Everything I wrote about yesterday - how we're so often relating to split-off or denied parts of ourselves rather than to what's true about others - is in play in our workplaces as much as anywhere else.Who gets promoted and who gets sidelined, who gets invited and who gets ignored, whose ideas are given space and whose are shut down, which projects get the go-ahead and which do not, whose voices are heard and whose are suppressed, who gets admired and who gets judged, who gets to be in and who gets to be out... all of these are so easily an expression of the hidden inner worlds of those who get to choose.Which is why it's incumbent upon any of us who want to extend our cares beyond ourselves and our own self-interest to study and get to know our own inner landscapes.Such work is not idling, nor pointless navel-gazing, but a necessary step if we want to bring about a world for the benefit of everyone. And this inner work is especially necessary when we have positional power, authority, or influence of any kind (which is all of us if we choose to take it).
The parts of ourselves we see in others
There are parts of us we know well - those that are in close - and parts of ourselves we know less well - the more hidden, invisible parts. Sometimes, simply giving a part its appropriate name allows us to see it and to interact with it more skilfully. The inner critic is one such part. Seeing it, naming it, entering into a different kind of relationship and conversation with it - all of these can be powerful moves in having it take up a more helpful and life-giving place in the constellation of entities each of us calls 'I'.But there are also parts of each of us that we have disowned or split off and that we barely see as part of ourselves at all. These may be parts of ourselves that we dislike, or judge, or abhor. Or they can parts we long for, but do not feel are available or appropriate for us. But parts of us they are, and since we can't bear to identify our experience of them with ourselves, we readily project them into others.So often, when we find ourselves disliking other people, when we get irritated by them, feel judgment or scorn or disdain or even hate towards them, we're seeing in them what we most dislike or scorn or are irritated about in ourselves. A simple way of saying this is that what we encounter in them reminds us so strongly of what we're trying to get away from in ourselves, that we try get away from it in them too.The very same process can also be in play with those we are drawn to, admire, or put on a pedestal. In this case perhaps we're seeing in the other, first, a reminder of split-off parts of ourselves that we deeply long to be reunited with but do not consciously know as our own. We feel drawn to the other person, or good about ourselves around them, precisely because of the feeling of wholeness and re-unification it brings about it in us.Perhaps it becomes obvious when described this way that the work for us to do with people who irritate us is not to try to change them (which in any case does not address the primary source of our irritation or anger or frustration) but to find out what it is about ourselves that we dislike so much and work with some effort and diligence to understand, turn towards, and accept it.And with people we love and admire the inner work for us to do is much the same if we want to love and admire them for who they are rather than because a hole or an emptiness or a longing gets filled when we're around them.Then, we can find, it's more and more possible to be around a wider range of people with openness and warmth and genuine regard. And it's also more possible to be close and compassionate with those we love most, who are so often the very people with whom we have the most difficulty because it's in them we find parts of ourselves most readily reflected.
For the sake of...
In the end, nothing works out permanently.Even the biggest, most robust organisations pass and fade away over time. Life as we know it keeps on changing, despite our best efforts to stop that happening. And eventually, all of us die, leaving everything we’d accumulated and created behind us. Before long, all of that disappears too.So whatever you’re working on now, whatever glorious future plans and hopes you’re working towards, it would be worth checking that what you’re doing is also worth it for its own sake, regardless of how it turns out.Because in the end, that it mattered at the time might be all that’s left.
