Difficult conversations, Relationships, Well Being
For my fellow conflict avoiders out there – here’s a powerful reframe
The last few months have been interesting ones, and much more challenging than usual. I’ve found myself in the middle of several conflicts and am still actively navigating my way through some of them. Like most human beings I don’t like conflict and have often looked for ways to avoid it in the past. Maybe I avoid having the difficult conversation or just avoid the person entirely. Navigating these murky conflicts has also been a struggle because I crave certainty. It’s often easier to handle a bad outcome if we know what the outcome is. The process of navigating through ambiguity, of uncertain outcomes, of not having closure can create a lot of angst. It’s been hard to sit with. But I’ve made a conscious choice to lean in rather than run and to get more comfortable with the things that are difficult to sit with. So sit I must. It’s been challenging too because I value relationships. I pride myself on showing up as a relationship-oriented person. I’ve worked hard to cultivate that over the course of my career – early on I got feedback that I tended to focus on my goals and objectives while ignoring that was important to others. I took the feedback seriously. I worked hard to bring more balance into my approach. To not be the kind of leader and colleague who only focused on task at the expense of relationships. To model servant leadership. To show up as a true collaborator with my peers. To put people first. Our inner critics will scare us out of conflict if we let them But no matter how much work I’ve done and no matter how many tools I have in my belt – all this outer turbulence has still managed to kick up inner turbulence in my mind. My inner saboteur has grown louder and louder as the conflict intensified. Maybe I haven’t worked hard enough on the feedback from early on? Maybe I’m bad at relationships after all? I should be better at difficult conversations at this point in my life. I should have learned all these skills by now. What kind of coach am I if I can’t practice what I preach? My saboteur has been using every trick in the book to get me to run away from the hard work and just throw in the towel. Conflict is scary after all. It’s funny how the mind works and how it plays tricks on us. For a long time, I think I viewed my worth as a human through the lens of my accomplishments. How much money did I earn this year? How many fortune 100 clients do I have? How many times have I had articles published? How many certifications do I have? These were the benchmarks by how I measured my success. And I say “were” very intentionally because I don’t think about these things so much anymore. I’ve learned to let go of many of these metrics as a
October 29, 2024
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7.7 min read
Emotional Intelligence, Leadership
What Pain Can Teach Us About Leadership
“Shelley, I’ve had this ring for a while.” She took it off her finger and showed me. “I gave this to myself as a gift after I completed a really big climb.” I looked down. It was a simple silver ring with a mountain scene carved into it. I said nothing in reply. I was still trying to catch my breath. “Inside I had it engraved,” she said. As she held it up, I could see the etching in the sunlight. “Inside it says – ‘We do not conquer the mountain, we conquer ourselves’.” I choked back the tears and looked away. Luckily, I was already at the back the group, where none of the other hikers could see me. And I thought to myself, now it begins… —————– Every 4-5 years I take what I often refer to as my spiritual pilgrimage. The first one was Kilimanjaro. The second was the high passes around Everest. I pick something insanely hard that requires deep physical exertion and then I go off, by myself, on a guided expedition with other hikers I’ve never met before. Why do I do it, I’m not really sure. I’ve found that at these times I’m usually searching for something. Maybe I’m searching for meaning. Maybe searching for inspiration. Often at these times I’m at a crossroads in my life and wondering what the next challenge or direction should be. There’s something magical that happens when you put your body through an extreme test. At least for me. Your mind switches off. The experience forces you to get into your body in a different way. To become more present to it. To become aware of it. To learn to rely on it. Things seem simpler, less complicated. The stories and lies we tell ourselves fall away on the trail. The only thing that really matters at that moment is pushing yourself to keep going. To take step after another painful step. The other thing that often falls away is ego. In that moment when Cindy showed me her ring, it annihilated what was left of mine. I had sized her up earlier in the day, I looked to be in better shape. I’d done more challenging hikes in the past – mind you it was the very distant past. But still. I should have been crushing day 2. And instead, I was the caboose. With more and more distance opening between me and the rest of my group no matter how hard I pushed myself. The shame was rising in my cheeks. But I just couldn’t go any faster. I hadn’t trained enough. I had assumed my base level of fitness would carry me through, and it wasn’t. The importance of pain in cultivating humble leadership The physical world can teach us so many important lessons. I talk a good talk about humility and cultivating humble leadership or servant leadership. It comes up all the time in leadership sessions. Just yesterday I was talking about the
October 16, 2024
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5.7 min read
Difficult conversations, Leadership, Relationships
