adult development theory. The theory describes how people mature and grow into adulthood. There are five stages.

When we’re born we inhabit the impulsive mind, acting on nothing but impulse and instinct. 

Then we grow into the imperial mind. We become aware of the world around us, but the emphasis is still on our own needs. 

Many people, but not all, then develop into the socialized mind. Here we become so aware of our culture that it becomes the most important determinant of our perspective. We base all of our decisions on society’s norms and beliefs. Our self-esteem becomes dependent on what others think of us. 

If we manage to break through those cultural illusions, we grow into the fourth stage, called the self-authoring mind. At this stage we define who we are ourselves. We create our own individual sense of self, making ourselves as we go.

A handful of individuals, estimated to be 1% of the population, develop into an even higher level of being. This stage is called the self-transforming mind. These people become unattached to identities and roles. They let go of preconceived notions of how they should behave. Instead, they’re always shifting and adapting, updating their mental models in response to new information. Every interaction affects the identities and roles they inhabit. 

For a self-transforming mind, there is no black and white. There are no firm answers. Everything is just a different shade of gray.

“People with this form of mind are less likely to see the world in terms of dichotomies or polarities,” Jennifer Garvey Berger, long-time collaborator of Robert Kegan, explains. “They are more likely to believe that what we often think of as black and white are just various shades of gray whose differences are made more visible by the lighter or darker colors around them.”

Learn To Appreciate The Subtle Details

Not striving to find the right answer can sound like heresy in a rational, left-brain dominated world.

Finding the right solutions is something so integrated into the modern mind that it can seem pointless—impossible even—to consider other ways of operating.

But this obsession of having the right answer is only one way of viewing the world.

Grayscale thinking is a perspective of nuances. It’s about finding the exceptions. It’s dancing in the spaces between, of playing with the boundaries themselves.

Rather than focusing on finding the right answer, it’s about uncovering newer and better questions.

If we follow questions, one answer will never be enough. More nuance and subtlety always lies in store. And with that, even better answers, and even greater questions, emerge.

Scott Cook, founder of Intuit, describes in the new book Trillion Dollar Coach the mindset of legendary CEO and leadership coach Bill Campbell.

Cook tells the story of how, when interviewing Campbell for a role at Intuit, the power of Campbell’s grayscale thinking became apparent.

“The first time we met, we talked about business and strategy,” Cook says. “But when we talked again, we got off of strategy and talked instead about leadership and people. The other people I had interviewed had a cookie-cutter approach to developing people. You can have any color you want as long as it’s black. But Bill, he was a technicolor rainbow.”

He continued: “He appreciated that each person had a different story and background. He was so nuanced and different in how he approached growth challenges and leadership challenges … Bill was great at that.”

How to Spot the Difference

There are a few signs that you’re entering into black-and-white territory.

Anytime you make a statement of “this is how things work”, you are making a black-and-white statement. When you notice yourself using words like “must,” “should,” “always”, and “never”, you are entering the realm of black-and-white.

Grayscale thinking has a different vocabulary. It’s peppered with “maybes” and “sometimes”. Phrases like “on the one hand…on the other hand“ show up time and again. It’s a constant process of exploration, of twisting and turning, and remaining curious.

A black-and-white thinker will ask, “Is this true?”. A gray-scale thinker asks, “How could this be true?”

You don’t need to always avoid absolutes. The key is to be aware that you’re entering into dangerous territory if you do.

Proceed far enough, and you’re turning off access to other realities.

Paul Saffo, technology forecaster and professor at Stanford University, is famous for coining the term “strong beliefs, loosely held.” This is compatible with grayscale thinking.

Strong opinions are essential—as long as they’re held with enough objectivity that you can update them when required.

If you’re a grayscale thinker, your identity and sense of self-worth are not tied up with your opinions. Instead, you’re always seeking a greater and deeper truth.

This continuous exercise demands not only letting go of your identity, but also a willingness to update your current beliefs and worldview.

Grayscale thinkers don’t just look through their worldview.

They look at it.

Instead of taking for granted the world they see through their glasses, they observe and scrutinize the glasses themselves.

Finding Color and Truth in the Paradoxes

It’s when we’re posed with the most confusing, contradictory, irreconcilable challenges that truths emerge. It is in grappling with that we understand. It is in the struggle to grasp that we are made.

“When things are most contradictory, absurd, difficult and frustrating,” writes E. F. Schumacher, “then—just then—life really makes sense.”

There is no right. There is no wrong. There is only more or less.

It’s all a following of questions, of challenges. And in your pursuit of these questions, you probably won’t receive an answer. You’re more likely to receive yet another question.And another. And another.

This may seem frustrating. But this is living.

Rigidity, static, fixed is death. Complexity, challenge, confusion is aliveness.

It’s in the tension where dynamism and vibrance lives. It’s in the electric energy where the thrill of adventure occurs. It’s in the contradictions, in the variations, where the fullness of life is experienced.

Black and white is decay.

Grayscale is aliveness.

Grayscale is a life in color.

But goals can quickly turn into destinations to get to. And in doing so, they become the conditions for our success.

While a goal-focused approach might work for the small things in life, for the big things it can lead to despair.

For the big things, you have two options. You can either set conditions for success. Or you can adopt conditionlessness. 

Small things versus big things

For achieving small and mechanical tasks, conditional goals are effective.

An example: If I want to make a cup of coffee, then my goal is to make a cup of coffee. If I manage to brew it, then pour it, and finally drink it, I have achieved my goal. My conditions for success have been fulfilled. I have been successful in the task that I set out to accomplish. Simple enough.

But with big tasks—with the Big Task itself—it’s a different story.

We say, “as long as I reach X, then I’ll be happy”. We claim that, “as soon as I achieve sales of Y, then everything will be OK”. We’re sure that, “if only I sign Z amount of clients, then I’ll feel secure”. 

These “if only…” statements are understandable. But when the attainment of conditional goals becomes the only determinant of one’s state of mind, it turns into a dark and treacherous road. 

Hedonic adaptation and outsourcing

There are two reasons why conditional goals form a slippery slope. 

The first reason is hedonic adaptation. We are first-rate adapters. Whether we become paralyzed or we win the lottery, our happiness always converges after an initial spike or dip. 

Well-being is not an additive game. It’s not a “more-is-better” competition. Instead, it’s a balancing act. Our state of mind is a thermostat that demands constant calibration. “More” doesn’t solve it. Only calibration can. 

The second reason is that when we set conditions for success, we outsource our well-being to things we can’t control. We become dependent on our circumstances for our state of mind. That would be fine if everything remained stable and delightful around us. But the gods aren’t always that considerate, are they. 

Not only do we outsource our experience to things we can’t control, we outsource it to the future. We outsource our today’s intrinsic desires to extrinsic, conditional rewards tomorrow. And that means that our intrinsic rewards will wait, playing catch-up, forever. 

A dark and slippery road, indeed.

Conditionless choice

So what’s the alternative?

The goals, milestones and visions we have for ourselves are very rarely about “the thing”. It’s not actually revenue that you want. It’s not actually the new job that you want. It’s about what those things give you. It’s about the sense of joy, the sense of freedom, the sense of immersion we envision that “the thing” will provide.

The beauty with these types of conditionless rewards is that, if you dare to think outside the box, they’re not dependent on external circumstances. They can always be experienced. They can always be had. They can always be claimed. 

They are dependent only on choices. 

Masters of conditionlessness

History is rife with examples of people who have mastered the art of choosing. In fact, it is those that have transcended the conditional world that stand out in history. Conditionlessness is the stuff of legends. 

One of the greatest examples is Viktor Frankl, the Jewish psychologist and Holocaust survivor who survived several concentration camps during WWII. 

We assume that our sense of happiness and meaning emerge from having the right conditions—the right job, the right neighborhood, the right relationships. But Frankl came to a different conclusion. He found the deepest meaning of his life in the worst conditions imaginable. 

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way,” Frankl wrote. “Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him….It is this spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful.”

He realized that meaning isn’t conditional. Meaning doesn’t depend on anything external. It can always be attained, no matter the circumstance. 

Viktor Frankl should, based on all objective and conditional measures, have been one of the the most deprived, depressed human beings on the planet. Instead, he was one of the most fulfilled. His sense of meaning did not depend on his external circumstances. He chose meaning. And from that choice, meaning emerged. 

His sense of meaning just was. It was conditionless. 

The path of the conditionless warrior

Conditionlessness is nothing but a choice. But it’s the biggest one you’ll ever need to make. 

And it’s not just a choice that you make one time and one time only. It’s an accumulation of smaller ones, one after the other.

Every moment, every situation confronts you with a new choice to make. Will I choose to make this encounter meaningful, or will I moan? Will I choose to be joyful despite the thunderstorm, or will I despair? We’re confronted with these choices again, and again, and again, and again. 

In every situation, in every moment, the gods are testing you. Will you fall into the trap of conditional rewards? Or will you choose conditionlessness?

There are no musts. You don’t have to do anything.

But this is the path of conditionlessness. This is the path of the conditionless warrior. 

This is freedom.

But in daily life, it’s easy to feel deprived of adventure. Routine tasks, unappreciative bosses, and overcrowded schedules zap the thrill out of the daily grind.

This state of affairs, however real it might seem, is an illusion.

Opportunities for growth and adventure are everywhere — if you know where to look, that is.

If you raise your gaze, there’s a special place a bit further beyond. It’s a place where adventure and growth can always be found, no matter the circumstance.

That place is the frontier.

The frontier and the adjacent possible

The frontier is the edge. It’s the current limit of your abilities. Everything within the boundaries of the frontier is known, expected, and secure. Everything beyond the frontier is new, unknown, and uncertain.

Adventure takes place at the frontier. It happens in a dance between the known and the unknown.

Steven Johnson, innovation expert and author, has popularized a term called the adjacent possible.

The adjacent possible is whatever lies just beyond the limits of your current abilities. When you’re standing at the frontier, the adjacent possible is what’s just within your grasp, if you really reach for it.

The frontier is not a static, fixed boundary. Instead, it’s expandable. Each step forward into the adjacent possible expands the frontier. And as the frontier expands, so does the adjacent possible, too.

Even though breakthroughs seem like big leaps at the time, they’re not. Instead, innovation is the result of a gradual process of leaning into the frontier, and expanding the adjacent possible — one step at a time.

No frontier? Then no growth, and no adventure.

Finding your frontier

So you’re longing for adventure. The first task is to find the frontier. It’s the composed of the following:

Frontier = The Known (old, safe, secure) + The Unknown (new, uncertain, scary)

The frontier is a combination of the known and the unknown. It’s stability and uncertainty, security and panic, all at once.

The frontier is when you feel desire and fear at the same time. It’s where “I want to…” meets the “…but…”.

It’s what the poet David Whyte calls beautiful trepidation: “the sense of something about to happen that you’ve wanted but that you’re scared to death of actually happening.”

Once you’ve found that sense of beautiful trepidation, you know you’re at the frontier. Then the second step is to be at the frontier.

Usually we can sense where the frontier is, but we shy away from it. Maybe it’s too frightening. It might seem overwhelming. Or perhaps we’re afraid of leaving what we know behind.

Whatever the resistance, it’s all a fear of being fully present at the edge. It’s a fear of showing up and being fully visible in the face of the unknown.

At the edge, we’re exposed to the elements. This applies to all of us, even leaders. “One of the powerful dynamics of leadership,” says David Whyte, “is being visible. One of the vulnerabilities of being visible is that when you’re visible, you can be seen; and when you can be seen, you can be touched; and when you can be touched, you can be hurt.”

