Tragedy As A Gift In Disguise

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Over the years, I have learned that every life circumstance, even a tragedy, provides an opportunity to grow. A friend recently told me of how she had lost her farm and her home that she loved so much in a horrible fire. Everything she owned and collected for more than sixty years was destroyed.

“At moments like this,” she said, “you stand at a fork in the road. If you take the familiar path, you collapse, give up, and feel hopeless, resentful, and defeated. You focus on the negative and lose yourself in the ‘problem,’ pointing to your misery to rationalize your pessimism. It takes little effort to be a victim and to stay a victim. It’s the easy way out.”

“You can, however, take the other path, You can view your tragedy as an opportunity for a new beginning. If you decide to keep your perspective, you can look for growth opportunities, and find inner reserve of strength. By deciding to focus on the possibilities rather than the pain, I was able to come through the loss of every material thing I owned with more strength and contentment than I had before the fire. When I sat and reflected on the whole experience, I soon realized that the things I had collected over my lifetime were just that – things, and things that I no longer needed, things that were actually becoming an anchor to keep me on the shore of new growth. After considerable suffering from the loss, I began to realize that the important things in life are not things at all. No longer attached to my house, I moved closer to my grandchildren. This was a move I had been procrastinating for sometime.”

“As I adjusted to my new environment, I was invigorated. It felt as if I were starting the second half of my adulthood. Had I taken the path of misery, I would have remained resentful and depressed, and would have missed the opportunity to set sail to new possibilities.”

What gifts have been given to you that are disguised as tragedies? What is calling you to deepen your authentic presence? What are you waiting for?

Acceptance Of Our Darker Self: A Key To Leadership

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I was coaching an executive recently who was sent to work with me by her CEO. The presenting problem was an extremely low score on a recent 360 survey. The results of her feedback were that she was a competent professional but had very poor interpersonal skills. When I tried to get the executive’s perspective of herself, all I got was a positive presentation. She was, indeed, very difficult to reach to and to connect with, just as her scores indicated. Soon after this initial interview started I pointed out the discrepancy between her “polished presentation” of herself and the reality of how others were perceiving her. Her response was that she was always taught to be optimistic and positive, and with a smile on her face, she explained that she just couldn’t understand why the feedback scores were so low.

Her perceived “inauthenticity” was distancing her from those she was most interdependent upon. It’s hard to trust people that won’t be honest with themselves. In reality, she wasn’t phony; it’s just that she was only expressing a small spectrum of herself.

A lack of acceptance of the darker side of herself (e.g. insecurity, fears, resentments, worries, inadequacies) was preventing her from being perceived as “real,” and resulting in people distancing themselves from her. She was also incapable of assessing the full spectrum of what was happening in her culture because she couldn’t see it in herself.

Authenticity is compelling. It also enables you to lead with greater wisdom and resourcefulness. This is our work together: to face and accept some of the darker parts of our nature, the parts we avoid. Connecting with and accepting a fuller spectrum of oneself – especially the darker self – enables us to better connect with others.

Adventure With An Astrocytoma: How Illness Affects Impact

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Leadership requires the ability to see, sense, and realize new possibilities – in ourselves, our institutions and organizations, and in society. But where does the capacity to see these hidden possibilities come from? Where does the ability to see beauty – in a flower, an expression of art, or a human being – originate? Where do we derive the ability to see the potential in people? Where does loving and embracing life come from? Where does the realization of possibilities originate? It comes, in part, from knowing that nothing is permanent. Would we see the beauty in a flower, sunset, or human being if they lasted forever?

Last November, my sixty-one year-old brother, Hal, was in Vancouver to receive the award for Alberta’s Outstanding Family Physician. Three days before the award ceremony he had a seizure and a few days later came the grave diagnosis: a grade III Anaplastic Astrocytoma – an aggressive, inoperable tumor intersecting three lobes of his brain. The prognosis was grim. With no treatment, he would live an estimated three-four months; with aggressive radiation and chemotherapy, one-three years, and with a miracle, longer.

For the past six months I have traveled with Hal through what he has been calling his “Adventure with an Astrocytoma.” This so called ‘adventure’ is a grinding mix of aggressive radiation and chemotherapy treatments, with accompanying aphasia, memory loss, itching rashes, seizures, headaches, nausea, diarrhea, and so little energy that putting his feet on the floor in the morning can be called success. Hal’s limbs are getting skinny and his belly is growing from the steroids that prevent brain swelling. While the medication experimentation continues, the days when he is able to get himself outside into the sunlight and around the block is a ‘Mount Everest’ accomplishment. From his most recent MRI, we see that the tumor is presently stable, meaning the chemo and radiation have stopped its growth, at least for now. This is good news and beyond what was originally expected for this point in his treatment.

