There’s a practice that my coach, the late Doug Silsbee, often used with his clients who had been able to make a significant shift, or to see themselves or their world in a different way.

He called it, “Taking in the good.” And in short, it means to enhance the effect of a change, or an insight, by being grateful for it. It’s the perfect practice to share in a time of thanks.

Beliefs that no longer serve

Most of the leaders I work with have beliefs about themselves or their worlds that no longer serve them.

And as we work together, some of those beliefs dissolve. Or they are replaced by newer, more useful beliefs and ways of being.

I was working with a client recently who I will call Jill. Jill has been given a lot of additional responsibility during the time we’ve been working together. She’s gone from leading a team of ten to a team of several hundred, and there are likely more people on the way.

Jill is seen as someone who has a good balance between being an excellent people leader and having a holistic view of the business. She prides herself on being able to look at complex problems and find and fix the root cause.

Jill is now at a point where her strength is getting in her way.

She is responsible for so much that she can’t possibly understand everything at the level of detail that she once did.

Jill was reflecting on this in a recent call, and was seeing that overwhelm would sometimes enter the picture when she tried to manage too much.

Seeing and reinforcing a shift in perspective

But suddenly, Jill got what she needed to change and how to do it.

In that moment, Jill saw that her role is no longer the person who figures out the root cause. She is now being asked to be the person who finds the people, who creates the team, that will figure out the root cause.

She is no longer the doer. She is a builder now. A creator and motivator of teams.

A leader.

In that moment of insight, Jill literally became a new person.

I reflected this back to her and talked about the practice of taking in the good.

“I want you to reflect on this shift for a moment,” I said. “Be grateful that you have seen it. And let that gratitude sink into your body as you ground this new way of being.”

We spend so much time doing what has been automatic to us that when we see a different possibility, it’s important to highlight it, to sit with it, to let the new psychological wiring solidify.

And this is what the practice of taking in the good accomplishes. If you can do this regularly, even if it’s only for a minute or two, you can help ease the path to making major changes.

When we take in the good, we give our bodies time to assimilate what our minds have seen. We hard wire the shift. Through the practice of taking in the good, my client was able to shift in her being in a way that was permanent, rather than a fleeting glimpse.

Most people instinctively go back to the thing that has always worked when stress shows up. The old way of being.

Even if it doesn’t work any more.

The practice of taking in the good can help prevent these relapses.

The journey never ends

My experience, both for myself and the clients that I have worked with, is this. One insight can change everything. But people seldom have just one insight.

When Jill and I started working together, she could not see that it would be possible network for another job. Then it was seeing that more money and more satisfaction could coexist. Then, in a big shift, Jill say that her stories of being an imposter were just stories. And now, she is working on the shift from doer to leader. She has shifted into bigger and bigger versions of herself, and become a more present and powerful leader in the process.

Everyone works through some version of this, of formerly solid parts of their identity dropping away as the next version of themselves emerges. And from what I can tell, so long as we are willing and curious, there is no end to our capacity to evolve.

A key element in lasting change

Taking in the good, as a regular practice, can help shorten the time it takes to change a habit, or a perspective. And it can lay a foundation for future change.

And as we approach Thanksgiving, it seems appropriate to share with you, much as I am grateful that Doug shared it with me.

Happy Thanksgiving.

There’s been a Warren Buffet meme that’s been making its way around:

“Busy is the new stupid.”

It links to an interview that includes Buffet and Bill Gates in which Bill Gates is amazed by Warren Buffet’s open calendar.

And it begs a question—

If busy is stupid, why are we so busy?

Busy is stupid, on one level. Busy lets others control our calendar, busy fills our days with things that we might be able to delegate, busy keeps us from paying attention to the things that we say are important (whether that’s longer term things related to our business, or simply having more time for our family, friends, hobbies).

But on another level, busy is very, very smart.

Because busy keeps us safe.

How so?

First of all, busy people are rewarded by society. There is an expectation that, if you have any level of success, you are busy. No one questions people who humblebrag about how busy they are.

But there are other rewards, too.

Urgent versus important

When you are busy, you are typically working on things that feel urgent. There is a dopamine reward every time you get one of those things done. It feels good, at a biochemical level. And the more things you do, the more you get that hit. The more productive you are, the more you can get that hit.