The frontier demands all of us. It’s nothing you can shy away from. Only by standing there, and being there with it all, are you truly at the cliff edge of existence.

Once you’ve finally collected the courage to stand at the edge and peer into the abyss, the final step is to lean into the frontier.

The first moments of leaning in will be terrifying, strange and uncomfortable. But because of the fear it creates, it’s also exhilarating. It makes you come alive. It’s a cocktail of danger, thrills, fun, terror, and excitement all at once.

You can let the fear and resistance stop you. Or you can use it a signpost of where to go, of where to lean in. Once you lean in far enough, momentum and gravity will take care of the rest.

Find. Stand. Lean.

Practice for your future self

Sometimes the frontier is clearly marked, but other times it’s hidden from view. Either way, it can always be accessed, even in the dullest of circumstances.

If you’re facing an annoying colleague, you have several options. You can sigh and not listen. You can react with anger, irritation and frustration. Or you can use the interaction as an opportunity to lean into the frontier by practicing empathy, patience and leadership.

Every moment presents an opportunity to practice. Practice being more calm. Practice being more aware. Practice being more empathetic. Practice being more risk-taking. Practice being more integrative.

Each time you practice leaning into your edge and you persevere, you’re expanding your range of abilities. You’re expanding the adjacent possible. And with that expansion, you’re creating more opportunities and possibilities for the future.

Your future self is the result of every individual action you take today. So treat your future self with respect. Find the frontier in every moment. Dare to be fully present at that cliff edge. Lean into it and expand the adjacent possible. And watch as new worlds emerge.

Sounds like an adventure to me.

“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.” — Marcus Aurelius

Few ad campaigns have been more successful than Apple’s ”Think Different” campaign in 1997. It featured snippets of the “crazy ones”—the Einsteins, the Edisons and Earharts of the world—set to a rousing soundtrack and an inspiring monologue.

“Here’s to the crazy ones….The ones who see things differently…While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

It was an epic campaign that won worldwide praise. It cemented Apple’s place in the minds and hearts of creative talent and free-thinking spirits. And in the years since, it remains a manifesto for every innovative entrepreneur and aspiring contrarian out there.

But it misses an important point.

Thinking differently isn’t cheap. There’s a serious price to it. And it’s not one that you might expect.

Guilt

Our bodies and minds are impressive pieces of hardware. Over eons we have evolved into refined, well-oiled machines. But our surroundings have changed—and our bodies remained designed for a different world.

In our primitive past we lived in small tribes. In these social constellations, leaving the group was not a great strategy. To embark on your own adventures lowered your own chances of survival. Even becoming ridiculed by the crowd meant potential exile, and potential death.

So to prevent social isolation and castigation from happening, evolution programmed an effective piece of software into us.

It’s called guilt.

Those who responded to the feeling of guilt—who felt bad for thinking for themselves and venturing out on their own—returned to their group and survived.

Those who didn’t respond to the guilt—who either didn’t feel it or chose to ignore it—perished.

And so, until this day, guilt trickles through our veins. It’s triggered when we disrupt the social fabric. It keeps us from agitating our groups. It prevents us from venturing too far out into the unknown. It hinders us from becoming too independent. And it makes sure we adhere to our need for belonging.

Guilt is a leash that keeps us close to those we love. It has noble intentions. But anytime we’re confronted with moving forward, we’re faced with the fact that we’re leaving our group behind.

That brings us back to Think Different.

Contrarians

In entrepreneurship and investing circles, “to be a contrarian” is a central commandment. “Betting against the consensus” and “seeing things differently” are keys to success, as these figures describe:

• Jeff Bezos: “Outsized returns often come from betting against conventional wisdom.”
• Marc Andreessen: “If you are doing it right, you are continuously investing in things that are non-consensus at the time of investment.”
• Ray Dalio: “In order to be an effective investor…and in order to be an entrepreneur, a successful entrepreneur, one has to bet against the consensus and be right.”
• Howard Marks: “To achieve superior investment results…you must learn things others don’t, see things differently or do a better job of analyzing them – ideally all three.”

When you hear these types of statements, it’s easy to conclude that the key is to think differently. The challenge appears to be coming up with new ideas that go against the grain.

But the difficulty is not coming up with the ideas. The tough part of thinking differently is sticking with it.

Why? Because of the guilt that comes with thinking and acting for yourself.

Remember, every step toward independence is a step away from the group. It doesn’t matter whether it’s our family, our group of friends, or society at large. Thinking and acting differently is always a step away from what we know and what has kept us safe until now.

These steps into the unknown, these innovative moves, are what lead to progress. But there is a tax on such progress, and that’s guilt.

The guilt manifests itself in different ways. It can be thoughts like, “Who I am to pursue this? Kids are starving in Africa, after all.” It can be crippling, paralyzing feelings of fear. Or it can be catastrophic predictions of inevitable failure, and the threat of condescending I-told-you-so’s. Whatever the case, you feel bad by merely thinking about doing things differently.

It’s literally painful. Research has shown that social exclusion lights up the same parts of the brain that are triggered by physical pain.

Guilt becomes an invisible wall that keeps you stuck right where you are.

Moving forward

Courage isn’t the absence of fear. Courage is acting despite of fear. In the same way, innovative progress is “thinking differently and acting upon those ideas despite the guilt and shame they generate.”

The key here is not creativity. The key is perseverance. It’s about keeping your eye on the target, on the world you want to create, and to withstand the guilt and shame that comes with every step forward.

So how do you persist? You persist by making the alternative—stagnation and the status quo—even worse.

If guilt is the price of progress, then you need to make sure that the cost of stability is even higher.

Many successful entrepreneurs come from challenging backgrounds riddled with heartache and insecurity. Terrible as it must have been, in some ways they have been lucky in their misfortune. To them, guilt is nothing compared to the conditions they faced in their childhoods.

“Many of the best entrepreneurs don’t need social approval,” says venture capitalist Josh Wolfe. “Or they thrive precisely because they never got it. They reject the rejectors. They give up on fitting in and they move to stand out…When you come from nothing, you have nothing to lose“.

Conclusion

What to do about it?

Know that the price of innovative, contrarian progress is guilt and shame.

Build a solid personal foundation to be resilient enough to withstand the waves of guilt that will hit you, so that your self-worth isn’t dependent on your need for belonging.

Create a cost of the status quo that is greater than the price of guilt.

And, paradoxical as it might seem, follow your guilt. The more you feel guilt, the more you know you are breaking out. The more guilt you feel, the greater the crimes you’re committing against the status quo. The more guilt you experience while not giving in to it, the more of a contrarian you are.

So here’s to the crazy ones….The ones who see things differently…and who feel the guilt of moving forward but persevere despite of it.

You take your current level of knowledge. Then you add new knowledge. As a result, your level of knowledge rises. You have learned something new.

Current Knowledge + New Knowledge = Learning

This is how we usually think about learning and growth, at least. Whether it’s a new skill, a new muscle, or a new technique, we think it’s always about adding something new.

There is a lot of truth in this approach. But it denies another, more effective source of learning.

Learning isn’t only addition. Learning is also subtraction.

Learning isn’t the only form of learning. Unlearning is learning, too.

Interference

The legendary coach and author Tim Gallwey has a formula for performance:

Performance = Potential – Interference

The goal is to remove as much interference as possible. By reducing interference, you allow latent potential to thrive.

But what is interference?

In short, it’s anything that gets in the way.

Interference is the collection of “shoulds, musts and oughts” you impose on yourself — the expectations you hold yourself to that limit your possibilities.

Interference is the performance anxiety that comes with believing that your self-worth depends only on what you do and what you deliver.

Interference is the blindness you experience in high-pressure moments, because you’re preoccupied with how you’re perceived instead of what’s happening on the field of play.

Interference is the procrastination and distraction that keeps you from doing the work you’re meant to do, because of your unwillingness to be with the discomfort of committing to difficult choices.

Interference is the state of being busy for the sake of being busy and spinning your wheels without going anywhere, instead of pausing for a second, cutting your losses, and setting a new direction.

Interference is the avoidance of conflict that comes from needing to keep everyone happy, since you’re petrified of being seen as the bad guy.

Interference is the tension and stress that comes from feeling like you’re responsible for carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, and that everything depends on your every move.

Interference is the stagnation that keeps you stuck where you are, because whatever you do it won’t be enough to meet your impossibly high bar of success.

Interference takes many shapes and forms. But they all emerge from your current belief system of how the world works. These unconscious belief patterns determine what you say, how you think, and what you do. Until you unlearn these belief patterns, your worldview will spit you out into the same direction, no matter how hard you try.

If you don’t change your worldview, your world won’t change.

Water flow

Here’s a mental image of how this works.

Imagine that every person is a flow of water. To see the light of day, this water needs to get through a faucet. You can never turn the water off, but you can adjust the amount of water that’s let through. When we’re children, our water runs free. But the older we get, the more we block certain parts of ourselves, and the less water flows through the tap. We learn that only certain parts of ourselves are acceptable to our families, friends and the world.

And so we’re left with blockages. Only a fraction of our original water flow streams out. The rest remains blocked. Some of it might seep through the cracks in strange ways. Much of it builds up behind the scenes. But it’s all there, waiting to explode.

The system is abundant with latent potential. To let it thrive, you have two choices. One is to call the water delivery company and ask them to increase the pressure, so that more water pushes through the same tiny hole – in other words, adding more potential to the system. The other option is to remove the blocks — allowing the faucet to open, and letting the natural flow run free.

Reduction

Most of us find ourselves in situations where we’re stuck. Maybe we’re not getting what we want. Or we’re not working where we want. Or we’re not growing at the rate we want. Whatever it is, we feel stuck. Chained. Constricted.

Our instinctive reaction is that new information will get us what we want. We think that if we find the right answer, somewhere out there on the internet, then our problems will be solved. “If only I knew the answer…THEN I would be fine.” We think it’s only a matter of adding more knowledge.

But that’s not how it works. Given how much information we have available at our fingertips, “if more information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs,” as Derek Sivers says.

You can try to learn more solutions. Or you can unlearn the problem itself.

You can unlearn the unconscious belief patterns that create your obstacles in the first place. You can unlearn the collection of expectations that blind you to what you want. And you can unlearn and let go of the paradigms that keep you stuck where you are.

Wisdom is not an abundance of knowledge. Instead, it’s simplicity. “I know that I have still before me a difficult path to traverse,” Gandhi wrote in the last lines of his autobiography. “I must reduce myself to zero.”

How close to zero are you willing to go? How much do you dare to unlearn?

But actually doing it is a different ball game altogether.

Interest is not action. Talking is not doing.

Does this seem obvious? It should. But it’s still far too easy to fall into the trap of confusing learning with doing, and mixing up inspiration with action.

This is especially true in leadership and personal development.

But before we get there, let’s take a look at a different arena. Let’s examine what has been called “the most important of the unimportant things in life”.

Soccer.

Soccer people

There are three types of soccer people.

Soccer fans are interested in the sport. Their interest can range from superficial knowledge to intense passion, but they’re fans nonetheless. They follow the latest news and enjoy watching games. They discuss tactics and transfers, and they have a sense for the intricacies of the sport. They are fans.

But a soccer fan is not a soccer player.

Soccer players are on the field. They don’t just talk about soccer, they play it. They do it. They play with their team, and they show up at practice. They put their heart into the action. They enjoy it.

But a soccer player is not necessarily a soccer professional.

Soccer professionals are not only on the field. They’re in the gym. They not only practice, they practice deliberately. They’re relentless in improving their abilities in specific skills. They have a coach who helps to identify areas of improvement, and to provide support when the going gets tough. They have routines outside of the sport—like sufficient sleep, a well-balanced diet, regular strength and flexibility training, and mindset exercises—that support excellence in their craft. They hold their sport with an almost holy reverence. They are professional.