While I wouldn’t wish this hell on anyone, I am surprisingly grateful. Hal and I have spent more time together in the past six months than we have the previous twenty years. We’ve done some reminiscing; we’ve said “thank you” and have forgiven each other. Every time that we are together, we now say that we love each other. And we make time to hang out when he simply can’t get out of bed, can’t utter a word, and I have no clue what to say. This whole imperfect and human experience of being together in an awkward and clumsy way has somehow been a blessing. This reminder of the impermanence of life has strangely increased my life’s quality. My marriage and my relationships with my daughters have improved as I’ve slowed down and made a little more room to be a bit more present a little more often with those that matter most to me. Being open to the pain of Hal’s experience has deepened my experience of being alive, what matters in life, and what it means, more fully, to be human.

Below are six lessons I have learned thus far on this adventure with my brother and his astrocytoma:

  1. Don’t procrastinate getting to your bucket list. If you have some things you are planning to do when you retire, don’t wait. Do it now. The preciousness of life is not realized in the future. It is realized only in the present. There is no guarantee that the future will meet your current expectations.
  2. Take time to connect. Life is impermanent. Every relationship as you know it today eventually ends. Don’t wait for the end to be near to appreciate what is here now. Besides, we never know how abrupt and unplanned that ending can come. You really don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Don’t miss opportunities to be present to the people around you.
  3. Embrace the realization of life’s impermanence. The older you get, the more opportunities arise to be with people who are in the sunset of their life. Be with people when they are dying whenever you can. Embrace the experience of dying along with the pain, and your life, and the lives of those still around you, will be enriched.
  4. Take regular sabbaticals. In today’s world, with its relentless focus on success and productivity, we have lost touch with the balance between work and rest. Constantly striving, so many of us feel exhausted and deprived in the midst of abundance. Carve out regular time each week for rest, renewal, time with friends and family, and a few moments for yourself.
  5. Take care of your health. Don’t take your health for granted. Good health is a source of wealth. Being free of pain is one of life’s most vital blessings. While you can’t necessarily control your health, you can certainly influence it – with good habits. Later life will test your disciplines.
  6. Renew your spiritual strength. Times of loss afford us immense opportunities to renew, strengthen, and deepen our own personal and individual experience of spirituality. Take time each day to commune with nature and witness the intelligence within every living thing. Spend time in a sanctuary away from the demands of the world. Sit silently and watch a sunset, or listen to the sound of the ocean or a steam, or simply smell the scent of a flower.

The reminder of impermanence awakens you. The awareness of death magnifies what’s important in your life. Remember to stop and embrace fully that which surrounds you. The life you have today won’t last forever, and remembering this will help you appreciate and grasp it more deeply. And in turn, you will amplify your impact while enriching and nourishing the lives of those you lead and enlarge. There is no better personal or leadership development than coming to terms with your humanity.

Leadership, Renewal, and Being Present

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It’s been a good summer so far. Usually I spend my down time taking on new projects, marketing, or writing. I like keeping myself busy and productive. But I resisted that this summer, and gave myself permission for some unproductive time. For the entire month, I just hung out with my family, got caught up on some reading, made time for friends, and visited my grandson. No expectations. No agenda. I also took time to just be present to the experience of life. I made room to enjoy some of the simple things of life I often neglect in a hectic travel schedule. I sat and actually listened to the sound of the creek in our back yard. I watched the finches build a nest outside my office window. I took in BodyWorlds with my seventeen-year-old daughter and pondered the absolute wonderment of the human body. I cheered on my 14 year-old’s two soccer teams. I listened to the wind and the rain. I watched an eagle teach her youngly to fly. And I took time to listen to the sound of silence. I took time to just be.

I feel rejuvenated and ready to gear up for a busy fall, determined to bring a deeper sense of presence to my work. My three-year-old grandson’s sense of awe and innocence inspired me to observe the world through a new set of lenses, and engage in it as if I were experiencing it for the first time.

As living organisms, we all need time for renewal. There is no better way for me to renew myself than to be present in the present, for this is my source of inspiration and discovery. I am truly excited about bringing a renewed perspective to my work this fall. One aspect of leadership and organizational culture I’m curious about is how being fully present to the experience of life in each moment impacts the leadership experience.

What are you doing to renew yourself by bringing yourself more fully into the present? What is your practice to come back to yourself? Not just during your holiday times, but also in the busy times.

How can your body help you be a better leader?

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An authentic leader guides and supports people to their own truth, thus developing sustainable leadership capacity in those they serve. To make this happen, people must first recognize that they have inner guidance and learn to trust it. Learning to tune into one’s own harp strings and live with periods of doubt is a life-long process. My work involves teaching simple ways to contact deep wisdom from your authentic self and encouraging you to trust and follow it.

