Self Leadership Series – Part 1 #8

“What if we could put down our iPhones, our gadgets, our laptops and spend a little time just settling in?… Settling in to paying attention to what lies inside us. To see our troubles as a knock on the door to an invitation” – David Whyte The Door Beneath Everything July 2022

This blog series began close in – sharing the personal circumstances that I found myself in my mid-thirties. This was at its core, a deeply internal experience that would fuel my own self-leadership journey.  So, for this final post I wanted to touch briefly on how I came to be aware of and begin to cultivate connection with my ‘inner experience’.

First a little bit of background……

When we moved house seven years ago, I stumbled across an assignment from my teaching degree back in the early nineties – complete in its original Atari computer format. Looking at the assignment took me by surprise at some level, while at another level I thought ‘of course I was interested in that’. The assignment was about student wellbeing practices, a topic less heard of at that time. It was built around The Inner Game by Timothy Gallwey. I recall it being a lightbulb moment for me at the time – this idea that there was an inner experience open to all of us that, if we were open to it, could greatly improve the way we showed up in our lives and help us achieve higher levels of performance.

I didn’t understand ‘inner experience’ beyond this conceptual notion at the time but looking back, I could see that a seed had been planted (as knowledge often does).  It would take me another decade or more for this enquiry into the ‘inner game’ to come back onto my radar.

Roll forward …

So, until my mid-late thirties, beyond this idea of an ‘inner experience’ that had been planted years before, I had no way of understanding or accessing this ‘inner experience’.  Sounds bizarre now but that was my reality. I was disconnected from myself – from who I was, from what mattered to me, from the life and love that was all around me. All my time and energy was spent reacting to the outside world and simply trying to keep afloat in day to day.

The invitation into my inner experience presented as a little voice inside of myself that was telling me that ‘something needs to change’. I decided to listen to this little voice. Through guidance and direction from trusted others and commitment to a daily reflective journaling practice, I slowly learned how to observe my thoughts and feelings and how to connect with my body to notice sensations.

Over time, and with the discipline (on and off as is most often the case) to keep practising the skill of self-observation, I learned a lot about myself and my reactions and responses in life; I learned how to rebalance my previously very stressed nervous system with obvious flow-on benefits to my wellbeing;  I became better equipped to make decisions and choices in life from this place of a clear head; I cultivated clearer access to the wisdom of my heart and my internal knowing; I  learned how to acknowledge and make space for all feelings so that they can move through me rather than to ‘fuse’ with them which allows both of us ( the feelings and I) to more far more freely. Most importantly, I have been able to come into a more conscious relationship with myself. This is continuous – changing and evolving as my relationship to self continues to unfold.

Cultivating a conscious connection with our internal experience is a pathway through which we can begin to peel away the layers of conditioning of our socialised selves and rediscover our true nature. Over time it can become the source from which we show up and operate in our lives, from the inside -out. Some of what I now understand about cultivating this relationship with self (our internal experience) is that:

• Discovering and nurturing this connection to self is a lifelong process.
• There is no ‘end point’ as the more you learn about yourself, the more you realise there is to learn.
• It takes practice and discipline (choosing to focus Key # 1 – Attention on this)
• If we choose to attend to it many benefits can follow. The greatest of these is that this is a pathway to re-discovering our true nature.

So, if this notion of’ inner experience’ is new to you, as it was for me, I just wanted to let you know that that is a perfect place to begin. Set yourself with a clear intention to nurture this beautiful opportunity to develop a more conscious relationship with yourself; and open your journal and leverage the discovery questions in the Three Keys to Practising Self Leadership to get started:

• What’s alive in me now?
  • Body Sensations
  • Thoughts
  • Feelings

Enjoy the process of nourishing and cultivating this connection with yourself.

This is the final post in this Self Leadership Series. Thanks for your company.

This post is an excerpt from my draft book Activating Self Leadership.

Photo Credit: Bree Hughes 2022 (Taken on a trip to Mt Field National Park with Bree to see the Turning of the Fagus)

Self Leadership Series – Part 1 #7

This post introduces Three Keys to Practicing Self-Leadership to provide a practical way of attending to self-leadership.

At the heart of self-leadership is making a choice to live life and leader others more consciously, or simply put, with greater awareness. Self-leadership invites us to celebrate and acknowledge what is working well and to embrace the experiences from our daily lives – the good, the bad and the truly ugly – as opportunities to learn about ourselves and to grow.

This requires us to pause. When we give ourselves permission to pause, we can start to see more clearly what is happening within us and around us and can make better choices. We have the space to acknowledge our efforts and successes and to identify specific situations or experiences that we would like to attend to.

