Your Wake Up Call: Commit to Becoming

What is the most important thing you learned in the last 12 months that you will commit to continuing in the new year? What is the thing you will leave behind?

Growth is a lifelong “do it yourself” project. Growth is demanding. The wisest people are always becoming, never fixed. They are flexible; they are willing to listen. The prize for a reflective life is more change — living in a state of becoming is the reward.

If you choose to invest in ego, an image of yourself, a rigid identity, you will stop growing, and simply age. Being old isn’t much fun, but being wise can be.

Clinging to a way of doing things that no longer serves (you, others, and the world) is a rejection of living, likely driven by animal instincts — fear and a desire for control and safety.

This season of darkness and light invites you to consider what needs to be born within you to live each day trusting in the promise of your one precious life. Is it courage, honesty, greater faith, or acceptance?

Choosing growth means becoming more childlike — but not in the way of a child, who must trust and adapt to survive, but in the way of an adult — who chooses trust in a dangerous world. Trust in what is not yet fully formed but might be.

Take comfort in knowing that in this world it is the struggle that matters, what is most beautiful is touchingly imperfect, including you.

What will you commit to doing and being this year, and what will you leave behind that no longer serves you?

Your Culture Hack: Embrace Self-Leadership

We tell ourselves stories, and our stories frighten us. If this is all you do, you remain in a reactive mode within your organization, regardless of role. If you choose to lead yourself well, then you are a powerful force for cultural improvement.

It begins with a recognition that your mindset shapes your reality. Plato knew this. Plato’s prisoners mistook reality for the flickering shadows on the wall of the cave, because this is where their attention was.

People haven’t changed, but the world has. We do not need to be bound in chains and forced to stare at a wall to be distracted and confused and rendered incapable of seeing what is real. We pay for the privilege. We sit glued to videos, apps, and alogorithms designed to attract our attention and conceal our choice; we hold the projections of reality in our hands, walking by other people living in their own heads. We look to “leaders” to tell us what to believe. Reading and serious discussion with others and real research feels too daunting. Our thoughts are the products of us being products. It was always this way, but never so mystifyingly so. People used to know when they were under the control of others.

Self-leadership is, first and foremost, choosing our own standards and determining our own course. First, we can choose not to live in a distracted, confused, and “productized” state. There has never been a greater opportunity to lead yourself and live the life of your own choosing. The organizations that are built by individuals on a mission, willing to contribute, are stronger and more able to achieve because everyone leads to the best of their ability.

To embrace self-leadership, start by asking:

• What are the stories you are most likely to tell yourself?

• Where do they come from?

• Are they valuable or worthwhile based on your goals?

• Are there better stories available to you?

Your Real-World Insight: Wabi-Sabi

The Japanese aesthetic philosophy “wabi-sabi” invites us to hold precious what is most obvious about our world — the reality of the ways it disappoints us and terrifies us. Our world is terribly broken, disappointing, and dark, but there is light all around us. There are big problems, and there are beautiful breakthroughs, moments of joy to notice, and create.

The circumstances are tough to accept. None of us are going to get out of this alive, but for each of us, there is time. How do we approach our reality?

Wabi-Sabi invites us to find beauty in broken things. This world is beautiful not in spite of its imperfection, impermanence and incompleteness, but because of it.

If you were to give up on the idea of perfection, permanence, and completeness, what would be available to you?

Enjoy each beautiful moment as this year ends!

Cindy