From my experience, many physical ailments are connected to not living in alignment with one’s inner guidance. With so many voices clamoring for attention, listening to and connecting with your inner advisors has become a foreign language. Consequently, we do not trust and take care of ourselves according to our inner guidance. In my upcoming residential retreat, we will explore how helpers and those in the healing profession lose their center and get burned out, then develop methods to restore themselves.

On the journey of learning to contact your deep wisdom, the body is an important source of guidance. One of my early teachers, Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, said that illness can be considered a Western form of meditation. In the West, where the meditative tradition is not strong and people are not in the habit of stopping periodically to become quiet and reevaluate their lives, illness – and sometimes only a serious illness such as a heart attack or cancer – stops a person so they can step back and take stock of what is important to them.
This is a common experience of people with serious illness. They often make a profound assessment of their life and values and rededicate themselves to those things of most importance.

But you don’t have to wait for a serious illness to connect to yourself. Pay attention to any ailments you are currently experiencing: back pain, headaches, intestinal issues, especially ulcers, discomfort in your joints, any kind of chronic pain or discomfort. While painkillers can certainly suppress the symptoms, be sure that you take time to listen for the root causes. What is your body telling you to attend to?

Your body is a wonderfully tuned instrument. Are you hearing the message? How has tuning in to your body been helpful for accessing inner wisdom? How does listening to inner wisdom make you a wiser, more thoughtful, compassionate leader?

What You Resist, Persists; What You Appreciate, Appreciates

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“No one is to be called an enemy, all are your benefactors, and no one does you harm. You have no enemy except yourselves.” — Saint Francis of Assisi

I love helping people succeed in business by helping leaders succeed with people. What I’ve learned is that it’s a lot easier to talk about how to get along with people than it is to actually do it. Dealing with differences of opinions and goals, differences of approaches, or differences of personalities creates some of our most frustrating and rewarding opportunities for growth and contribution. We are here to learn, and people who trigger frustration in us can often be our greatest teachers. Here are some thoughts about dealing with resistance.

I live in the beautiful foothills of the Canadian Rockies and with our warm summers, we like to stay home in the summer and take our holidays in the winter. In addition to writing, developing new products, and networking, my summers are for relaxing, spending time with my family, and puttering around the house. And this year I have come up against a roadblock.

Behind our home is a creek with a great swimming hole. It’s a sanctuary for our family and neighbors. I go there for quiet contemplation and renewal. And we have a trespassing issue. On hot days people love to come and use the creek, and, while the creek itself is public land, they have to trespass to get there. With the great weather this summer, there are a lot of people there making a lot of noise, disrupting my serenity.

While the police are happy to come when people light fires, bring in booze and drugs, or have loud parties late at night, we can’t expect the RCMP to be there every minute to chase away sometimes well-intentioned people who simply want to enjoy the creek. We are, for the most part, responsible for managing the problem on our own.

I, along with our wonderful neighbors, who share ownership of the land surrounding the creek, are up-in-arms. Signs have been posted, saying that we will prosecute trespassers. And the signs get torn down. When we get angry, we confront the trespassers and, for the most part, are either ignored or argued with. I feel like an activist this summer, fighting for a cause. I believe I am right and that, indeed, the cause is a worthy one.

However, I notice that the negative energy that flows into what we are trying to do actually generates increased opposition, creating “enemies.” What you resist, persists.

This is a good opportunity for me to realize that the problem is not “out there,” it is in me. I teach people not to be victims. So now I get to practice what I preach. My “enemies” are not my enemies at all, but actually my greatest teachers.

My work is to let go of my craving for control in order to feel safe. I will never have enough power to control this situation. Letting go is about acceptance, but this is not the same as passive resignation. What I’m ultimately letting go of is the struggle. By accepted life on life’s terms, I can take responsibility for my situation and for all those events I see as problems, but still change the things I can. Val and I still love to walk the creek at night and will call the police if there are people down there breaking the law. In the daytime we will continue to remind them that they are on private property and ask them to be respectful of the land and surrounding property. Not with resistance or anger or negativity. Simply a request. And we will have continued venting sessions with the neighbors as we get support for expressing and letting go of our anger about an impossible situation.

I teach leaders that their ability to influence will come from their own peace of mind. When we are present, relaxed and calm amidst the turmoil, then we are able to make contact. And with this contact comes impact. When stressed or fearful or angry or preoccupied, the connection is broken.

How is your inner state? What are you resisting? What do you need to let go of to make room for serenity? What you resist will persist. What you let go of won’t necessarily give you what you want, but an inner state to create much more.

As I write this blog my sixteen-year-old daughter, Chandra, played the youtube video of Nick Vujicic, the man with no arms and no legs who reminds groups about focusing on what you have, not what you don’t have. That’s my focus for today, to stay conscious each moment and pay attention to my blessings, not my frustrations. What you appreciate, appreciates.