The Three Keys to Practicing Self-Leadership are designed to support this quest. The process begins with a scan of your internal experience and external environment to acknowledge what is working well and surfacing of a situation or experience (focus area) you would like to attend to. Focus area in hand, a series of structured questions are woven through the three-step process to support personal enquiry from observation through to action. Let’s take a look at the three keys:

          Key # 1 – ATTENTION  – “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” ― Mary Oliver

Scanning current internal and external realities to acknowledge what is working well and to surface a specific situation or experience (focus area) to attend to.

Key # 2 – OBSERVATION – “In the silence within, you will find relief, truth and the instructions you’ve been seeking. Go there. And listen.” – Brendon Burchard

Pausing to enquire and reflect on self and situation (as it relates to chosen focus area) to gain new insight and perspective.

Key # 3 – ACTION – “The future depends on what you do today” – Mahatma Gandhi

Undertaking planning and preparation to move from insight to action.

So how do we bring this to life? Each of the keys has a series of questions, that together help us to attend to self-leadership. If you would like to get started right away – grab yourself a journal or notebook and you can practice applying the questions as you read on.

Key # 1 – ATTENTION

Scanning current internal and external realities to acknowledge what is working well and to surface a specific situation or experience (focus area) to attend to.

Taking time to slow down enough to notice what is happening within us and around us is always the starting point for attending to self-leadership. It is in this process of slowing down that we can acknowledge what is working well for us and surface what needs our attention.

This first key to practicing self-leadership –  Attention – invites us to listen, acknowledge and intend.

We begin with a scan of our internal experience and external environment. These questions help us to pay attention, slow down and to make conscious choices. We don’t ask them just once and forget – they are the foundation questions that we need to revisit often!

• What am I noticing in my external environment?
• What’s alive within me right now – thoughts, feelings, body sensations?
• What am I most proud of? What’s working well?
• Does something need to change?

If you identify a specific situation or experience that you would like to attend to, then ask yourself:

• What’s the reality I want that I don’t have now?
• What can I do to improve this situation?
• What is my intention ?

Let’s look at the second key – Observation.

Key #2 – OBSERVATION

Pausing to enquire and reflect on self and situation (as it relates to chosen focus area) to gain new insight and perspective.

Developing our capacity to pause, observe and reflect is a key self-leadership skill. Just like the first key – it begins with us making a choice – in this case a choice to undertake some exploration and observation of the focus area at hand.  The pause part of this acts as a mechanism to challenge our pre-programmed reaction that might otherwise drive our reaction and behaviour –  to enable different perspectives and insights to emerge.

This second key to practicing self- leadership – Observation- requires us to pause, inquire and reflect.

Ask yourself the following questions to draw your attention to the broader context and to observe your thoughts, feelings and body sensations as they relate to your focus area:

• Situation
  • What do I need to understand in relation to the broader context/environment in which this situation is occurring?
  • How do I choose to be in relation to this situation?

• Self
  • What’s alive in me now in relation to this situation?
    • Body Sensations.
    • Thoughts
    • Feelings
  • What is making me feel that way?

 Grounding the observation

• • What really matters most to me and how does that apply to this situation?
  • What do I now know?

Let’s now look at the third key – Action.

Key #3 – ACTION

Undertaking planning and preparation to move from insight to action.

Taking the new awareness or insight it is now time to move into action to ensure that the change that is possible from this new awareness comes to life.

Taking action isn’t just about making major decisions. Small and simple steps and a short and sharp list of actions can be very effective, impactful and a great way to start. For example, and dependent of course on what it is you want to change, consciously starting your day with five minutes of mindful breathing, drinking two litres of water a day, turning your phone off at a set time each evening … and of course giving yourself permission for some down time are all example of small simple steps. Alternatively, your required action might take the shape of specific goals and leverage a goal-setting process that identifies the goal and what a successful outcome will look like, defines the behaviour required to achieve each goal, the action steps needed, and any support you will need to stay on track.

Sometimes our actions just apply to us and in other times they may extend to interactions with others – for example having a difficult conversation, communicating a boundary, or applying a new skill to a challenging situation. And sometimes the insight that we get means that the action we need to take is on a grander scale – an example of this might be finally deciding to make that long-yearned-for career change a reality or discontinuing an unhealthy friendship.

The third key to practicing self- leadership – Action- requires us to prepare, plan and act.

Identify the specific actions that you will take to move towards a positive outcome:

• What would be a helpful outcome for this situation?
• What action do I need to take to enable this outcome?
• What support do I need?

