Believing is Seeing
LIFE LEADERSHIP DIGEST – Article by Steve Trivett – 23/08/2019
Despite major scientific advances and philosophical insights, our full potential as human beings remains largely untapped. Paradoxically, it’s our innate capacity as observers that is enabling us to tap the depth of human wisdom. The focus is on our capacity to use language, moods, emotions, and our body to enhance our health, welfare, happiness, and performance.
A growing domain of knowledge and skill that’s sweeping the world is an understanding of Human Ontology. It combines cognition, emotion, and spirit to offer new insights for leadership to be understood a life skill, not a body of knowledge. It focuses on how everyone has everything we need to be effective human beings that can hold ourselves accountable, behave with integrity and be authentic in our conversations and relationships. We just need to know how to accept our innate wisdom and stop contaminating it with unhelpful thoughts and feelings.
If we see leadership as a performance art then we can learn to use the power we have as human observers to see things we would otherwise be blind to. It involves self-awareness and self-questioning to make sense of why and how we make the choices we do. For example:
- Do you know what you care most about and want to happen as a result?
- What is important for you to do now or retain as an intention?
- What thoughts will help you accept yourself and respect others?
“The only thing worse than having no sight is having sight and no vision” Helen Keller
Helen Keller’s story helps us realise that we don’t just “see” with our eyes. We listen, speak and feel with our whole body. Our assessments of what is real combines how we remember the past, make sense of the present and declare our future desires. As Daniel Kahneman observed, without greater clarity and objectivity we remain blind to our blindness.
The more distinctions we make the more meaning we can give to our thoughts. Those thoughts then drive the emotions we experience that have an impact on our future success and mental health. We have to look to our concerns (our past constructed selves) and intentions (our future imagined selves) to understand our priorities for action now that is our living selves. What we believe to be true shapes the assessments we make to envision the future we want. Questioning our assumptions can reveal alternative perspectives on who we are and how we can be in the world.
Life is a story that we tell to ourselves
The blindness comes from assessments we use thoughts that just aren’t true when grounded in logic. But how do we know? Our beliefs come from what we believe is real to us. We trust these thoughts until we question if they still make sense to us when they are causing us pain and are clearly not serving our aspirations for a better future. To transform our Way of Being we must travel a journey from now to new, thereby producing a new life movie.
We don’t always appreciate how powerful our “Way of Being” is in shaping how we generate the reality we live in. We must learn how to:
- React to a realisation that we can create a new life story
- Inquire into the meaning and purpose offered by reframing our context
- Transform the language, mood and body postures needed to generate a new future
- Generate new actions that will get the result we are after
Personal development involves changing our worldview by giving the “movie” running in our heads a new storyboard. This awareness can help us rewrite our story and produce a life movie that gives us more joy and satisfaction.
We make a choice. Either we lead our life or life leads us.
Over 35 years I worked as a Change Agent in youth and community work, adult education, leisure management, organisation development, management consultancy and executive coaching, with:
- Rural and urban communities – home and abroad
- Public Sector managers, staff and leaders
- Self-organising partnerships and multi-disciplinary teams
- Young entrepreneurs, coaches and business leaders
What I have observed is that life is a story we embody in all aspects of our being in relationship with others. It makes sense to practice having empowering conversations with ourselves, and others, to generate more awareness of what effective action looks and feels like. We need to get at:
- What “we” really care about – to build mutual trust.
- What “it” is possible to do for yourself – to access your body wisdom
- What “I” am willing to commit to – to hold myself accountable
This type of internal conversation can help us to navigate our inner resources and find new insights into who we are and what we need to do be responsible for the quality of our, those we care about today and future generations.
With practice and some courage, we can reveal our soul’s purpose and address those difficult truths that need to be accepted or resolved. The first step is to understand how we respond more positively to what comes at us from the “outside-in” so we can change how we interpret it from the “inside out”.
We are looking for what motivates, concerns and constrains us.
The perspective seems to depend on our ability to “be” more powerful observers of how we create our reality through our Way of Being. It enables us to see what skills we can practice, shifting the language, mood, emotions and body postures we produce to serve a declared purpose.
