Refusing to Collude
February 26, 2010 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
I woman told me the story of her anorexia. Her family couldn’t deal with it and she was eventually hospitalized. She didn’t understand the doctor’s alarm because the scale told her 100 lbs. He saw 80 lbs. and told her she would die. Although she had the evidence, what “she” saw on the scale, the doctor’s words were, thankfully, enough of a shock to get her to accept treatment and eat. She was unwilling to make the trade-off, her life, in spite of her proof that nothing was wrong. The doctor refused to collude.
Clients can get hostile when you refuse to collude. They’ll drag out the facts, proof and evidence of what’s happening to them and how it justifies their suffering in one or more personal or business domains. I’ve used that doctor’s approach, direct and hard-hitting. I lost clients. I’ve also colluded, by spending too much time listening, being empathetic and giving feedback, ideas and advice that weren’t followed. I didn’t want to be an enabler and I didn’t want failed projects. So I lost clients.
I learned. Resistance to change loves collusion and uses the proof and the evidence to get it. The only way you can help someone stop resisting is to help them see it for what is. It doesn’t work to whack them over the head with the dire consequences. These aren’t, after all, life and death situations although our clients in the grip of resistance clearly suffer.
What does work is going deep, getting to the bottom of it so to speak. What’s beneath everything that’s visible, understood and apparent is the hidden payoff. Its impossible to tell another person what that payoff is. You can only help another person realize it. That takes willingness, commitment, rigor, logic, dialog and trust. Timing is critical because resistance is a vampire. It will do anything to escape the light of reason in order to remain safe and secure in the dark.
The woman who had the strength to make it through anorexia struggled for decades with disappointment and frustration that showed up in her career, professional and business domain. It literally made her sick and frequently injured. She had the will and desire to go another way but her resistance had collected three decades of evidence that convinced her otherwise. I refused to collude.
And then there was a moment when she was able to be still long enough to ask herself: “If I’m not the one who starves and disappears, then who am I?” She answered: “I’m visible and powerful.” And there was a time in her life when she believed that visible and powerful was a dangerous way to be so she shut it down. There was no regret or grief in this realization, just relief because it all made perfect sense. She was never the effect, she was always the cause. It was the right choice at the time and she could choose differently now.
If you’re struggling with resistance to change or creativity you can do this on your own. Its a simple but powerful self-awareness tool. You have a conversation with yourself guided by these fill-in-the-blank questions:
- I’m the one who_____________
- If I’m not the one who_______________, then who am I? I’m the one who__________________
Intention – It’s Creative
October 24, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
Intention: the “I” in DRIVE
One of the 5 elements of the RedShift DRIVE Self-Awareness and Change Leadership Model, and key to shifting identity in the metaphysical dimension, is Intention.
“Be the change you want” is an increasingly popular personal development and leadership intention, in this context defined as where we direct our attention or what we identify with. Its often coupled with “we can change the world” and both relate to thought and action. Consultants often call it some version of “to drive change”.
This approach presumes outward intention, and how to respond in new and sometimes more conscious ways to things that are happening to us and our world. Outward intention is attention directed at form and matter, a tiny percentage of the totality of existence to which we ascribe tremendous dominion and then against which we must endlessly struggle in attempt to control.
The resulting suffering we see all around us is evidence that we also need to go within. To allow ourselves and lead others to shift attention inward, on the formless and invisible, is to relinquish control and to take the hands off the wheel. This creates space for new conditions in which change can take place and for receiving the greater intelligence and guidance that’s always available but rarely has the right of way.
Life is change and evolution. To draw a boundary between us and evolution, accepting only what we think is good and rejecting what we think is bad pits us against life and change. But the proof is getting harder to deny – who knows what’s good or bad?
To paraphrase Eckhart Tolle, life is the driver and you (we) are the DRIVE. Time, distance and the conditions along the way matter less when we let go of the ways and means and will to get to where we want to be. Its not as hard as it sounds if you just live and lead as if you’re already there.