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There are so many things we are already doing well in leading our lives to have arrived at this moment. Let’s never lose focus of that and …..stuff comes up in life. There are conversations that we know we need to have, situations that we know we can and should positively influence, changes we know we need to make in our lives and times when we how we behave and the decisions that we make result in less than satisfactory outcomes. These situations/experiences, if left unattended and ignored can leave us feeling a misalignment between ‘who we are’ and ‘how we want to be’ and the actuality of what is.

As we travel the self-leadership path, we bring greater awareness to all of this. We begin to unpeel the layers of our socialised selves and get a little closer to the truth of who we. Choosing this path not only ignites change in ourselves, but naturally a source of inspiration for others.

Through applying the Three Keys to Practicing Self Leadership we can attend consciously to our lives and leadership. That includes celebrating and acknowledging what we are doing well and making a shift from reacting to life as it is thrown at us to noticing and attending to what matters.

The final post in this series will look at Self Leadership – An Inner Experience.

This post is an excerpt from my draft book Activating Self Leadership.

Photo Credit: Bree Hughes 2022 (Taken on a trip to Mt Field National Park with Bree to see the Turning of the Fagus)

Self Leadership Series – Part 1 #6

This sixth post introduces the idea of ‘mental real estate’ as a way of thinking about how you are allocating your energy and attention. You are invited to reflect on the things that matter most to you and consider the alignment or misalignment of that with your mental real estate to sharpen your focus on what needs to change.

‘Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.’ – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This post continues the theme of the personal story that I shared in the introduction to this series – that period in my life when I found myself in a state of overwhelm and was disconnected from myself. I wouldn’t recognise until sometime later was that one of the costs of disconnection was that I had lost sight of what truly mattered to me.

During this time, a leadership coach introduced me to the concept of ‘mental real estate’. It was a classic ‘light bulb’ moment. Our mental real estate is the capacity we have to hold onto, manage and navigate everything in our lives. Our work, our relationships, our family. Our day-to-day responsibilities in the many roles that each of us has: leader, partner, parent, sibling, child, friend, colleague, etc. Perhaps our community work or volunteer work at school or elsewhere.

The thing about mental real estate is that it’s not an infinite resource. There’s a limit to how much each of us can handle. Just like ‘real’ real estate, mental real estate has boundaries that can’t be expanded. The more we commit to extra things in our lives – the more we say ‘yes’ to every request or offer – the more our mind starts to push up against those boundaries.

Eventually it becomes like overpacking a suitcase and then still trying to get more in: something has to give. This is the point at which we are over committed.

The impact of this situation will be familiar to many leaders and other busy people. We start to lose focus on the things that really matter to us. We can get locked into ‘thinking and doing’ and lose the ability to ‘feel and be’. We can become overwhelmed, as I was. Stuck on a treadmill, we can become overly stressed – certainly stressed beyond a healthy level – and start making poor decisions. This diminishes our wellbeing and starts to affect our happiness, relationships, and overall performance.

It’s important to realise that, just like the real estate we live in, a lot of what is crowding our minds in these situations is clutter we don’t really need. It is noted in popular psychology that of the estimated 70,000* thoughts we have a day approximately 80 percent are not helpful in moving us forward. This mental clutter gets in the way of our ability to think clearly and make good decisions. It can lead to unnecessary overwhelm.

Reserving as much mental real estate as you can for the stuff that actually matters is the key here as our mental real estate is a precious commodity.

Activity – Allocate your mental real estate

Here’s a simple activity that might help you think about what you are allocating to your mental real estate and whether it could do with some decluttering.

1. Bring into your awareness the things that matter most to you in your work and life: those things – people, places and experiences that make you feel full, happy and satisfied. Allow yourself a few moments to write in your journal, or even on a piece of paper:
   • What matters to you most?
   • What is most important for you in your life and leadership?
2. Now ‘zoom out’ to take in everything that you have on your plate right now. All the tasks and roles that you are (or feel) responsible for right now.
   • Are you making a concerted effort to ensure that some of your mental real estate is reserved for those important aspects of your life? Or is this exercise simply too hard due to your mental real estate being overcrowded?
   • Is there an alignment? Is the stuff that is keeping you busy, and therefore occupying most of your ‘mental real estate’, contributing to those things that are most important to you?
   • What do you notice?
   • Does something need to change?

Bringing our conscious awareness to the things that matter most to us and the alignment or misalignment of how we are allocating our mental real estate to that is a great way of sharpening our focus on what needs to change. A leader I was working with shared their experience of this process:

‘When I did this exercise some years back, I noticed that where I was spending my energy and effort was definitely not in alignment with the things that mattered the most to me. The people I cared most for were simply not getting the allocation of me (my mental real estate) that they deserved, and that I truly wanted to make available for them. Work, and my inability to switch off from it, was completely and unnecessarily consuming me. It was impacting my sleep, I had little clarity of thought and I was often making poor decisions.