As a coach and mentor, I currently help people see how simple daily practices can transform their life skills and self-leadership behaviours. The practices they learn help them improve their performance by transforming their communication and relationship.
Isaac’s Story
I recently heard Isaac Lidsky talk about losing his sight as an adult, and how it caused a major “breakdown” in his life. It forced him to live in a world he never wanted. He interrogated the beliefs and assumptions that were driving his negative assessments and testing them from both a rational and an emotional perspective.
We all experience “breakdowns” in the normal flow of daily life, ranging from recurring concerns to unpredictable disasters. It took a while for Isaac to “see” he was actually living in the feeling of his own thinking.
The past was determining his present reality until he realized that the story he was telling himself led him to declare his commitment to “create a way of being” that would lead him to the future he wanted.
Working with his “being” was something he knew he could achieve if it was about changing his “doing”. He set himself daily practices to reframe what he was seeing and feeling. Isaac then understood what Helen Keller was trying to tell him. That he was “blind to his blindness”. Not sight blindness but thought blindness.
If we cannot imagine it we cannot do it.
An open mind and an awareness of our thoughts that generates the insights we need to question our assumptions, conquer our fears and explore new possibilities. The best insights come from being curious about what is not known and seeking personal growth until it is revealed. It’s the strength of feeling we attach to those possibilities that determine how passionate and committed we really are to bringing about change.
“You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” – A.A. Milne
Isaac eventually found the determination to:
- Make a new life movie through which he could act out a new story of his
- Manage his emotions and make choices from an optimistic and confident mood state
- Energise relationships around him and care for the people who shared his
With daily practice, Isaac became more aware of the things he was doing to stop moving forward. He was eventually able to “see” that with his new Way of Being he was able to turn:
- Resentment into acceptance
- Resignation into ambition
- Anxiety and fear into hope and gratitude
It was hard finding the energy and the willpower to hold on to his long-term vision when he could not silence the avalanche of negative thoughts inside his head that were generating irrational fears.
Isaac began to realise that:
- He couldn’t change past events
- He couldn’t change what hadn’t happened
- He couldn’t change other people
- He couldn’t change society’s attitudes
- But he could change his way of being and seeing things
Producing life energy
Isaac was inspired to apply his successful business leadership skills to the leadership of his own life. Normally it happens the other way round. His optimism and commitment gained him the respect and cooperation of everyone around him. For his own part, he took on this life leadership lead role with great enthusiasm, resilience and determination.
What Issac was tuning into was asking himself the question what energises Issac. When is Issac able to just be Issac and not let himself be defined by his emotions or the opinions of others. It was his thinking that was the problem and it was not allowing his human spirit, his authentic self, to shine through.
Isaac decided to tap into the energy offered by where it enabled him to take leadership of his life. He could see how harnessing four key energy sources could support his needs as a person (inside-out energy). For example, he gained insights from people he admired like Helen Keller (top-down energy) and tapped into the wider world to gain inspiration and new insights (outside-in energy). He was also energised by the cooperation and support of close friends and colleagues around him (bottom-up energy).
Effective leaders know how to access and coordinate human energy.
These four dynamic energy sources combine in collaborative conversations. Isaac was able to energise his declaration to change through the offers and requests he received from those who shared his vision.
It was as if he was producing, directing and writing the script for a new life movie where he was taking on the lead acting role.
Creating a new reality
When we assert control over our thoughts and seek to influence the thinking of others, we hold ourselves accountable for what we say, do and feel; not just the results we get. The result may be legally and financially beneficial, but not very innovative. Using our personal integrity and authenticity can lead to more creative actions and better results.
The direction of our life is largely determined by the risks we take and the authenticity of our choices.
Isaac chose gratitude as his authentic mood state. It helped him remain positive and realistic. It transformed his attitude and the type of change he could make happen.
“You have an innate capacity for realisation. A realisation that brings you more closely into alignment with reality. The more aligned with reality you are, the more effective you can be at creating results.” – Jamie Smart
The diagram below explains how the observer that we are depends on our Way of Being. The reality we observe and act from determines our choice of action and the results we get. To transform the result we need to change the way we interpret reality, not just amend the action. This principle applies to daily disruptions and international politics.
