09 Jun It gets to be easy
This is my quote for the year, I can’t remember how I got to it, but it resonated and it stuck. It falls into the same category as: “I get to drive kids around.” and “I get to do difficult work for my clients.”
When you start giving it a bit of thought, you realise there is something deeper behind it. The privilege, the gratitude, the grace of the opportunity. Some will say it is just putting on rose coloured glasses, I think it is more than that. It is realising that when the triggers or tough stuff happens, we can have a different view of how we could experience it.
Agility is a leadership skill that is often described as bouncing back, and during the hectic Covid times, everyone proclaimed to be ‘pivoting’ – changing direction when the current strategy is not delivering results.
I would like to challenge the pivoting or reactive bounce. Maybe we can consider a different approach when hitting obstacles or our triggers or samskaras – I borrowed that word from Indian philosophy: Samskaras are the roots of our physical, mental, and emotional conditioning and habit patterns. The more we repeat an action the more it becomes ingrained within us and that becomes our default reaction.
The invitation is to be agile in a different way. When our stuff gets hit by what is happening – the current reality, we brave-up and allow the disturbance to flow through. I know this sounds strange.
We are trained to act, react, pounce, pivot, etc., but what if we just paused for a second and first try to find equanimity – that sweet spot of even mindedness. Then we can start noticing what is coming up, watch our thoughts, painful feelings, comments, noise that is disrupting.
I agree with what the author Michael Singer writes about this, “Suffering is caused by the contrast between what you mentally decided you wanted and the reality unfolding in front of you.”
If we can accept what is, let it be, allow it, it clears up space to then decide with clarity and calm what would be the best action. The first action is to relax into it, become physically, mentally and emotionally completely calm.
Then it gets to be easy – to adapt and respond to any circumstance.