Something needed to change.

I set an intention around that making a change and through making different decisions and choices I was able to better align my mental real estate with what matters most. The concept of ‘mental real estate’ continues to be a useful frame for me to use on an ongoing basis when I invariably wander off track and need to re-navigate and focus my priorities.’

How are you currently allocating your mental real estate?

Does something need to change?

The next post in this series will introduce the Three Keys to Practicing Self-Leadership – aka the ‘how’ of practicing self-leadership where we will move from theory to action!

 *Joe Dispenza, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself (Hay House Inc., 2013).

This post is an excerpt from my draft book Activating Self Leadership.

Photo Credit: Bree Hughes 2022 (Taken on a trip to Mt Field National Park with Bree to see the Turning of the Fagus)

Self Leadership Series – Part 1 #5

This post defines self-leadership as being both a choice and a practice which helps us to honour ourselves and engage more consciously in life. This in turn positions us well to positively influence our own lives and the wider eco-systems of which we are a part.

Every thought we have, decision we make and action we take either moves us toward the life we want to live or away from it. Each of our decisions and actions are also either helpful or harmful (directly or indirectly) not only to ourselves but to the wider eco-systems of which we are a part.

Think about that for a moment. Sounds simple enough doesn’t it?

The truth is however, when we are moving at breakneck speed through our days and weeks, we can lose sight of this ‘simple’ map. We can find ourselves making decisions and choices that are misaligned to who we really are and the things that matter most.

Enter self-leadership.

What is self-leadership?

Self-leadership is a choice that we make and a practice that we enact to honour ourselves and to engage consciously in life. This is done with an intention to learn and grow and to positively impact self, others, and the broader systems of which we are a part.

Self- leadership is not passive, it is active. It requires us to bring attention to both our internal and external realities. It involves us making a conscious choice to attend to self-leadership and to find our own way of practicing it in our daily lives.

Through a commitment to self-leadership we move through life with greater levels of awareness and are better equipped to respond rather than to react to what life presents to us. Overtime and with ongoing attention, the practice of self-leadership helps us to peel away the layers of our social conditioning, re-discover our own true nature and become the author of our own reality.

Who does it apply to?

Self-leadership applies to all people. It doesn’t just sit in the domain of people who are in formal ‘leadership roles’ (where it clearly sits the heart of great leadership) Why? Because collectively as humans we have (mostly) been educated and socialised in a way that detracts from rather than enhances our connection with our own true nature.  This needs to change!

A focus on self-leadership puts us on the path where we can begin to do this – to peel back these layers of social conditioning and begin to re-claim the powerful and unique beings that we are.

When we practice self-leadership, we are consciously choosing to live and lead our lives with growing awareness about ourselves and the environment in which we operate.  This positions us well to positively influence our own lives and the wider eco-systems of which we are a part.

Getting started

Making the choice to attend to self-leadership is the first step. The next step is knowing what to focus on and how to go about it in every day.

This is where the final three posts in this series are designed to help!

The next post in this series will introduce you to the concept of ‘mental real estate’. It will invite you to reflect on how you are currently allocating your ‘mental real estate’ as a way of bringing attention to what might need to change.

This post is an excerpt from my draft book Activating Self Leadership.

Photo Credit: Bree Hughes 2022 (Taken on a trip to Mt Field National Park with Bree to see the Turning of the Fagus)

Self-Leadership Series 1 – #4 What’s your personal motivation for attending to self-leadership?

This post invites the reader to reflect on their current experience of life and the deeper motivation that might drive the decision to bring greater attention to self-leadership.

There are many life circumstances and experiences that can precipitate us making a conscious choice to bring greater attention to self-leadership. Perhaps some of these may also apply to you?

• Are you stuck in a rut of reacting to the expectations and demands of others?
• Do you regularly feel overwhelmed with everything work and life demand of you?
• Have you lost connection with what truly matters?
• Do you feel ‘foggy’ in the head and unable to make good decisions and choices?
• Are you falling short of having the level of impact that you want to have as a leader?
• Are you unable to give your time, energy and focus to the things that matter most in your life?
• Do you feel stuck on the ‘doing’ treadmill, not knowing where to begin to make change?
• Do you lack the capacity and ability you need to take your leadership and personal effectiveness to the next level?

While it may not necessarily feel like it, all of these can be symptoms and signs that there is an opportunity for to change your own reality through attending to self- leadership.

