SHAPING THE NEXT CHAPTER OF YOUR LIFE – AUTHENTICALLY

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The pandemic has created an opportunity to shine a light on the quality and depth of your life, your leadership, and your relationships. The past several months have been a time of reflection and evaluation to ask questions such as:

  • Where is my career going?
  • Do I really want to spend the rest of my days working seventy hours a week?
  • How can I be a better leader by focusing on what truly matters?

One client talked about how, for the past twenty-five years, she was in the “rhythm of a corporate tune, continually reacting to the demands of others.” She said, “Now is the time to find my own new rhythm.”

I offer some strategies for moving into the next chapter of your life as you settle into the new reality which will likely be with us long-term:

  1. Decide to see this as an opportunity. Choices have great power to determine the outcome of your life.
  2. Make room to step back, pull out a journal, and answer some questions:
  • What’s been working well in your life?
  • What areas are not flowing/working well?
  • Where might you be over-accommodating, compromising yourself, and burning out?
  • What parts of your life have you felt most excited/passionate about?
  • What do you feel called to do?
  • What might need to shift/change/end?
  1. Reach for your why – your reason for being – an inspiring purpose for getting out of bed in the morning.
  2. Reflect on your most important values.
  3. Consider your unique abilities, talents, and gifts that set you apart from the crowd.
  4. Plan on how you will contribute and serve the world over the next five to ten years.
  5. Include your loved ones in your plans and intentions.

Authentically shaping the next chapter of your life, whether you stay in your current role, decide to renew it, make a transition to a new role or even a new career, or are considering what retirement might look like, requires careful and conscious attention. From time to time, we all drift away from our true nature. When we realign with our authentic self, we amplify our positive impact as a leader and create meaning and purpose in our life.

If you want to learn ways to shape the next chapter of your life in alignment with your authentic self, please join me for a complimentary one-hour webinar on September 23. This – and more – will be included in the webinar and in my upcoming virtual Life In Transitions course.

The webinar is offered at 9 am MT and 5 pm MT. Register now to make sure you get a seat!

REOPENING • REENGAGING • REFOCUSING How To Make The Comeback Better Than The Setback

