One of my clients has a long history of feeling that she is not enough. That there is nothing she can do to prove to herself and others that she is worthy.

This despite the fact that she hears from people all the time how amazing she is. That she is well-regarded by both the CEO and the president. That people have stayed with the organization just to have the chance to work on her team.

This has been an ongoing conversation, and she’s been consistently frustrated by the voice in her head that is constantly telling her all the things in her life that she is failing at.

A common challenge

Many of my clients, both men and women, struggle with a version of this story. It seems in fact, that the more successful they appear, the more they struggle with this story. And they resist giving it up. Because if they were enough, if they were satisfied, what would they do? Maybe they would just sit on the sofa and eat donuts all day!

My experience is that this doesn’t happen.

A bold experiment

Back to my client. I asked her if she wanted to do an experiment. And she is generally enthusiastic about these experiments, so she said yes.

But the experiment, in my mind at least, was a bit woo-woo, a bit out there, especially for someone who is in the middle of a high stress corporate job. I had some thoughts like, “What is she going to think of me?” and “What if this doesn’t work?” and “What if she laughs at me?” I tried by best in that moment to take action anyway, because at some deeper level, I felt the experiment to be “right.”

The experiment was this. First, to see that the voice in her head was trying to protect her. That it wasn’t about beating her up or making her feel bad. That it really wanted the best for her and was doing it in the most helpful way it could see—by providing constant reminders of the things that were left undone. By berating her, because that is what her parents had done, and because that is what she had absorbed as the best way to succeed in life.

She saw that with a little reluctance, but agreed that yes, this voice was trying to protect her, and was actually trying to help her succeed by making her feel like there was always more to do.

Talking to that voice in your head

Now the experiment begins to get a bit weird. I asked her to talk to the voice.

Some of us have talked to the voices in our head. I know I have. But it’s often from a perspective of wanting the voice to stop, of berating the voice that feels like is berating us.

I took a different approach here. I asked her to tell the voice that she appreciated the voice’s efforts, its dedication to service, and its protection and help over all these years. I asked her to really feel that appreciation. And then I asked her to ask the voice to be quiet, just for a few minutes. After all, there are other parts of herself that might want to say something. Aspects of herself that she was not as familiar with.

The voice agreed to be quiet. And then I asked her to listen with her whole body, to be open to something other than language, perhaps an image in her mind, perhaps a felt sense.

We spent some time in silence together as she was going through this process. And what happened after just a minute or two was profound.

Allowing something bigger to emerge

First, she said she had this immense sense of knowing that she was in fact, enough. More than enough, really. Amazing even. She was a bit embarrassed to tell me this.

But then, as she was telling me this, we both got an image in our heads. Of a tattoo, on her inner left wrist. Something that she could look at every day, in moments of doubt, as a reminder of this felt sense of being enough.

While I did not get a clear image of what the tattoo would look like, my client did. It was an infinity sign.

She has not gotten the tattoo, and the actual design has evolved somewhat, but in that experiment, we established that she can feel her own deep knowing that she is enough. And we now have a consistent language, and a consistent practice that we have developed together, where she can access this bigger part of herself whenever the voice threatens, well-intentioned though it is, to make her life miserable.

And every day, she draws her soon-to-be-real tattoo on her inner left wrist.

Having that reminder, and having access to that space, helps her to see things differently. It has helped her to say no to things that are not consistent with her talents and values. And to say a more focused yes when that is called for, too. She has more impact, with less stress.

When the mind slows, when the voices clear, when the panic subsides, we don’t stop doing things. But what my client says, and what my experience is, is that we often see even bigger possibilities than the ones we were considering.

When we see that we are enough, that we have always been enough, that the intelligence that is looking out through our eyes is the same intelligence behind the flowers and the trees and the stars, we can ask ourselves, with sincerity, “If not us, who? If not now, when?”

Even my own willingness to engage in this experiment was about a deep sense of knowing, and being willing to proceed despite the question that my own judgmental, afraid of being laughed at, loud-but-small voice was asking me.

That voice has been telling me not to write this piece as well, and yet here I am and here it is, emerging from a quieter presence.

The voice is always there, always trying to protect me, always trying to protect you. But there are other aspects of you, too, and some of these aspects are much, much bigger. And just like the bully who goes away when you start to ignore him, that voice can eventually quiet, too.

