The Leader’s Navigator Podcast

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My daughter Hayley and I have been doing a podcast together since June of 2022. We have a wonderful time together and have shared over 60 episodes.

If you haven’t listened yet, we would love to have you pop by and check out a few episodes.

Some of our most recent topics include:

• Episode 61 – Finding Your IKIGAI – where your gifts and passion intersect with your contribution to the world.

• Episode 60 – Clarifying Your Values, Home, and the Authentic Journey

• Episode 59 – Finding Yourself in a World of Unrealistic Expectations: The Push for Perfectionism and Pressures of Popularity

https://theleadersnavigator.podbean.com/

What’s the difference between tension and relaxation?

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I hate to admit it, but I have spent a good part of my life trying to live up to an image to impress others. I call it impression management.

It’s exhausting managing impressions and constantly regulating myself. There’s a constant fear of doing something that doesn’t correspond with the image I am trying to project.

The problem with living in fear is that it overpowers creativity, joy, inner peace, and spontaneity.

There’s a Zen saying: Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.

I guess this is a reason why I have spent a good part of my life teaching about authenticity. That which we are best able to teach others is what we are most in need of developing within ourselves.

Your phone is not your friend.

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“People have always tended to be the servants of their technologies.” -Marshall McLuhan

Many couples have come to me for counseling who are actually “too married.” That is, they have an “enmeshed relationship,” characterized by a lack of boundaries, loss of individual identity, and fear of abandonment. In essence, they have no relationship with themselves separate from the relationship with the other.
They are entangled in each other’s web.

Indicators of an enmeshed relationship become obvious when I ask people to separate from their phones for an extended period. Solitude – time alone with your own thoughts – creates anxiety. Fear of missing out. Nervousness. Unease.

For those in enmeshed relationships, the strategy is to step away from the relationship and begin developing your identity away from the relationship. It’s paradoxical: the more you “need” the relationship, the more you need take a break from it.

I advocate the same strategy for those enmeshed in the relationship with their phone. Living an authentic life means developing a relationship with your interior self and the world around you.

Cal Newport offers three strategies I’ve adapted to combat having your phone be your “constant companion”:

  1. Use the phone foyer method. When you come home from work leave your phone, plugged in, by your front door in the foyer. If you need to use it, you have to go to the foyer and use it there.
  2. Do at least three things every day outside your house without your phone. Run an errand. Walk the dog. Visit a friend. Go to dinner. You don’t have to divorce your phone, just practice having an identify without it.
  3. Make your phone less interesting. Take off of it any app where someone makes money off of your attention when you tap on it. Devices and digital media were never designed to meet our emotional needs. They were designed as a tool – for sharing information and communication.

Your phone is not your friend. Your phone is a tool.

How to hold yourself accountable to be authentic.

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Authenticity is when your actions are a full expression of who you are in a way that contributes to the world. You are in alignment with what life wants from you. The Authentic Way is the awareness that you don’t need to change yourself; you need to come home to yourself.

Words I hear used to describe what it’s like to be authentic, at home with yourself: happy, confident, peaceful, free, brave, calm, inspired, appreciative, alive, fulfilled, ‘you lose all track of time.’

Words used to describe when how you live is not the real you: exhausting, anxious, depressing, sad, irritable, stressed, lonely, disengaged, empty, lost.

How to hold yourself accountable to be authentic:

  1. Decision. Like any choice to change your life, it starts with a decision – a firm resolve to live your life authentically.
  2. A Benchmark. Have a sense of what authenticity feels like to you: have a vision of what “coming home” means to you. Know you’ll be “off course” much of the time in a world that expects much from us.
  3. Community. Authenticity is a lonely journey but it can’t be done alone. Community can come in the way of teachers, guides, confidants, and coaches – those who support you and hold you accountable to be who you are.
  4. Self-Reflection. The authentic journey is a contemplative journey. Reserve time on a regular basis to turn off technology to attend to the voice from within.
  5. Journaling. Regularly writing down your emotions, reflections, dreams, values, progress, and gratitude, can help keep you connected to your authenticity.
  6. Feedback. Be open to how you are impacting others. Stay humble. Being teachable is a core quality of authenticity.
  7. Uniqueness. Create a list of ways you come home to yourself, nourish yourself, and attend to these regularly (e.g. spending time in nature, with good friends, with animals you love, reading books, cooking, going to museums or the theatre, etc.)
  8. Service. Authenticity means bringing your gifts to the world in a way that makes the world better – even in some small way. Be sure you are intentional about making a difference.

From a TO-DO List to a TO-BE List

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Successful people have some kind of a to-do list – stuff that needs doing this year, this week, this day.
Living authentically means having a to-be list: How will you show up in your life? What kind of person will you be when you come to work? What kind of a leader will you be?

Here’s an example of what I would consider a great to-be list:

  • Be committed. Commitment is essential for success. Commitment to a cause beyond your self-interests. Commitment takes you past a goal or wish. Being committed means a firm resolve that inspires action.
  • Be encouraging. Encouragement means a belief in people, making everyone around you smarter and better. Rather than draining energy and intelligence and capacity by pretending to be the smartest person the room, use your wisdom to amplify the intelligence and capabilities of others.
  • Be grateful. Gratitude is the antidote to entitlement. Being grateful means inspiring others by finding the best in every person and every situation. My mother grew up in poverty and would say, “Always find a way to make your gratitude bigger than your circumstances.”
  • Be humble. Humility is a true evaluation of conditions as they are. It’s having the willingness and courage to face the facts of your life. Everyone has something to teach us and has somehow been a part of our success. Humility is about giving credit where credit is due.

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Don’t promote insecure people.

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Insecurity and positional power don’t mix well. But I see it all the time. Someone is placed in a position of authority and they use that authority to get work done. “I’m the boss so do as I say.” While you might get short-term results, if you aren’t secure enough to listen and value the opinions and approaches of others, you’ll get resistance, disengagement, or resignation.

One CEO told me she never promotes anyone until they’ve spent time leading people in a volunteer organization. “If you can’t influence people where you are without a title, then you haven’t yet earned the privilege of having a title.”
The late former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher said, “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”

Being a leader means:

  1. Being secure enough with yourself that you can admit you aren’t the smartest person in the room, you have something to learn from everyone, you can ask for help, and you sincerely open to learn and try other suggested methods.
  2. Listen and value opinions and approaches of others before sharing your experience and perspective.
  3. Make a decision and take a stand when you need to. Know when you’ve collaborated enough and that your decision isn’t necessarily going to make everyone happy.