You CAN'T Avoid Pain

Do you know what the biggest epidemic of our time is?

 

AVOIDING PAIN

 

We don’t want a bad grade

We don’t want a bad review

We run from disappointment

We run from troubled relationships

We avoid hard conversations

We don’t want to get on a scale

We don’t want to look in the mirror

Color the hair, cut out the fat, and smooth the wrinkles

We don’t want to be the ‘bad guy’

We think we have to stop crying

We pretend we are okay

We shun failure

 

We invest so much energy in feeling good, feeling happy. Protecting ourselves from feeling bad. It scares us. It stops us in our tracks. For some it is the primary motivator in life. Succeed—so I don’t fail. Achieve—so I don’t notice the hole in my heart.

 

I have learned many things from and with my clients but first and foremost my life has taught me that pain is an integral part of life and when we hide from it, we risk losing a piece of our own humanity.

 

Sometimes we have to roll up in a fetal position and shake with terror

Sometimes we have to eat crow

Sometimes we have to feel such heavy loss that our limbs no longer carry us

Sometimes we have to face our own weaknesses

Sometimes we have to accept responsibility for causing others harm

Sometimes we have to look in the mirror and accept that perfection does not exist.

Sometimes we have to do without, suffer, sacrifice, retrench, retreat and recover.

 

And that is the proof that we are human.

(Not to put too fine a point on it but …that is the proof that we are not G-d. )

 

That is the seeds of our survival. Learning how to live in the garden and learning how to journey out from it.  Learning how to accept ourselves for our humanity. Learning how to accept each other for theirs.

 

 

 

 

 

Take In The View Before You Set Your Goals

I had a great conversation today with a client who is in his 4^th year at the helm of his organization. He brought about a lot of change in his first three years and really set the organization on a firm foundation toward excellence. He described it as climbing a mountain. He is now standing on the top of the mountain.

Do you know the feeling? You just completed a huge project successfully. You met some really big goals. You overcame challenges to accomplish something worthwhile. And then there is a little sadness. It’s over. Or it seems to be. What do you do with your time and energy now? How do you transition into the next thing?

Back to my client: He is a little uneasy with the calm and the seeming cessation of challenging forward movement. He asks, “What is my job now? I know there are plenty of new goals to set and so much more we could be doing. And yet, it feels like we are still walking the same paths only improving our capacity to reach the summit by degrees.”

So I encouraged him to think about his metaphor. He is now at a plateau with a vista. He can look back down and revisit the journey and the accomplishment. He can acknowledge what he and his team have been able to do. He can also look out and around. This is an opportunity to be still for a while and just notice what is happening around him. What is out there? What new possibilities? What new terrain to traverse?

Do you allow yourself some time and space between action to just notice? What catches your attention? Give yourself just a little more time than feels natural to stop planning and proposing and just watch what might emerge.

Back to my client: We started the conversation about what he is noticing. What seeds of new ideas might be hidden in the discomfort of his stillness. What new perspective he had after his first set of accomplishments. We began to map some possibilities but not too firmly. He is starting to enjoy the exploration. There is more here.

 

How about you…?

 

Collaboration

You didn't get into this mess alone;

 

Find the folks

who are going to help you

get out of it. 

 

Are we too protective?

The outside in…

The senior leadership team is in their monthly meeting. As we zoom in, we watch as one member consistently puts her points forward in self-assured declarative statements. She tells you why she is right. She reminds you of her prior experience that puts her in a unique position to know. She lays out a pretty thoughtful plan. She hasn’t expressed any doubt, asked any questions (that she doesn’t already know the answer to). The people around the table know to expect this and they tolerate it because, actually, she is right a lot of the time. The team leader is internally scratching his head because he knows that important conversations are being shut down as a result of this dynamic.

 

The inside out….

Over the years, our life experiences act like irritations in the mollusk shell and we slowly coat ourselves with the nacre that protects our vulnerabilities. Layer after layer, year after year, we feel more protected, more girded against the many ways in which life can touch our soft spots and make us feel unsafe. And like the nacre, we start to see the beauty in that protection. We become resilient. Those coatings stop serving as a protection and start to define who we are. We would sooner lose our nacre than walk outside naked. Eventually, others never really get to see who we are in all our humanity, we sacrifice intimacy and connection. And sometimes, we even forget to set aside the shell when we are alone.

 

What if I told you the woman in the team meeting has always been under-estimated. Her gender or her color or her accent has triggered more biased events than she cares to recall. Her nacre is pride. It is proving. It is aggressive self-promotion.

 

The way forward…

The woman is trapped in her protection. She is so worried that she will be viewed negatively that she is missing how she is actually being perceived.

Her work is to start to crack her shell just enough that she can look inside.

Her work is to allow herself to feel vulnerable occasionally and understand she won’t fall apart.

Her work is to eventually risk sharing that vulnerability. It might look like saying, “I don’t know” occasionally. It might look like holding her tongue even when she thinks she should speak. It might mean taking a risk and asking for feedback from her colleagues on how she could improve their working relationship. 

Are you on that team?

What is your work?