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As we emerge from COVID-19 restrictions, new challenges lie ahead. I have been asked by many clients to help them navigate the transition into a new reality. Regardless of whether you have been on the frontlines in an essential service or working remotely, the next few months are critical for planning your personal transition into the new reality. There is an opportunity to rebuild team focus, morale, and productivity, and a renewed feeling of belonging as we emerge into a post-pandemic world.
Here’s a few leadership tips to help you make the comeback better than the setback:
Connect Before You Expect. We all need our teams to be productive and focused, especially as we emerge from the disruption. Parenting over the past forty+ years has taught me (the hard way) that leadership in the home and at work is mostly about connection. When children are safe, relaxed, and cared about, they are more willing to receive our guidance and follow through on their responsibilities. Brain science tells us that this is true for all of us. We are all more likely to be accountable when our perspective is taken into consideration. People are emerging from the pandemic with a variety of emotions – anxiety, excitement, fear, loneliness, exhaustion, grief, self-doubt, and everything in between. It’s okay not to be okay. And it’s okay – in fact it is necessary for our well-being – to acknowledge what we are going through, what we’ve been through, and what we are up against going forward. Now is a great time to rebuild connections, listen carefully with compassion and empathy, and take the time to be there. Don’t be afraid of asking people about their mental health status. It’s not about fixing anybody or anything. It’s about community. Connect before you expect.
Think Win-Win. While many of your team are excited to get back into the workplace, many are also as excited to continue to work remotely. While flexibility from leaders will be required, even more important is the commitment to a win-win solution. Take the time to define the needs of the organization and the needs of your team members and make these explicit with everyone. Then take time to create a third alternative that serves both the employee and the organization. Remember – you can’t sink half a ship. You won’t succeed in the long run until everyone succeeds.
Reinforce Personal Responsibility. Personal responsibility is about giving to others what we expect from others. Making this comeback better than the setback means taking personal responsibility to come to work better and stronger than when we left. We all have a part to play in building – and rebuilding – a worthwhile place to work. Accountability isn’t about blaming or finger pointing or fault finding. It’s about taking ownership and recognizing that each of us does our part. Personal responsibility recognizes that waiting for someone to change is never a good strategy.
Make Belonging an Intention.  A sense of belonging, or feeling part of something bigger than ourselves, is a fundamental human need. Knowing that our unique gifts are needed and valued gives us meaning and purpose. When people feel safe to voice their views and to be who they are, are included in decisions that impact them, and are listened to and valued for their perspective, it increases productivity. We all need to be recognized for what we bring and how our contribution and authentic voices and ideas can be powerful and make a difference. A sense of belonging can also mean giving credit when it’s due. You can’t take for granted or assume that everyone feels that they belong. You must be intentional at making it happen. I am committed to making my leadership programs more diverse and inclusive and so I have asked a senior executive from a community services agency whose mother was raised in the residential school system in Canada if she might consider joining and starting the classes of my live-stream masterclass with some smudging, an indigenous prayer, and some teachings from her people.
Attend To Your Authentic Leadership. Authentic leadership means finding your own path and bringing that more fully to the world. As leaders, we spend our lives helping and building others, but do we have an authentic vision for ourselves? Leading authentically requires a strong identity, a compelling sense of self. Thelonious Monk, the jazz musician, said once that “a genius is a person most like themself.” Being an authentic leader is synonymous with being one’s self. It is that simple, and it is also that difficult. The authentic leadership visioning process (which we teach in our masterclass) is about creating something that’s true to your values, to who you are and to your dreams and that will make a lasting impact on the world. It’s easy to say, but it’s hard to do. In essence, it’s not what we can do or what we should do, it’s what we want to do or what we may feel called to do. I encourage you to take some uninterrupted time this summer to reflect deeply on what the next ten years of your life would look like if it were aligned with your truest self. Assess the gaps between your vision and your reality and get to work to close those gaps.
Many people have recently asked me whether we are going to emerge from the pandemic as better people and better leaders. My response is a quote from Henry Ford: “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you are right.”  Ford was referring to the power of belief. Our beliefs are potentially the biggest single force at work in our personal and organizational lives. We all face a fundamental choice as we go forward. You can have trusting beliefs or distrusting beliefs about a problem. The problem remains the same. It’s just how we perceive it. Distrusting beliefs put us in a victim mindset: “There’s nothing we can do. This is horrible. We’re stuck. We’re at the mercy of poor choices and bad leadership.” A trusting belief says, “This is challenging; we were not prepared. But if we stay true to who we are, our values, our vision and our mission; if we treat each other with dignity; if we believe in the spirit of generosity; if we stay true to those beliefs, we can get through this.” Let’s decide to make this comeback better than the setback.

LOOKING INTO THE SHADOWS: How Turning On The Light Can Nurture Psychological Safety

