Everybody’s situation is different. The way to lead in life and work and the road for getting there is unique to each of us. At the same time, there are predictable elements that are helpful in setting direction, finding support, and developing skillfulness. I believe the ultimate goal is to be more ourselves but skillfully. Here are my findings - from my own journey and my work with clients on theirs - that stand out as important.
Set Your Course
- Stoke Your Motivation: Is this really what you want work and life to feel like? Are you contributing your talents, skills, and passions in ways and places that feel fulfilling? If not, it's time to make a change. Life is too short. Generate your motivation to start the journey!
- Take Ownership: If you don’t take ownership for the direction of your life, no one will. As William Earnest Henle, a nineteenth century man of letters noted: I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.
- Clarify Purpose and Values: Your purpose is the north start that will guide your journey. It can feel elusive but it's really about the impact you seek to have on others. It's the compass for the changes to come. Values will ground the journey and ensure inner and outer alignment.
Mobilize Your Team to Assist
- Find Support: This is where I and others come in to be part of your team, but you’re still the captain of your ship – setting the course, deciding what works and feels right for you while making the changes in your perspectives, beliefs, practices, and habits. Our job is to help you see more clearly and move with greater speed, agility, and confidence toward your vision.
- Befriend Yourself: An inner best friend is the most valuable companion through life – present from the beginning to the end. I’ll help you to hear the inner dialog, bring it into the open, and strengthen the inner friend while reducing the power of the inner critic. Connecting into your inner wise one - your Inner Leader - will help you find the right way through. S/he can guide you to who, what, and how you wish to be.
- Recraft Relations with Important Others : We’re designed to need and respond to others, even though our culture tells us otherwise. Having strong, close relationships has proven to be the single most critical variable in a life well lived. Wouldn’t it be good to do this well? I can help you shift some of your approaches and responses which will create new possibilities.
Gain Insight then Skillfulness
- Understand Your Strengths: We embody our Strengths whether we recognize them or not. They show up in both their positive contribution and in their unhelpful under or overuse. Our Strengths have needs and triggers. It's really useful to understand them so we can help create the conditions under which they show up at their best.
- Manage Stress and Your Nervous System: Our biology was tuned over millennia for a set of conditions most of us don’t face anymore. We’re not about to be eaten by a tiger and we won’t die if we don’t fit into our current social group. However, our body still acts on those assumptions both quickly and unconsciously. The challenge is to bring more awareness to what's happening, interrupt the circuitry, and make a positive choice about how to respond - rather than just being driven by the nervous system's reactivity. There’s lots to learn and things to be done with tools and techniques that range from ancient practices to current technologies.
- Lead Your Inner Team: Within each of us is an inner team with many seats at the table. Some team members are louder or more dominant than others. They all have contributions, opinions, and fears. As we learn to lead and manage more skillfully from the inside, we're able to more effective on the outside working in service of our purpose and positive intentions.
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice...You didn't stop. You knew what you had to do...Little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world - Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice...You didn't stop. You knew what you had to do...Little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world - Mary Oliver