These circumstances and experiences, once acknowledged, can be the catalyst that helps us to take positive action on our self-leadership journey. I know this works because I’ve seen it happen on many occasions in the self-leadership work I’ve been privileged to support within a wide range of leaders. One described her personal change journey better than I would be able to:

I was feeling hopeless, helpless, full of misery. This affected my emotional and physical wellbeing. One day my inner self started shouting at me, ‘You need to change; you cannot keep living like this’. Through making a clear decision to no longer accept the status quo, I made a commitment to myself to activate a new level of self-leadership. This enabled me to open to new possibilities and start to make different choices in my life that step by step took me towards a different reality. I am glad I sought support and chose this path … Change is difficult in the beginning, but the end result is beautiful and worth it.

It is also possible that despite our level of dissatisfaction with whatever situation we find ourselves in that it still isn’t enough to convince ourselves to get started!

Enter – Personal Motivation.  Taking time to connect with the deeper ‘why’ that is motivating us to create change can be the difference between inertia and action.

What’s your personal motivation for attending to your own self-leadership?

There are four common personal motivations that when leveraged can drive people from inertia to action on their self-leadership journey. Which one/s resonate for you?

Do you wish to:

1. Experience greater levels of personal satisfaction, wellbeing and fulfilment?
2. Uplift your capability and effectiveness in leading self /others towards creating outcomes that matter?
3. Be the best role model that you can be for your children /younger generations/ employees/ colleagues/friends?
4. Make your unique and valuable contribution to making the world a better place and recognising that the most powerful way of attending to this is to activate and commit to self-leadership?

Your personal motivation for creating change may also come from acknowledging a little voice inside of you that is telling you that something needs to change such as it did for my client above – perhaps it’s to do with a need to attend to your wellbeing or an unhealthy situation that you find yourself in or having a courageous conversation that you know you need to have?

These are just a few examples. Your specific motivation might be different from all of these and that’s perfect too.

We will be motivated by different things at different times based on the situation and context in which we are operating. Whatever that context is for you- it is worth getting clear on your personal motivation for attending to self-leadership. It can after all, hold the key to moving from inertia to action.

The next post in this series will explore the question: What is self-leadership?

This post is an excerpt from my draft book Activating Self Leadership.

Photo Credit: Bree Hughes 2022 (Taken on a trip to Mt Field National Park with Bree to see the Turning of the Fagus

Self-Leadership Series 1  – # 2 What I’ve discovered about self-leadership

This post shares some of what I have learned about self-leadership along the way and how it is the foundation for both our wellbeing and making our greatest contribution.

I did not ever set out on a deliberate path to explore and understand self-leadership but alas that’s what much of my personal growing and learning has specifically been about. It has also become, the central focus of much of the leadership development work with my clients.

What I write and share here is the sense-making and clarity about what I have discovered about self- leadership derived from over a decade of intense personal and professional learning and have now practised for many years. I share it here in case what I have learned may act as a signpost or inspiration for wherever you are on your own self-leadership journey. I also share it because when we are consciously practicing self-leadership, by default, we take caring of ourselves, each other, and our precious planet. Is there anything more important than that right now?

What I have discovered about self-leadership

Some of what I have discovered along the way about self-leadership is that:

• We are each responsible for our own evolution and growth. Period;
• Learning about ourselves and growing our effectiveness is a lifelong process that takes focus, commitment, and a choosing in each moment, where we focus our attention;
• Establishing routines and habits that support our ongoing personal learning and wellbeing is vital;
• Unless we are intentional about our own personal learning and development, life will continue to drive us rather than enabling us to shape our own reality;
• When we grow and evolve, we light the path for others; and
• If we want to play our part in contributing to the health of our families, communities, friendships, and the planet then self -leadership is non- negotiable.

My commitment to my own self-leadership is a way of life now as essential as eating, sleeping and breathing. It is never a ‘set and forget’. It requires ongoing attention and conscious action and what that entails in any day or week, morphs and changes as I do.

I know now that there is no destination point to arrive at. Just an invitation to ‘be’ in life as consciously as possible and to discover and leverage our vast and wondrous internal resources (they are waiting patiently for us to call them into action)!

It is only through activating self- leadership that we get closer to the truth of who we are and from that place be truly in service of our greatest contribution.

Wherever you are in life and on your self-leadership journey, this series is as an invitation to gently and courageously move a little closer towards self.

The third post in this series will explore why self-leadership matters.

This post is an excerpt from my draft book Activating Self Leadership.

Photo Credit: Bree Hughes 2022 (Taken on a trip to Mt Field National Park with Bree to see the Turning of the Fagus)