Fans. Players. Professionals.

These are very different ways of being. They all have a deep interest in the subject of soccer. But they attack it from different angles.

This isn’t just the case for sports. It applies to any discipline.

Take food, for example.

First, there are food fans. They range from buffet bingers to connoisseurs who spend small fortunes on world-class dining experiences. Either way, they love food. They’re passionate about it.

Then there are people who actually make food at home. They don’t just warm up meals in the microwave – they cook. They look forward to trying out new ingredients, new recipes, and making meals from scratch. They enjoy cooking for its own sake, and for the joy it brings to their friends and family. These are the food players.

And then there are food professionals – the chefs. They’re dedicated to their craft. They’ve trained under a mentor as an apprentice for years. They take meticulous care of their tools. They’re always trying to up their game and expand what they’re capable of. There’s a profound joy in what they do, but there’s also the pain and suffering that comes with improvement and excellence—the intensity of the kitchen, the endless experiments with new techniques, and the obsessive devotion to the craft. By always improving in what they do, they’re always in the process of becoming who they are. They are professional.

Fans. Players. Professionals.

If you’re a fan, that’s great. And if you’re a player, that’s cool too. No one has to be a professional.

But it becomes problematic when you mix up the categories – when you think you’re something that you’re not.

This isn’t much of an issue in sports. If you’re a soccer fan, you would never claim to be a soccer professional, would you?

Unfortunately, mixing up these categories happens all the time in leadership and personal development.

Let’s see where the boundaries are.

Personal development people

Personal development fans are fascinated by the topic. They read every pop-psychology book that comes out. They listen to podcasts. They consume endless amounts of information and inspiration. They learn a lot, and they improve their theoretical understanding of personal growth.

But they don’t do personal development.

Personal development players do personal development. They not only read books and blogs. They act. They go to courses, training programs and events. They get a buzz out of meeting new people, and they enjoy raising their own self-awareness. They’re in action.

But their growth isn’t what it could be.

Personal development professionals are dedicated to transformation. They’re relentless about leaning into their growth edge. They have a coach that shines light on their blind spots and supports them to grow. It’s not just aimless growth – they have specific areas that they focus their development on, and they practice them deliberately. There’s joy and pleasure involved, but it’s also difficult, painful and unsettling. They know that real transformation can’t happen without it. But they persist, because of the insights and possibilities that emerge. They know they are never complete. They know that they are always becoming.

Fans. Players. Professionals.

Leadership people

Leadership fans are fascinated by the subject. They read all the latest books and HBR articles. They’re inspired by thought leaders, and they love discussing the latest leadership research.

But they don’t do leadership.

Leadership players lead. They lead by example. They make sure to notice, acknowledge and support their followers. They enjoy inspiring others, and they love the thrill of seeing people grow.

But a leadership player is not necessarily a leadership professional.

Leadership professionals are dedicated to the craft. They have clear, defined growth edges that they’re always leaning into. They practice their leadership — meaning that they have “drills” that they “run” every day. They have a coach, who supports them in highlighting blind spots and creating action plans to grow. They’re grateful for the moments of joy that come with the territory, but they also know that leadership can be excruciating. It can be gut-wrenching to speak the truth to someone. It can be devastating to create intimacy through vulnerability. But they do it nonetheless, because that’s what leadership is. They have habits—energy check-ins, sufficient sleep and recovery, physical training, daily pauses—that make sure that they’re primed for leadership excellence. They don’t avoid their weaknesses. In fact, they’re desperate to learn more about them. They seek out real, honest feedback like a truffle-hunting dog. They then use this information to grow, so that they can help themselves, and therefore help others, even more powerfully.

Fans. Players. Professionals.

Reading books and watching TED Talks will not make you a leadership professional. It can be a start, of course. But don’t think for a second that it makes you a pro.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with being a fan. What is problematic is thinking you’re a professional, when in reality you’re a fan. You’re only fooling yourself. Is there anything more heartbreaking than someone who’s lying to themselves?

Understand: Being professional, in this context, has nothing to do with whether or not you get paid. Being professional is instead about the attitude you adopt, the practices you pursue, and the path you persist on.

When our leaders talk more than act, it affects us all. The perceived bar for excellence becomes lower and lower for everyone. Soon enough, no one actually takes real steps to grow as leaders and in their personal development. Everyone just watches yet another TED Talk, and thinks their job is done.

People talk, and people consume. But few actually grow. Few truly transform.

Fans. Players. Professionals.

Who do you say you are? Who do you want to be?

But recently you’ve come to realize that you crave something more. You’re missing something, but you’re not quite sure what it is. You have a feeling that you’re leaving a big part of yourself on the table, that you could be more, somehow.

Your drive, your impact-focus, your perfectionism, and your likability have gotten you far. But these very same qualities are the ones that are holding you back from even greater levels of success and achievement.

To become the next level of you, you need to rethink what it means to be you.

It’s time to shed your skin. It’s time to level up.

Drive and perfection

You’re ambitious, driven and independent. You’re multi-talented. You’ve always had a knack for solving problems. You’ve performed and exceeded expectations your whole life. Since you can handle any challenge, you can always do more. And since other people do nothing but slow you down, you prefer handling things yourself. You strive for bigger and broader challenges, because you know that you can handle them.

But you’ve started asking yourself: What am I driven towards? What am I driven by? Where am I going with all this busyness?

You’ve realized that you’re not actually driven toward anything. The only thing you’re driven by is that relentless, incessant slavedriver on your shoulder, who whips you to do more, and more, and more. It’s never quite enough for him, though, is it? If anything, you’re driven away from yourself and what you want. In fact, you have no idea what you really want anymore, because it hasn’t mattered in a long time. Combined with your high standards of accomplishment, you’re stuck with an infinitely high bar that you don’t want to overcome. The high bar blinds you from what you actually want. And because you strive for perfection, it’s easier to do nothing than to fail at overcoming the high bar. You don’t ask for help. So now you’re stuck. And you’re numb.

Your drive has served you well. But it’s also keeping you stuck and numb.

What got you here, won’t get you there.

Impact and value

You’re focused on delivering impact and value. You don’t like to fuck around. You want to have a real impact on the world, so you despise wasting time. If there’s value to gain, you act. If not, you avoid it like the plague. You’ve prioritized value your whole life. Play is for children, you’ve always thought. You can be relied on to get things done. And you’ve delivered.

But your focus on being productive means that anything that doesn’t have a valued, practical, and measurable end-goal isn’t worth doing. Rest, recovery, breaks, play, just hanging out — why bother? You’ll eat chia seeds, turmeric and coconut oil until they spill out of your ears, but a good-old chocolate cake? Yeah right. Play and pleasure is for children, after all. And because of your unforgiving value-focus, you’ve become more and more isolated. You’ve been so focused on being productive and doing what’s “right”, that you’ve forgotten what those emotions called pleasure and joy feel like. You’ve become so focused on doing, that you’re scared of being.

Your focus on value has served you well. But it’s also holding you back from from achieving real, true, deep levels of impact and connection.

What got you here, won’t get you there.

Kindness and empathy

You’re likable. You’re polite. You’re kind. People enjoy your company. You’ve learned to play the social game with your finely-tuned emotional intelligence. You can fit in to any group, at work or at the bar. You’re a diplomat of the highest order, who always sees the other side of the picture. You’re liked by everyone.

But you don’t dive deep. You’re afraid of commitment. You’re terrified of being vulnerable and showing weakness. You shy away from conflict, because you associate the discomfort of argument with your own value as a human being. Keeping the peace has become so important that you’ve learned to neglect your own opinions. You’ve become so used to keeping other people happy, that you’ve forgotten what it means to be truly happy yourself.

Your likability has served you well. But it’s also preventing you from experiencing the tenderness of love and the attainment of your own desires.

What got you here, won’t get you there.

The work

It’s entirely natural that it’s turned out like this. You’ve achieved so much. But now you can start seeing the costs. You’re not only depriving yourself of the beauty of aliveness. You’re depriving the world of yourself and your potential impact. In your effort to be impact-driven, productive and kind, you’ve ended up stuck, numb and isolated. In an attempt to put others first, you’ve actually prioritized your own insecurities and defense mechanisms.

So, what to do about it? First of all — acknowledge all of the goodness. Appreciate and say thanks to all of your amazing qualities. They’ve brought you far. Don’t try to “fix you”. There’s nothing wrong.

But — and it’s a big, hairy but— to take the next big step and to achieve what you really want, you need to incorporate a more nuanced version of your core qualities. You need to understand where they come from and what they lead to. You need to start seeing what it is that you’re currently compensating for, and to begin healing the wounds at the depths of your soul. You need to expand what it means to be you, no matter how uncomfortable that might seem.

Where to start? In the same way you learn anything. Practice. Practice doing what’s uncomfortable and what you’re currently resisting.

You can practice being open. Practice sitting with the discomfort of being. Practice noticing what you want, and going after it. Practice committing to your desires. Practice opening your heart and leaving it on the floor, messy and bloody for all to see. And, god forbid, practice allowing yourself to eat that luscious chocolate cake, and actually enjoying it.

Work with your coach on it. Ask your close friends and colleagues for feedback. Show leadership by modeling to others what’s possible through deep inner work. Play around with your development, if you dare.

Becoming the next level of you is not easy. There’s no quick fix. It can be outright nasty at times. It’s like a snake shedding its skin — it’s a far from elegant affair. And like the snake, it’s not a one-time occurrence. It’s the work of a lifetime.

This, my dear friend, is the real work. This is where real impact comes from. This, you’ve come to realize, is your next big project. It’s you.

But you’ve always liked a challenge, right?

But what do great leaders do, exactly?

It’s easy to assume that leadership cannot be grasped, because of its mysterious qualities. Either you’re good at it or you’re not, one might think.

The truth is that leadership is a discipline like any other. It demands effort and practice. It can be learned. And it’s more similar to a certain commercial discipline than you’d like to admit.

Defining leadership

There are plenty of definitions of leadership, but here’s one that summarizes them:

“The ability to influence other people toward a common direction.”

There are two components to leadership:

1) Influencing other people. This can be through direct influence (using rational arguments, reasoning, and incentive schemes). Or it can be through covert influence (by painting a grand vision, by exploiting status dynamics, or by leading by example).

2) Common direction. This can be a measurable goal or task. It can be an inspiring mission. Or it can be a grand vision of the future.

With this definition, the span of leadership is wide. Many everyday interactions are actually leadership in action.

Getting your group of friends to agree on what restaurant to go to is leadership: you influence the group (your friends) to go in a common direction (the restaurant).

But so is inspiring a national movement to take action against climate change. In this case, there’s a big group, and there’s a big direction.

Both are examples of leadership. The difference lies in the size of the group and the magnitude of the direction.

So leadership is all about influence. And if we really boil it down, leadership is all about sales.

Leadership is sales

SHOCK. GASP. HORROR.

Yes, sales can have a yucky, icky feel. When we think about sales we think of annoying car salesmen. We think of badgering telemarketers and unethical commission hunters.

But sales is influence. If you sell someone a service, then you have influenced that person to exchange money for your offering.

The only difference between sales and leadership is that the currency of sales is (usually) money. In sales, the exchange of money is what seals the conversion of a prospect into a customer.

The currency of leadership, however, is enrollment. The act of enrolling someone to go in your desired direction is what converts a prospect into a follower.

So if you’re a leader, you need to sell your followers on why they should follow you. There are many ways to do that. You can sell the vision. You can sell the camaraderie and culture. Or you can sell the gold at the end of the rainbow. But at the end of the day, you need to sell yourself.