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“This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine. There is nothing more confining than the prison we don’t know we are in.”  – William Shakespeare
An executive I am coaching recently shared his 360 data where his direct reports expressed that they didn’t feel safe around him; that his unpredictable volatility and insensitivity created an environment that was not conducive to engagement and high performance. He believed that their response was an excuse for poor performance, and they lacked a solid work ethic, using the current remote working environment to “cop out.”
It’s not easy to hear tough feedback and see our blind spots, but it’s essential in personal and professional growth. We are in an era of daily change and uncertainty. This is a time for leaders to create and protect the space for everyone to feel psychologically safe. The first step in cultivating that environment is to reflect on ourselves as leaders – and that begins with understanding and accepting those uncomfortable truths, which I refer to as shadow work. Psychological safety around us begins with psychological safety within us.
While it’s often encouraged to focus on the light, it doesn’t make the dark go away.
The dark is just on the other side, waiting for a time to show its face. And if we don’t have the courage to bring it into the light of our awareness, we can inadvertently hurt ourselves or others. Shadow work, in its simplest form, is looking inward for what we had hidden earlier in our lives, and gradually healing those aspects of ourselves. Kimberly Fosu speaks about this in her blog, Shadow Work: A Simple Guide to Transcending The Darker Aspects of Yourself.
Let’s say that a girl is born with a strong sense of self. She knows who she is; she knows what she likes and doesn’t like; she asks for what she wants and she isn’t afraid to speak her mind! She is a strong little girl, but she is raised in a family that doesn’t know what to do with her spirit and constantly tells her to tone it down because it’s “too much.”
In order to survive, she rejects the parts of herself that are strong and confident. She grows up to be quiet, sweet, and obedient. Then, when she turns forty, she doesn’t understand why her life is so painful. The truth is, she suppressed important aspects of herself and thus feels divided. She won’t be able to feel psychologically safe – or fully create safety around her – until she does her shadow work to discover and embrace who she was meant to be.
Here’s a few things we know about shadow work:
1. It takes courage to meet with your shadow. 
When you start shadow work, you may feel the resistance you felt as a child, and the desire to keep suppressing these aspects of yourself. To become aware of something, you have to choose to see it. We are unaware of the shadow in the same way we can’t see in the darkness – we often even coach children to not be afraid of the dark. Once you turn on the light of awareness and embrace the hidden aspects of yourself that seem to be extremely uncomfortable, you open your eyes to a whole new side of yourself that you had no idea existed. If you are worried about what you might find, there is probably something important you don’t want to revisit. Instead of continuing to avoid it, you can see it as one more reason to do shadow work. This work is necessary if you want to be an authentic leader and fully realize your capacity to impact the world.
2. Become aware of your shadow. 
Ask yourself: “Was I completely accepted as a child? How did I feel most of the time? What was expected of me and what behaviors and emotions were judged by the people who raised me?” Your response to those behaviors that were judged created a shadow aspect within you. The answers to these questions will open the door to what is hidden. The shadow often finds roots in your childhood. The most important step in doing shadow work is to become aware of what is concealed. Shine a light on it to bring it out of the darkness. No matter how long you avoid looking at your shadow self, it will keep manifesting into your reality until you pay attention to it. The self that is fractured seeks to become unified, and we will be presented with opportunities to see the aspects of ourselves we have suppressed, rejected, denied, and disowned. The more you become aware of your shadow self and embrace it with some compassion, the freer you are to welcome your authentic self.
3. Shadow work is about making the unconscious conscious and the unacceptable acceptable. 
We become adults and feel we should be able to handle life better, yet we often keep falling into the same unhealthy patterns. That’s because the shadow operates outside of our conscious awareness, in the form of unconscious and limiting beliefs. The goal of shadow work is integration and appreciation – fully seeing and embracing all the aspects of yourself that make you who you are. Within your wounds lie some of your greatest and most important gifts that have yet to be unearthed.
4. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.  
Acceptance is a requirement. The minute you say something about you is “bad,” you have a reason to suppress, ignore, and deny it. Once you become aware of your shadow self, don’t shame it or blame it. Instead, give it your full acceptance. Your shadow was born from non-acceptance and rejection in the first place. It was created the moment you began to push it away. Antagonizing the shadow even more only adds fuel to the fire. The shadow is part of who you are, so look at it from a place of appreciation. Everyone has gone through a difficult time in their life that created shadows within them. Make peace with your shadow so you can find peace. Shadow work is a great way to experience inner healing and transformation through self-awareness and self-acceptance.
5. Recognize – and appreciate – triggers.
Have you ever met the most gentle, sweetest, and kind person, and in the blink of an eye something happens, and this person turns into someone else? They become mean and scary; they throw a huge tantrum or freak out. The shadow part took over when they got triggered. Triggers have the power to turn lives upside down and destroy the most cherished relationships. They spark a highly charged emotional reaction and are messengers from your shadow self. They are reflections of deep unresolved wounds that you have suppressed.  See your triggers as an invitation to delve deeper into things you are unaware of.
We are constantly evolving as leaders. Our awareness evolves as well as our ability to respond to that awareness. The authentic journey is just that – a journey into becoming more fully who we are. It’s not a destination. It’s a method of travel. While working with the shadow is about integration, you can never be completely integrated. It’s a life-long journey. Embrace it with awareness and self-compassion. Doing shadow-work means coming to know and accepting these hidden aspects of ourselves that, at some point down the road, will result in authentic self-acceptance and genuine compassion for others. In the words of Dumbledore: “Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”

