"All you undisturbed cities, have you not longed for the enemy?" Rilke

This line of (from a Rilke poem from his Book of Hours) arrests me.  I heard it read by the poet David Whyte at the opening of our second Invitas learning experience near his home on Whidbey Island off the coast of Washington State, almost a month ago.  It was evening, there had been wonderful food, wine and conversation.  This was not his first or only poem to share.  But when he delivered it, I felt as though it reached out and grabbed me by the shoulders and said…”YOU, Nancy, undisturbed Nancy, haven’t you longed for the enemy?”  It was personal and it implicated me.  It still does.   Why?  And what does that line mean?  Who longs for the enemy?  Hmmmm…what if I do?  I mean literally the enemy is disturbance.  Because the city of Nancy Clarie Wonders is undisturbed.   And that is true.  Other than my clients bringing me their disturbances, my city is pretty quiet, tucked in.  How did this happen?  Why did this happen? First question: how it happened was I arranged this life as it is.  I made all the choices so I created a life with little disturbance. Why?  Well, honestly because I had had so much disturbance for almost a decade, I think I just wanted to rest, to live in my little walled city (which is actually what the poet was seeing when he wrote the poem.).   And I am so glad I did, not just because I was exhausted from constant change and seriously needed the rest but also because I had never lived my life in this contented and calm place.  It was and is lovely.  Helps me understand why we wall ourselves off.  YET, I can feel something stirring deep within me, like the bulbs under the ground putting down roots and sending up shoots.  I am ready for the enemy.  I am ready for an intimate relationship again or some kind of challenge or learning that disturbs my self sufficiency and clarity.As the song Being Alive by Steven Sondheim states so beautifully…. Make me alive, make me confusedMock me with praise, let me be usedVary my days…One can be alone within a marriage or a family.  Those folks in the walled in city had others with them but…still the poet asks them…do they long for the enemy?Yes, when disturbed...I fuss. But do I truly want to be disturbed?  If I am honest,  I am a house divided here.  I do and I don’t.   And yet, I know I only grow through these disturbances and I know that we humans are built for change and growth, even while we/I resist.  Likes a ship, I am safe in harbor but that’s not what ships were built for.  Nor was I!  Oh goodness, here goes! 

Are you in the "real" conversation?

This is truly the 64,000 question.  Most of us engage the conversation we know how to have but often that is not the "real" conversation.  The conversation that you don't know how to have, is typically a "real" conversation, it's  the conversation you MUST have to move forward.   Other questions that are related to this one are:

• Are you doing your top priority work first or do you tackle the things that you know how to do easily first?
• Are you majoring in minors?
• Who inside you determines the focus and the direction of your energy expenditure during a day?  Is it your protective and scarcity/anxiety/stressed based self or is it your aspirational self?

Since our organizational and our personal lives are  a series of conversations day in and day out, if we aren't having the conversations that are most important (even if  hard), we can expect the following:

1. Decreased passionate engagement and satisfaction in our work and life.
2. Decreased energy, efficiency and productivity.
3. Decreased positive personal and organizational results.

But when we do have the "real" conversations, the ones we MUST have, we can expect the following:

1. Increased engagement for ourselves and others.
2. Increased connection  to our colleagues and ourselves.
3. Increased sense of empowerment, for playing big and not small.
4. Increased efficiency, energy and productivity.
5. Increased positive personal and organizational results.

If you agree you want to have the "real" conversation, the one you MUST have, the first step is COURAGE.   And where do you find that courage?  For many of us it is found in reconnecting with our personal mission and purpose for our work and our lives.  We find it through our hearts and what matters to us.  Did you know that the root of the word Courage is Coeur for heart.  Ask yourself:

1. In my moments of "Flow" in my work and my personal life, what is it that excites and compels me?  What gives me energy?
2. Why  does my work matter to me?  To others?

The second step is COMMITMENT and action.  After you have brought to the forefront of your heart and mind the meaning and purpose of your life and your work, then make a list of the conversations you are avoiding, including any with yourself.  Rank order the list from easiest to most difficult. Then, make a commitment to go after them one at a time, until you have made it through the list.  Starting with the easiest allows you build on your successes and achieve positive momentum to continue to engage the "real" conversations that arise in all of our lives.The third step is to APPRECIATE and acknowledge yourself for shifting avoidance to positive forward moving action.   

Psyche (aka your unconscious): Holds all the trump!

More and more neuroscience is demonstrating the limits of the logical and the rational.  Thus proving C.G. Jung, (Jungian Psychology) to have been a prophet.  The power of the unconscious, the mysterious and unfathomable, within each and everyone of us is truly breathtaking.  AND it is efficient!  How does it get better than that?!I write about this because there are tools that one can use (many of which I have practiced for almost 2 decades) that help us actually hear the voice of our own psyche.  AND why that matters is because it turns out ..that it is not "Father who knows best" but Psyche.  (Yes, I am that old!)Our own sweet souls are what will make the best and happiest decisions on any and all matter of preference for each of us.  Whether it be the next car we buy, the person we live with or career path we take...or which pair of shoes to buy and where to go for dinner.    Psyche (soul) always speaks to us in the language of feelings, energy, moods and dreams.  She is always letting us know what will make us happy in the long run.So why aren't we happier?  Because our Strategic Mind generally overrules her and so quickly we often don't hear her at all.    She says, "I want light and space."  Strategic mind jumps in with "We can't move, we don't have time and where will we find....blah, blah, blah."  Conversation over...except it isn't because Psyche will now start to disturb our peace with ennui or discontent or weird dreams.  AND she won't stop.Our distrust of her is part and parcel of our inherent distrust of joy and happiness.  (See my post:  Trusting Joy).  Most of us trust suffering and struggle more than we do joy and happiness.  That is why we mostly change through the school of hardknocks.   What would happen is when Psyche whispered "I want light and space." we would respond with curiosity with "Tell me more"?Maybe we allow Strategic Mind (SM) to register it's concerns immediately...but in the spirit of a brainstorm, instead of control.SM:  "Look, the easy way would be to change our exisiting space if that is possible, but why is it you want light and space and are there other ways we could achieve that, because moving is a a big chunk of time and money?"And then the ideas surface.  The brainstorm is on.  Strategic mind doesn't have to and should not just say "yes" to Psyche, it is meant to be a true conversation between the rational and irrational within us.  We can learn how to stay in the tension of the conflicting needs within our own minds, knowing that one day something greater than either "move or stay here and ignore the need for light and space" will emerge.  Einstein said, "you can't solve a problem with the level of thinking that created it."  I say, ask yourself where you are stuck.  AND put those two opposites together and ask "how can I have both X and Y?"  Then settle in and wait, trusting that an answer will come.  Stay open.  Wait for what is fresh, new and alive to arrive.  