I have a CEO client who is the walking definition of this. He swoops in and solves crises. Every day.

But how does this equate to safety? On two levels.

First, the hit is predictable and predictable always feels safe. Predictable means known. I can insert myself into situations where I know or I can figure out the answer.

I’ve got this! I can fix this!

My CEO client has decades of industry experience. He has seen a version of almost every crisis that can come up. He is confident that he can fix it.

But here is the challenge for him. Here is his blind side.

He believes he is the only one who can fix it. And this is a huge limiter for his business.

Like many of us, he grew up believing that the harder you work, the better you are. Free time on his calendar aches to be filled.

He says he wants to expand his business into new product lines and geographies. To work on the business rather than in the business. But that requires asking some big questions—

What does he really want?

Who does he want to be?

What does he want his company to look like in twenty years?

Who is the team who can take him there?

We avoid the big questions because they are uncomfortable

These questions require time. They require contemplation. They have no easy answers. The decisions you make today could take years to play out.

And all of that feels the opposite of safe.

Are you busy? Busier than you say you want to be?

Have a little compassion for yourself, for the part of your brain that wants to keep you safe.

But then walk toward that discomfort.

Because what you actually want is on the other side of it.

 

 

When I was little, I had a nagging sense that something was wrong with me. It felt like my mom wanted me to be someone else, a smaller version of my father, the football star, the homecoming king.

Instead, she got me. The kid who was into science and reading nonstop, the “brain” at school, the fat slow kid who, at least until an early growth spurt, got picked last in gym class every time.

And I learned early on that my mom really didn’t think much of me, my friends, or my interests.

I was 12 when Star Wars came out and I convinced my parents to go with me (why didn’t I go with my friends? I suspect it’s because I really didn’t have many at that point).

It was a Saturday matinee and I remember being stunned from the very first scene, the rumbling star destroyer appearing at the top of the screen and continuing to get bigger and bigger for what seemed like forever.

For those of you who are too young to have seen the original Star Wars in the theater (now called Episode IV), it was like nothing that had every been on screen before. (I got chills just watching the opening scene on YouTube to refresh my memory.)

After Luke Skywalker prevailed and the Death Star was destroyed, I walked out into the parking lot, squinting in the afternoon sun, stunned by what I had just seen. I could barely speak. And I will never forget what my mom said to me.

“Jeff, if you liked that, you’re weird.”

And that, in a word, was my identity.

My friends were weird, my interests were weird, and even though I was active in high school (football, baseball, choir, the school paper, and yes, I was even a mathlete), I never really felt like I fit in with any of the many groups I was part of.

I probably had what would be called social anxiety (and medicated) today, but to me it was panic attacks and I finally figured out, after a decade of intermittent crippling anxiety, that meditation helped.

Meditation was weird.

Going on retreats was weird.

When I was at retreats, it was weird to be a lawyer from the corporate world. When I was back at work, it was weird to have gone on retreats.

But over the years—decades, really—I realized a couple of things.

First, that there were people who were actually fascinated by my interests, and by how I showed up in the world. They were interested in my retreats! I didn’t have to hide them!

Second, that I had a deep empathy for other people’s stories. That because I had never felt seen or valued for who I was, I was determined to really see others, in all their beautiful wounded complexity.

More than two decades of meditation practice has only deepened my capacity to witness others, and increased their willingness to tell me things they have never told another living soul.

Why am I writing this?

Because my pain—the pain of not being seen for who I really was—became my purpose—seeing others and their limitless potential.

Today I am a secret keeper, a guide, a catalyst to radical change in others because of my capacity to make space for that change without judgment.

My experience is that most people have some deep pain. Some way in which they feel inadequate. Something they hide because they are ashamed.

Much like I assumed that I was weird and unlikable. Much like I hid my personal development work for many, many years.

And yet it was the very thing I was most self-conscious about that was my biggest strength. It turned out that the work that I had done to relieve my pain could be used to help others relieve theirs. It had been my purpose before I knew it was my purpose.

What is your pain? What is it that you are ashamed of?

Could it instead be the source of your superpower? If only you would reveal it to the world?

I’m guessing that when you read that headline, you might have had a thought like, “How does Jeff know my boss?”

I don’t know your boss. And I’m not talking about your boss.

I’m talking about you. More specifically, who you were as a child.

