Diane Bolden’s Synchronistically Speaking

 Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Unless you do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.”  This week’s video post recaps a brief conversation I had with my youngest son that gave me insight into why it is so hard to move beyond that which we already know — and what we have to lose if we don’t.  It’s amazing what you can learn from your kids — and a pair of old, gnarly sneakers. Tweet

Here’s what I said in the video:

My son pulled these [sneakers] out of the trash the other day. He said, “Mom, why did you throw these away, I love these shoes!”

“Really?  This is why I threw them away.”

“But Mom they’re so comfortable and I love them and they’re black and they’re great and they’re all worn in.”

“But sweetie, if it rains, your toes are going to get sopped. And you can’t run as fast as you want to in these. And you can’t play kickball without injuring yourself.” 

He insisted on wearing them. He dug them out of the trash and put them on one day even after we bought him new shoes.

But you know, I get it — because we all have our habits that are comfortable and easy and familiar. And we want to keep doing them, even when they don’t serve us anymore.  

Sometimes comfort keeps you bound.  Dare to move beyond it.

For more on moving beyond your comfort zone:

The Pinocchio Principle: Becoming the Leader You Were Born to Be    

Softening the Pain of Growth

 Taking Your Leap, Part I & Part II

Bridging the Gap Between No More and Not Yet

Are You at a Crossroads?

If you want a rush, forget about skydiving, bungee jumping, or walking over hot coals. Try speaking extemporaneously, from your heart to a group of people for at least ten minutes. They say public speaking ranks as people’s number one fear, even higher than fear of death.

I did that over the weekend. I chose that. I wanted to put myself in a situation that would push me smack up against my greatest resistance and fear and just see what would happen. I committed to doing it, even though it scared the hell out of me. I purposely didn’t prepare. I wasn’t exactly sure WHAT I was going to say or do. In the minutes before I would be called up to speak, I felt my heart beating in my mouth. My hands were sweaty. There was an electricity around me that I feared would paralyze every muscle in my body.

I never thought I was afraid of public speaking. I’ve facilitated workshops, taught classes, done lectures. I learned to enjoy being on stage or at the front of the room, though in the back of my mind horrible thoughts lurked – like, “What if I let these people down? What if I waste their time? What if the things that come out of my mouth don’t make any sense? What if my presentation is just ho, hum and people start to yawn, or check their blackberries, or tune out altogether?”

I’ve resisted these fears in my past – fought them with long, hard preparation and research and practice. I’ve poured over my subjects, outlining them, dissecting them, breaking the concepts down and then putting them back together. I’ve designed curriculum, carefully constructed to ensure that each learning point was supported, reinforced, tested. I’ve memorized it, dreamt it, ate it for dinner, and regurgitated it again and again and again for practice.

But the more polished and prepared I tried to be, the less I connected with my audience. The less fulfilled all of us came away from the presentation feeling. And my greatest fears became a reality. They were bored. They were restless. They left wanting something more. And so did I.

The truth is, for everything I know, there is far more that I don’t know and want to learn. The more I venture into that part of me that doesn’t know things, the more curious I am. And the more I indulge my curiosity, the less I care about managing my appearances, needing to come across as someone who’s got it all figured out. Instead of filling my mind with stuff that ends up feeling more like clutter than anything else, I find that my heart begins to open and beat with a new energy and vibrancy. It receives. It remembers. It guides. It connects.

I’m intrigued with people who are willing to courageously step on stage and talk about what scares the hell out of them. I enjoy watching the bloopers more than the polished, perfected performance. Let me see you at your most vulnerable. Not so that I can feel superior to you, but so that I can be inspired by you. Because what keeps us from truly connecting with each other is our need to cover up and mask the common denominator that truly unites us. We are human. We feel. We cry. We love. We yearn. We try. We leap. We fall. We get back up again.

In conversations with people, when I dare to forget about my mask, my facade, my persona — and just say what’s in my heart, I am liberated. I am connected. I am transformed. Sometimes when I do that, the people around me drop their facades too and things begin to get interesting. We dispense with small talk and go for the good stuff. We lose sense of time and space and are embraced by the electric buzz of possibility and wonder. And we leave each other’s presence feeling uplifted and inspired.