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The unseen chances of life
I didn't know what to do. I was tired, and deflated, and miserable in my work. But I didn't know how to choose anything else.It was Davina who first showed me that it might be possible to open to something new.I thought for a while about studying law. But my friend Jonny, who I first met on a summer camp when we were sixteen, had been grappling with his own choices and suggested I speak to his friend Jane, who worked as an organisation development consultant - a field I'd been interested in for years.Jane told me about a personal development course that she thought would help but I couldn't make the dates. I remember how disappointed I felt, but I asked around about alternatives and Zahavit, who I knew from another part of my life, introduced me to Cheryl, who pointed me in the direction of Sue's wonderful programme on the same topic.And at Sue's programme I met Susan, who I happened to tell me over lunch that she thought I'd really enjoy the programmes at Roffey Park. And so within a couple of months I was there, beginning a Master's Degree in Organisation Development, and where I met Paul, who ended up in the same programme design group as me. Paul invited a colleague of his, Deborah, to speak to us, and Deborah introduced me to a book that would change so much - James Flaherty's "Coaching: Evoking Excellence in Others".Two years later, I was a student on James' programme in integral coaching, half-way across the world, hardly even really knowing how I'd ended up there. And James, seeing a possibility in me that I was only just starting to see in myself, invited me to become a leader-in-training for the extraordinary programmes that I now teach in London and which are among my greatest joys.Had any link in the Davina-Jonny-Jane-Zahavit-Cheryl-Sue-Susan-Paul-Deborah-James chain not happened - and so many of them came from purely chance conversations - who knows what I would be doing now, and with whom?And these are merely the chances that I know about. How many must be the other, unseen, coincidences that made what I have described here possible - the chances that brought people together, into the path of each others' lives, so that any of what I've described here could come about.This is the way life always is, even though so much of it is invisible to us.It occurs to me on remembering this how illusory is any idea that I'm really in control of what happens in my life. And I'm humbled, and grateful, that life so often seems to have a way of bringing what needs to be brought, even when I can't see it, fail to appreciate it, or fight it away.
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One choice you get to make
As we encounter each of life’s difficulties, we get to choose:Consider ourselves cursed or mistreated, as if we are owed freedom from hurt, pain or confusion. As if life owes us happiness. As if we are meant to be in control of everything. This is, essentially, a fight against life as it is.Or draw on difficulty as part of life’s path, an opportunity to turn more deeply into life rather than away from it.And while, with each successive difficulty or joy, we find that we understand life’s movement less and less, perhaps this way we learn to live it more and more.
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Protector Parts, Defender Parts
We are rather less a single, unitary 'I' than a system or community of parts, each in relationship with one another. And it can be so very revealing, and practically useful, to get to know the parts - their intelligence, their blind-spots, and the very particular projects they've each taken up in our lives.I've written before here about shame, a familiar background mood for me, as it is for so many people. It turns out that there are at least two parts of me that are actively involved in protecting me from shaming by others - one which pre-emptively shames me, and one which more directly defends me from shame. Each has its own form of good intention, and each often causes me difficulty.The first part is an inner critic part. It's so dedicated to me not being shamed by other people that it will frequently take pre-emptive action by shaming me itself. The logic is clear, and compelling: if I can be made to feel sufficient shame beforehand, then perhaps I'll hold back from acting in a way that would cause others to shame me. It's a simple exchange - the lesser pain of my own internally generated shame to protect against the more soul-searing shame that comes from the disapproval of other people.This is the part which would have me hold back from speaking my mind, from becoming angry with other people, from showing too much love, from being a surprise or a disappointment or a bother or mystery. This is the part which, for years, held me back from dancing, having me be ashamed of myself even before I begin. It's dedicated to forever scanning the horizon and keeping me within very tightly contained boundaries so as to avoid the kind of pain it knows I could, once, not tolerate. It is willing to exact quite a price in order to do this: the inner price of feeling some level of shame at all times, and the outer price of holding back what is, most truly, mine to bring.The second part is a protector part. Should the antics of the inner critic fail, so that I actually get shamed by someone else, it throws itself into action. It's not interested in waiting, nor does it have any time for curiosity or learning. What it most wants is the shame to go away. The protector part brings forward my defensiveness, my justifications, my denial. Insincere apologies, pretence, lengthy justifications for my actions, tuning out, disconnecting from people, freezing, abandoning my commitments, bending myself out of shape - all these are the order of the day for the protector part.The protector part is also willing to pay a price to protect me from shame, most notably having me act at odds with myself, with a relationship I care about, or with my deepest, most sincere commitments.And while both these parts have honourable and noble intentions, they are way out of date, having swung into action when I was very small and really needed some protection. They don't take into account that I am an adult now, and that there is another part of me, more akin to the me-myself that exists over the entire span of my life, that no longer needs their help. This part, which could be called essence or self, is really quite able to be in the world alongside shame, and anger, and hate, and disappointment. It is vast enough, deep enough, alive enough, and quite strong enough to experience whatever comes its way. It is curious, open, timeless, and willing to learn.Naming the parts has power. When I see that I am had by the inner critic or inner protector, I am increasingly able to ask them to relax, to step aside - to reassure them that I'm quite fine, whatever happens, and that I do not need them to protect me any more. And, in the space that this affords, I'm more able to step, willingly and without panic or rush, towards genuine relationship and inquiry, and into the world as it is rather than the world as smaller parts of me imagine it to be.