Selling yourself as a leader

Selling yourself can be uncomfortable. It means confronting who you are, who you want to be, and your own strengths and insecurities.

In recent times, the concept of leadership has been romanticized. A typical article on the topic will discuss “authentic leadership”, “compassionate leadership,” and “vulnerable leadership.”

Despite the lack of sting, these are all examples of sales and leadership of the highest level. Why?

Because they all lead to influence. An authentic leader is easier to connect to. A compassionate leader is easier to confide in. A vulnerable leader is easier to trust.

If your people trust you, connect with you, and confide in you, then you have gone a long way toward securing their followership. You have influenced them to follow you. You have sold your leadership successfully.

People have needs: everything from basic needs like safety and security; to emotional needs like approval, attention, and affection; to fulfillment needs like self-actualization and self-transcendence. If you understand your followers’ needs, then you can start designing your leadership to deliver what they crave.

You are your leadership tool. To sell it, you need to sell yourself so that it resonates with your followers’ needs.

Let’s not avoid the facts. Leadership is sales. And sales is leadership.

So start asking your people what they need. Start adjusting your leadership to accommodate those needs. And start getting comfortable with the discomfort of selling yourself as a leader.

This post is part of LinkedIn Sweden’s #inittogether campaign. 

“Make voyages. Attempt them. There’s nothing else.” — Tennessee Williams

Marco Polo. Christopher Columbus. Marie Curie. Albert Einstein. Amelia Earhart. Neil Armstrong. Jane Goodall.

These names are the stuff of legends. Their stories evoke notions of adventure, peril and intrigue. They are figureheads who have pushed the world forward by pushing themselves ahead.

They are discoverers.

We associate these discoverers with an almost myth-like status. But the truth is that the act of discovery is not limited to these heroes of history.

We are all discoverers. Granted, our discoveries might be smaller in the grand scheme of things — but we still have the possibility to explore the undiscovered, each and every day.

When we try new things, we discover new abilities. When we’re surrounded by unfamiliar cultures, we discover new connections. When we push ourselves in uncharted territory, we discover more about who we are and what we’re capable of.

As a coach, I support ambitious and impact-driven people on their own journeys of discovery. I help them to discover what they want. I help them to discover what they’re willing to give to get there. And I help them to discover more of themselves along the way.

As a business owner, I’m on the endless path of discovery myself. Discovering new opportunities and new services to offer. Discovering where my own boundaries and breaking points are. And discovering more about who I am and who I want to be.

The act of discovery has a romantic, adventurous feel to it. And although it does have certain storybook qualities, it can also be a gut-wrenching affair.

Why is it so difficult? The reason is that discovery demands two completely different time perspectives. I call it the dual vision of discovery.

The dual vision of discovery

The dual vision of discovery is the ability to both look up and look down, at the same time.

Looking up means having a long-term direction. You need to set a course and head toward that point on the horizon. You need to think ahead, with patience and fortitude. You need to lift your gaze, and keep one eye on the future.

But you also need to look down at what’s immediately in front of you. You need to approach tasks with diligence and concentration. You need to do your best with what’s in front of you. You need to keep your head down, with one eye firmly on the present.

Throughout my entrepreneurial career, I’ve come to learn that this dual time perspective is crucial. Without dual vision, you’re toast. All forms of creation, discovery or entrepreneurship require looking up and looking down at the same time.

If you only look down at what’s in front of you, you’ll run out of motivation. You’ll lose the big picture. And you’ll get sucked into a whirlpool of busyness without getting anywhere.

On the other hand, if you only look up toward the future, you’ll become blind to what needs to be done right now. You’ll get caught up in grandiose dreams and visions. And you’ll lose touch with reality.

Even though I know that dual vision is crucial, it’s still difficult to remind myself of its importance. It’s tough to remain optimistic when things don’t go as planned. It’s frustrating to keep ploughing ahead with a marketing campaign when you’re unsure of what it will lead to. It can feel pointless to keep writing blog posts when you don’t know whether anyone will read them.

This is why dual vision is so important.

Impact is created in the daily grind. The seeds of change are planted in the present. But often—in fact, most of the time—you don’t see the fruits of your labor until weeks, months or even years later. So you must set a long-term direction for what you want to achieve.

If you were to only think in the present moment, you would stop because of the heartache. You would stop because of the obstacles, setbacks and pain. You would stop because of the No’s, Maybe’s, and Later’s you inevitably receive from others and from yourself.

With a firm, long-term direction, you have an everlasting source of motivation. It keeps you focused. It gives the answer you so desperately need when you ask yourself, “why am I doing what I’m doing again?”

The name of my company, Kodawari, is a testament to this dual time perspective. It’s a Japanese word that means, approximately, “a sincere, unwavering focus on what you are doing, with the intent of making it perfect, while knowing that perfection is impossible and that the work itself is most crucial.” In other words: the mastery of discovery.

Coaching is ostensibly about setting goals and achieving results. But this is a drastic oversimplification. The truth is that things change. Reality intervenes. New goals become more important, new circumstances arise, and new constraints need to be taken into account.

But there is one thing that will never change, and that’s the path of discovery. And it’s a path that requires looking up and looking down. Wherever it may lead, there’s always more to discover: of oneself, of others, and of life.

I’m in it for discovery.

These are noble intentions. The desire to learn and grow is a hallmark of high-impact people. Change is the name of the game.

Despite these strong urges, we often don’t succeed. We try to change, but it never seems to stick. We give up for a while, and then we try again six months later. We try, we give up, we try, we give up. It becomes a never-ending loop of trying to change, but not actually changing.

The reason change is so difficult is that we’re missing a crucial element: the foundation for change to take place upon.

The iceberg of doing and being

In coaching, there is a distinction between doing and being.

Doing is what you do. It’s the actions you take. It’s the decisions you make. It’s your behavior and all its visible manifestations.

Being is who you are. It’s what’s underneath all of the doing. It’s your qualities, your thought patterns, and your conditioning. It’s the pattern of beliefs that you hold about yourself and your environment. It’s your worldview.

When we set out to make a change, we usually attempt it on the doing level. We try to do new things, or we try to do things differently. But in most cases, we haven’t updated the being level. So what ends up happening is that we revert to our old defaults. The change doesn’t stick.

It’s like constructing a building on a wobbly foundation. Or like trying to stick a magnet to a fridge that’s built entirely of wood. It’s bound to fail.

Your assumptions of how the world works, your beliefs about what’s right and wrong…all of these determine what you do in the world. Your worldview is your incentive structure for action. It’s your embodied rulebook for life.

And so you can either try to break your own rules…or you can rewrite your rulebook entirely and play a different game.

You can address your doing, or you can address your being.

Examples of change from doing vs being levels

Here’s a few examples of the difference between the two levels of change.

Let’s say you want to be more organized. You feel like you don’t have an overview of what’s going on, so you want more structure and more consistency.

To solve the problem, you could change what you do — by setting up structures for your finances, adding systems and processes for marketing, and writing fancy labels on your folders.

But the truth is that you can organize until the world ends, and you’d still never feel like you’re organized enough. Your worldview is based on the assumption that uncertainty is dangerous. So what you really want is a sense of control and a feeling of certainty. What you really want is to know that things will work out, that they’ll be OK. What you really want is to know that you are OK, in a ceaselessly changing world that keeps reminding you that you are never quite enough.

The doing problem is organization. The being problem is dealing with uncertainty.

Perhaps you want to delegate more. You find yourself sticking your nose into everything, doing far more than you should as a leader. You’re becoming busier and busier, and your overflowing calendar is telling you it’s time to take a step back and let others take more responsibility.

The doing solution is to recruit more people. “If only I had more people, then I could delegate more”, you tell yourself.

But you can hire an army and delegate all you want—it will never be enough. Underneath it all you feel like your self-worth is solely based on what you do. You need to do as much as you can, to prove your own value to yourself and to others. A voice deep down asks you, in more words or less, “if I’m not busy taking care of everything, then who am I?” So you stick your nose into every task under the sun, proving to yourself that you are needed. That you are worthy.

The doing problem is delegating. The being problem is a subconscious need to prove your self-worth.

Or maybe you want to be more relaxed and less stressed. You feel like you’re running around at 200 kmh. Your head is exploding with ideas, to-dos, and next steps. You can’t just chill out — and you’re not sure you even want to. You’re always in motion, but now you can sense that you’re approaching the breaking point.

The immediate doing solution is to meditate, journal, and do yoga. To chill out.

But you can try to chill out all you want. You’ll always have the nagging sensation that you should be doing more, something more productive. That’s because below the surface, your sense of identity is tied up with productivity. In an attempt to shield your inner-most sensitive self from the world (and yourself), you’ve created a shell that’s all about action, struggle and movement. And so you feel like you have to prove yourself in every situation that you face. But deep down you’re scared of what you’ll find if you stop to take a breath; you’re resentful of what you’ll see in the mirror when you allow yourself to feel what you really feel. That fear then shows up as guilt when you’re not working hard. So to avoid that guilt, you struggle forward like your life depends on it.

The doing problem is stress, fatigue and burnout. The being problem is an unconscious need to struggle.

The being solution to all of these examples is quite simple: 1) To figure out what’s important to you and what you’re about. 2) To be OK with who you are right now. To be OK with not knowing the future. To be OK with not moving fast. To be OK with not always struggling ahead.

Simple, but not easy, I’ll admit.

Conclusion

The being level might seem trickier and scarier, but it’s also where robust, sustainable change is created. And the beauty is that if you address the being level, then the doing level takes care of itself. It will almost seem like magic.

This goes for individuals as it does for organizations. To make organizational change stick, you need a new set of assumptions. You need a new worldview. You need new mental models and new rulebooks to live, think and breathe by. You need to update the “organizational being” itself.

Whether it’s you or your company, it takes guts to address the being level. And it’s tough work to do alone, because these assumptions are so deeply ingrained that you’re blind to them at first. A coach, mentor or sparring partner can help to shine light on your own rulebook, and open your eyes to the beliefs and accepted truths that drive your behavior.

“We, human beings, live with a lot of answers to questions that we never ask,” says Julio Olalla. “What about asking those questions all over again?”

That’s what being work is. It’s asking yourself the big questions all over again.

What answers are you taking for granted in the world? What if you asked yourself those questions all over again? What would happen if you saw the world through a different lens, and a different set of assumptions?

“Today I escaped from the crush of circumstances,“ Marcus Aurelius once declared, “or better put, I threw them out, for the crush wasn’t from outside me but in my own assumptions.”

If you don’t change your worldview, your world won’t change.

So crush your own assumptions to escape the crush of circumstances.

Address your being, and let the doing flow from there.

“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.” — Leonardo da Vinci (attributed)

There are two basic approaches to life.

The first approach is the defensive stance.

In the defensive stance your intention is to hold your ground. You react to what happens to you. You’re like a defender on the football pitch: You hold the fort and you tackle the opponent when he comes at you. You react. You prevent. Your only aim is to keep things as they are.

The second approach is the offensive stance.

In the offensive stance your intention is to attack. You make things happen. On a football pitch you’re like the striker or the playmaker: You create opportunities and you dictate the tempo of the play. You act. You create. Your goal is to put things into motion.

Both approaches are valuable. But too often we lean toward the easier, more natural defensive stance. We defend ourselves and our current situation against uncertainty, and we end up defending for defending’s sake. We get stuck.

The offensive stance can help us to get unstuck and into motion.

The offensive stance is about action.

All actions involve some degree of risk. We can never know for sure what the future will bring. But inaction is just as risky — it only feels less so because we’re not actively involved. It’s the status quo bias at play.