That’s what I want to bring to the stage in every area of my life. I’m beginning to realize that the powerful part of writing, speaking, creating a video, engaging in conversation — anything we do to connect with others — is not so much about finding the perfect combination of words, but rather about tapping into an energy — live, vibrant, pulsing, bright, beautiful.

Our greatest opportunity is to create a bridge through which this energy can somehow travel from one to another in such a way that it will liberate, soothe, uplift, energize, inspire, and fill us all up with boundless passion and light until we burst in a joyous explosion of blissful exhilaration, and brighten everything and everyone around us.

That was my intention this weekend when I got up in front of people and spoke without any preparation, and it is still my intention.  With this blog, in my meetings with clients, with my family, my friends, and my very self.  Polished? Perfected?  Heck no.  Fun?  Thrilling?  Worth the risk?  Ohhh, yes.  And I’m just getting started… 

What can you do today to forget about polished and just let it rip? Move into your fear. There is energy and electricity there. For you. For me. For all of us.

I dare you.

For more on letting it rip:

The Pinocchio Principle: Becoming the Leader You Were Born to Be

In Search of Greatness: Finding Your Zone

Beyond the Bulletproof Image – How Being Vulnerable Makes You Strong

Transcending Tradition – Becoming You

Skydiver picture by 2happy from Bigstockphoto.com

Have you ever noticed that some people have a knack for making amazingly difficult feats look easy?  Maybe it’s the dancer that seems to merge so completely with the music that it seems to actually come through her.  Perhaps it’s the chef that chops and sautés and gently folds ingredients together in such a way that they become an impressive creation of mouth watering art.  Maybe it’s the speaker that gets up in front of hundreds or even thousands of people and uses a combination of words and emotion that transcend language and reach right into the hearts of everyone present, leaving each person somehow transformed.

Wouldn’t you love to reach that level of mastery in your own life?  I would.  I once heard someone say, “Every master was once a disaster.”  Over the four plus years that I’ve been learning karate with my kids, I have certainly had my share of embodying the disaster part of that expression.  I can also tell you that those who truly pursue mastery — and seem to the rest of us as though they have already arrived — rarely (if ever) use the word “master” to describe themselves.

This week’s video post features a lesson I learned through my experience in the karate dojo that gave me insight into the pursuit of this thing called mastery – that can be applied to everything we do. 

Here’s what I said in the video:

[The first part of the above video] was just a small part of a martial arts sequence called Kata.  The first time I saw black belts doing that three or four years ago, I thought “there is no way I will ever be able to do anything like that”, but gradually I learned.  And I wasn’t able to learn it all at once.  I had to start out by learning what a U-block was and how you punch, and how do you do a center knife-hand (which I still need to work on). And then I was taught the sequence — what comes after what.

The first time I did the sequence it did not look like a dance.  It did not look like a kata.  It looked like a choppy series of techniques that I hadn’t quite mastered yet. I had to think about every single thing I was doing and what came next and whether or not I was doing it right.  And I was completely in my head.

Only when I did it enough times, over and over and over again was I able to forget about thinking and trust that my body knew what to do, to lose myself in the drama — and really that’s what the Kata is — a simulated fight against attackers.  That is when it really came together for me.

It is so similar to what happens with us whenever we learn something new.  We always start off looking a little silly, a little foolish and feeling a little stiff and certainly not smooth or fluid or graceful — and maybe think we’re never going to master it. But over time, the more we practice, the more we build confidence, the more we’re able to trust that we really do know what to do. 

Then we’re able to get out of our heads and come from our heart. And that is when our work becomes our art.         

For more on mastery:

The Pinocchio Principle: Becoming the Leader You Were Born to Be

Paths to Proficiency

Taking Your Leap, Part II

In Search of Greatness: Finding Your Zone

 
Dancer photo by Alexander Yakovlev from BigstockPhoto.com.

Have you ever come smack up against an old assumption that was just plain wrong?  The above video features a story about a painful lesson I learned years ago when I thought I could (and should) do everything on my own.  It was probably the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever done that didn’t involve falling down or tripping over something.

