[After I wrote a draft of this, I wondered if, with everything going on in Ukraine, I could post it. Whether it seems naive in the context of so much personal upheaval to post something about happiness, especially something that says that happiness is often on the other side of taking personal risk.

Yet I believe that what I have written is just as true, maybe more so, in times of struggle. Even war.

See if you think so, too. And I welcome your comments.]

Safe looks comfortable, even happy. But is it?

Whether someone is thinking about the sale of their business or a change in career, I see, time and time again, the same fundamental misperceptions.

First someone thinks they can, and should, know exactly how things are going to work out. Before they start.

Second, they think there is a “right” path and a “wrong” one.

What I observe is that neither of these things is true. Instead, life presents doors, and we get to choose whether or not to walk through them.

Often, the desire for safety prevents someone from walking through a door. What might be on the other side? What if it doesn’t work out? And as we refuse to walk through these doors, over time, the structure that we call our life gets smaller and smaller. More and more, life feels small and restrictive rather than large and welcoming.

My experience is that people who say no, who refuse to walk through those doors, end up less happy than people who are willing to walk through one door without knowing what the next door will look like. Who are willing to start the book not knowing how it will end.

The people saying no, in my mind at least, are resisting the flow of life. And the flow of life is where the wonder, the awe, and yes, the happiness reside. Because we are made of the flow, when we feel the flow, the aliveness, we feel happy.

Each of us is that flow of life, the creative force of the universe, showing up in a unique way in a unique place at a unique moment in time. Over and over and over.

And the more we allow that flow, the more we allow ourselves to look in a direction and be amazed at what shows up, the more we get to be swept away in the flow of our own inherent happiness.

We can choose to be afraid. Most do.

But we can also make the other choice. Awe, grace, beauty, connection. Even in the midst of struggle or suffering, there is the more daring, the more expansive choice.

Open the door. Walk through it. And let me know what you see.

Sometimes a client is spinning so fast in their head that tapping into their inner wisdom seems impossible.

But then I point out the fact that we are talking, the fact that they didn’t cancel our conversation, the fact that they see that the only time during the week that they are relatively calm is when they are with me, is a sign that their inner wisdom is working.

Despite the apparent overwhelm.

Sometimes, we are really busy. We tend to spin ourselves up thinking that we shouldn’t be busy, thinking it means something about us that we are busy, thinking that there is no way to get everything done, and that we will be fired if we don’t.

And then we think that we need to calm ourselves down, which is one more thing to DO.

But being centered and present is what happens when we stop doing. We naturally settle when we stop trying to settle.

Being present is our natural state. Being open is our natural state. Being curious is our natural state.

The trip from overwhelm to calm can be very quick indeed when we see this.

And when the cortisol stops coursing through our veins, typically, it becomes very easy to see what we need to do next.

I personally thought this wasn’t possible until it happened to me. Until I saw that most of what I called stress was just thinking that I was using to scare myself, because that somehow looked helpful.

I’ve had two clients tell me, just this week, that even though they are working on huge initiatives (one was the biggest ever for his company), they can’t believe how little stress they are feeling.

When you really see this, it changes everything.

What do you see?

I see at least three ways to take on the role of leading and getting things done in the world.

The first is doing. The productivity model. This model is all about getting as much stuff done as possible. And it is the model that most of us operate from, most of the time.

The question, “What is the right stuff?” can seem secondary in this model. Often, we are told, by our boss, or by the board, or by investors, what we should be doing. But the goal is simply to get a lot done and results are measured by volume.

But at some point, it becomes apparent that there is stuff we should be doing that we are not doing. It feels intimidating, or we are afraid or unsure or we simply procrastinate because we feel like we don’t know how.

This is where the “being” school comes in.

Who are you being as you try this?

What is the identity that you are coming from? Are you coming from the identity of a powerful leader? Then that leader will get more of the right things done, right?

But being from this perspective doesn’t feel like being at all. It feels more like another doing. How can I “be” more powerful? I can say affirmations and create perspectives and say to myself every morning who I intend to “be” that day. And then I can take “massive action” from that more powerful sense of being.

To me, that sounds like just another path to exhausting myself. Adding more things onto the things that I already am not getting done. And by the way affirmations have been shown to have a negative impact if by repeating them you are just reminding yourself that you really don’t believe them.

So what’s left?

What I have found is that what there is to do looks very different based on what I actually see.

When I see that I am a fragile ego that constantly needs propping up to feel good about itself (or at least not to feel dreadful), then I can find a lot of things to do, that I actually need to do, to make that fragile ego at least temporarily feel a little bit better.

When I see, instead, that I am the space in which that ego arises, that I am the thinker of the thoughts about myself and I can actually use that creative power of thought to create anything, different thoughts tend to arise.

Lighter thoughts.

More calm, more present, more fun thoughts.

I might end up doing exactly the same things, but they will feel quite different in the doing.

Or I might find myself doing something completely different.

What do you see?

Most of the senior executives I work with are so used to not telling the truth that it can be hard to get them to open up.

Everyone who talks to them, all day long, has some kind of agenda. And when the executive speaks, everyone tries to interpret her words as a new project, as something to do, or as a prediction of the future.

It can be hard to say anything lest it be misinterpreted.

But I have no agenda.

Sure, most of the time, when someone comes to me for coaching, they want something to be different in the outside world. They want a result.

But that often changes, sometimes dramatically, when they get quiet. When they begin to tell me and themselves, often for the first time in a very long time, the truth.

If I have an agenda, it is that.

For my client to see their own truth.

Not what others want from them, or what they think they should want.

What they actually want. Or maybe, a bit more esoterically, what wants to emerge through them. Sometimes that comes by way of what they don’t want, what they worry about, what they are afraid of.

But then, things setting and the truth emerges.

After that, everything becomes a lot easier.

What’s wanting to emerge through you?