An offensive stance is demanding. It requires action and initiative.

But a defensive stance can actually be more draining — because you’re not in control. When you defend, you’re forced to sit back and watch events happen to you. You become a victim of life rather than its protagonist.

With an offensive stance, your inclination is to go out and happen to things. Boldly. “Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth,” Niccolò Machiavelli advised. “Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.”

The offensive stance is about momentum.

Change doesn’t happen without action. Unfortunately, it’s easy to forget that fact. Instead, you wait for the perfect conditions to act…and before you know it, you’ve ended up waiting forever.

An offensive stance makes sure you’re always on the front foot. It gives you a bias toward action, not away from it.

Attacking life is an active, momentum-filled affair. It is energy. It is boldness and spunk. An offensive stance might take more energy than the alternative, but it generates more energy, too.

Once you’re in motion, it’s easier to stay in motion. The offensive stance makes sure you don’t wait around for the right chance to move. Instead: move, and chances will arise.

“The best men are not those who have waited for chances,” said E. H. Chapin, ”but who have taken them; besieged chance, conquered the chance, and made chance the servitor.”

The offensive stance is about responsibility.

Both the offensive and defensive stances are pragmatic approaches. They both assume that we can’t control everything in life. We don’t control the stock market, the weather, or presidential tweets, after all.

But there is a difference in how much control we permit ourselves to have. The distinction lies in how much responsibility we choose to take for our own fate.

A defensive stance is a fate-responding approach. An offensive stance is a fate-creating approach.

In the offensive stance you don’t just play the cards you’re dealt. Instead, you take command and you shuffle the cards yourself. You shake things up. You dare to question the rules of the game, and you create new opportunities where there were seemingly none before.

Trainer and weightlifter Jerzy Gregorek has a famous maxim: “Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.” The offensive stance means more hard choices. It means taking on more responsibility than required. But because of those hard choices, it leads to more freedom, too.

“Choice equals freedom,” says Jerry Colonna, “and freedom is scary. Freedom means that we are responsible for our own happiness. Freedom means we are accountable for our own lives.”

You’re faced with a choice.

You can defend yourself against life…or you can go out and attack it.

You can be held by the reins of fortune…or you can hold the reins yourself.

You can let life happen to you…or you can go out and happen to life.

You’re driving down the highway. It’s a comfortable, straightforward ride, and you’re blazing ahead. But you have this nagging sensation. Something tells you that you need a change of scenery. Something beckons from beyond.

So you take the next exit. You turn off the highway—unsure of what lies ahead, but certain that something is pulling you toward this untrodden path.

Up ahead, you see a toll booth. You creep up to it, and you get your first look at the toll booth collector. He has a long face and a dark demeanor. He voice is darker still as he growls out the cost of the toll.

“Holy toledo!” you exclaim. The amount he demands sounds ludicrous to you.

The toll collector isn’t surprised by your reaction. At this stage, most people spin around and return to the Default State Highway in a huff. Others fumble around, questioning whether the off-road trip is worth it—and whether they themselves are worth it—before they apologize and return to the highway, too.

But you’re different. You know that adventures aren’t free. You know that leaving the Default State Highway itself has a price. You know that everything and anything in life costs something.

So you pay the toll collector. The coinage weighs heavy in your hand as you drop it in his hardened, callous hands.

He shakes around the coins, giving them a jiggle. He can sense their weight and their value to you.

A wry smirk of a smile emerges on his long face.

“On your way,” his dark voice looms. You experience a strange sense of relief and trepidation, a combination of fear and excitement.

The barrier creaks as it lifts. The toll collector can see the paradox in your eyes. He chuckles—he’s seen this before, too.

You creep forward past the barrier—cautiously at first and then with increasing speed. Soon enough you’re flying ahead. And you never look back.

Freedom isn’t free

When we want to take a leap into the unknown—when we want to make a change—we do it because of the potential gains. We dream of becoming an artist because we’ll be able to express ourselves creatively. We dream of running our own business because we’ll be able to set our own schedule. We dream of becoming a leader because we’ll be able to inspire and influence other people.

The potential gains are alluring. The trouble is that we often forget the other side of the equation.

We forget that freedom isn’t free.

It’s easy to confuse freedom with pleasure. We think that freedom will rid us of all our ills. We think that freedom means perfect harmony, balance and joy. But that’s not how it works.

More freedom involves, if anything, more displeasure. Sure, there might be more pleasure with freedom. But there’s more displeasure, too. There’s more risk.

Every step in a new direction has a cost. Here’s a few examples:

• The price of more creativity is more structure. To be creative you need the physical and mental space to do so. It demands structure of your time. It demands boundaries to the physical and online worlds. It demands saying no to your friends who want to drink a mid-morning macchiato when you’re in the zone. “The way to get over creative block is to place some constraints on yourself,” says creativity expert Austin Kleon. “It seems contradictory, but when it comes to creative work, limitations mean freedom.”
• The price of self-discovery is shame and guilt. If you start trekking on your own path, you’ll soon discover how much of your identity comes from what people expect of you. Every step toward your new situation, and away from your comfortable old surroundings, swells with pain. You feel guilty about leaving the group behind. You feel shame about putting your needs before others. “Because we instinctually avoid guilt, we get stuck in life,” says Jeff Riddle. “This means to have life be better, we have to feel guilt.”
• The price of growth is pain. People talk about how much they’re learning on the job. But although they might have learned, they haven’t truly grown. They haven’t transformed into a more complex organism that’s more capable of new challenges. Real growth demands real pain. If you lift weights, your muscles won’t grow unless you feel some serious discomfort. The same goes with skill development. If you’re not in discomfort—if you’re not questioning whether to go on, if you’re not doubting yourself and your abilities, if you’re not on the verge of tears—you’re not really growing.

Getting to the next level of who you are isn’t cheap. The cost is the old you. You pay by leaving behind what you thought you knew. What got you here won’t get you there. Another way of putting it is: “What must die in you, so that you may live?”

This might sound dreary. But it’s anything but—because we can reverse engineer the system.

If growth costs pain, then we know that we should embrace pain. If we know that no discomfort equals no growth, then we will avoid situations that don’t challenge us. We’ll seek truly uncomfortable situations because we know they lead to growth. We won’t wait for the “perfect conditions” to develop, because we’ll know that “perfect conditions” actually prevent us from growing.

This doesn’t mean you should seek pain for the sake of it. Meaningless, self-imposed self-flagellation is nothing but tragic.

But what it does mean is that when you’re in an agonizing practice session, almost crying of discomfort, you know that it will lead to the growth you want. It means that if you feel guilt after having left your job, you know that it’s because you’re creating yourself. It means that if you feel constricted by your own rules, you know that it’s allowing you to be freer in your creative endeavors.

This awareness means you can see pain and the other discomforts for what they are: costs. They are the price of admission. They are the toll for what lies beyond. And this awareness can prevent you from allowing these costs to turn into something far worse: suffering. As Haruki Murakami says: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

Not less than everything

Everything has a price. Anxiety is the price of self-awareness. Risk is the price of high-value outcomes. Uncertainty is the price of adventure. Limitation is the price of freedom. The old is the price of the new.

The toll booth collector sits at the edge of the old and the new, always. “Most of us have two lives,” says author Steven Pressfield. “The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.” The toll booth collector is the resistance.

So the question is: Are you going to let the toll collector put you off? Or will you see him as a beacon pointing you to where you want to go?

The choice is yours. Know that it will be costly. But freedom ain’t free.

“Fully alive and deeply committed is a risky business,” says Steven Kotler. “Once you strip away the platitudes, a life of passion and purpose will always cost, as T.S. Eliot reminds us, ‘Not less than everything.’”

So we tell ourselves, and we tell each other, to keep our options open.

The advice is well-intended. We presume that the more options we have, the more freedom we’ll have to make the choices that we want.

It sounds great on paper. But the problem is that it often doesn’t turn out that way in reality.

We do what we can to keep our options open. Relentlessly. We go to the best schools so that we can keep our options open. We strive for the best grades because they will give us the most options for the future. We aim for the most prestigious job we can get, because it will give us plenty of options for our next step.

The problem? This can all become an endless cycle of collecting options…for the mere sake of collecting options. We’re left with piles of options, but we never use them. We hoard options instead of taking advantage of them.

In an attempt to give ourselves the freedom of choice, we end up constraining ourselves. In a pursuit toward opening future possibilities, we create paralysis instead.

Options, in and of themselves, are good. Optionality is power, and it should encourage risk-taking. But an incessant collection of options without ever using them is pointless. The sad irony is that if we keep our options open for too long, we don’t make any real choices at all.

Collecting options without using them is like going to a brunch buffet without eating anything. You go for the buffet because you want a wide selection of options to choose from. But if you don’t eat anything—if you don’t choose something—you’ll go home empty-handed, despite the smorgasbord of options you had in front of you.

The loss and grief of choosing and committing

Choice implies a loss. We feel like we lose our flexibility when we make a choice. We feel like we lose out on all the other wonderful opportunities out there.

And you know what? You do. That is the cost of choosing. When you choose a partner to commit to, you’re saying no to all other potential partners. When you choose a career to devote yourself to, you’re saying no to all other career paths for the time being.

Making a choice is saying yes to one thing, and no to everything else. Choosing isn’t free.

But once you commit, then the world opens up. Your vision narrows. Your energy gets focused. Priorities become clearer, and decisions become easier to make.

Making an impact on the world is not a result of keeping all your options open. It’s the result, as they say in finance, of exercising options. It’s the result of choosing, and setting one clear direction.

That doesn’t mean that you’re confined to that path forever. You can always course correct, based on the prevailing winds. But it’s hard to course correct without having set a course in the first place.

If you don’t know what you want, keeping your options open can be a good initial strategy—as long as it doesn’t evolve into option-collecting for its own sake. But if you know what you want and how to get there, collecting options is silly. “The shortest distance between two points is reliably a straight line,” says professor and author Mihir Desai. “If your dreams are apparent to you, pursue them.”

Discipline equals freedom

Saying yes to a new job, a new venture, or even a new coach is difficult. You might feel less free and more constrained. But it will give you more freedom, not less. “In many areas of life,” says Timothy Keller, “freedom is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones.”

Making choices and commitments is actually liberating. It also shifts one’s definition of freedom. You leave behind the notion of “freedom from” (e.g. freedom from terrible bosses) and you move toward “freedom to” (e.g. freedom to do what you want).

This type of freedom demands saying no to things. It requires throwing away some of your options. “You have to chain yourself to years of piano practice to have the freedom to really play,” says David Brooks. “You go from a life of open options to a life of sweet compulsions.”

So instead of keeping your options open, experiment and find the areas that are important to you. Do the hard work of setting a course, and then start closing options. Create those liberating restrictions and those sweet compulsions. Start choosing the constraints that give you the freedom to really play.

“Our potential is one thing. What we do with it is quite another.” – Angela Duckworth

People with ambition are a captivating breed. They’re optimistic. They want to have an impact on the world, in big ways and in small. They have that special something, what Francis Galton called zeal.

They have drive.

I get inspired by these people and strive to work with them. Their willingness to do good is admirable. The world would be a better place with more of that goodness.

But like anything in life, there is the other side of the proverbial coin. Despite its shiny appearance, drive has a dark side. And believe me, it can be dark.

I should know. I have been through the darkness—I have burned out. And so have so many people that we all know.

Drive is commendable. It’s a force to be reckoned with. Anything of note that’s been accomplished in the world has been driven forward by someone’s drive.