The Beautiful Thing About Conflict
The last few weeks have been tumultuous ones, and I’ve been shying away from writing this blog, waiting for things to settle. It’s the space that often brings the insight. And it’s starting to emerge, where I can now come up for a little bit of air and reflect on the last few weeks. The last month or so has been a powerful opportunity for me to lean into conflict. It’s not my favorite thing to do. Many of us really struggle with conflict, it’s one of the top topics that comes up in coaching sessions with my clients, and I’ve been hit with it from all sides lately – on the family front, on the business front and even on the friendship front. I think at times we go through tumultuous periods, it’s part of the wonderful and annoying mystery of life – it’s an amazing reminder that we’re obviously not in control and life is full of ebbs and flows. I can feel a lot of things shifting in my life as I have grown as a coach, as a leader, as a wife, and the bottom line is that often the status quo behaviors that we have become accustomed to cease to work with new levels of awareness. Relationships may fall away as you outgrow them. Advocating for ourselves in different ways, asserting new boundaries or expectations might create tension as we work to negotiate new agreements. What is the conflict trying to teach you? The question I often ask myself in times of conflict is – What can I learn from this experience? How can I grow? Sometimes it’s super hard to see the silver lining on the conflict cloud, especially when we don’t get the outcome we were hoping for. Maybe a cherished friendship comes to an end. Maybe a business relationship comes to an end. There could be sadness, disappointment and grief on the other side of conflict. These emotions are scary, and we often try to avoid them. When I ponder these potential outcomes, maybe conflict is an opportunity to experience these darker emotions, to really feel them, and to learn to live with them. Maybe it’s an opportunity to go deeper into ourselves and recognize the pieces of us that need to heal. Maybe it’s an opportunity to learn how to communicate with the people we care about more effectively. Or all of the above. I’ll turn to the situation about my family. I’ve been navigating a tricky situation with several family members where an inheritance is concerned. Tensions have flared. Hidden agendas have been uncovered that have resulted in a lack of trust and prevented open and honest conversations. The conflict is often not about the surface issue The interesting thing about family is the presenting issue is often not what the conflict is really about. Still waters and root causes often run deep. We’re not talking about huge sums of money. We’re not talking about large tracts of land. There’s
September 4, 2024
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6.3 min read
Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Spirituality, Well Being
Want to feel more joyful? Think about this.
Our failure to know joy is a direct reflection of our inability to forgive. Charlotte Jojo Beck I came across this quote the other day and it caused me to really pause and think. As human beings, we tend to look at joy as something that’s attained once we’ve completed a series of steps. I see this a lot in my coaching practice. I’ll have joy when I get this promotion. I’ll be able to tap into joy when I no longer work for this horrible boss, or when I feel more confident in my skillset. I’ll have joy once I understand what my purpose and my true path on earth really is and have a plan for making it happen. It’s not wrong to seek change, to want to grow or to want to improve our circumstances. The problem is in thinking that “fix” alone will solve the problem of not having enough joy in our lives. Our mental construct often frames joy as something we must earn. The truth is joy is accessible now – in our imperfect lives, our imperfect careers, our imperfect leadership, our imperfect team and family dynamics. The issue is that we can’t often access it because we’re too busy blaming ourselves or others for the perceived problems in our lives. Forgiveness is often an inside job Beck’s quote speaks to the path we need to take to access what’s already available to us. And more often than not, the person we need to forgive the most is ourselves. Forgiveness is about letting go of the protective armor Or maybe anger and resentment is projected outwards at the people around us. We find ourselves locked into judgment and blame of others for the things they have done to us. The things we have been subjected to – unfair expectations, abuse, trauma, bad leadership, bullying, being taken advantage of. The list could go on and on. Perhaps it shows up as passive aggressiveness or full blown aggressiveness with others. Or maybe avoidance. Forgiveness begins with the intention to let go of the armor of blame and defensiveness and a willingness to touch the vulnerability that sits underneath the anger. Perhaps it’s the shame of having been humiliated publicly. Or of having been abandoned and feeling isolated and unwanted. Or the regret and shame of not standing up for ourselves with a difficult person. When we can face that vulnerability and meet it with compassion and love for ourselves, we find ourselves on a much more joyful path. For a long time, I carried a lot of anger and resentment about a previous work situation. It was years ago, when I had just transitioned my career, and found myself in a situation where I had been set up to fail. It wasn’t until I really leaned into the feeling that was sitting under the anger – humiliation, and allowed myself to feel it without trying to push it away, that I could let it go.