Gimme a Break
September 18, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
Tolerance for mistakes is at an all-time low.
Its on my mind because I’ve screwed up quite a few times this week – driving, messing up a screening form, carelessly forwarding an email, losing a receipt, forgetting an appointment. If you want to see people shut down, try explaining your mistake to them. There’s a good chance they won’t listen. In the worst case scenario, they’ll benefit or profit. Financial services, airlines and government agencies often excel at it and the most vulnerable people are frequently their biggest targets.
People have a great opportunity to gain my trust, respect and loyalty just by slowing down, listening and saying something to the effect “Its ok, don’t feel bad, its a little thing and I can quickly fix it for you”. Anyone who responds like that builds long-term social capital with me. And it reduces stress, a huge benefit.
So here’s an terrific way to differentiate your professional service firm: cut everyone some slack.
Reading this, you may be thinking that you’re already good at providing solutions to problems. That’s great as long as you’re living up to your promise with the small stuff too. That living up to also means acknowledging that you too have been hyper-critical and intolerant to the mistakes of others, that you give can yourself a break for it, and that you resolve to be vigilant and to do better.
Stupid Ego
July 24, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
The Professor Gates – Cambridge Police incident spotlights our collective unconsciousness about the extent to which the ego governs our responses and reactions to things and events that we don’t want or don’t like.
If we’re aware of our ego, and its attachment to opinions, roles, race, class, authority, ownership etc., it loses its power. That doesn’t mean we won’t bump up against things and situations that upset, frustrate, anger and disappoint. But it does mean that we’ll recognize an ego trigger and refuse to blindly and fully give ourselves over to it.
Its not that we shouldn’t stand up, and even fight for, what we believe in. But when aware of the ego’s involvement, we do so with discernment and with some sense of responsibility for creating the very experience that we don’t like.
The ego hates awareness, intelligence, discernment and co-creative responsibility. It needs to be stupid in order to exist and survive. Like radar, it seeks out the stupid ego in other people which is really the one stupid ego that lives through and in every one of us.
When President Obama remarked about the stupidity of the escalation of the incident, I translate that to the stupidity of the egos feeding off each other and subsequently the collective ego feeding off the resulting rage and polarization that spread like wildfire.
Whether you agree or disagree with their respective positions, if you put yourself in the shoes of the egos of the parties in the incident, their reactions make perfect sense and you can understand how they felt threatened in that situation to the point of annihilation.
Unfortunately, our egos will often trick us into thinking that in doing this kind of exchanging ourselves for the other, that we’re making excuses for what is wrong or bad and what should be eliminated. So we choose instead to harden our opinions and build stronger walls around them, unable to see that we’re creating a hard life experience, i.e. suffering.
When you look at it this way, you may realize that the stupid ego is extorting a very high price and its a price you’re no longer willing to pay.
The Art of Refusal
July 10, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
If you feel defeated because you can’t get or be what you want, refuse to have or be anything less.
If you’re stressed out and angry over loss or change, refuse to make others and the space around you stressed out and angry.
If you’re in a crisis and fearful, refuse to merge with it.
If you can’t handle it anymore, refuse to carry the burden and release it to someone, or something else.
If you’re burning with resentment, refuse to judge anyone or anything.
If you’re feeling snarky and cruel about someone, refuse to repeat what you’re thinking.
If you’re in the grip of addiction or compulsion, refuse to be unkind to yourself.
If you’re feeling isolated and unwanted, smile and greet everyone warmly.
The more you practice the art of refusal, the more you accept the responsibility for creating both the good and bad in your life in exactly the same way. At that point, what you’ll feel most is grateful.
Friction Free
June 9, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
An underlying technology of the machine tool industry I was involved with was tribology, concerned with friction, lubrication and wear. Round and cylindrical parts last longer when the hardness and smoothness is improved and continually lubricated. The need for tribology grew when tolerance for friction decreased as engines became smaller (example: compact cars) and applications became more critical (example: artificial hip joints).