But like any superpower, there within lies the hero’s greatest weakness, too. Drive leads to impact and change. But drive can also lead to burnout, disorientation, and paralysis. Drive can lead to no impact and change at all.

And that’s because of the dark side of drive.

The light and the dark

Drive means you want to be productive…but you don’t always know what you’re doing or why.

You want to do, do, do. You want to make real change happen. You want to provide value. You’re driven to do good, and to do. You’re allergic to laziness…

…until you confuse laziness with patience. So you do, do, and do, for the mere sake of doing. You go around in circles instead of heading anywhere in particular. You’re always busy, but you’re not always making headway.

Drive means you set high standards…that can become obstacles you never dare taking on instead.

You set a high bar for yourself and for others. Your level of expectation brings out your best and unlocks hidden potential…

…until you set the bar so high that you’ll never be able to reach it. So you’re never satisfied with yourself or others. In the end, paradoxically, you end up not pushing yourself completely—or not even trying at all—because you can never do enough.

Drive means you’re focused on the next thing…so it can be hard to fully experience what’s going on right now.

You want to achieve new things. You think ahead, you strategize, and you’re focused on what’s to come. You have an unstoppable inner force that propels you forward…

…until you’re so focused on the next thing you that you never experience the what’s happening now. You don’t notice the scenery that passes you by, and you immediately forget where you’ve been. You’re so obsessed with the destination that you miss the ride.

Drive means you’re always thinking about doing things…but you can easily confuse thinking with actual accomplishment.

Your head is filled with ideas for new ventures, new ideas, new things to do. Your mind races with notions of how to change the world…

…until you’re so preoccupied with your thoughts that you become paralyzed. Your thoughts get in the way of actually doing anything. And then you think even more to compensate for the lack of acting with drive. You get stuck.

Drive means you identify yourself with being driven…but you feel guilty whenever you’re not accomplishing anything.

You see yourself as a driven, ambitious person. You’re a mover and a shaker. You make things happen, and you dare to dream big. You are driven…

…until things don’t go as planned. Then it’s not only the actions that failed. You feel like you failed. You feel worthless. And whenever you’re not driving forward, you feel guilty about standing still.

Drive management

Drive is a superpower. It’s an unquenchable desire to move forward and to accomplish things in the world. But drive needs to be handled with respect. It needs to be observed and be kept on its leashes. It needs to be managed.

Here’s five questions to ask yourself to manage your drive.

1) What are you driving towards?

The direction you set is more important than the force you apply. Maximum drive and no direction will get you lost or make you go around in circles. A clear direction and minimum drive might take longer, but you will get you where you need to go, sooner or later.

To let your drive run free is like letting the bull loose in the china shop—it will lead to an impact, but not the one you want. Channeling your drive leads to impact with intention. What is your direction? And have you chosen it?

2) What do you notice along the way?

It’s not much of a journey if you’re locked in your car, staring straight ahead without blinking. Instead: look left, look right. Stop to take in the sights. Enjoy the scenery, and reminisce of what you’ve passed along the way. What do you see?

3) When was the last time you filled up your tank?

Drive is not a never-ending energy source. Like any supply of fuel and power, it needs replenishment. Your access to drive will always be there; what’s needed is recovery. How willing are you to stop and fill up the tank?

4) Who’s driving with you?

Driving on your own can be liberating…for a while. But the most rewarding of adventures aren’t travelled alone. Coaches and mentors can give feedback on whether you’re controlling your drive or whether your drive is controlling you. More importantly, who else do you bring along with you for the ride? Who do you let in on your journey?

5) How long are you willing to drive?

“If only I get there, I’ll be fine”, you tell yourself. “I’ll be fine when I reach my destination.” Yeah right. Who are you kidding? You’re driven, and you’ll always be driven. As soon as you reach your destination, you’ll pick a new one. And then a new one after that.

If you instead view your journey as an infinite road that can never be finally reached, you’ll never feel like you’ve never arrived—because you can’t. Are you driving down a finite path or an infinite road?

Staring into the fire

Just because drive has a dark side doesn’t mean that we should avoid it. Drive is crucial for any type of accomplishment. It provides the fuel to break new ground, and the ability to persevere when the going gets tough. Without “capacity, zeal, and vigour,” said Francis Galton, one “cannot hope to make a figure in the world.”

But everything in life has an underbelly. It’s the yin and the yang, the night and the day. Darkness depends upon light, and there would be no light without the dark.

By avoiding the dark side of drive you actually make it worse. You blind yourself to the fire. Close your eyes for too long, and it will either burn you, or it will go out completely.

Instead, dare to raise your gaze and look that fire straight in the eyes. See its dangers. Treat it with respect. And then use it to your advantage.

Drive is a fire that can burn you. But it can also warm you, provide light, and cook your food. But that means being humble before its powers, and embracing all of it, dangers and all.

To manage and channel your drive you need to see it first—all of it. How much of your drive are you willing to see?

“My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind.” – William James

Time management is all the rage. The early bird gets the morning worm, we’re told. We feel pressured to do more and more, yet we struggle to find ways of meeting the demands of others and ourselves. If only we could find a way to navigate the tsunami waves of time.

Hoping for the perfect time management cure for our ills sounds seductive. But it’s a fool’s errand…and it’s trying to solve the wrong problem.

Creating and managing more time isn’t what matters. It’s what we do with that time that counts. And what we do with our time is our attention.

Attention is a window

Our attention is the window through which we perceive the world. “Attention,” says author Michael Foley, “is focused perception, perception at work.”

Since our perception becomes our reality, our attention starts shaping the world around us and therefore ourselves. “What we pay attention to is no trivial matter,” claims psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “we are what we attend to.”

If you only read news about terrorism threats, then you’ll become anxious. If you hang out with people that always complain, then your attention is focused on complaints. If you constantly refresh your social media feeds to count likes, then that becomes your evaluation of success. “When we blather about trivial things, we ourselves become trivial,” said Epictetus. “You become what you give your attention to.”

The ability of attention to shape our perception makes it powerful. Luckily, it’s not beyond our control. There is so much that we don’t control: macroeconomic trends, the stock market, other people, the weather. But one thing that we do control, apart from our actions, is our attention.

Controlled attention is perceived control, and perceived control is well-being. Research has shown that the more we feel like we’re in the driver’s seat of ourselves and what we do, the greater our health and well-being. And the more we feel that we control the span and depth of our attention, the happier we feel, too.

Attention affects our emotional state, but it also affects what we do. In fact, attention is the practical mechanism through which we accomplish our work.

“Just like you walk through the air and you swim through the water, you work through your attention,” says Jason Fried. “It’s the medium of work. While people often say there’s not enough time, remember that you’ll always have less attention than time. Full attention is where you do your best work, and everyone’s going to be looking to rip it from you. Protect and preserve it.”

You work through your attention. It’s the filter through which you interact with the world. It’s the tool through which you achieve your success.

But how can we learn to control our attention more? Here’s three ways.

3 ways to control more of your attention

1) Intention

Attention is meaningless without an intention. Setting an intention creates a direction. It provides clarity. It becomes a reference point to refer back to when faced with a decision. Often, a lack of attention arises simply because there is no intention behind it. It’s aimless.

You can set an intention for the task that’s in front of you, but you can also set an intention for the life you have in front of you, too. If we can agree that you are what you attend to, then that begs the question: What do you want to become?

Equally important is that choice of what not to focus on. What do you choose to not attend to? Setting an intention is helpful here as well, because it provides clarity about what’s not important.

There’s a Russian proverb that says if you chase two rabbits you won’t catch either one. An intention is the choice of what rabbit to chase, and which one to neglect. Choosing is difficult. But without a choosing, you’ll be chasing rabbits forever (and your stomach will never stop growling).

You can’t have it all. But you can have all of what you choose to want.

QUESTIONS TO IMPROVE YOUR ATTENTION: What is your intention? What do you choose to attend to? And what does that mean you choose to say no to?

2) Curiosity

Attention is a machine like any other. It requires energy to keep itself going. Ideally, it would run on a never-ending source of fuel.

It turns out there is such a sustainable energy source for attention: curiosity. Curiosity is “like an addiction … magnified by attempts to satisfy it,” says Nassim Taleb. It’s stimulated both by understanding and by an absence of understanding. One question leads to the next question, and that new question leads to yet another question.

When we ask questions, we open up spaces in our mind for answers to go. Those unanswered questions create a tension, and that tension seeks resolution. Curiosity is the tension that’s desperate to find a resolution. And that leads to focused attention.

Asking question after question can keep attention in place. William James provided a simple example. “Try to attend steadfastly to a dot on paper or on the wall … if you ask yourself successive questions about the dot — how big it is, how far, of what shape, what shade of color; in other words, if you turn it over, if you think of it in various ways, and along with various kinds of associates — you can keep your mind on it for a comparatively long time.”

QUESTIONS TO IMPROVE YOUR ATTENTION: What do you observe? What are you not seeing? What can you learn? What new question can you ask yourself instead of stopping?

3) Challenge and variety

Do you feel bored? Do you feel stuck? Does every day look like the day before it? That rut and that stability—despite seeming to provide the right tranquility for focus—can actually be causing a scattered mind.

The unknown, the new, and the unexpected can be effective ways of focusing attention. “The friend of creative work is alertness,” says author Tim Harford, “and nothing focuses your attention like stepping on to unfamiliar ground.”

Attention is, per definition, when we are not bored. “Focus is what distracts us from whatever is distracting us,” says coach Tim Gallwey. Our attention drifts when faced with a boring task. When there’s no newness and no challenge, then things become dry. But when we’re confronted with an obstacle that’s just beyond our current skill level, then we’re engaged and in flow. Our attention becomes heightened.

Fear and anxiety are the cousins of uncertainty and the unknown. But fear, if viewed as a compass toward what matters most, can be a powerful tool for honing attention. Obstacles, of any kind, heighten our mental powers because they trigger our problem-solving abilities.

“Fear is not a sign or personal weakness, but rather a natural state of discomfort that occurs whenever you’re out of your comfort zone,” says fear expert Kristen Ulmer. “It’s there not to sabotage you, but to help you come alive, be more focused, and put you into the present moment and a heightened state of excitement and awareness.”

QUESTIONS TO IMPROVE YOUR ATTENTION: What is your level of discomfort? How could you do something more challenging right now? What are you avoiding because of fear?

Conclusion

Our attention is how we work. It’s crucial for mastery and excellence in any skill or craft. And it will only become more important in the future. “The ability to perform deep [focused] work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy,” says Cal Newport. “As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.”

It’s not only our performance at work that’s at stake here. It’s the nature of our lives. As Tim Wu writes, “when we reach the end of our days, our life experience will equal what we have paid attention to, whether by choice or default.”

So if you want to become a better leader, start attending to what it means to be a leader. If you want to switch careers, start attending to the new occupation and what the job entails. If you want to become a better partner, start attending to the other person.

Whatever matters to you, start attending to it. Your life, quite literally, depends on it. “Our acts of voluntary attention, brief and fitful as they are,” wrote William James, “are nevertheless momentous and critical, determining us, as they do, to higher or lower destinies.”

Don’t leave your fate in the hands of the gods. Pick your destiny by choosing your attention.

“He who asks a question is possibly a fool for a moment; but he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.” — Chinese proverb

What if you could increase the likelihood of a behavior just by asking yourself a question about that behavior?

A research study aimed to do just that. The researchers evaluated two groups of people that received challenging tasks. The tasks ranged from going to the gym regularly, to solving difficult mental puzzles.

In response to each challenge, one group wrote statement-based positive affirmations, like “I will do this.” The other group wrote question-based affirmations, as in “Will I do this?”