Staying Connected: Making The Beast Beautiful

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Learn the alchemy
True human beings know.
The moment you accept
what troubles you’ve been given,
the door will open.
-Rumi
Some people break during difficult times, while others break open and lead us into a better world. As this pandemic wears on, it is time to examine how to allow the pain of it to break us open so a stronger, wiser and kinder self can emerge. If we can use the present reality as an opportunity to clarify our values and grow into better people, we can inspire others to pull out of their despair and fear and trade distraction and denial for deepening and connecting.
In other words, if we can open our hearts to ourselves, with all our shortcomings and all of our beauty, we can then open our hearts to others and do our part to create a new world.
And we can begin to do that by taking the authentic journey, which I suggest starts with the following:
Be Real
There’s something attractive about realness. We are drawn toward what is real, like sunsets, beauty, and honesty. There’s an unwritten rule in the speaking profession: Don’t give a motivational speech at a funeral. It might be a good message but the timing sucks.
Being real means we respect ourselves enough to be honest with ourselves and the people that matter to us. We have to be willing to face our fears honestly before we can call ourselves courageous. And the most courageous thing we can do is ask for help.
Being real means it’s okay to not be okay, and trust that we’ll get through this and move forward together – with honesty, grace, and compassion. We have to grieve before we build.
Find a champion
An inspiring cornerstone of the Calgary Catholic School District is the commitment to every student having a champion. Every child deserves a one-on-one relationship with an adult in the school who believes in them unconditionally, who knows they have their back, and who is in their corner. In order to ensure that every child has a champion, every employee must have a champion.
The journey of transforming difficulty into an adventure that opens us to growth may be a lonely journey, but it can’t be done alone. The lone-warrior model of leadership is heroic suicide. We all need champions in our lives – confidants that hold space for us while we hold the space for others and allies that stand beside us and behind us. We all need at least one person in our life who believes in us when we can’t find it in ourselves.
Choose a growth mindset
Carol Dweck, a Stanford University psychology professor, has done extensive research on mindset.  She has found that our mindset exists on a continuum, from fixed to mixed to growth.
People with a fixed mindset are attached to the comfort of their current perception of themselves and others and to not failing. People with a growth mindset, on the other hand, don’t let their fears determine their choices. They are less attached to the opinion of others and thus are more willing to step into the possibility that comes from uncertainty. A growth mindset – a willingness to be vulnerable, learn, grow, and be up for challenges that are ahead – thrives in periods like the pandemic. When difficulty or obstacles arise, instead of, “Why is this happening to me?” a growth mindset asks, “How is this happening for me?”
Get stronger
After recovering from polio meningitis when I was four, my father took painstaking efforts to incrementally build my strength each day. He would lift me up on the parallel bars and have me practice holding myself there. We had a daily routine of 5BX exercises and time on the tumbling mat. He was a nationally ranked gymnast and he encouraged me every day to get stronger.
Even today, forty years after his passing, I can hear him say, “Don’t pray for life to get easier. Pray for you to get stronger.” Both his wisdom as well as his health habits have stayed with me through all kinds of difficult periods in my life. It’s a reminder that resilience and security don’t come from the world; they come from my capacity to access resources from within. Strengthening habits – like weight training, meditation, yoga, relaxation, rest and opening up to others – have sustained me through all the difficult times of my life.
Clarify A Compelling Vision
A friend of mine works for an organization called AAWEAR, a group of people in Alberta with a history of hard drug use. Through supporting each other, educating others, and raising awareness of health issues, AAWEAR strives for an improved quality of life for those in the drug using community.
My friend meets daily with people who live in tents and on sidewalks in the city of Edmonton. His vision is to help those who struggle with drug abuse and homelessness recognize that they deserve respect and understanding within their community. No matter how dark things get around him, Tyler is inspired by a vision to help others live a better life.
What inspires you in the difficult times? What gets you up early? What keeps you up late? What inspires you to keep walking through the rough terrains of your life to see you through to the other side? We all need a vision – beyond our own self-interest – to keep us moving forward through inevitable doldrums and disillusionments of life’s journey.
We all have the capacity to inspire and empower others. But it takes a devotion to our personal growth and development to embrace times of change and difficulty, such as this pandemic, and reach within so a better person can emerge. Hard times can motivate us to embody the hero within us. The psychologist, Carl Jung, believed that “the privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” This journey is described in my book, The Other Everest: Navigating the Pathway to Authentic Leadership, and the journey we go through in our Life In Transitions course. It is the journey to the deeper aspects of our nature that awaken us to who we are meant to be. And that is how we can use this beast of a pandemic to find what is beautiful in ourselves and the world around us.