Without tribology applications, anything from grit to human antibodies will abrade, erode and eventually destroy surface finish.
Its a good metaphor for how to respond to the changes and uncertainty resulting from an increasingly smaller and connected globe, lack of tolerance for bad systems and replacement of worn-out structures.
Worry, doubt, ego, hubris and what Julia Cameron beautifully describes as giving in to “the temptation of despair” will just as quickly erode individual and collective human potential as a speck of dirt will destroy a bearing. Self-aware people and organizations are vigilant about thinking, assumptions and expectations. The result is a mirror-finish belief system or culture that deflects what’s not wanted and functions smoothly, regardless of circumstances.
Relationships, networks and social capital provide the lubricant.
Stress Test
April 22, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
There’s no longer any doubt about the negative effects of stress on health and quality of life. But what most stress-relief advice fails to address is, its not what’s happening causing stress, its thoughts about what’s happening (or what’s happened) causing stress.
Many techniques, like meditation, exercise, yoga, massage, deep breathing and diet will temporarily relax the body and mind, and stop thought. They’re all great. But long-term stress and trauma relief require a full audit of the hidden toxic assets (beliefs) lingering on the personal balance sheet. Like executives of troubled banks, we can’t release them, write them off so to speak, because we’re still unconsciously identified with an earlier promised or perceived return on whatever deal we made with life to get what we needed. It makes perfect sense then, that we’d resist anything that changes or threatens the deal.
But more than any other time in our lives, for most of us anyway, the shifts we’re experiencing are impervious to any of our attempts to force events to go one way or another. We’re just piling on the stress. And universal law endlessly proves, that force of will gets in the way of letting happen what needs to happen for a greater, albeit different, life experience than the one we bargained for back when the world was a different world.
Unlike the bank execs, there’s no guilt, blame or shame involved in bringing our hidden toxic assets into consciousness, wiping them off our balance sheet because they no longer serve us and moving forward lighter and in alignment with the winds of change.
What You Get
April 17, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
My biggest issue with most of the media-psychology, coaching and pop new-agey methods, is that they’re reductionist. They aim for mass appeal with focus on the quick fix: point out what’s wrong, what its costing in some lack of fulfillment, offer advice to fix the problems and to attain the desired fulfillment.
But shallow methods and quick fixes aren’t transformational and the results don’t last. That’s because the quick-fix methods focus on the apparent trade-off for the client (or reader) and not on the hidden payoff.
Here’s a typical, if overly simplistic example:
The client hates his job but after years, or even decades of misery can’t break free. The trade-offs he makes are apparent to himself and to his adviser, or author:
- trade off the creativity for the steady paycheck
- trade off the adventurous for the familiar
- trade off the independence for the benefits
The analysis of the client’s problem and the advice he gets address the trade-offs he makes. With the global crisis, advice like this has reached a fevered pitch, and somehow feels the same for every problem or lack.
Just start, do it. This is your life. Set a goal. Take action. Be accountable.
So why is it that we’re drawn to and consume this obviousness? Because these methods don’t touch what we unconsciously hide and protect at all costs and that we can’t bear to examine: the beliefs that drive the choices that we make to get the payoffs to which we’re addicted.
An unconscious belief system operates like a psychic one-arm bandit leaving us penniless, but we can’t stop pulling the lever. In the grip of the bandit, we’re willing to accept the cost, an unfulfilled life, rather than examine our choice to identify with a lesser self.
Most of us are driven to some extent by old, unwanted beliefs that we chose at a crucial time in our development in response to a physically or emotionally traumatic event(s), real or perceived – it doesn’t matter. The longer they live in us the more exhausting it gets to keep pulling that lever to get the security and safety payoff that we think we still need. But we don’t need it anymore; that time is long past.