The results? Across all tasks, the questions-based affirmation groups were more focused, motivated, and successful in achieving their goals. This is known as the question-behavior effect.

Answers are a sought-after commodity. We want answers for how to live and what food to eat. We want answers for what career to choose and what strategy to pursue. Heck, we even want answers to the meaning of life.

But this obsession with answers deprives us of something more important, more powerful, and more meaningful:

The question.

Whereas answers are static, questions are dynamic. An answer might fix a problem right now, but a question keeps the door of the mind open to new answers in the future. “An answer is an invitation to stop thinking about something, to stop wondering,” says author Rachel Naomi Remen. “Life has no such stopping places.”

Whereas answers are context-dependent, questions provide context. “Questions are places in your mind where answers fit,” says Clay Christensen. “If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off. You have to ask the question — you have to want to know — in order to open up the space for the answer to fit.”

Whereas answers are closed, questions are open-ended. The fact that a question hasn’t been answered makes us want to answer it. We have a constant itch to solve the puzzles in front of us, even if they can’t be answered. We’re pulled by an urge to resolve our own cognitive dissonance.

Of course, a question will always demand an answer. That’s kind of the point. But it’s not that answers themselves are bad. It’s that being too dependent on answers can blind us from more useful questions.

Some questions are better than others. For example, if you always ask yourself, “why does this always happen to me?”, then you will always be answering that question. You will always be trying to find answers for your own ineptitude and bad luck.

The best questions are not answered by facts. Instead, they’re answered through action. And those actions lead to further questions that challenge our deeply held assumptions and beliefs. Krista Tippett says the “measure of the strength of a question is in the honesty and eloquence it elicits.” The more a question forces us to be honest with ourselves, the better the question.

We are all faced with a choice: we can either chase answers, or we can follow questions.

So the question is: what questions are you following?

I admire the ambition and the enthusiasm, because it shows the beginnings of a desire of change.

But there’s a big problem. There is no such thing as courage.

Literally, there is no emotion called courage. You can’t actually feel courageous. People who do daring things never say, “now I feel courageous, and therefore I will now do this daring thing.” That’s not how it works.

Courage is, more often than not, how we explain others’ actions that look scary to us. Think about when a friend tells you that she’s quit her corporate job to start her own company. “You’re so brave,” we’ll tell her. “You’re such a courageous person.”

But really we’re just projecting our own feelings and fears onto the situation. We’re thinking: “That step seems so scary to me. There must be something special about her. I could never do that—I have too much fear.” But if you ask her, she’ll tell you that she didn’t feel brave. She had just come to a point where enough was enough.

Fear following

Courage is not the absence of fear. It’s acting despite of fear, as Nelson Mandela once said. And fear is not a bad thing. It’s often a calling card toward something we care about. It’s a signal of something we deep down know we should do, but triggers some sort of anxiety. Fear gets your senses piqued, makes you more focused, and more alive.

I’m not the first to say this. “A shortcut to success is to follow your fear,” says surfer Nic Lamb. “What you fear is an indication of what you seek,” said the writer Thomas Merton. Athlete Amelia Boone recently said, “I now take fear and discomfort as a sign that I should be doing something. That’s where the magic happens.” And fear expert Kristen Ulmer proclaims: “You are supposed to be scared when you’re doing big things—okay? Acknowledging this can be life-changing.”

People do scary things not because they feel brave — they do those scary things because they want to or because they feel like they have to. They feel like there’s no other choice. They’ve passed the point of no return. Even though their actions have potential negative consequences today or in the future, the potential gains are too loud to ignore.

What we think of as courage is actually more like resoluteness and determinedness. It’s steadfastness. It’s the ability to see what is essential and to prioritize your efforts. It’s the sense of knowing what’s important to you. It’s when you want it, bad. And you act, despite any discomfort you might feel along the way.

So courage is more about keeping your eye on the ball. It’s knowing what the ball to look for—on a field (i.e. life) that’s becoming more and more crowded with other balls that vie for your attention. It’s the ability to see where the ball is, despite it zipping around and sometimes hiding from view. And it’s knowing that the ball might smack you right in the face. But if you’re going to have a chance to hit a home-run—or a mere base hit—there’s no way to do it without keeping your eye on the ball.

A new definition of courage

One dictionary defines courage as: “the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery.”

As you will have picked up by now, that definition is…wrong.

So I hereby propose a new definition of courage: Courage is “the after-the-fact explanation attributed to a person who has faced difficulty, danger, pain, etc. and acted anyway, despite—and often due to—fear.”

Fear is what you feel before you’ve done something important. Courage is how you explain that you did it anyway.

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage,” the writer Anaïs Nin trumpeted. With our new definition, here’s a modification: “The more you have followed your fears and acted despite of the discomfort you have felt, the more your life will have expanded.”

So don’t wait for the courage to act. Instead: act, and courage will follow.

Making choices is hard. Choosing between the chocolate brownie and the ice cream sundae can be difficult enough. But, big, life-altering choices can freeze even the strongest of minds.

There are a lot of reasons for why we’re hesitant to make choices. Status quo bias is one—we prefer the current state of reality, because we know what it is. Making a choice is a step into the unknown, into a new world of uncertainty. That can be scary.

But often we make big decisions more difficult than they need to be. And that’s because we’re probably asking the wrong question.

For example, think about the questions you would ask yourself if you’re considering a new career move. They might include: What industry do I want to work in? What role do I want? What salary do I deserve? What company has the best culture? Then there’s the big questions: What do I enjoy doing? What am I good at? What do I really want to do?

These are all relevant questions. But they’re missing a key strategic question, that makes the rest of them easier to answer.

That question is: What arena do I want to play in?

The arena

The arena is a metaphor for the situations where we do our real work—the work we’ve built our skills around. It’s the instances where we bring our capabilities to life. It’s the bounded context where we have the chance to thrive.

For me, my arena is in 1-on-1 conversations. It’s in the heat of deep, intense exchanges with another person where I bring my value. It’s in that dance of questions and answers, between reflection and challenge where I compete—not with my opponent, but with myself. Conversations are my arena.

The beauty of this way of thinking is that it defines what is truly important, and it therefore shows what’s not as important. For me, the choice of arena leads to several different options: coaching, psychotherapy, mentoring, and more. All of these options have their pros and cons. Some are more suitable than others. But all of them would put me in the arena that I want to play in.

Roger Martin, the brilliant strategic thinker, says that the number one question a business should ask itself, after defining its desired outcome, is:

Where do you want to play? In other words, what is the specific market space you want to play in?

This is how the best strategic businesses define strategy—it’s how they make choices about what to do, and what not to do. The more specific their answer, the easier the how and the what to achieve success there becomes.

And so the same logic applies when you’re making a big decision yourself. Where do you want to play? What arena do you want to play in, day in and day out?

Once you’ve decided on your arena, then the other questions become much easier to answer. When you’re aware of your battleground, then you’ll know what skills you need to excel in that space. You’ll know what types of roles and tasks are relevant for you. And you’ll have clarity in what you’re aiming for.

This doesn’t mean that you need to spend all of your waking time in your arena. All of us have other duties that allow us to do what we do. But the “arena mindset” will, at the very least, make you conscious of how much time you’re spending in your element—in your warrior’s armor.

We all play in an arena, whether we like it or not. But you can be more or less deliberate and conscious about what that arena is. And being deliberate about that choice demands commitment. “Nothing happens until you decide,” said the mountaineer W. H. Murray.

Even though it might seem scary to make that commitment, it’s actually the first step toward change. ”Picking a lane isn’t limiting,” says author Ryan Holiday. “It’s the first act of empowerment we take as a creator.”

Dare to dare greatly

A final word of warning. Competing in your right arena is not for the faint of heart. Anson Dorrance, the legendary women’s soccer coach, calls it the “competitive cauldron.” It’s hot. It’s intense. But it’s in the fire of the cauldron where we are made. The fire can burn you or it can warm you—that choice is up to you.

“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena”, Theodore Roosevelt famously said, “whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; […] who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

It’s only in the arena that we can dare greatly. So choose your arena wisely. Your arena determines who you are and what you will become. Who do you dare to be?

On the one hand, we’re great at imagining the outcomes of change. We dream about the massive success we’ll have, the fame and fortune we’ll experience, or perhaps the perfect job we’ll dedicate ourselves to.

But on the other hand, we’re also great at getting in our own way, before we even try to get there.

We’ve all been there. We tell ourselves that we’ll change when the conditions are just right. When we have the right skills and experience. When we have a big enough safety net. We’ll change when we’re ready—when we feel like changing.

The problem is, those perfect conditions rarely come around.

To change is to do something new, or to do something in a new way. In other words, change is innovation. So when attempting to make a change, we can learn from those whose lifeblood runs on innovation.

Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) are all the rage in Silicon Valley and the startup world. An MVP is a version of a product that isn’t complete, but it’s good enough. It’s functional and it gets the job done, but it’s far from perfect.

The idea is that it’s much more effective to launch an MVP than to wait for until the final, perfected version is complete. That’s because 1) you can start much earlier to get feedback from real customers, that allows you to refine the product, and 2) since the product will never actually be perfect, it’s better to launch early and start creating momentum, than to wait for the hypothetical perfect day to launch the perfect product.

So when trying to change yourself, the same logic applies. Sure, you can wait for the perfect moment to change. Sure, you can wait until you “feel” motivated to change. Sure, you can wait until you feel supremely confident and comfortable about the change. But when will that day come, if ever?

Instead of waiting for the stars to align, you can take a Minimum Viable Action — the smallest possible action you can take that can still lead to the change you want.

For example, let’s say you have a dream of becoming a painter. The idea has tickled you for years. Seeing yourself painting in your own studio has been a tantalizing but distant dream.

Now, you could wait until that beautiful day when the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and you wake up with nothing else than the desire—and the skills—to become a painter.

Good luck with that.

A more effective way is to take a Minimum Viable Action. For example: sign-up for a painting course, pay for it, and tell people you’re going to attend. This action takes very little effort. But once you’ve done it, it will create momentum all by itself.

Since you’ve invested in it, you’ll want to get your money’s worth, due to the sunk cost bias.

Since you’ve told people you’re going to go to the course, you’ll want to remain congruent with the new identity you’re creating for yourself.

Since you’ve signed up and committed to it, it will take more psychic effort to cancel your spot than to go to the course, due to consistency bias.

And once you’ve gone to the course, you’ll get real feedback on what it means to be a painter. You will actually know whether painting is something you want to pursue further, or if it’s just been an irritating dream that’s distracted you from real life.

Change is rarely all-or-nothing. It’s more often the result of small, barely perceivable mini-actions that together add up to to change. “The beginnings of all things are small,” said Cicero, the Roman politician and orator. Small things lead to slightly less small things, and eventually they lead to real achievements. “Timing, perseverance, and 10 years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success,” says Twitter founder Biz Stone.

Minimum Viable Actions work because they put us into motion. They create momentum. And once the process is started we’ll get sucked along for the ride. The tension between today and tomorrow will pull us toward the future. Our cognitive biases will urge us to be consistent with our identities, investments, and proclamations. And instead of being plagued by our feelings of insecurity, we’ll act despite of them.

“When you can learn to take actions despite how you feel about them…that is what is going to change your life,” says recovered alcoholic and now ultra-endurance athlete and author Rich Roll. “It doesn’t matter how you feel about the action; it only matters that you take it. Once you take it, that will shift your mood. But if you sit around, waiting until you feel like doing something, you will be sitting in that chair, waiting, until the day that you die.”

So don’t wait for the perfect conditions to make the change you’re seeking. Instead, take a Minimum Viable Action. Now. “If you want to summarize the habits of successful people into one phrase,” says writer James Clear, “it’s this: successful people start before they feel ready.”

