LIFE LEADERSHIP DOMAINS

MOOD MANAGERS
– Facing Facts
– Exploring Possibilities
– Embracing Uncertainty
– Seeking Growth

REALITY CREATORS
– Emotioning
– Presencing
– Relating
– Languaging

MOVIE MAKERS
– Inner Producer
– Inner Director
– Inner Scriptwriter
– Inner Actor

ENERGY PRODUCERS
– Inside-Out Energy
– Outside-In Energy
– Top-Down Energy
– Bottom-Up Energy

Developing your innate human capacity and wisdom means finding new opportunities to learn and grow, making new distinctions and creating new insights.

The unique nature of human beings is that they have conscious awareness. They “know” themselves, can connect with the “minds” of others, value their aliveness and  “existence”.  

We have the capacity to grow, explore and give meaning to our life; constrained by our environment and Way of Being. It’s our willingness to question our human capacities that shapes the way we see things. We can unlearn bad habits and adopt new practices that enable us to continuously improve our relationships

We have the power to question and make new distinctions to change our perceptions, and actions and produce different results and generate a new future.

We are all on a life journey

Life is a journey into a future that can be of our own choosing. Or we can live it by default and leave it in the hands of fate. or left to the hands of fate. Every pathway is a “process of becoming” to realise something or someone else unknown.

Only you know what feels right for you. What engages and excites you, what you can accept and commit to and what activities bring you joy and satisfaction. It’s for you to find the energy, the positive mood state and create a different life for yourself.

Others will seek to influence your choices. As you experience life in different contexts, with different people, your perceptions change and your life goes on a new journey led by circustances.  In this way, you are “context-sensitive” and in danger of becoming situation-dependent.

But this is an illusion. What you know to be true is always incomplete and imperfect you find yourself engaged in movie of your own making, where you choose what you  learn,  accidentally or purposefully. Every moment is an opportunity for a new start of your own choosing.

We tend to seek growth when life fails to give us the answers we are looking for to give life more meaning. We can feel limited in our options. This is the time to face facts so we can explore new opportunities to grow  ourselves, our relationships and the organisations we find ourselves in, as well as our role in society. 

When we actively seek growth we find new opportunities to learn in the natural flow of life. We discover what we really care about, grasping new insights and unexpected opportunities to practice new skills.  Growth happens when new distinctions are made. The”plastic” nature of our brain  generating new ays of seeing, being and doing things.

We cannot not learn. Our brain is continuously connected with its environment, shaping our thought patterns, by looking for similarities and differences.  We become more aware of our predispositions. The way we think and move in habitual ways creates a “blindness” that prevents from perceiving, understanding and imagining a new “life movie”.

Growing through learning

Learning is fundament to us being able to make new distinctions that reveal more of our world that becomes our reality. We adapt by telling ourselves new stories that upgrade or replace the old ones. This type of learning determines how we grow and become the authors of our own lives. It involves:

• Becoming aware of our predisposition to think and act in habitual ways that are no longer working for us.

• Reformulating our assumptions with a questioning mind, a positive mood and ambitious actions

• Exploring and developing new perspectives from which to direct and act in a more fulfilling life movie

• Producing well-grounded assessments to make better decisions and take new actions

We can spend a lifetime pursuing personal growth and never achieving our desired future. But growth is a life process. It is the way we learn and adapt to find new ways of thinking and acting. We often do not realise that we we become what we practice. 

Avoiding the discomfort of learning and change can get in the way of us challenging our old thinking and unproductive behaviour. It is our mind that is stopping us from realising our innate potential for growth and self-realisation.

What do you want to happen?

The traditional view of personal growth is to get what we want by developing our inner resources and embodying new skills through practice. We then know how to frame the actions we need to make a difference.

Adopting an ontological approach to learning and change offers us a dimension to personal growth that connects us with our authentic self; our soul if you like. Instead of just observing the impact of our actions on decisions, we gain a deeper awareness of ourselves as whole human beings, our deepest intentions and values. 

Our Way of Being has four domains of existence. The language we choose, the moods we adopt, the relationships we make and our presence of mind and body.

The fundamental purpose of understanding our human ontology is to help us realise more of ourselves as “powerful observer’s”. This skill can enhance our conversations, emotional intelligence and body awareness. This more holistic Way of Being enables us to thrive on the volatility and ambiguity found in a complex and volatile world.

Everything has its context of course, and it shapes the way we think and behave. This is an assessment we make in the present that merges our experience from the past and hopes for the future. It shapes how we turn upon to live your values, beliefs, concerns, prejudices, preferences, etc.

But are they working for us?

The problem here is that many of our actions are habitual, designed to take care of our deeply held beliefs, not our present concerns or future needs. We may have an intention to change but will remain constrained or stuck in habits that we are often blind to or can’t accept.