HOW TO BUILD COMMUNITY IN A TIME OF ISOLATION

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A research project from the 1980s, documented in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that male heart attack survivors who were socially isolated had more than four times the risk of death than men with strong social connections. And a study of more than four thousand men of Japanese ancestry living in Hawaii found that social networks guarded against coronary artery disease (independent of known health hazards such as high blood pressure and cigarette smoking).
Over the past four decades, there has been a sizable body of evidence documenting that being socially isolated significantly increases a person’s risk of premature death from all causes, a risk equal to that of smoking, obesity, and physical inactivity.
Simply put, people are nourished by other people. Research suggests that belonging to a tightly knit community is a significant predictor of health and mental well-being. Living beings yearn for the proximity of other living beings. Humans are happiest and healthiest when around other people, working together and helping each other. For much of history, humans have banded together as a matter of survival.
Even with pandemic fatigue, where we are weary of social distancing and isolating for the sake of our community’s health, our need for community has not changed – we desire to be heard, to be connected, to belong. Social distancing is not the same as social disconnecting. Isolating is not the same as detaching. Working together for the good of the whole is not the same as living in fear and withdrawing from each other. In our current conditions, we are called to develop a renewed connection to ourselves, to learn to enjoy solitude, to appreciate smaller spaces, and to be creative and intentional about sustaining our relationships with each other – thus finding innovative ways of sustaining community.
Living with a propensity for depression and having walked through some very dark periods in the course of my lifetime, I can suggest five strategies for fostering community during this pandemic that have worked for me:
1) Develop self-awareness. When a Stanford Graduate School of Business Advisory Council was asked to recommend the most important capability for leaders to develop, their answer was almost unanimous: self-awareness. But how do you develop self-awareness? Self-awareness starts with checking in on yourself in the present moment. Are you afraid? Stressed? Inspired? Exhausted? Angry? Renewed? All of the above? Self-awareness comes from introspection and feedback from others. It takes time and intention but is a journey worth taking. You can only connect with others to the degree you connect with yourself.
2) Find a confidant. A confidant is a person with whom you can be real and honest. Confidants provide a space for those who are busy holding a space for everybody else. At this point in the pandemic, as fatigue is settling in for so many of us, we all need at least one confidant who can put us back together at the end of the day. Confidants are friends, spouses, coaches, lovers, or trusted colleagues that provide support, perspective, and accountability in the midst of our frustrations and challenges.
3) Practice kindness wherever you go. We are all doing the best we can to get through these challenging times. Let’s make it a point to grant each other a little grace. Even while wearing a mask we can smile with our eyes, offer encouragement with a hand gesture, and practice patience with our tone of voice. We’ve never been more alone, but we have also never been more together, sharing this experience with eight billion people on this planet. Community is developed one kind act at a time.
4) Find a reason to get out of bed in the morning. In a world preoccupied with problems, community is about discovering our gifts and finding ways to bring them into focus. Community is ultimately about being needed, belonging to something beyond yourself, being inspired with a reason to face the day. It is the task of leaders, indeed the task of every citizen, to shine a light on the gifts of those in the periphery and bring them into the centre. Especially in the midst of a pandemic, we need to find a reason to put our feet on the floor each morning.
5) Get comfortable being alone. Loneliness and being alone are distinct. A desire for solitude is a defining characteristic of an authentic person. A quest for community can be one more form of manic activity if it is not rooted in a continual practice of silence and time for reflection. If you work on creating a balance between reaching out to others and enjoying what the Finns call hiljaisuus, or solitude in one’s being, you’ll strengthen your sense of self-worth and find more meaning in your life.
Our intention, in our upcoming Authentic Leadership Masterclass is to do our part to help build communities with like-minded authentic difference makers. While we show how authentic leadership presence can be applied to the leadership practices of fostering trust, building accountability, navigating change, and engaging talent, a major part of the program is to connect leaders with each other to sustain their growth, connections, and sense of community. We work with accountability partners between sessions to support each other’s growth, help each other stay on track, and sustain the insights you glean from the class experience.
We still have a few seats available for our January and February programs for those of you committed to renewed leadership development this year in a community of incredible like-minded difference makers. I hope you will join us.
To mark the passage into the promise and hope for a safe and prosperous new year, I want to borrow from history and visualize an ancient and meaningful ritual. For 2,500 years, the Japanese have been making and drinking sake, a type of rice wine brewed from fermented rice. Throughout all that time, sake has been used to mark special occasions with the people that matter most. In most celebrations involving sake, a glass is placed inside a masu cup and the host pours sake until it overflows like a waterfall. The overflowing is an act of kindness and generosity to show appreciation for the people around them. It also works as a little act of celebration, to lift the spirits and to enjoy the present state of life. Watching the sake overflow and not knowing whether it will tip over presents a beautiful moment of suspense, when time seems to slow down. By introducing a moment of suspense, the ceremony keeps your mind in the present moment, focused only on the beautiful waterfall of sake.
As a message of appreciation to all my readers over the years, I’m taking the liberty to borrow from this little Japanese ritual and overflow some sake with you. My hope is that the image of this overflow will remind us all to bring presence and generosity into this new year. May we all experience the overflow of kindness through our actions as we build community together and navigate into 2021.

