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It's been an unusual few weeks. Celebrities who shaped or contributed to generations of global pop culture have died. Revolution is trying to take hold not only in Iran, but also in how health care is paid for in the US, how green technologies are supported. Threats big and small make the world's news, and and on a smaller scale, ripple through lesser known communities and personal lives.
In times like this when a sense of uncertainty and the limitations of mortality are impacting governments and individuals around the globe, it's normal to feel unsettled in our own lives. It's as if the atmosphere we exist in and the ground we stand on is suddenly shifting. Reality is unreal, and unreliable.
The least helpful thing to do in such times is to dwell in questions such as: what's going on? what if that could happen to me? how can I be protected? when will everything be good again?
What we all seek, I think, is an unassailable sense of inner peace. We universally want to feel safe and secure, able to meet the challenges life throws at us, and know in advance that whatever happens, we'll be okay in the end. This is a basic human need.
So how do we get there? I think there are two essential questions that lead to creating or recovering inner peace are:
- What do I have that can never be taken from me without my consent (my skills, beliefs, attitudes, etc)?
- What are the positives I know I can count on, without any doubt? (my knowledge, my abilities, my supports)
These two questions invite taking an inventory of the factors that create and maintain resilience. When we have resilience, we have options. And when we have options, we can make opportunities for positive change.
Your coaching question for today is: What factors build and maintain my resilience, and how can I strengthen them?
Have you joined the social media (SM) revolution? Are you noticing any downside in the quality of communication in your in-person friendships? Is the cyber-world sabotaging deeper relationships of more substance?
As I get more and more involved with Twitter, and some of the other social media sites, I'm certainly in contact now with many more people ever before. There's something seductive about people from other parts of the world who I've never heard of wanting to befriend me. That's heady stuff for one who possibly has a touch of social anxiety for regular real-time networking. LOL.
But I'm also noticing that my closest relationships are developing a chronic lack of meaningful interaction, as snippets of cyber-connection replace phone calls and lovely lunches, casual meetings at Starbucks, or walks in the park. The truth is, without the meaningfulness of live, in depth conversation and frequent in-person interaction, something important is lost, and connection corrodes.
If you're noticing more irritability, agitation, silence, aggression, argument, conflict and other signs of relational dissatisfaction in friendships and with family, it's possible that they are simply trying to make bids for feeling reconnected with you -- however inelegant those behaviors may be.
Is it time to take a break from your cyber pals and rekindle the old fashioned friendships that may be languishing?
I've been thinking a lot about self-confidence lately, wondering to what degree it is a learned or innate attitude and behavior. Here's where my thoughts are at the moment. Would love to hear yours.
Confidence starts with feeling safe. It's an outcome of knowing and trusting that we will be okay, no matter what. It's therefore directly tied to the amount of resilience one has after going through devastating set-backs.
Confidence also requires being able to be vulnerable, which sounds like it would be the opposite of feeling safe, but isn't. Being vulnerable is the ability to admit to being mistaken and not feel shame about that.
Confidence grows with the ability to be open and humble when having been wrong and know you can take care of yourself if others can't be gracious enough to listen and help you process through it, or when they aim to hurt you with your less-than-perfectness and their superiority complex.
In my mind, there's a lot of ego-centered, need-to-be-right, brash, impulsive, arrogant opinions and behavior that are confused with confidence. True self-confidence doesn't need to put others down, or point out their short-comings. Those are learned defense mechanisms that serve to block the development of real confidence (not to mention the growth of spiritual self-awareness).
True self-confidence is like the love spoken of in a familiar Bible passage: it is patient and kind, doesn't envy or brag, doesn't get puffed up with false pride. In other words, it's an inside job of being calm and centered in storm and sunshine alike.
How are you exhibiting true confidence today?
Show of hands -- how many of you prefer to avoid confrontation? Even when you hear the word, it makes you nervous, your heart starts to race, your palms get sweaty, you can feel your muscles contract, and you become hypervigilant and look for the exit? Where's the beauty in that, you may be thinking?
To confront means to face in challenge, to encounter. But many of us experience it as meaning, to argue, to fight, to get bullied or wounded, to barely survive a lose-lose or lose-win situation in which we expect to get hurt. Because the psyche serves to keep us safe at all costs, the natural tendency is to run from confrontation. Unfortunately the cost gets very high if by avoiding challenging encounters we seldom get our needs met.
Over a lifetime of having stronger personalities confront us in ways that have been threatening or hurtful, we've probably never learned the skills of confronting others about what we don't like and what we want instead in a direct, non-violent, and elegant manner.
This lack of skill creates a lot of passive aggressive or stubbornly self-sabotaging behavior as we try to get our needs met.
Recently I've been looking at the Center for Non-Violent Communication's model for elegant confrontation. There is calm and centered beauty in it's two simple parts: empathic listening and honestly expressing. For both parts, the NVC way is to observe without defensive judgment, to hear / speak objectively about feelings and needs, before entertaining / making a reasonable request for a change.
Another way of saying this is to stand gently in your own truth -- to walk in beauty through the fear of sharing how you feel and asking for what you want. Confrontation can be a gift of commitment to yourself, and to a difficult relationship. Living the beauty of non-violent confrontation is to be living in trust. It's a growing trust in our own abilities to recover from others' inelegant responses, and an allowing of faith in the fact that they have their own feelings, needs, hurts and fears they struggle with as well.
How might you stand gently in your truth and walk in beauty through your fear today?
The essence of coaching, I think, is in helping clients reframe perspectives that no longer serve your highest purpose or greatest need. Often that will call into question ways of thinking and feeling that you have held as true or real. For some, re-ordering these beliefs can be temporarily unsettling.
Truth and reality have many levels and colors. As children, many of us were taught that there is only one Truth, and one Reality. As we grow into adults we learn that what was presented to us as the one Truth or Reality was our parents’ or society’s explanation, but that what was unknown when they formed their truth and reality has since been replaced or augmented by new knowledge.
If we’re lucky to be well educated or if we are naturally open to the process of critically thinking for ourselves, we easily reframe the perspectives about truth and reality we’ve been taught in our early years.
But if we’re committed to sustaining a certain explanation, it’s much harder to reframe old, outmoded, dysfunctional views into new, more growthful, more healthy perspectives.
In coaching, we ask: what belief or assumption are you committed that might no longer be the version of truth you want to invest in? What reality have you been committed to that you now see has to change?
Change itself necessarily implies that there is an old version of reality and a potentially new one, an old truth and a new one. If this were not so, there could never be any change at all.
Growth by it’s very nature is change.
What is the central truth you are committed to right now? How does that commitment shape your choices, your current reality? How might you need to change that explanation of truth in order to have the choices and reality you really want?