Self-awareness sheds a light on the beliefs and resistance that want more than anything to hide in the dark. Moving forward, and growing, doesn’t require re-living, remembering or analyzing the past. It does require uncovering, accepting, releasing and replacing the old belief machine that provides the old payola.
The requirement is the willingness to imagine: who would you be without the damn thing? The zorba kicks in. In my experience, its never a quick fix but the new, and often surprising and unexpected payoff makes it well worth the effort.
Concept Fatigue
April 11, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
Isn’t it wonderful to have access to a world of knowledge for our consumption and upon which we can build our businesses, differentiate our brands and better direct our personal lives? Or not.
In fact, when we’re overly driven to add more, to learn more, to understand more, to know more.. we can set ourselves up for the suffering that sneaks up when we’re overly attached to more and more of anything. The excitement of discovering new content, and following new threads and people, wears off and we’re left bewildered about why there’s a sudden shift in our mood to one of tension with mind and body in a knot.
We’re all susceptible to concept fatigue although I believe its easier to see in others.
For example, self-awareness is the cornerstone of my business and personal direction. So I’ve been stoked to recently discover new ideas, insights and perspectives at the intersection of consciousness, neuroscience and cognition. This week alone I added several books and videos. I was on a roll, stuffing my mind non-stop with great new stuff and figuring out how it would fit. My ego loved it. But the resulting dissatisfaction and total energy drain helped me recognize, and hopefully be more mindful about, the paradox of concept attachment in the conceptual world. You get stress, not success.
Antidotes include stopping at the first sign of tightness, breathing, relaxing and reading anything by Pema Chondron.
Don’t Get Derailed, Get Intense
February 12, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
During times of extreme uncertainty and massive shifts, its human nature to have thoughts of panic and self-doubt. These become self-fulfilling only if you believe in them and identify with them.
Solo professionals are often alone and vulnerable to getting lost in thoughts triggered by events that are exploding in frequency. A deal falls through, there’s not enough money, inquiries slow down to a trickle or less, investors pull back, unexpected family needs show up, losses accumulate. And if that’s not enough, millions of other professionals are telling (and selling) other solo’s what they’re doing wrong and what they should be doing.
When you don’t separate who you are from the onslaught of triggered thoughts, you’re at higher risk of getting derailed. A precursor is a sense of urgency to do or chase something different, and its accompanied by a lot of anxiety, tension and doubt – paradoxically, the exact things you’re trying to get away from.
Its not possible to stop all negative thinking, unless you live perhaps in a monastery. But you can refuse to identify with the thoughts and the debilitating emotions that accompany them. You do that by observing them and feeling them for what are: thoughts, not you. And then you refuse to respond to them by unconsciously going off in an unwanted direction and getting derailed.
Resolve to replace urgency and scrambling with intensity. Urgency scatters energy and attention and inhibits poise and readiness to receive. Intensity is focused on intuitively choosing to do one thing at a time with the highest quality.
Nobody can tell you what that “thing to do” is. It could be, for example, producing a creative work, taking a walk, washing the car, helping a client, eating an apple, working on finances, being with other people, looking for a job, playing with kids, doing errands, taking a nap.
What’s important is that you merge with what you do and not with your thoughts about it which make you doubt your choice. Florence Scovel Shin tells us “Let God juggle your affairs”. You don’t need a religious orientation to accept truth in that statement and to feel a sense of relief.
We’re part of something that needs to happen. Although its huge, and beyond our knowledge, control and understanding, with awareness and intensity, we are the conductor and on the right track.
Photo credit:Pewari Naan Photostream
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The RedShift Web Site Pages and the corresponding Blog: Creating Natural Influence, do not enable comments. I'm more comfortable getting feedback on social sites than here, where the work is so close to who I am, where I've been and where I'm going. If you have a comment or question, or would like to suggest a topic for an upcoming blog article, please contact me. Thank you.