It dawned on Isaac that to be a results creator he would have to start with a deeper understanding of himself. He had to act in ways that would produce stronger connections and impact in all his relationships. He would learn how to observe and adapt to changes in a world of increasing volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.
Challenging assumptions
If we rely on other people’s assessments of us they will shape our way of behaving. Our true and authentic self can then get hijacked and we never achieve our potential.
Interestingly, even when we use our own observations and assessments they too have to be tested for authenticity and logic. It’s helpful to focus on:
WHAT is important to me/us that needs to be understood?
SO WHAT could it mean for my/our intentions or concerns?
NOW WHAT can I/we see to achieve coordinated action around what I/we care about?
This simple questioning can us find the simplicity behind life’s complexity and clarify how we might be limiting or deluding ourselves with our own thinking, especially if we don’t reflect on the facts that support our assumptions and the beliefs that sustain them.
Facts are just conclusions or justifications we make from limited information. We need to check-out if the words being used mean the same from other people’s perspectives. The context and background of the person making the assertion must then be understood before an assessment is made.
Only by pausing long enough to observe what we are feeling and the thoughts behind them, will we become more conscious of what is actually happening inside and around us.
This challenges the assumptions we are making. For example, we can become more aware of:
- Drawing conclusions that defy logic
- Believing that we are always right
- Scared that the worst will happen
- Worried that we are deluding ourselves
- Constrained by what we think we can or cannot do
Virtual Reality
We live in language and the relationships it generates. Words make sense of the symbolic thoughts and metaphors we create in our mind to produce a unique, virtual view of reality. It can only ever be a partial representation of what we sense is “out there” because we all apply different distinctions depending on our history and culture.
To cope with the inevitable complexity and paradoxical nature of life we tend to generalize, and so distort and delete those bits of information that don’t fit our worldview.
What we believe in becomes our truth, even though it’s an illusion.
What we assert becomes our truth and we have faith in it. We live by it. But we created it and is in essence just a reflection of our chosen views and hopes. Often expressed as generalisations we seldom pause to question the evidence.
When we step back and explore the validity of our assessments we can surprise ourselves and rewrite the story to trust those assessments. We get clarity when we give ourselves space and time to question:
- Am I over-thinking this issue?
- Is my truth just someone else’s assessment?
- Why do I want this assessment to be true?
- How does it serve my purpose or intentions?
- What significant information is missing?
- Does it fit with what I care about?
Leadership for Life
So, making a change to improve or transforming your life means producing a different reality with a new set of intentions. When we do this we are producing a new life “movie”, writing the “script”, “auditioning” fellow actors and “directing” our mind, consciousness and thoughts. Being a Life Leader means we are able to shift our Way of Being, to fit any context we find ourselves in and still come across as authentic.
The reason for this is outlined in the green sections of the diagram below we start by connecting our understanding of who we are with our reason for living. We can then go on to explore how much determination and passion we need to persist in delivering our new intentions.
The blue sections lead us into scripting and directing this new movie. We have to decide what knowledge, skills, attitudes and relationships we will need to achieve our life purpose.
The stimulus for Life Leadership is often a “breakdown” in the normal flow of daily life. It can be a positive experience or something that’s not working for us. It is our way of seeing and being that determines how we respond in different situations. We can find ourselves leading when the purpose is important enough to us.
Take responsibility and become the author of the life your soul is yearning for.
This website offers you theoretical and practical guidance on the practices that effective leaders use to be successful at work and more satisfied with life.
- Adopting an optimistic mood state – by using your MOOD MANAGERS
- Generating energy to engage others – by harnessing your ENERGY PRODUCERS
- Producing a story that lives your vision – by engaging your MOVIE MAKERS
- Creating a reality that works for you – by developing your REALITY CREATORS
Summary
The diagram below shows how our Way of Being is formed and how it can be changed through conversations and significant relationships. It starts from a realisation or a sensation that something in the normal flow of life is no longer serving us well, but we cannot see what it is. It is transparent in the sense that we like looking through a window of consciousness and do not see the glass we are looking through. We are filtering out aspects of reality that we do not want to see or aren’t looking for. As soon as we bump into the window we become aware and pay attention to it.
