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What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?  This challenge is often offered in leadership development classes and encourages developing an awareness of:

·      how we get in our own way,
·      how we hold ourselves back,
·      what barriers exist in our own imagination, and
·      inspires risk-taking and courage,
·      pushing us into becoming our best selves. 

Recently a colleague offered me an alternative framing: what would you do if you were 10% braver?  It turns out every day is an opportunity for me to ask myself this question and try something just a little different than what my normal habit or pattern may be. 

What does 10% braver feel like?  In yoga, I historically cannot stand crow pose, largely because I cannot do it.  I have sat in a squat while my classmates gracefully mount into this pose year after year, actually angry at the teacher for asking us to do this pose that to me felt structurally harmful to shoulders.  It is a great strategy, by the way, to get mad or annoyed at others while you are really fearful or uncertain yourself. 

I have tried crow pose over the years, half-hearted attempts that just proved to myself how stupid the pose was and just how unattainable it was for me.  The week my colleague asked me: “what would you do if you were 10% braver?” I tried something different.  I was helped by a teacher who broke down the steps again to move yourself into crow pose, and this time, I followed her, without judgment or anticipation.  And, when I got to the point where you need to not just look forward but really tip your weight forward, I did.  I tipped forward 10% further than I had ever done previously.  And a miracle happened.  I balanced my weight on my hands.  I could feel the weightlessness and joy that was possible in this pose and I suddenly got it, why this pose was worth striving for and practicing. 

I still have not mastered crow pose by any means, but I have seen what is possible and believe it is worth continuing to practice and lean in.  Like any practice, this is one that takes reminding and refreshing.  For this week, I ask myself (and you): what would you do if you were 10% braver?

Conversational credit: Kira Varon, Susan B. Trinidad, and our Vitaltalk conversations on small acts of courage, growing here: vitaltalk.tumblr.com and vitaltalk.blogspot.com.  


Vast

8/21/2013

1 Comment

 
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Hiking up the steep path into the wilderness above Hope, Alaska, my mother and I stopped frequently to take in the view around us – and to shout for grizzlies that we knew were in the area, actively bulking up for the coming winter.  After a few hours of climbing, we crept across a rocky falls into a wide-open cirque.  It was remarkable.  Breathtaking.  A tarn sat in the center, and a wide stretch of tundra with steep rock walls encircled it.  The ridge leading up the wall was wide and I asked: shall we go on?  Mom stopped, froze actually, and said: “This is far enough.”  I accepted this as her limit, happy to have been able to spend the day hiking with my 71 year-old mother, and we sat on a nearby rock with our lunch and watched Nuna, my sister’s dog, play in the lake. 

The perception of vastness can hit us at any point: looking into a wild open cirque, contemplating the public school system, thinking about reforming healthcare, or recovering democracy.  Why do some of us say: “This is far enough,” and sit down or turn back, and others of us say: “Let’s go on”?  Why we respond the way we do is an open question.  A different question might be: so we need to sit down, eat lunch, then find a hand hold and take just one step forward.  How would our world look different if we could find the small acts of courage it takes to move into the face of vast, unsolvable problems or worlds?  Small acts of courage are everything.  Taking on the vastness with awe, humility, and wonder.  Getting curious, simply apprehending – recognizing what is before us.  This act of seeing may get us somewhere moving forward.  Not to contain or constrain the vast unknown and wondrous, but to notice one’s own inner state and response in the face of vastness, and be curious about that, is to begin to see what is possible.  Seeing possibilities – that is our only responsibility.  Not solving, containing, or fixing.  Open to the possible, the curious.  And take breaks when you need to, knowing you are not alone as you sit on your rock, contemplating your next move.   

A recent hand hold for me into the previously impentetrable reform of American politics was a talk by Parker Palmer on Healing the Heart of Democracy.  He offers five habits of the heart that for me serve as handholds – touchstones – for moving forward on the path toward restoring democratic engagement within myself.  Starting with me, my habits and practices, is what is within reach.  The acts of Congress and congress people are far away on the high cirque edge and I cannot reach them.  But to reach them, I have to start with the steps I have before me.  And I need my handholds to steady my legs as I walk.  

For resources and more information regarding Palmer’s Five Habits of the Heart: http://www.couragerenewal.org/democracy

Conversational Credits: Kemp Battle, Karen Knudsen Edwards, and Elizabeth Terry


 
We all have been there.  That isolating moment when no one around you understands what you are saying, or seems to share the same urgency around things that you see as clearly on fire.  Then comes the moment where you start a conversation, and the spark of recognition occurs.  The conversation can start on an airplane, in a café, waiting for an elevator, or at a professional meeting when a voice across the room suddenly sounds strangely like your own. 

This experience of finding one’s tribe happens again and again in different sectors.  Our cancer communications group has done it.  Our formation group is emerging.  Our medical education group does it.  Our consumer-based approach to translational research does it.  What is it that crosses each of these groups and feels essential to our being and our work?  In each case, the spark and balm of connecting with like-minded souls feels like an essential catalyst to the work that can happen next.  In each case:

  • We feel like we are shouting into the wind in our usual daily practices or circles or institutions
  • We feel like we have something new to say, that feels somehow threatening to the status quo
  • We feel like the insights we have somehow unlock the practices in question and are what can help shift the practices to a whole new level
  • We feel the conversation finally advance and grow when we can stop defending or explaining and start living and exploring.  

And in each case, that new level is one in which the whole person matters.  Where attending to process and the how we work is as important as the what we do. 

These are my tribes.  From Seth Godin we know that tribes can form around anything.  There can be a tribe that plays Farmville, or watches Dr. Who.  Why are they important?  You understand.  You get me.  You get my passions.  And I do not have to explain myself.  We can start the conversation at a completely new level so we can actually advance to work than defend territory. 

The question before us now is not – who is my tribe and where are they? – but rather – how do we move into the work before us?  How do I?  I already know what I need my tribe for is strength and reminding me what is possible and true.  Now, what can we – can I – do from this place?

Conversation Credit: Anthony Back, Kemp Battle, and Kathleen Farrell