At our most critical moments, a child is often in charge. The person we were as a child. Because it is at our most critical moments, when we feel least safe, when we feel like we might be kicked out of the tribe if we make a mistake, that the person we were as a child reemerges to try to protect us.

The child in us knows what it’s like to feel unsafe. And a long time ago, she mastered a strategy to protect us.

Have you ever gone on automatic pilot, triggered by something you may not even understand?

Your inner child wants to keep you safe

That’s your inner child protecting you.

You might lash out, or argue, or defend your position, or say cruel things to coworkers.

You might withdraw or leave.

You might work unreasonable hours in an attempt to fix things.

You might make sure everyone around you is happy, even to the detriment of your own happiness.

And any of this could be triggered by a work situation that feels like something that was unsafe in your childhood.

You’re an adult now. A successful one, too. But maybe this child is getting in your way. How can you move from that unconscious trigger to developing the capacity to choose between this option and another that might work better?

Releasing old patterns

Last week, I was working with one of my clients who is responsible for a major function at a $10 billion company. She was having trouble, falling into what she called “my old patterns.”

We spent some time talking about what that looked like for her, how it felt in her body.

She said when she was in that place, she was “ready for battle.”

And I asked her to take the physical posture of “ready for battle.”

She was tensed up, hunched over, protecting her core and her heart. She was ready to lash out, ready to yell. She had a lot of energy and focus when she was in that coiled position.

I asked her if she associated this with anything, and she immediately had a memory of a former job, years before, where a colleague was trying to get her fired. She jumped in to action, defended her position, and not only kept her job but got a promotion. “Ready for battle,” had, in this case, worked for her.

I asked her about other times, maybe earlier, maybe younger. I ask her about her family, about whether there were times growing up when she had taken that position.

She had. Her parents had divorced when she was young. There was a lot of yelling. She remembered being in that position to protect herself from the yelling, and doing a fair amount of yelling herself.

It was the way she kept herself safe.

We all have memories like this, of a time in our childhood when we felt unsafe, when we doubted that our parents loved us, when we were afraid that somehow we didn’t belong, or that there was something wrong with us.

And we all developed a strategy to respond, to at least temporarily ease the pain.

My client developed a combative strategy, “Ready for battle.” Maybe it’s different for you. Maybe you work on relationships, or you work harder, or you save the day by figuring things out.

If you see yourself using the same strategy over and over again, often without realizing it, the chances are very good that you learned this when you were a small child.

That it kept you safe. That it got you love. That it helped you belong.

Because it’s unconscious, it comes up whenever you feel danger. And because you have been as successful as you have been, there is a very good chance that this strategy has worked for you.

But at some point, it might not be the right strategy anymore. In fact, it might keep you from doing what you really should do. It might even keep you from advancing in your career.

And while it’s easy to say that, it’s not always easy to do that in the heat of the moment. Because it’s hard wired into our bodies and we’ve been doing it for decades.

I asked my client if “ready for battle” ever limits her. She said that it absolutely did. That she could be so focused on what she thought was the right answer, and defending that answer, that she could miss other solutions. She could miss opportunities to partner or collaborate. And as her responsibilities broaden, it becomes more and more important for her to do that instead of simply advocating for her position.

So we did an experiment. I asked her to choose how she wanted to come across in these conversations where she is combative today. When she would rather see the opportunity to collaborate.

From “ready for battle” to “open and present”

She said she wanted to show up as “open and present.” I asked her how that would look physically. Instead of bent over and flexed, she was tall, relaxed, and open. Her heart was exposed. Her face was relaxed.

She was a person who I would be happy dealing with, not a person girding for a fight.

And we had her flex between positions. Between “ready for battle” and “open and present.”

If she practices that enough, she will learn to take a new posture in the moment. It will first become an option, and then become instinct.

She is embodying a different style of communication, of leadership.

She is no longer the scared child protecting herself. She is an adult choosing what’s best in this moment, rather than constrained, like so many of us, by the wounds of childhood.

Using the body to release the past

That might sound like magic. But I encourage you to try this for yourself. We are so used to using language to create what we want in life, to the idea that we can try to be a different way simply by using different words. But some things are beyond, or in this case, before language. Some things are deep in our history and deep in our bodies. And often, our bodies are the key to changing them.