WHAT DO THE HOLIDAYS MEAN TO YOU? Five Ways to Stay Authentic During This Busy Season

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Last Friday — Black Friday — I delivered the closing address at a conference in the Fantasyland Hotel in Edmonton, then walked through the attached West Edmonton Mall to the food court for lunch.
I was shocked by what I saw: deal-hungry consumers jammed this huge shopping center wall to wall.
I couldn’t help but contrast the frenetic shoppers with the committed group of family and community support services leaders I had just presented to. I realized the mall was too crowded and crazy to enjoy lunch. I ended up, instead, in a quiet restaurant away from the mall with space and peace to reflect on my experience at the conference.
In the quiet I thought about the leaders in my presentation. They exemplified what I would call authentic leadership: men and women who are committed to substance over superficial, character over charisma, and service over self-interest, people whose inner compass guides their daily actions and who inspire trust and confidence by being honest and real. Being with them was such a contrast from my Black Friday experience, a sales bonanza that now marks the start of the holiday season.
My musings led me to reflect on the holidays, a time of demands, expectations, and obligations. But authenticity — the commitment to be piloted by an internal guide rather than solely by the expectations of others — asks us to stop and reflect on the question, “What does this holiday mean to you?”
In response, here’s my list. As you read it, think about what’s on your own list.
1. Renewal. In the dark of winter, the holiday lights are a wonderful reminder to stop and let them brighten us, both literally and emotionally. Even a small moment of noticing can be renewing and sustaining. This is a time of year to s-l-o-w down and find restoration where you can. It’s a time for revitalization, not depletion. What nourishes you? What gives you energy? What replenishes you?
2. Presence. A friend winters in Mexico. I spoke with her shortly after she arrived. “Mexico is so beautiful!” she exclaimed. I wondered if it was Mexico that was beautiful or if she was just noticing the beauty. When my wife, Val, was unpacking Christmas ornaments this week and hanging up her beautiful collection of bells, I stopped for a few moments to be present to the beauty of her joy, which in turn brought joy to me. Life is only lived now. What makes a task valuable and life meaningful is the quality of the attention we give to whatever we are doing in the present moment. Allow this time of year to remind you of that. While presents are appreciated, the best gift we can give is our presence in this moment.
3. Connection. Who do you want to spend time with? Who enriches your life? I plan to share this holiday season with Val, my daughters, my grandchildren, and very close friends. Connection is ultimately about love, and expressing and experiencing love. By being present in the moment, you can feel the love within yourself and those around you. Love is a state of being. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. When you share this connection with those you truly care about, you are nourished and fulfilled.
4. Reflection. One of the keys to making the most of your life is developing the ability to reflect. Go back over your day, your week, your month, and your year. Look back through your calendar. Whom did you see? What did they say? What happened? How did you feel? Reflect on your experiences, your choices in the past year. What were your successes and failures? What is there to celebrate? What did you learn? How will you apply those lessons? What are your intentions for the coming year?
5. Service. You will never experience joy if you are perpetually waiting until everything is okay with you, or the rest of the world, to feel thankful. You must catch joy as it presents itself, even in the midst of sorrow or suffering. In the craziness of life, gratitude inspires meaning and joy. The best measure of a person’s character is their capacity for feeling and expressing gratitude. And service awakens us to appreciation. Wherever you go, and whomever you meet, bring them a gift. The gift may be a compliment, a flower, or a prayer. Reach out to someone less fortunate than you. Pay it forward. Service is vital to a life well-lived.

I hope my list has inspired you to articulate what you truly value, and that you will live this season in close alignment with those values, rather than being driven by the tyranny of obligations. Happy holidays.