What calls you in your quiet moments?

Can you ignore the  voice trying to protect you and keep you small? In those moments when that voice is quiet, can you feel the bigger part of you that wants to emerge? The vast intelligence you are made of? The infinite presence looking through your eyes?

Rest in that, as often as you can, and watch your world change.

Turns out the coaching profession has a lot of things wrong about human change.

Goals are actually counterproductive.

Focusing on weaknesses? Counterproductive.

Making project plans and elaborate to-do lists? You guessed it.

What does work?

Fun. Play. Dreaming.

I’m summarizing a lot of neuroscience research here, but it turns out there are two networks in the brain that are used for very different things. And there are two different emotional states that generally go along with these networks that are also used for very different things.

When we are looking at the world through the lens of fear, or activation, or stress, we are being driven primarily by the task positive network (TPN) and the sympathetic nervous system (SNS). This system can be very helpful when we are trying to get (insert your word here) done.

When we are looking at the world through love, through openness, through possibility, through connection, we are primarily in the default mode network (DFN, our sense of a self) and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). This system helps us rest, recover, connect, and contemplate.

When you are working furiously to meet a deadline, you are in the SNS and the TPN. When you take a break, go for a walk in the park, and have that sudden insight of how to save 10 steps and do the project better, you are in the DFN and the PNS.

When we go about trying to make changes, our first instinct is to think about our weaknesses and create a project plan to overcome them. We use the TPN and SNS to try to wrestle the problem to the ground.

It’s a reasonable instinct, and not surprising given how much of our lives are typically about doing. But while the TPN and SNS are great at focus, that focus is accomplished by shutting out the possibility of thinking about things differently. In other words, by using these systems to try to change, we shut down the very possibility of the change we are attempting!

Have you ever tried to lose weight by counting calories and noticed that all you think about is cheesecake?

That’s the TPN and the SNS, trying to use your existing wiring to get to your goal as efficiently as possible and, by the way, failing miserably.

But if you dream of an image of who you want to be, and then ask yourself “what would that person do in this moment?” you have a better chance of tricking the system.

If you play Rich Litvin’s “perfect system” game, where you make an exaggerated point around exactly how you created the system that creates your stress, overwhelm, or whatever else is in your way, you have a better chance of tricking the system.

And dreaming and playing are easier and more fun, too.

I’ve decided that every Friday is going to be my dream day.

To dream big about who I want to be, what I want my business to be, who I want to work with as clients and colleagues.

To dream big about the world that I want to create, where more and more leaders create companies where the best people and ideas thrive, where more and more people bring their full selves to work, where fewer and fewer people they have to make compromises to make money.

To dream big about a world in which we take care of our workers, our customers, our suppliers, and the environment, rather than trying to extract maximum shareholder returns (and employee well-being) in the short run and let everyone else fend for themselves.

To dream big, and then to take tiny sustainable steps toward that creating that world.

And to have fun doing all that.

I work with so many leaders who have “achieved” their whole careers and now are trying to step off that hamster wheel because the path has become the obstacle. They see what they have given up with their relationships and their health. They see that they have built a success that felt great in the first few decades of their career but now feels empty. They crave a meaning that is missing and they see that what they are doing is no longer working for them. They know the next step is to step away (at least from a lot of the day-to-day drama) but they don’t know how. One of my clients, a CEO with 100 employees, calls it being stuck between being a small company and a big company, with his day-to-day involvement being the main obstacle.

He doesn’t see (yet) how to step away so his company can grow. But as we dream more and more, as we play, as we begin to take the whole project a lot less seriously, the chances of him having that insight become a lot higher.

Fun, play, dreaming can feel so trivial sometimes.

But it turns out if you want to change, they might be the most important thing you can do.

 

I used to write about things like big visions and impossible futures.

And while I still believe in both, my experience is that many people tune out when I write that way. It feels too daunting. Life is already hard, and now you’re asking me to dream bigger?

Maybe my “impossible future” is that I want things to be just a little bit easier. A little less overwhelming.

That’s where “What if?” comes in.

My experiment with “What if?”

My experiment with “What if?” is actually a pretty big one. (At least if feels big to me.)

“What if I could create an abundant life in a beautiful place doing work that I am passionate about with people I love?”