Here’s what I said in the video:

Years ago I worked at a hospital and I was teaching classes to help clinical professionals work through all the changes they had to make when managed care hit.  These people had a lot of change to make.  There was a lot emotion involved.   They had to completely reinvent the way they saw patients and did all the things that they had done for years. There was a lot of resistance.

And I remember I got this idea that perhaps it would be helpful for them to see how others have worked through this.  So I decided I wanted to make a video and I got approval to make a trip to one of the sister hospitals whose staff had already begun making the transition.  I managed to find one of the oldest cameras around at the time.   It was so huge, that the VCR tape actually fit in it. You can imagine the contraption and all the gear I had to carry.

I finally got to the hospital.  We had a conference room arranged.  I managed to coordinate and have all these people show up in this one room.  I asked them questions that got on tape their reaction and their coping mechanisms and their pain – and the way in which they were able to take something that turned everything they knew on their head and work through it.  It was heart rendering.  It was moving.  It was beautiful.

I singlehandedly worked the camera, I asked the questions, I tried to zoom in on people’s faces when they talked, and I spent a whole day doing this videoing.  I came back and I edited it myself. Granted – I knew nothing about filming and editing videos.  I had to use the camera in order to do editing, cutting and pasting with my VCR.

When I got back and had my finished product, everybody crowded around and we put the tape in the VCR and hit play.  I was just devastated. It was horrible.  And I remember watching it and just feeling my heart sink.  Because all those stories that almost brought tears to my eyes as I was filming them – the sound quality was so poor, you couldn’t even hear people talking. The camera was shaky.  The editing was horrible.  And I was just so embarrassed.

That happened years and years ago when I thought I needed to do everything myself and had a lot of fire in my belly,  but for whatever reason, I was very resistant to asking for help. And I learned such a valuable lesson from that. What I learned and how I have benefitted from that experience is that I have allowed myself to let go of the things that I thought I needed to do myself and enjoy working with people that have skills that I don’t, who can get almost even more excited about my ideas than I am — and see things that I didn’t see — to make it richer and allow something to be created that is far better than anything my little mind could ever have imagined.

So here’s my question for you, “What great idea are you sitting on, and who do you need on your team to make it happen?”

Picture by Diomedes66 from Dreamstime

The above video is a simulation of a life that many (including myself) have led at one time or another.  Trapped.  Inhibited.  Frustrated.  Suffocating.  But there is a way out.  And each one of us will find it eventually — when we’re ready, willing and have had enough self-imposed anguish.

I believe it will make all the difference in the world.

Here’s what I said in the video…

Wow – I see some amazing possibilities. So many ideas! Oh my gosh. That problem they were talking about – I know how it can be solved. But, what if people laugh at me? Hmmm, and who am I? Who am I to say that and come up with that idea. How can I pull it off?

I’ve seen people go out on a limb before and never come back.  I don’t want to be one of them. I can be safe in here though.

But there’s just so much that can be done. If we could just have a meeting and talk about the real issue. If I could just say what I need to say instead of rehashing stuff that we keep meeting about that has no relevance at all!

But what if I make somebody mad? What if I upset my boss? That wouldn’t be good. I think I’ll just stay in here.

It’s getting kind of cramped in this box though.  All these ideas – I just keep them in here. I’m running out of room.  I’m having trouble breathing.  In fact, it’s getting pretty tight in here.

I’ve got to bust out. It couldn’t possibly be worse out there than it is in here. It couldn’t possibly be worse out there than it is in here.

I don’t need this box anymore.

For more on busting out:

 The Pinocchio Principle: Becoming the Leader You Were Born to Be 

Busting Out of the Box 

Beyond Boundaries

Taking Your Leap, Part I & Part II

In Search of Greatness: Finding Your Zone

Man in a box image from Dreamstime by Christopher Hall.

Ever get to a place where everything feels way too heavy and burdensome? Well I’ve been there too. The above video features a story about a conversation I had with one of my children years ago that never fails to help me get things back into perspective.  Scroll down for more resources on lightening up.