MASTERY AND THE POWER OF REFLECTION

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“Don’t aim to become a person of success; rather, aim to be a person of value.”
-Albert Einstein
A key to living authentically is the capacity to reflect. Reflect means to go back over; to study again. Go back over your notes. Go back over your thoughts. Go back over your day, your week. I like to take time at the end of the year to reflect upon what’s important in my life, going back over the year to be sure that in my pursuit of a standard of living I don’t lose track of the standard of my life. January is a good time to reset the compass and clarify my intentions for the upcoming year.
Reflection turns experience into insight.
–  John Maxwell
I kicked off 2019 by attending a five-day workshop called Come Alive at The Haven Institute on Gabriola Island on Canada’s west coast. Facilitated by my good friend David Raithby and his colleague, Linda Nicholls, the experience was filled with tremendous insights, reminders, and discoveries that supported my own authentic journey. It reinforced my reflections and renewed my vision for my life and work.
One of the significant take-aways from the retreat was the understanding of the difference between achievement and mastery.From very early in life we experience them both and often confuse the two. While they appear to be similar, the motive and results of each are distinct. Achievement, as defined here, is the attainment of a goal based on external motivators, such as recognition, approval, money, appreciation, status, or the opinion that others have of us. We work hard in school to get good grades. We build a successful business for the profit and prominence it promises. We lose weight so we’ll look good for the reunion. In an achievement-oriented world, one’s value is measured by external results, such as income, appearance, fashion, numbers of likes on social media, and how we compare with others.
Mastery, on the other hand, is about internal motivation. We experience mastery when we take our first steps, learn to tie our shoelaces, or overcome a difficulty. With mastery we experience the reward of curiosity and discovery, wonder and fulfillment. With mastery, we feel deep satisfaction as our world expands and we uncover new capacities. Rather than being externally motivated, mastery is inspired by an inner yearning to realize our potential and express who we are meant to be. As parents and teachers, we cultivate mastery by providing a safe learning environment and encouraging support. Rather than focusing on praise, approval, and external rewards, mastery is developed by encouraging children to reflect on their own endeavors, experience their own sense of amazement, and affirm themselves based on their own internal measurement of self-expression and gratification.
Alongside the experiences of mastery, we all experience, to some degree, the pull of achievement and its rewards. While achievement is a worthy aim at particular points in our life, it potentially creates a dependence upon something outside of ourselves that can blind us to the sustaining fulfillment of mastery. This reliance on external validation as a motivator is expressed when students are driven by grades rather than the love of learning, businesses are motivated by making a buck rather than making a difference, and success is motivated by an unquenchable hunger for fame and fortune. When a person’s worth becomes dependent on societal validation, a cycle of self-criticism, burnout, anxiety, despair, and ultimate emptiness results.
Being all too familiar with the barrenness of achievement motivated by the drive for approval and status, I am now emerging into a stage of life where achievement is being replaced by mastery. It’s fulfilling, less stressful, and a whole lot more enjoyable when you build a business based on self-expression and contribution than one driven by notoriety, the praise of others, and success defined by the marketplace. If you consider what you want to be said of you at your funeral, you will find your own definition of a life well-lived and discover that the people you seek approval from won’t even be at your funeral!
Twenty-three centuries ago, Aristotle knew something about the difference between achievement and mastery when he distinguished between what he termed “external goods,” such as prosperity, property, power, personal advancement and reputation, and “inner goods,” or “goods of the soul,” including fortitude, temperance, justice, compassion, and wisdom. He taught that the good life is not one of consumption, but one of the flourishing of these virtues.
Five suggestions for bringing more mastery into your life and living authentically:
1. Create a regular habit to pause and take a deep breath. S-l-o-w d-o-w-n and make room to pay attention to the voice within. Connecting to your breath opens you to connect with the present moment. While goals are important, life is not lived in some distant future. Life is lived now. The present moment is where meaning lies.
2. Take an honest inventory of what drives the actions in your life.Ask yourself some tough questions: What motivates you? How dependent are you on the validation and approval of others to define you? Whose voices are driving your life? What matters to you: achievement or mastery? “external goods” or “internal goods?” Take time to notice the impact that your motives are having on the quality of your life, your relationships, your health, and your leadership.
3.Listen to your body. Your body knows. I came down with a cold after the holidays. I don’t like to take cold medicine. I like to hear the symptoms clearly and listen accordingly. Paradoxically, I think it’s healthy to get sick periodically as it helps reset your immune system and gets your attention if you listen to what it’s trying to tell you. Perhaps the same thing could be said for pain. I stayed home for a couple days, relaxed, and used the time for some reflection. It went quickly and informed me to let go of some expectations I had of myself that were externally driven and not aligned with my authentic self. If you don’t listen to a cold and take care of it, it will turn into bronchitis; if you don’t listen to bronchitis it will turn into pneumonia; if you don’t listen to pneumonia….
4.Clarify your intentions. You may find that nothing needs changing in your life except how you approach your life. There’s nothing inherently wrong, for example, with having a goal to build a financially successful company. But living authentically requires a careful examination of your intentions. If you are depending on the success of your business to give you your worth and your place in the world, you’ll likely find it will never be enough. If, however, you are building a business in order to express yourself, help others grow, and bring value to the world, the journey can be far more meaningful and fulfilling.
5. Take stock of your relationships. Reflect on the people that are in your life right now and where you might need support to live with greater mastery. If you want a fulfilling life, hang out with people who will inspire and support you to be who you are. Coaches and mentors can be helpful to guide you to your own truth and your voice. Mastery, like authenticity, is a lonely journey but it can’t be done alone.
I’d love to hear your experience, perspective, and reflections on the difference between achievement and mastery, and what these insights mean to you.