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Holding on, letting go
How long do you hold on to the hurt you feel when criticised, or judged, or when you don't feel seen?I know that I, first and most habitually, can interpret slights and hurts as a sign of the unravelling of a relationship, the beginning of the end. And so perhaps it's little wonder that I have over time developed the kind of body and mind that easily holds onto them, feeling 'the end' again and again when I meet the people (usually those I love most) around whom I got hurt in the first place.It was a revelation to discover that the world simply isn't this way for everyone else. That there are people, close in, who care for me deeply and who have moved on within hours - and quite often within minutes - from the original intensity of encounter. For them, fierceness is just fierceness, disappointment just disappointment, anger just anger, gone when it's gone and certainly not the end.And so I'm learning, gradually, to pay better attention to what's actually happening now and over time in a relationship rather than taking as true the story that my body and emotions - conditioned by years of practice and habit - hold on to.
Blessings for all of it
In the Jewish tradition, as in other religious and spiritual traditions, there is a blessing that can be said for pretty much anything. A blessing for waking up, and a blessing for going to sleep. A blessing for sunsets and for lightning. Blessings for food and for rainbows. Blessings for new clothes, for reaching special days, and for anniversaries. Blessings for the bathroom. Blessings for encountering others. Blessings, even, for bad news and for dying.The simplest way to understand blessings is as an act of thanks. But they’re also a practice in remembering what is so easily forgotten – that even the humdrum and mundane is neither humdrum nor mundane. And they’re a practice in noticing all those phenomena and entities which are often in the background for us but upon which all of life is standing. In this sense blessings require no belief in a deity but simply a commitment to marvel at life’s sheer beauty and complexity. They are a practice in staying awake. They are an invitation to live in a state of what Abraham Joshua Heschel called a state of ‘radical amazement’.The rabbinic tradition invites people to say at least a hundred blessings a day. What would become possible, I wonder, if just now and again we each started to look at what’s become most ordinary and most unremarkable in our lives, perhaps even that which we’ve come to resent, and turned to wonder at the blessing within?
I'm republishing this today for P, a source of exquisite blessing in the lives of many
Learn together, Oct 1-2 2015
In one way or another, my writing here in 'On Living and Working' is always about what it is to be a human being, how development comes about, leading to a growing capacity to respond with wisdom and skilfulness to the world that presents itself to us, and how we can participate more fully in our own lives and the lives of others.These themes are also the heart of the programmes I run though thirdspace coaching, the organisation I founded to bring these questions to the world of organisations and beyond.The next opportunity to learn with me is coming up in London in October. It will be a chance to learn the first steps in integral development coaching, a skilful means to support your own development and the development of others, combining both theory and hands-on practice, and with practical application for work and the rest of life.Coaching to Excellence runs in London on Thursday 1st and Friday 2nd October. Early-bird rates apply until 9th August.It would be thrilling to have you join us.
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No try
No! Try not! Do. Or do not. There is no 'try'. Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back
So often the very quality we have most to bring to the world is also, in our desperate reaching for it, the cause of our suffering and difficulty.
The woman who, trying to feel loved, over-extends herself in helping and self sacrificing, pushing herself into others' lives without understanding that her efforts obscure that her very presence in the world is a form of love itself.
The young man who, in his urgency to demonstrate his integrity, judges and criticises those around him, wounding and driving people away - not seeing yet that his inherent integrity, in its truer form, is always present, spacious, welcoming and wise.
The man in his 40s who, in his insistence that he not be boxed in - that he remain always free - breaks focus and relationships and so creates a cage for himself, denying the very freedom to engage meaningfully that is his in every moment.
And me, so wishing to bring about peace, stillness and harmony that for many years I stifled others, turned away from disagreement, and did not know my own capacity to be still in the midst of storms of conflict and difference and anger.
So often the key to our own flourishing - and to bringing our gifts - is finding out that the very quality we are efforting hardest to bring about is the one that is right here, if we could be brave enough to embrace it and to relax our endless trying.
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