A lack of coherence between the world as we see it and how we behave in it, can lead us to plans and activities that cannot be sustained. If we adopt a more ecological perspective we can learn to question the constraints placed on us, as well as the opportunities we seek for growth

We start by observing and understanding our Way of Being and identifying what changes need to be made in our language, mood/emotions and body, to make us more effective at pursuing our goals. We learn to think afresh and find the clarity of mind that supports our sense of confidence and well-being.

Mind, Consciousness and Thought

The best results come from acting from our innate wisdom, a source of common sense that shapes the way we reflect and respond to events. We find ourselves thinking less and sensing more. This is often referred to as an awakening or source of enlightenment. 

The work of Sydney Banks sees mind, consciousness, and thought as the “Three Principles” behind how our experience of life gets created. This is universally accepted. Gravity is a good metaphor. We just have to experience it to know that it exists. That’s not to say that the three interactions are predictable. There is a source of energy and intelligence needed to shape the emotions that emerge in our nervous system, moment-to-moment. 

When a thought emerges it is expressed in language. When we think “how dare they blame me for something I didn’t do” it produces a feeling of anger that is experienced as real.  But it’s only a thought that you can change..

So if you think “it’s a mistake, they don’t know what they are talking about”, it could produce feelings of compassion.  It’s the same event, just different thinking with a different emotional outcome. Which one is more empowering and which one can bring us misery? How we see is what we get.

As the brain and nervous system programmes itself in response to sensory data from its environment, until it emerges in the conscious mind and enables us to use logic to make sense of what we are experiencing.

Thought requires mind before consciousness can exist. We develop states of mind through our thinking which produces a mind map of world we are aware of. A reality that is true for us and works for us.  But it’s just our version of reality, our own life movie. It’s how we make use of these “principles” that determines what we experience.

What we know from brain science is that clarity of thought and innate wisdom serves us best when we are calm and things make sense to us. We can then observe and verify how things happen in the moment and accept them as true.

For example, when we seek heart-driven decisions we pay attention to what is arising from a mood of gratitude, where the heart feels what we say and do.  We engage the brain less by quietening the endless self-talk so the whole body can be engaged in experiencing what it means to be alive.

This is how we access our sixth sense, our innate capacity for intuition and insight. A subconscious feeling that we trust to guide our actions when logic fails us. We use metaphors and symbols in our search to make sense of what we are experiencing. We are we are just observers and interpreters of what we sense.

We create reality in our minds and become conscious of it as we recognise that we are composing the script and auditioning our actions before acting out our choices.

Our choices are influenced by those in authority (a top-down source of energy), other players in our life (a bottom-up source of  energy), and those who receive and judge our performance (an outside-in source of energy).  

We seek joy, peace, love, pleasure, and ambition, fulfilment, etc. How we go about searching for these things is the issue, because they are not to be found “out there”. We have to acres our  “inside-out energy” to discover how just “being” ourselves can feed our soul. Personal enlightenment can only be found in the spirit of acceptance and appreciation.

Accepting the Gift of Gratitude

We are taught to love each other but don’t always love ourselves, our environment, or to love “being” alive. Gratitude is the belief that all that we are and all that happens in our lives are gifts. We are not entitled to anything.  

This mood state can reduce our life by not accepting our self-worth and becoming consumed by conflict, stress, and worry. Negative thoughts have more power than positive ones. We know that positive thoughts are more likely to deliver positive results, yet we find it difficult to stop negative thoughts from dominating our Way of Being. 

“Love is an essential ingredient for success. Without it, our life suffers in emptiness. With it our life vibrates with warmth and satisfaction.”  – Glenn Van Ekeren

Visualisation and meditation can help in the short term, but we soon see that so much of what happens to us is beyond our ability to predict. There are assumptions that we will not question because we are interpreting what we observe through negative filters of selfishness, anger, judgment, expectations of being right, worry and so on.

We will not curse the clouds if we remember that the sun is not far away and will continue to warm us and bring light into our lives, even though we can’t always see it. We can nevertheless be grateful for its existence. Any negative thoughts can then be a trigger to remind us that they are just “clouds of negative talk” and positive energy can deliver a breakthrough that will re-establish the normal flow of daily energy. Make it

Make it our practice to see the positive side of life and it then becomes easier to transform our Way of Being at will. Our mind, and the thoughts it generates should not be left to its own devices. We must keep it under observation and not allow negative thoughts to infect our choice of mood, words or body posture. This takes daily practice, but the reward is a grateful heart that will permeate your moment-to-moment thoughts and feelings. You are more likely to present your best self when adopting a positive mindset or frame of reference

To grow as human beings we have to observe our mindset, the “possibility space” where something we need to see is allowed to become transparent to us. If we believe the universe is interested in our welfare and we are grateful for all that it offers us we will respond with appreciation. The earth supplies us with food, air to breathe, water to drink and raw materials to make anything we need to prosper. So why do so many of us not appreciate the simple things in life and feel the love it offers us?