Here is what I said in the video:

There was a time in my life a few years ago where I was just CRAZY busy.  I’ve always had a unique talent for over-complicating everything — making things WAY harder than they needed to be, and I was doing that a lot. I remember racing to get my kid at daycare and having him be the very last kid to be picked up right around 6:00pm.  And he would look up at me like, “Mom, you’re finally here – I didn’t think you were actually going to make it.”

During this particular week, I had a lot of things falling through the cracks.  I was behind on some major deadlines,  I  was not really feeding my family or myself very healthy food.  I was just feeling like a lousy mother, a lousy wife, a lousy person in general — like I just couldn’t get things the way I wanted to, which back then was PERFECT.  If it wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t good enough.

I remember sitting on the couch with my toddler and he looked up at me and he said, “Mommy can I count on you?” And I thought “Oh my God, my two year old is questioning whether he can count on me!  I must really be awful.” 

And I looked at him and said, “What did you just say?” He said it again, “Can I count on you?” I replied, “OF COURSE you can count on me!”

And he looked up at me with his sweet little twinkly blue eyes as he raised his fingers to my shoulder to count with them, saying “One, two, three, four…”. I just remember looking down at him thinking “Oh my God!” and couldn’t help laughing. Suddenly everything felt lighter and better.

Now whenever I get in that place where I’m out of my mind overwhelmed – and taking myself WAY too seriously, I remember my sweet little boy at two years old — “one, two, three, four….” 

For more on Lightening Up:

Something to Consider

Lightening Your Load: Mind Over Matter

A Story About a Bad Day

Paths to Proficiency

Illustration from Dreamstime by Nlizer.

The above video is about a riddle my young son told me a long time ago that I think about whenever I find myself longing to venture beyond my limitations to explore fresh, new opportunities and unchartered territory. I wonder if he realizes just how much that little story has inspired me. I hope it does the same for you.

Here’s what I said in the video:

One day my son came home with a riddle. He said “Mom, pretend like you’re in a box.” So, I said “okay”, and proceeded to envision walls all around me. Then he challenged, “How do you get out?”

I said, “Well, I punch through it.”

He rolled his eyes and said “No.”

So I guessed again. “I know! I get a box cutter and I slice through the box.”

He took a deep sigh and repeated, “NO.”

And I said “Well, how about if I chew through it?”

He could no longer contain his frustration with me. “Ugh. MOM!”

So I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Okay, how do I do it?”  To which he simply replied,

“You just stop pretending!”

We all have our pretend boxes, don’t we.

For more on moving beyond boundaries:

Busting Out of the Box

The Pinocchio Principle: Becoming the Leader You Were Born to Be

Clearing the Way for Success

Lightening Your Load: Mind Over Matter

Priorities, Productivity and Perspective

Image by Dusan Zidar from Dreamstime.com.

Have you ever played a game that you just couldn’t walk away from even though it nearly drove you to the brink of madness?  Well, mine was the game of PERFECTION.  The video above explains what we all have to lose by playing it.  At the end of the transcript below are links to other resources for overcoming perfection.

Here’s what I said in the video:

This game used to be my one of my favorite games as a kid.  It’s called Perfection.  You have sixty seconds to find the places where each of these little shapes stick into this game before the tray pops and everything flies in every different direction.  And I used to LOVE this game as a kid.  I would play it over and over and over.  Even though every time that darn tray popped it would scare the crap out of me, I kept playing it.

The funny thing is, even after I outgrew this game, I was playing my own perfection game.  It was “check the box”.  Every box had to be checked before I could feel like I had done anything of value.  The irony is, half the boxes I was trying to check were things that didn’t really need to get done at all.  And not only was I trying to check the box, I was trying to get everything done perfectly — only to come to the end of the day or the end of the week when the tray would pop and everything would fly in every different direction and I wasn’t getting anything done. 