Part 1: Moving from one year into the next ...

Let my history then, be a gate unfastened to a new life and not a barrier to my becoming.  David Whyte   We humans are such funny creatures.  We have stories about everything and everyone ~ even ourselves!  Maybe especially ourselves.  And unfortunately, we ~ I ~ stick like crazy glue to that story.  Think about it.  When was the last time you surprised yourself by allowing some otherness, some unknown frontier to rise up and … arrest you?  Alter your path?  Carl Jung called that God.  We often think it is the devil!  How dare life deliver anything but our expected results, right?What is also true of us, is that most of us have a story that often differs in small or large ways from others’ stories about us.  Today, on the eve of a new year, we invite you to step outside your story about your history and who you are and who you can be.   Who exists beyond that story?  Discover your unknown, your unclaimed otherness, your becoming.…not known because not looked for…(T.S. Elliot)  So, why not consider seriously aligning with the call of 21st century life?  To trust and welcome the unknown, rather than resist it.  “To learn to love the unknown for itself, to take it gladly like a lantern to help you see where ordinary light will not go.”  For me this line suggests we align ourselves with a positive expectancy, similar to what we felt on Christmas morning as children.  What would be under the tree for us?  Our most cherished desires or something else, yet still wonderful?  Maybe more wonderful?  You are leaders, whether you are leading just yourself, into authenticity or an organization of hundreds.  You are leaders.  And you are 21^st century leaders, living in challenging, uncertain, and unpredictable  and terribly complex times. Now, how do you find your way to say YES to that fierce embrace?

EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE.

AND

EVERYTHING IS AT STAKE.

What an amazing time to be alive and part of history.  If anyone needs to become comfortable in the unfamiliar, the unknown, it is us: we rational planners and doers. I invite you to place, who you think you are, what you think you love, and what you think is possible for and through you, on your right side.  Set them down.  And allow your left side, your own dear unknown, to offer, to reveal, to announce itself to you.  As you move from this year passing away, it matters to name what is done and complete for yourself so that you can create the space to invite new growth and imagination into your life in 2013.  Consider using these questions to help you become clear about what needs to recede or die back in your life:

1. What is finished, complete in your life now? 
2. Where have you achieved substantial mastery and need to allow that particular gift to recede in order to create space for your next level of growth?
3. Where in your life might you be taking a strength of yours and over using it, or applying it to something that doesn’t need it?   For example, let's say you are a good idea generator.  You have most of them at meetings.  But what if NOW it is time to develop discernment.  The ability to pick between ideas, the one that will really hit it out of the park.    That means listening and observing and reflecting.  Opposite of the idea generator mode.  But if you keep going to the “creative” idea generator, it will actually become a liability.    This is an example of over-doing a strength so it becomes a liability.

Nothing stops her...

"Our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasures."  RilkeToday is Katharine Lillie Dearing's 27th birthday.  My daughter's courage amazes me.  How many things she has done for the sake of her career in acting.  She continually has faced down each of her fears for the sake of this career.   Fears like, rejection and whether or not she could make a living in a big city AND still create time and space to fill her life with things and people that bring her wonder and joy.   And as we speak she is now challenging some of her deepest fears.  So, I write this to remind her that her deepest treasure is barely a breath away.  AND to remind us all that it is worth the grand quest.  It is worth taking on that which we are most frightened by because (as is true in the realm of myth and magic) it is in those moments the great transformation occurs.  The frog becomes a prince.  In Phantom of the Opera, she kisses his ugly face and he frees her.  We must prove ourselves worthy or our deepest treasures, before they will reveal themselves to us and drop their costume of our deepest fears.  We must prove to our sweet souls that we won't let their deepest treasure be co-opted by the strategic mind, the ego.Yes, it is true, that which you resist most or fear most, you will one day discover this to be the source of the greatest healing and comfort.  You will say things like:  "O, if only I had known, that what I most wanted and longed for all my life, was actually in the thing I most despised."   Let's say your greatest fear is being unaccessible, not there for others, unavailable and/or self-consumed.  Yet one day for strange reasons you risk  being that one who is unaccessible and unavailable to others and find the greatest peace you have ever known, the peace that surpasses understanding.So, Kate as I sit on the sidelines of your life watching you take on, challenge after challenge, always rising to the occasion, and always overcoming your fears...I realize that you are my teacher.  Your dream is much harder to be faithful to, than many others.  The path less clear and so many examples of those who tried and failed.  Yet, nothing stops you, angel girl.  Who would have guessed that angelic little easy going, baby girl who entered the world 27 years ago would turn out to be an amazon warrior for her right to have a life that takes her breath away.  It will be so angel.  It will be so.