Your “What if?” might involve moving across the company and changing careers at age 50 (as mine did).

It might be bigger. It might be smaller.

But “What if?” conveys a sense of play that seems to work a lot better than planning.

The folly of five year plans

For one period of my life, early in my career, I would wake up every morning and think about my five year plan—where I wanted to be, what title I wanted, how much I was going to be making, and so on.

Every morning.

And it only took me about fifteen years to figure out that I had no idea what was going to happen in five years. When I was a partner at a global consulting firm, I had eight jobs in 15 years. Sometimes, I left home one day with one job and came home with another. I planned for very few of those jobs. One day I actually came home with the news that we were going to be moving across the country.

What’s that quote? “People plan and God laughs?” Somehow, the universe always seems to provide what is needed, yet it does so in ways that I could never predict. (See my “what if” above.)

“You don’t need to know how.”

I recently had an insight that felt, in my bones, one hundred percent true, while at the same time going completely counter to my past tendency to come up with five-year plans every morning.

You see, I’ve felt compelled to write, to share, to dive deeper and deeper into these topics of how we find our way in the world, how we become more human, how we lead from a place of authenticity and even love.

And yet there are days where I send email after email to total strangers and have no idea what to do next.

There is still that muscle in me, still that tendency, to want to know what to do. To want to make sure that I am “working hard,” so that I can “earn” this thing called “success.” I want know how things are going to turn out and when I am going to have “made it” down this new path, this “what if” experiment that, seemingly at the universe’s urging, I created for myself.

But the insight was this—

“You don’t need to know how.”

I don’t need to know how this is all going to come together. And, when I can trust, there is great peace in this.

Your invitation to the universe

I believe that this system that we are all part of is perfect at bringing us exactly what we need exactly when we need it. And when I look at the biggest gifts in my life, I had no idea when or in what form it would come. I did what I felt I was supposed to do, and then the universe, time after time, did its part.

“What if?” is your invitation to the universe.

“What if?” is the invitation that every one of my clients has made.

“What if I can make more money working for an organization with a mission that inspires me?”

“What if I can create new line of business while my employees take over the existing one?”

“What if I can be the leader my organization needs?”

“What if my team can be as committed as I am?”

While the universe never seems to answer in exactly the way that I (or my clients) expect, it does always seem to give us exactly what we need.

And if you’d like a guide as you live out your version of this mystery, I’m happy to help you in any way I can.

 

Last post I talked about noticing the fact that, a lot of the time, we are doing things to convince ourselves that we are enough, or to cover up the feeling that we are not enough.

And I suggested that when we see that, our experience begins to change. Life begins to feel a little lighter, a little less serious, a little more joyful. We begin to see the exquisite dance that is always in motion around us and in us.

When we create from that place, our unique gifts tend to show up in their full glory.

There are some classic questions that get at this—

“What would you do if you could not fail?”

“What would you do if money were no object?”

“What would you do if you never had to work again?”

In my experience, the reason that these questions are so powerful is that they are already true.

You cannot fail

You cannot “fail.” What you might define as failure is simply an experiment that has gathered data. How you use the data defines whether the experiment is a failure, not the data itself. The Wright Brothers tried hundreds of times before the first successful flight. Thomas Edison’s team tried 1000 times before they had a working light bulb.

Similarly, as Silicon Valley can attest to, money is never an object. If you have a good idea and do the work you can raise any amount of money you wish.

For most people, the answer to these questions has something to do with the unique capacity that each of us has to create. And the joy that we receive in that act of creation.

But of course creation is not and cannot be all joy. Unless you see joy as something that is deeply present, no matter what, like the energy of life itself.

You can have anything you want

Another of my favorite quotes is from the spiritual teacher Byron Katie—

“You can have anything you want, as long as you are willing to ask 1000 people.”

Creation plus commitment. These seem to be the requirements. The universe seems to respond when we create something and stay committed to it. When we say or do something that might be seen as crazy, over and over again, until it becomes the accepted wisdom.

This is what I strive to do with my writing, my coaching, my teaching. To help you think just a bit differently, to see just a bit differently, knowing that at some point you might have an insight that will change the world.

Here’s another question for you—

What would you be willing to devote your whole life to, in joy and in suffering, even if you never succeeded?

What must you do no matter what?

That’s your gift. Keep bringing it.