I was playing this stupid perfection game which you may have wondered, “What the heck is she doing?”  when you saw me.  “Doesn’t she have something more important to spend her time on?  Maybe she has a little TOO much time on her hands.”  YEAH.  That’s what happens when you do perfection.  You never do anything of any significance.  You scare the crap out of yourself because you can never reach that ideal that you’ve been killing yourself for.  And you are terrified of the chaos because you have no idea how to navigate through it.  You have been so busy trying to get all the pieces in their little places before things break out that you never do anything that’s really important.  AND you also never ENJOY anything that you are doing while you are doing it because you are so wrapped up in trying to get it perfect.

When I was playing the game of perfection, I never dreamt about the things that I could achieve.  I had trouble staying in the moment.  And I was always behind — always feeling like things were churning in my head.  Even after work I would be thinking about all the things I needed to do the next day, until the tray would pop and I would terrify myself again and again.  And you know what?  I’m done with this game.  I don’t even want my kids playing this game.  It’s going in the trash.

For more on overcoming perfectionism:

Priorities, Productivity & Perspective
Outwitting Overwhelm ~ From Frustration to Freedom
Getting Unstuck ~ The Power of Purpose
The Pinocchio Principle: Becoming the Leader You Were Born to Be

This week’s blog post, My Most Embarrassing Moment,  features a video about one of those experiences I’d rather not repeat and why the most powerful lesson from it didn’t come to me until years later.  Below I’ve expanded a bit on the key messages.

One of my most embarrassing moments happened while running on a treadmill at a gym.  When I went to fix my hair, my foot hit the part of the treadmill that wasn’t moving and I lost my balance.  I hit the belt, which was still moving and was catapulted into the middle of the room where other people were working out.  Whether it actually happened or not, it felt as though the room went silent and all eyes were on me.

I’m pretty sure I was bleeding.  Though I was bruised and in a lot of pain, it didn’t come close to the humiliation and embarrassment I was experiencing.   I smiled and nodded as people asked me if I was okay, pulled myself up and somehow hobbled out of there.  To this day, I really don’t like to run on treadmills and tend to avoid them. 

The lesson I took from that experience is that treadmills would hurt me.  But there was a far more powerful lesson that I initially missed.   When I fell, I wasn’t in the moment.  My head was somewhere else.  I wasn’t conscious or balanced and as a result, bad things happened.  My belief that treadmills will hurt me and I need to stay away from them is an assumption.  A faulty assumption.

In my new book, The Pinocchio Principle: Becoming the Leader You Were Born to Be, I drew an analogy of assumptions like these to the strings that keep Pinocchio from realizing his dream of becoming real and doing what he really wanted to do.   My assumption that I need to stay away from treadmills is keeping me from what could otherwise be a very enjoyable experience, particularly if I don’t have the luxury of running outside.  I’ve written a whole chapter about how our assumptions keep us from doing the things we really want to do in our lives and how we can dismantle these strings so that we can live and lead in new, powerful ways.

What’s your treadmill story?  Maybe it is something you tried that didn’t go very well and led you to  rule out the whole experience and figure you were no good at it.  Maybe your story is about a person that reminds you of someone from your past with whom you didn’t have a good experience.  In either case, chances are you’re believing things that are not necessarily true and keeping you from something that could be really great. 

What would you need to do to be free of that?

Click here if you’d like to order a copy of The Pinocchio Principle, or go to www.PinocchioPrinciple.com for more information.

Become a subscriber at  www.DianeBolden.com and receive my free report:  Ten Traps Leaders Unwittingly Set for Themselves…and How to Avoid Them.

Though comments are currently closed, please feel free to email me at Diane@DianeBolden.com with your feedback, questions and thoughts.  Have a specific challenge you’d like to see a post written about?  Let me know.  I’d love to hear from you!

What is it that you are longing to create in the coming year? 

And what do you need to let go of in order to allow it to fully take root?

Are you willing to entertain the thought that it may come in a form that is unfamiliar to you? 

Every year, we are encouraged to set New Year’s resolutions.  We are a goal driven society that is conditioned to seek more.  Our egos desire more money, more fame and prestige, and more stuff.  A deeper part of ourselves longs for more peace, more meaning, and more purpose in our lives.  We want to move beyond our previous realizations of what we’ve already accomplished to master newer, better ways of doing things – whether that be what we create in our lives or in our organizations – and as leaders what we are able to inspire others to do as well.