June 20, 2024
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4.4 min read
Authenticity, Mindfulness, Well Being
Be Careful Who You Put on a Pedestal
The last few weeks have been interesting ones – for a good chunk of March my husband and I took a vacation with my parents to Africa to go on safari. I’ve been in a reflective place since then, thinking about the fun and excitement of the trip, but also thinking about how far I’ve come in my relationship with my parents, particularly with my father. Family relationships can be tough, especially parent – child ones, and then there’s the added aspect of how we as children tend to put our parents on a pedestal. It’s hard not to, when you think about it. I’ve lived it, many of my clients have lived it, and while well intended, there are several unintended consequences in doing so. It manifests in a lack of decisiveness when it comes to things like career choices, life choices, increases codependency and can really muddy the waters where clear thinking is concerned. When I think about the impact this had on my life, it’s profound. It’s hard to just “be,” when you’re so busy trying to be someone else’s version of you. Inadvertently and unconsciously, we give our power away and when we do we grow increasingly resentful of the other person. Why can’t he see me for who I am? Why can’t he appreciate me for the person I’ve become? We feel pushed or compelled to do things out of family obligation and anger and resentment builds and builds. Left unchecked it can completely poison the relationship. I thank God it didn’t in the case of me and my dad. When I truly think about it, for many years I was playing the part of the victim who had to do what he said without any choice in the matter, and my dad was the persecutor in our dynamic. The more the anger built, the more I distanced myself from him – my tactic was to isolate myself rather than fight. Over the years I’ve worked hard to pull him down from the pedestal I created. And it’s important to note that I was the one that created it. Pedestals keep us from being able to truly love Putting others on a pedestal isn’t fair in two ways. It’s not fair to yourself, because in effect what you’re doing is giving your power away as you seek approval and validation from the person on the pedestal. But it’s also not fair to the other person. It puts pressure on them, it creates unrealistic expectations that they need to live up to. It creates a sense of division, of separation. And the greater that sense of separation, the harder it is for love to enter the equation. The harder it is to see that person for the truth of who they really are – a flawed, messy, beautiful human being, doing their best, worthy of unconditional love all the same. That’s how I see my Dad now. And I appreciate him for who he is, just
April 3, 2024
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6.3 min read
Emotional Intelligence, Mindfulness, Well Being
Pain is Inevitable, Suffering is Optional
The title of today’s blog is a quote that has been attributed to many notable talking heads, including the Dali Lama. And it’s the events of last week that really brought it home for me, as in the wee hours of Friday morning, when I should have been peacefully sleeping, I was awakened by a massive migraine attack, complete with nausea and all the fun things a migraine can throw one’s way. The bottom line – it was an unrelenting 24 hours of hell. And not just on the physical front. Especially not only on the physical front. In-between unsteady trips to the bathroom my mind was awash with anxiety. What’s going to happen to all my client appointments tomorrow? Cancelled. What’s going to happen to my blog I need to finish and get out by the end of the week? Not happening. What if this wrecks my business? Clients are going to think I’m unreliable. How am I supposed to plan and manage my engagements when something like this can strike without a moment’s notice? What if this puts undue stain on my marriage? Me being up keeps him up. How much can my husband really take? It left me drained, emotionally and physically, but also quite reflective. Because at some point, in the midst of all the strife, strain and obsessive worrying, I realized I had a choice. Not a choice of whether I get to have migraines – unfortunately I don’t have that kind of power! But a choice on what perspective I get to take on the situation. And it’s the perspective I take that leads directly to how much suffering I must endure. What does it mean to suffer? To break this down, let’s think about what suffering means. It’s worth noodling on this considering the Buddha said many a time that “life is suffering.” On the surface of it, not the most upbeat way to view our journey around planet earth. But it depends on how you look at it. I’ve often defined suffering as “resistance to what is.” Resistance creates pressure. And pressure creates stress. And so, when folks enter my virtual office these days and say things like they’re burned out and stressed out, I believe them. They are. But I also say the solution lies not so much in having more time in the day to address a never-ending list of to-dos, but more in the way we manage our energy relative to the problems life throws our way. Because unfortunately, like it or not, life will throw us problems. That’s the one thing we can always count on. The real problem is we think we shouldn’t have problems. And therefore, we spend a lot of time resisting said problems, which creates a lot of suffering. Recognize any of these? If only I’d had a better childhood, then I wouldn’t be navigating all the difficulty I am right now. They were wrong to fire me. If they had really valued me,
February 26, 2024
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5.5 min read