Newsletter Articles

Courage: Engage in a New Approach to Social Entrepreneurial Success

Sun, 31 Jan 2016 05:48:00 GMT

Have you ever stopped and wondered why you get emotionally triggered like a minefield? Sometimes you may see it coming but can't stop it. Other times it explodes in your face before realizing what is happening.

Maybe this doesn't happen for you at all, and that is fantastic.

Maybe it hasn't happen for you yet because you have never challenged yourself to get out of your comfort zone. Maybe you had a brief emotional encounter and quickly retreated into the illusionary safety of your comfort zone, and never peeked out again of fear it may happen again.

As a social entrepreneur, close to launching your entrepreneurial enterprise, or just having won the trust of your volunteer team, being emotional triggered can have devastating consequences for your social entrepreneurial success and your desired social impact in the world.

Imagination: The invisible force

Imagine if there was a way for you to be free of negative emotions and their impact on your health, relationships and social entrepreneurial success. Imagine you knowing how to handle - in the moment - all of the unwanted feelings and emotional triggers you experience from time to time, even the ones that cause you emotional pain.

Imagination is not just a powerful word. Imagination is powerful beyond comprehension. Imagination connects us with invisible forces. Imagination sparks curiosity and wonder, something most adults are sadly trading for "Right" answers. Why? Because that is what is expected and rewarded in our society. Imagination and natural curiosity and wonder are progressively eroded when entering the education system. Independent thought, imagination and intuition are rarely rewarded or encouraged. Yet, that is what is called for us to break free of emotional triggers that are caused by suppressed and unexpressed emotions.

Letting Go: The Pathway to Surrender

David R. Hawkins in his book entitled "Letting Go: The Pathway to Surrender" presents an approach that he emphasizes to be quite different to the world's usual methods. It is similar yet different to approaches I have come across in my work and life-long-learning. It's a problem-solving approach with a difference. Usually we become aware of a feeling or emotion we experience, and almost instantly our mind kicks in starting a drawn-out attempt at problem solving. The Pathway to Surrender promises a mechanism that brings fast and easy results, and can unlock our innate capacities to enable us to live a meaningful, peaceful and successful life. The most wonderful insight offered is that these states and capacities for - happiness, success, health and well-being, intuition, unconditional love, beauty, inner peace and creativity - are within everyone of us. Yet the question is posed, "How can something innate to us - a natural part of our being - be so difficult to attain, or ought we ask "How can we awaken to our innate capacities? Or "How can we reconnect with our innate capacities?"

Surrender: Does it conjure joy or resistance in you?

Over the years, I became aware of how much resistance there is to the concept surrender. I first used the word "surrender" in the mid-90's during a conflict resolution workshop, I led as part of my organisation development role, in Local Government. I was totally unprepared for the huge resistance and outright rejection of the word surrender in the context of conflict resolution. The word surrender brought up strong emotions and was used synonymously with capitulations - giving self up to the enemy to be tortured and executed or walking away from everything that was close to the heart. Surrender was seen as a difficult endevour and a last resort. If you are experiencing a similar emotional reaction or resistance to reading/hearing the word surrender, it may initially be challenging for you to read on. Hence my suggestions is to start with imagination. Imagination's extraordinary transformational power is a grossly underutilised. I trust the following quote will inspire you to experiment with imagination, and slowly start to see "surrender" as a freeing future from emotional attachment and turmoil.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand. Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.” ~ Albert Einstein

"Imagination...is the preview of life's coming attraction is profound. What occurs to me, as I write this, is my experience of instant recognition when one of my "life's coming attraction entered my present." It called for big decisions in an environment of uncertainty and lack of know how, yet I made them effortless within seconds. One of my "life's coming attraction" was founding and launching World Leadership Day. It was the most natural thing to do. Another was to enrol in Coach Training, and become a professional coach, leaving secure employment and starting my own international coaching and training company.

Understanding the Letting Go Mechanism

Hawkins emphasises the importance of understanding the Letting Go Mechanism as it is quite different than the world's usual methods. The mechanism developed follows a specific process that is described in Chapter 16. In essence:

"Don't look for answers; instead let go of the feelings behind the question.
When we are surrendered on the feeling behind the question, we can let go of any other feelings that we might also have about what seems to be the problem
When we are finally and fully surrendered on all components, the answer will be there waiting for us. We won't have to look for it."

Putting the Process into Action

I have recently applied the process to a technology-related problem that brought up feelings of disappointment, sadness and loss. Following the Surrender Process, I focused on letting go of the feelings behind the questions, which I had been churning over in my mind. The more I focused on letting go of the feelings behind the questions, the more my feelings intensified. I remembered the saying, and truth behind it "What we focus on grows." Realising this, I shifted my focus on my breathing. This worked fast. As it was late I went to sleep. The next morning the answer was waiting for me "keep an open mind and explore how the project can go ahead." I am happy to say "The project is going ahead. in inspiring ways"

Stop - Reflect

Before using the process, stop and reflect on your thinking as this will determine your results.

Do you say to yourself "I believe it when I see it" or "I see it when I believe it"
Imagination will get you to the believing state where you can see and experience the success of the Surrender Process.
If you wait to see it before you believe it, it won't work unless you shift your belief.