 Though it is tempting to occupy ourselves with thoughts of how we can go about achieving all of this and what we need to do more of, perhaps what we really need to start with is what we need to do less of – what we need to let go of in order to create the space for something new to come in.  We are constantly evolving as human beings – and as communities of human beings.  It is so easy to look to the past to define who we are though the things we’ve already done – goals we’ve achieved, titles we’ve acquired, creations we have built.  Our previous experiences coagulate to form an identity that is easy to confuse with our true nature. 

 The fact of the matter is, you are not your accomplishments, your creations, or the sum total of the various roles you play in your life – manager, director, vice president, mother, father, friend, son, daughter, etc.   You are much, much more than that.  Your potential is limitless.

And yet, we limit ourselves by these definitions.  They filter the experiences we allow ourselves to have and compel us to define the form that our deepest longings should take.  In order to be happy, we reason – we must get that promotion, achieve this or that particular goal, hit that target.  So we continue to go through the motions, doing the kinds of things we’ve always done – on a sort of auto pilot.  Some of this may bring satisfaction, and some may bring a growing source of discontentment.  We need to attune ourselves to that which brings us the most of what we truly desire and open ourselves to the possibility that what we really want may need to come in a form that has previously been undefined for us.  In short, we must allow ourselves to surrender what we think we know to open up to the mystery that is unfolding in each of our lives.

 Easier said than done, right?  How exactly do you go about letting go of the known when it is all you know? 

We can take our cues from nature.  Snakes and other reptiles shed their skin, trees drop their leaves, and caterpillars create cocoons in which their forms entirely dissolve before recreating themselves in the form of butterflies.  Even a fish in a bowl cannot stay in water that contains its excrement – the waste must either be emptied and replaced with new water, or absorbed by something else that will remove it from the fish’s environment.  Without engaging in these renewing processes, these creatures will die.  And so it is of us.  Many of us are already walking around encased in layers of old, dead stuff that needs to be released. 

What are you holding onto in your life that has run its course?  What are the old outmoded ways of doing things that no longer bring you energy?  What are the things you’ve acquired that you no longer need?  What beliefs are you holding onto that are no longer true for you? 

 Pay attention to the times that you feel constricted, anxious, or tired and in those moments ask what you can let go of.  Don’t be afraid of the answer.  Though it may frighten you because it introduces an element of the unknown, following these insights will always lead to freedom and liberation. 

Your computer can only handle so much data.  If you do not delete old email and get rid of files that have been accumulating over the years, and if you continue to add new programs without deleting old ones, you will find that it becomes sluggish and unresponsive.  Just as freeing up space allows your computer to process things more quickly, so too will clearing your own personal space (whether of things or thoughts) allow you to access new levels of clarity and creativity.  You will breathe easier, be more present in every action and interaction you partake of, and bring more of who you really are to what you do.  And you will open up the space of possibility that will allow something to come in that may surprise and delight you.  Rather than being something you slave away for, it will simply emerge and reveal itself to you.

And of course, any work you do on yourself will serve as a form of leadership for others who, like you, seek their own answers and could benefit from your example of unearthing what is possible and allowing it to take form in new and unexpected ways.

The article above is an exerpt of my new book, The Pinocchio Principle: Becoming the Leader You Were Born to Be, which will be released on 1/11/11.  The Pinocchio Principle  is a roadmap to help you integrate your head with your heart, utilize your intuition, challenge your limits and move out of your comfort zone to unearth your greatest work while inspiring others to do the same.  It is available to pre-order at www.PinocchioPrinciple.com.  If you order before 1/11, I’ll send you an autographed copy! 

Become a subscriber at  www.DianeBolden.com and receive my free report:  Ten Traps Leaders Unwittingly Set for Themselves…and How to Avoid Them.

Though comments are currently closed, please feel free to email me at Diane@DianeBolden.com with your feedback, questions and thoughts.  Have a specific challenge you’d like to see a post written about?  Let me know.  I’d love to hear from you!