How To Find Security In A World Filled With Uncertainty

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“Circumstances do not determine a person; they reveal a person”

Reality has always been filled with uncertainty, but I’ve never had more uncertainty in my life than now. Here are just a few of the questions that have been on my mind recently:
• Will we ever get back to relating comfortably with each other again?
• Will my daughter be able to come home for Christmas? When will I see my grandkids (who live in the US) again?
• What if I unknowingly pass Covid on to someone else? If I contract Covid, what impact will it have on me? How about on my family?
• What will the impact of zoom meetings and remote working conditions have on my business long term?
• Will this pandemic ever actually be “over?” And what will the new reality look like? And how will we even know it is “over?”
With my sensitive nervous system and propensity toward worry, I struggle to find strength and peace of mind. Here are seven ways I have found security and inner well-being in the midst of the uncertainty:
1. Separate Security From Safety. Safety is a condition of being protected from harm in order to achieve an acceptable standard of risk. Safety comes from your environment. In its simplest terms, your workplace or relationship is either physically safe or it is physically unsafe. Psychologically, it is either safe for interpersonal risk-taking or it isn’t safe. Security, on the other hand, is a state of confidence that arises from one’s capacity to face the demands of reality. Security comes from within. “Security,” Helen Keller said once, “is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” It is the organization’s responsibility to ensure a safe work environment, but it is an employee’s job to be secure within that environment. The best companies create loyalty through great leadership and culture, not through the illusion of job security. Job security comes from one’s employability, one’s capacity to be employed. Like an employer, it is the responsibility of our public health system to create a safe society. However, the path of security, in the world of a pandemic, is to take responsibility for our own health and well-being – so we’ll have the strongest immune system possible. No one else is going to do that for us.
2. Become Stronger. My father used to say to me, “Don’t pray for life to get easier. Pray, instead, for you to get stronger.” To quote American author, Van Jones, “I don’t want you to be safe, ideologically. I don’t want you to be safe, emotionally. I want you to be strong. That’s different. I’m not going to pave the jungle for you. Put on some boots and learn how to deal with adversity. I’m not going to take all the weights out of the gym; that’s the whole point of the gym. This is the gym.” I find it strengthening to regularly workout on the weights and hit the bag. While sustaining and growing physical strength is helpful, what it does to strengthen my mind is even better. You get stronger by doing something difficult. What are you doing every day that’s hard, but you do it anyway? We’ve all heard that self-care is important. But self-care usually isn’t comfortable or easy or painless. Self-care is what you don’t want to do but you know you need to do because of how you feel after you do it. Becoming stronger can be as simple as making your bed every morning. Strength is not about velocity; it’s about direction. What direction are you headed?
3. Build Community. Through this pandemic, I’ve never felt more isolated, and I’ve never felt more connected. We are all in this together. No one is unscathed from the impact of COVID-19. Every day I reach out and deepen my relationship with my community – my handful of trusted confidants. Not only am I using this time to get stronger physically and mentally, I’m using this time to strengthen my relationships with the important people in my life. Every day I share something with someone about my fears, my doubts, my insecurities, and my dreams. I talk about my losses and my grief, my anxiety and my worry, my vision and my intentions. It doesn’t need to go on Facebook, but it does need to be shared with the people who matter most. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