It takes courage to believe in the “top-down” presence of an all-giving power that offers us infinite possibilities to grow, realise our dreams and feel appreciated. Research into human emotions suggests that we are at our happiest when we are giving love to others. It requires us to recognise all the love we have been given in acts of kindness. If we are sincere, cook meals for others, offer to help out and say thank you for small favours, then gratitude becomes ever-present.

“There is an inherent law of mind that we increase whatever we praise. The whole of creation responds to praise and thankfulness.”  – Charles Fillmore

Those who recover from traumas feel that their life has been given back to them and they are immensely grateful for it. More so than before their flow of life was normal. Small breakdowns in that flow are an opportunity not to dwell on the pain of what was nearly lost, but to see that pain as a ‘wake-up call’. We can learn to value and grow from what we do have, and not to grieve for what we don’t have. It can even be something we expected but didn’t happen. See your life as a valued gift and you won’t waste it. You will want to treasure it or use it to benefit yourself and others, simply because you know how it gives you pleasure.

Building Resilience and Willpower

To overcome small breakdowns in the normal flow of life we need to overcome the constraints we place upon ourselves that we create in our own minds. They can be material (outside-in) or ontological (inside-out) constraints. If we live with an inner fear that we are not realising what’s important to us or are not happy with our life we are in denial and need to turn the fear that is stopping us into an urgency to act now to pursue our life purpose.

“For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now, the present is the only thing that has no end.”  – Erwin Schrodinger

Being is our experience of each moment. We cannot afford to waste those moments as we will not get them back. They get fewer as each hour passes.  If these thoughts don’t motivate us to get on and take small actions that will contribute to a Better Way of Being and get the results we want.  We will not experience our “hero’s journey” and find a more meaningful and fulfilling life movie.  It’s too late when our thoughts are dominated by regret.  Be your best self now!

Be your best self now!  Regret is about the past and not a guide to the future. We cannot make a different decision, it’s gone. Having regrets in the present about something that had its context in the past is meaningless and a groundless assessment. Regrets can have value if we can identify the concerns we still need to take care of that persist today so we don’t repeat them tomorrow. Regrets can enhance our innate wisdom if we refuse to feel bad about them.

When we find ourselves stuck in regrets or resigned to our fate, we can’t move in a new direction. It is the will to change and learn what makes a new life movie possible. Tap into the passion and resilience of our inner producer, the purpose, and drive of our inner director and the capacity to think and take action that is our inner actor. Choose a script that uses positive words and a storyline that keeps us focused on the results we are after, that stays as an intention at the front of our minds every day.

To become a more powerful observer, we must practice being fully alive and being grateful for every moment and event we experience. If we accept that our time is running out we will want to face up to the facts of life. Now over sixty years old I can tell you how quickly a lifetime passes. Be sure to create the life movie you want to lead in, or you will just have a walk-on part in someone else’s movie. Do you want to lead for life or let life lead you?  It’s your choice

Being your authentic self

To express ourselves fully we need to know who we are and have the confidence to risk being ignored, betrayed or excluded. When placed under real pressure many of us will just “freeze”. Our mouth goes dry, we start to shake or our mind goes blank. We can’t even remember our names as we struggle to form simple sentences, spill our drinks or bump into things. We may be facing a large audience or someone we admire or fear. In essence, we feel insecure unless we can learn to embrace uncertainty and tolerate risk.

It is this sense of insecurity that affects our ability to choose to act as our best selves and connect authentically with other people. We become obsessed with how others see us and paradoxically feel increasingly isolated as a result. This is not something we find easy to admit, even to ourselves, although it is often obvious to others. We can find ourselves passed over for promotion even though we are more than able to do the job. We don’t observe ourselves being more judgemental, competitive, jealous and difficult to please.

It can feel like there is a second self that lives inside our mind that is everything we do not want to be, our “shadow self”. Carl Jung described these generalised ways of seeing people as archetypes. They shape what we expect of others. The “shadow’ archetype determines how we see ourselves. What are the characteristics of your shadow self? Do you look outside yourself for approval? Are you an attention seeker?  Do they give you a feeling of self-worth?

In the diagram below you can see how our life has a local and global perspective that influences our growth over time. You are shaped by your culture and your daily interactions. This history determines how you behave in the present, but always with the future in mind to resolve problems or realise new opportunities. All the time you are seeking more satisfaction and meaning in your life. You see it as “movies”, where you inhabit different worlds.