A Revealing Truth That Can Transform Your Influential Leadership

Thu, 14 Jan 2016 00:12:00 GMT

"Nothing in the future is guaranteed, but what is a guarantee is if you don't turn yourself into the person you want to be, you zero your own chances."
~ Col Chris Hadfield, Astronaut

Staying within your comfort zone may give you the illusion that you are safe. Yet it is not a place where you grow and evolve and make yourself 'future ready', which simply means ready for the future you create or encounter

Did you ever consider that staying in your comfort zone could kill your dreams and aspirations?
Did you ever wonder why some brilliant or talented people never got anywhere in life yet others who seemed less brilliant were highly successful?

You live in a VUCA world - a world that is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. Staying in your comfort zone guarantees you zeroing your own chances. I liken this to 'self-imprisonment'. Is this a life worth living? I don't think so. Do you?

It's A Choice Between Life and Death

A few years ago I found myself in the Emergency Department waiting for emergency surgery. My blood pressure was very high, aggravated by severe agoninising pain from my fractured shoulder socket and arm ripped out of its socket. I had an identical injury a couple of months earlier on the opposite shoulder that had not fully healed. The nurse attending to me, blindly followed protocol of frequent blood pressure checks without making the connection between her action and my critically raising blood pressure. The pressure of the inflated blood pressure cuff escalated the pain in my injured shoulder and with it my blood pressure. I asked her to stop but she didn’t. She simply ignored my desperate pleas.

With telling me that I would not be going to the operating theatre till my blood pressure came down, the nurse further escalated my fear and frustration, and consequently my blood pressure. How on earth could the blood pressure come down when with every blood pressure check she drove the blood pressure higher and higher?

I felt like a trapped animal. I felt unsafe. I felt extremely vulnerable as my life was in the nurse’s hands. There was no one else around.

Suddenly I realised if I don’t stop her right now, I will not get out of this hospital alive. With an amazing confidence in my voice, which surprised me in hindsight, I ordered her not to touch me again, and I told her I would go to operating theatre no matter what. And I did. A few minutes later the operating theatre called for me to be to be taken to the theatre. The surgeon noted the high blood pressure and calmly said “Elisabeth we need to operate to bring your blood pressure down”.

I finally could relax. I felt relieved, safe and grateful all at the same time. I made it. I will live. The next morning my blood pressure was back to normal.

Now this is a traumatic example of being propelled out of the comfort zone. In terms of getting out of my comfort zone, nothing worse could ever happen than looking death in the face. Yet, it demonstrated to me the personal power we have when we put it to the test. By acting in the moment I have increased my chance to live by 100%.

The Point: You don’t have to, and certainly don’t ever want to, wait until your life is on the line. Become more aware of, and pay attention to, the subtle ways you zero your own chances by resisting to get out of your comfort zone.

Danger Zone: Not Knowing What You Don’t Know

You will have heard people talking about changing one’s mindset. Changing one’s mindset from what to what is the question. How can you change your mindset when you don’t have a reference point? And why would you want to change it? What’s in for you to change it?

Up till recently mindset has been a fairly loose concept for me. Having explored it in great detail recently, several light bulbs went off simultaneously and many things clicked into place for me. I have come to realise that knowing and understanding mindsets is fundamental for everyone because it determines our quality of life, relationships, our achievements and influential leadership.

Understanding mindsets is critical in making sense of the often senseless, and incomprehensible behaviours in people, especially of leaders in business (often referred to the CEO disease) and public life. It is especially critical for leaders who find themselves under enormous stress, exhibit behaviours that put them at a high risk of facing huge losses.

A Revealing Truth for Where it Hurts the Most

We all have basic qualities like intelligence, talents, aptitudes, personality and character, although our initial basic qualities may vary. Where we differ is in the belief we hold about these qualities that drive our actions. Our belief determines, frequently without our conscious awareness, whether we operate from a ‘fixed mindset’ or a ‘growth mindset’.

Mindset is a ground-breaking idea discovered by Carol Dweck in decades of research on achievement and success. Her research has shown her that whatever mindset people have in a particular area will guide them and determine radical different outcomes. It’s not about whether human qualities can or cannot be cultivated. It’s about the consequences of people's thinking, and the action they take that determines their outcomes.

In Essence: When you believe your intelligence or personality is a fixed, deep seated trait you will operate from a 'Fixed Mindset' because of your belief there is nothing you can do about what you haven't got. On the other hand, if you believe that your basic qualities are only a starting point that you can develop, you will be open to feedback and ongoing learning. You are cultivating a 'Growth Mindset'. Having said that, it is not as clear cut having one mindset or the other. Most likely we all lean more to one or the other, before we become consciously aware that our mindset works either for us or against us.

So how can a revealing truth transform your influential leadership?

If you operate from a fixed mindset and hold an influential leadership position, the chances that you are being pushed out of your comfort zone, when you can't deliver what is demanded of you, are very high. So what do you do to save your credibility and reputation when you believe you have to be perfect and simply haven't got the qualities you need? You can open your heart and mind to the revealing truth of cultivating a Growth Mindset and transform your influential leadership. It may be challenging to make the shift to a Growth Mindset but I doubt that it will be as challenging as having to force yourself to lie, cheat and cover up trying to save your credibility and reputation.

I deeply appreciate the Mindset work of Carol Dweck for two reasons. Firstly, it restored the faith in leaders that I have lost trust in because of lying, cheating and cover up. In fact her work has given me an insight into the enormous stress these leaders may have been under to resort to these out of integrity tactics. I liken their experience to my looking death in the face - terrifying! Secondly, it provides me with invaluable tools for working with clients ready to embrace, cultivate and expand their 'Growth Mindset' to become the influential leaders they aspire to be, and live a life in integrity.