If you don’t feel ready: good. Now is always the perfect time to start.

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” — Mahatma Gandhi

When you think of the term personal brand, it probably brings to mind the glossy image of a pop-star celebrity. A globetrotting blogger perhaps. Or even an aspiring corporate warrior.

But I believe that one of the world’s greatest personal branders was Mahatma Gandhi.

The iconic world-changers of history have all had strong personal brands. They had a set of core beliefs and a guiding philosophy that guided everything they did. They could be trusted to lead by example, and lived the virtues they so espoused. They had a reputation that they upheld through every act throughout their life ^[1].

Gandhi’s core belief was truth. Although he was dedicated to serving—and he undoubtedly served millions of people—what drove every part of his being was his unrelenting quest towards the ultimate truth. The title of his autobiography proves the point: The Story of My Experiments with Truth.

So how did he bring his brand of truth to life? There’s a touching story from early in Gandhi’s childhood where the seeds of his brand beliefs were planted.

In a rush of youthful mischief, Gandhi had stolen a bit of gold from his brother’s armlet. Overwhelmed by guilt, he decided to hand a written confession to his sickly father. Gandhi remembered:

“I was trembling as I handed the confession to my father…He read it through, and pearl-drops trickled down his cheeks, wetting the paper. For a moment he closed his eyes in thought and then tore up the note. He had sat up to read it. He again lay down. I also cried. I could see my father’s agony. If I were a painter I could draw a picture of the whole scene today. It is still so vivid in my mind.”

”A clean confession, combined with a promise never to commit the sin again, when offered before one who has the right to receive it, is the purest type of repentance. I know that my confession made my father feel absolutely safe about me, and increased his affection for me beyond measure.”

A touching story indeed. But it’s the last sentence that proves the power of a brand. Gandhi was dedicated to truth. But he couldn’t only say it, he had to prove it, too. He had to act it.

He became obsessed with the truth. And once he showed the lengths he was willing to go to adhere to the truth, he began building a reputation for it. This made people feel “absolutely safe” in his presence — because they could trust he would live by his word.

During his twenties, Gandhi found himself in South Africa working as a lawyer. It’s a profession that—on the surface at least—is dedicated to the truth. So a solid career choice, for sure. But what do you do when you know the client is lying? Gandhi wrote:

“I warned every new client at the outset that he should not expect me to take up a false case or to coach the witnesses, with the result that I built up such a reputation that no false cases used to come to me. Indeed some of my clients would keep their clean cases for me, and take the doubtful ones elsewhere.”

This was proven before a magistrate court in Johannesburg. The client was on the witness stand, and it become clear that he had been deceiving Gandhi. Immediately, Gandhi asked the magistrate to dismiss the case. People in the room were astonished. A bold move, certainly. But it paid off handsomely—the client knew about Gandhi’s devotion to the truth, and the immediate reaction only reinvigorated that belief. As Gandhi writes:

“…my conduct in this case did not affect my practice for the worse, indeed it made my work easier. I also saw that my devotion to truth enhanced my reputation amongst the members of the profession, and in spite of the handicap of colour I was able in some cases to win even their affection…This frankness earned me the unbounded affection and trust of my clients. They were always willing to pay the fee whenever consultation with senior counsel was necessary. This affection and trust served me in good stead in my public work.”

A personal brand is strong when what you do is aligned with what you say and believe. And the more you’re under pressure to act in the ways you believe in and you follow through, the stronger your brand becomes. As the Latin writer Publius Syrus proclaimed, “anyone can steer the ship when the sea is calm.” What reveals strength of character and brand is how you steer the ship when the sea is storming.

For Gandhi, saying no to clients and confessing to his father were not easy decisions. “I did not dare to speak”, he said. “Not that I was afraid of my father beating me. No I do not recall his ever having beaten any of us. I was afraid of the pain that I should cause him.” That sense of pain was palpable. But the fact that he acted in line with his beliefs despite the pain is what made his brand strong.

“It is one thing to hold principles,” says author Henry Cloud, “but another to live them.” The word integrity comes from the Latin integer, meaning one. We have integrity when we’re whole—when we’re the same inside and out. When we do what we say and believe.

So call it integrity. Call it character. Call it what you will. But for the sake of our reputations, our brands, and our own well-being, sticking to our core beliefs and our commitments brings order to ourselves and to our reality. It creates harmony between the inner and the outer; ease rather than dis-ease. This approach to life “harmonized my inward and outward life,” Gandhi claimed.

Life harmony—all from a personal brand. Who knew?

Footnote

[1] A personal brand is not the same thing as being famous. You might not have a single Twitter follower, but you can still have a strong personal brand in your own local community. Branding is about your reputation. Marketing and advertising is about your reach.

• Understand their situation
• Take responsibility for solutions
• Commit to action that achieves their goals and growth

But you don’t need to be a coach to do these things. You can always do coaching, regardless of your role. Whether you’re a leader, an entrepreneur, a knowledge worker—heck, a functioning human being—there is much to be gained by adopting a coaching mindset.

The best coaches listen actively. They give their clients their full, undivided attention. They’re supportive. They challenge. They create a space of safety and trust where deep insights can be uncovered and growth can occur. They stick to their word. They ask uncomfortable questions, and they’re comfortable with silence. They believe in their client’s potential, and they do everything they can to help the client to find and realize that potential, too.

These are the hallmarks of the coaching profession. But in what job are those characteristics not aspirational?

A recurring theme when reading about iconic figures from the past and present is their coaching mindset. Creative pioneers, fearless leaders, even world-class physicians—so many have exhibited coach-like behaviors.

The world’s greatest editor was one such man.

The unshaken friend

Maxwell Perkins was an unassuming character early in his career. He started out as a hard-working reporter, but soon enough scored a job as an editor at the legendary publishing house Scribner’s.

Perkins’ client list eventually became a “who’s who” of twentieth century literary talent. Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe…the list goes on. All became clients of Perkins. And all loved the man, deeply appreciating the work he did. It’s been said that Perkins has received more book dedications and acknowledgements than any other person in history.

How did Perkins manage these remarkable feats? The short answer is that he was a coach at heart.

He believed in the author’s potential.

“The source of a book must be the author,” Perkins claimed. “You can only help the author to produce what he has in his compass.”

Much of Perkins’ success owed to the fact that he took chances on authors who were turned down by other publishers. He found diamonds in the rough and polished them to their full potential.

“Perkins has the intangible faculty,” said his client Marcia Davenport, “of giving you confidence in yourself and the book you are writing. “

He didn’t order authors what to do.

As Malcolm Cowley wrote in an endearing New Yorker profile in 1944, “When an author is sure about what he is trying to do, Perkins doesn’t make or suggest any revisions, and the manuscript goes to the printer without so much as a shifted comma. This happens even when commas ought to be shifted, for Perkins has no interest in what he regards as unimportant details.”

His clients agreed. “He never tells you what to do,” claimed author Roger Burlingame. “Instead, he suggests to you, in an extraordinarily inarticulate fashion, what you want to do yourself.”

When required, he provided humbly articulated suggestions.

At the height of her powers, author Marcia Davenport found herself stuck in a rut. Perkins fine-combed the manuscript she was working on, and came back to her with numerous suggestions. These were framed as questions, not demands.

“Couldn’t all this be brought into unity by changing the dates and relating one thing to another?” he wrote to Davenport. “It could begin with the phrase…,” he continued. Suggestions were always framed as possibilities and experiments, not demands or irrefutable truths.

He thrived in helping his authors to see clearly through their emotional and professional turmoil.

“A big, long manuscript full of agony and confusion—that’s Max’s dish,” one author said of Perkins.

“What you get from him isn’t expressed in words,” said Davenport. “You might call it a tacit exchange of ideas. Let’s say that you’re working on a novel and find that everything is at a dead end. You go to see Max late one afternoon and he takes you out for a drink. You sit and talk there for an hour or so in a disjointed fashion, with long pauses, and by next morning you go back to work with all your questions answered and a perfectly clear vision of what you are trying to do.”

That unexpected, but oh-so-welcome clarity was a Perkins trademark.

He was always on the author’s team.

This wasn’t just something that Perkins claimed. The language he used conveyed unwavering team affiliation with the author. He wrote to Davenport: “We must somehow bring the underlying scheme or pattern of the book into emphasis, so that the reader will be able to see the forest in spite of so many trees. And that will mean reducing the number of trees if we can possibly manage it.”

There was no “you must”. It was always “we can”.

He challenged his authors with piercing insights and perceptions.

Thomas Wolfe was a rebel. He had a habit of scowling at anyone he found disagreeable at parties and other social gatherings. After one particularly nasty such episode, Perkins told him, “You don’t really hate those people. You hate yourself because your work is going badly.”

Perkins wasn’t afraid of saying what needed to be said, no matter how uncomfortable it was to hear. And because it was so uncomfortable, it provided a new perspective to his clients that helped them to change either their work or themselves for the better.

Challenging. Listening. Supporting. Encouraging. Pinpointing. Creating space. Seeing clearly and helping to see clear. These are all core tenants of coaching. And these are all the skills that made Perkins the world’s greatest editor.

The point is not that everyone needs to become a certified coach. The point is merely that adopting a coaching mindset can be beneficial for anyone. Supporting, encouraging and challenging people to grow are all characteristics to strive for, regardless of one’s occupation.

The value of Perkins’ coaching behaviors was not lost of the world nor his clients. When Thomas Wolfe’s Of Time and the River was published 1935 after monumental struggles, it contained the following dedication:

“To Maxwell Evarts Perkins, a great editor and a brave and honest man, who stuck to the writer of this book through times of bitter hopelessness and doubt and would not let him give in to his own despair, a work to be known as “Of Time and the River” is dedicated with the hope that all of it may be in some way worthy of the loyal devotion and the patient care which a dauntless and unshaken friend has given to each part of it, and without which none of it could have been written.”

Sticking through times of bitter hopelessness and doubt. Providing loyal devotion and patient care. And being an unshaken friend. All are virtues to aspire to and live by, whether you’re a coach, an editor…or just a good-old human being.

“Just be yourself,” they say.

It might seem like solid advice. But I couldn’t disagree more.

Of course, we all have unique dispositions. We need to listen to these deeper urges, respect them, and give them the space to flourish. But that is very different than just being yourself.

The advice to always be yourself is loaded with problematic assumptions:

• That your flaws don’t matter
• That there’s no point in trying to be better than you already are
• That somehow by being yourself things will magically turn out alright

Be yourself is the indoctrination of the fixed mindset — when you believe that your qualities are carved in stone. Researcher Carol Dweck has shown how this mindset leads to a never-ending cycle of self-doubt and disappointment.

So what is a better option for go-to advice? Be who you want to become.

This is a very different perspective. Being who you want to become means acting as you think that your best self would act. It forces you to give an honest account of your current level, where your gaps are, and how you can improve. It means acknowledging the never-ending possibility for growth and change.

You can be who you want to become in several ways:

1. Adopt a growth mindset and realize that you can always improve. This doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person today. It just means that your actions can be better tomorrow.

2. Be inspired by other people who you want to emulate. This doesn’t mean being inauthentic or disingenuous. It means expanding your reference point for what a life well-lived is.

3. Define where you’re not living up your own ideals and accept that fact. This doesn’t mean being anxious about not performing. It means being better at choosing what actions to take in the future to improve.

By being who you want to become tomorrow, it also makes you more deliberate in the choices you make today. It encourages you to act in line with what you believe is important. And it means you’ll never stop trying to be the best version of yourself.

So don’t be yourself. Be your future self.