Revealing strength and vulnerability

Dealing with your shadow side is a process of building self-esteem or self-worth from the inside-out. Being self-conscious is different from being self-aware. Get in touch with a time when you could express yourself freely and show your best self. It can provide insights into how you need to behave in a truthful and genuine way. For example, notice how freely you express yourself when trying to convince someone and are able to declare your desires with passion. You can become more open and lose yourself in the experience. You will no doubt be able to think of many examples where you lost any sense of time. You discover that your mood state and words become more positive in tone and more future-focused. Your body posture is more open and you display a sense of presence and commitment. You speak of a deeper and authentic self. This Way of Being has its own authority that is not dependent on the approval of others.

If you want to “be” an effective leader you must bring your integrity and inner authority out into the open for others to see. You will have overshadowed your own shadow side if you display a Way of Being that reveals your best self. You can use your shadow side to reveal your vulnerability, humility, and humanity to others, whilst demonstrating your self-confidence and self-expression. You can practice revealing some of your shadow side in casual conversations. You can also use it in interviews to turn a weakness into a strength or capture the hearts of a large audience as you connect with their own concerns and vulnerabilities.

When you express your intentions you are actually being strong. You are declaring your desires and bringing new worlds into existence. When you have confidence in who you are and what we can offer, you can find it easier to ask for help, make promises and reassess your beliefs to get what you want. You must stop questioning your value and see yourself as a gift to the world and see it as your responsibility to share your ideas, talents, concerns and aspirations.

The ability of your ‘observer’ to make distinctions

To do what we do and get what we get, we need to understand how we empower our observer or the inner director of our life movie. Our inner actor speaks and moves to communicate a ‘way of being’ that generates the language, emotions and presence needed to perform authentically. Consciousness gives us the capacity to be more creative in our actions. but if this breaks down we bring our inner director into the process. This prompts our inner producer to look for profound shifts in motivation that add a more positive attitude, a higher purpose or new possibilities for action.

The way we are is a result of the way we interpret what we see, hear and feel. How we observe is shaped by who we are – the values and beliefs that underpin our ‘way of being’. As actors, we need to be clear about the mindset we are using to assess our performance. This is like our inner scriptwriter dictating the emotions and context that our inner actor must then interpret. Our inner director must be able to visualise what’s needed to shape the performance of the inner actor. To grow as leaders we need to observe our ‘way of being’ to adjust and create the result we want. This requires our inner actor and inner director to align what we know is important and what we do to produce an authentic interpretation.

The best Movie Directors help their actors to observe and reflect on their actions, thoughts, and emotions by reframing and stepping outside behaviour adopted without thinking. The best actors can detach themselves from their experience and notice how they observe and explain what they are doing and why. It takes considerable practice, energy and determination by our Inner Producer to bring the Inner Director’s vision into reality. Distinctions have to be made between intention and behaviour, cultural expectations and social systems.

The ABC framework developed by Albert Ellis interprets an issue by drawing a distinction between the activating event, the beliefs and perceptions being applied to the assessment and any evaluation of the consequences. Growth comes from grounding the assessment by testing the authenticity of the evidence on which an emotion or belief is based. The next step is to generate alternatives and identify a desirable outcome. The new actions will grow out of a new way of relating.

Showing empathy and compassion

There is another place from which to live. This is a place that recognises that everything anyone does or says is rooted in listening and speaking from the heart.  It may not always be obvious or easy to see, but we do not have to accept the interpretation of our thoughts. There is another interpretation available, another choice, one which can build empathy, motivate us and strengthen our will.

“To be compassionate is to stand back from our negative emotions and mood states and not indulge them, and see them as normal though undesirable aspects of our minds and seek acceptance to create a new state of mind.”  – Paul Gilbert

When confronting someone about their behaviour it is advisable to state what you believe you saw or heard, without judging or evaluating. If you then state how it made you feel, in a spirit of mutual respect and cooperation, you can state what you needed to happen for you to avoid feeling that way. It is then possible to ask: What you would like to have happen? If the conversation follows these simple rules a sense of human connection, at the heart level, can usually produce a mutually agreed outcome.

Compassionate communication in this form provides a practical guide for both hearing and speaking from the heart. We all long to be heard and understood as a person. The capacity to draw out and listen empathically to what is longed for, rather than what is being thought, opens up the possibility of a different quality of connection – and a more ontological approach to how we are seen and heard.

References

Awakened Leadership by Alan Shelton. Red Hatchet 2012

Self Power by Deepak Chopra. Harmony 2012

The Tools by Phil Stutz & Bary Michels. Vermillion 2012

Overcoming Destructive Beliefs, Feelings and Behaviours by Albert Ellis.  Prometheus 2001

Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. PuddleDancer 2002

The Compassionate Mind by Paul Gilbert. Constable 2010

Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle. Hodder 2003

The 10 Second Philosophy by Derek Mills. Hay 2012

The Zen Leader by Ginny Whitelaw. Career Press 2012

Way of Being by Carl Rogers. Mariner 1980