4. Replace Optimism With A Firm Resolve. Admiral Jim Stockdale, who Jim Collins referred to in his classic book, Good To Great, was held captive in a prison camp in Vietnam for seven years. When asked how he did not allow his oppressive circumstances to beat him down, he talked about facing the honest truth of one’s situation. “You have to understand, it was never depressing. Because despite all those circumstances, I never ever wavered in my absolute faith that not only would I prevail – get out of this – but I would also prevail by turning it into the defining event of my life that would make me a stronger and better person…” He also commented on who didn’t make it out of those circumstances: “It was the optimists. They were the ones who always said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ Christmas would come and it would go. And there would be another Christmas. And they died of a broken heart…. You must never, ever, ever confuse the need for absolute, unwavering faith that you can prevail despite those constraints, with the need for the discipline to begin by confronting the brutal facts, whatever they are. We’re not getting out of here by Christmas.” There’s no end in sight to the pandemic and we don’t even know what the end will look like. What we do know is that strength lies in staying present in the present moment and power comes from a firm resolve we will get through this and will be better for it. “I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so to all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
5. Choose Service over Self-Interest. In my book, Caring Is Everything: Getting To The Heart of Humanity, Leadership, and Life, I discuss the value of expressing our innate generosity as an antidote to most of what ails us. At times, caring happens as a reflex. It isn’t something we think about or “try” to do. It’s the instinctive response of an open heart. Someone slips, our arm goes out. The car in front of us is in an accident and we stop to help. A colleague feels down, and we buy them a cup of coffee. It all seems natural and appropriate. Through caring naturally for one another, we can glimpse an essential quality of our being. We may be sitting alone, lost in self-pity, feeling sorry for ourselves, when the phone rings with a call from a friend who is really depressed. Instinctively, we come out of ourselves and are there for another. It doesn’t matter what is said, but when a little comfort is shared, we hang up and feel a little more content with ourselves. We’re reminded of who we really are and what we can offer one another.
6. Practice Gratitude. In The Hiding Place, Corrie Ten Boom tells of her involvement in the Dutch resistance during World War II, and how she managed to survive Hitler’s concentration camps and afterward travel the world as a public speaker. “Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives, is the perfect preparation for the future only He can see.” The practice of gratitude carried her through the years of torture and the death of her family members. At one point, she even practiced gratitude for the fleas, for they were a part of “all circumstances.” She was a courageous woman who brought to life the precious perspective of seeking the gift in everything. I’ve learned to always make your gratitude bigger than your circumstances. Here’s a quick exercise to try that proves that gratitude can change your outlook. Pick any person you know and ask yourself, what do I appreciate about this person? Try to write down at least ten things. Now observe how your attitude toward that person has shifted. You can even take it a step further and let the person know what’s on your list. Gratitude changes everything. What you appreciate appreciates. Gratitude is like a muscle. Just as it is strengthening, so it has to also be strengthened. It has to be practiced.
7. Find Strength From Within. Whether you call it faith or inner well-being, security ultimately must come from within. I’ve learned this in my work with addictions for the past two decades. To get well, drug addicts and alcoholics have to find some kind of strength beyond their own capacity. They have to come to grips with the brutal facts that there is no security outside of themselves. Alcohol won’t do it. Drugs won’t do it. Food won’t do it. Order and control won’t do it. Fame and money and notoriety won’t do it. Security is an inside job. There is simply not enough stuff in the world to fill the emptiness inside of us. It’s an inside job. William Stafford’s journey with words began most mornings before sunrise. This simple poem, “The Way It Is,” written 26 days before he passed, expresses brilliantly what it means to find an inner place of calm and steadiness in the midst of the vicissitudes of life.

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

Uncertainty is integral to life. Without uncertainty there would be no room for new possibility. In our willingness to accept uncertainty, solutions will spontaneously emerge out of the problem, out of the confusion, disorder, and chaos. The more uncertain things seem to be, the more secure you can feel, because accepting uncertainty is the path to freedom. In the wisdom of uncertainty lies the freedom from our past, from knowing, from the prison of past conditioning. Through the willingness to step wholeheartedly and fully into the unknown, we step into the field of possibility. When we discover both inner well-being and wisdom amid the uncertainty, we find security.