image by Elle Linda Yaven
1. Ungrounded
One day in class my MBA students came up with a list of what they were no longer willing to tolerate. ?
Here's the list: I AM NO LONGER WILLING TO TOLERATE
Soon after, another list arose: Self-Belief. I
The sanctity and stability of inner coherence is a practice to meet these times. Crafting a viable self-belief -nimble, yet unwavering enough to be a through-line underscoring your intentions.
On the other hand, creative drive overrides self-belief, or more to the point, its' absence.
We get a lot done without it.
Given for creative minds it can remain out of reach or appear ungrounded, especially without the controllable metrics expected in a data driven MBA program is why my curious students wanted further conversation about it.
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“By the way, I just wanted to share that after yesterday's class, I went out with friends to a birthday party.
And that night in the middle of my sleep, a light just shed on me regarding what you said about self-alignment and I started to connect the dots. I used to give up values in exchange for friendships. But I stayed true to my values last night at the party. And I woke up feeling really good.”
- A Student
INVITATION:
What story streams in your head without invitation?
Curate that tune. Inserting the thinnest wedge matters.
2. Hope
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Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops - at all.
- Emily Dickenson, Poet (1830 -1886)
Self-belief is dusted with hope.
It arrives with some variation of “Can I really make this vision real?”
It's the thrill of a secret between you and you. The challenge is awareness of what it will accomplishment requires.
A little self-belief goes a long way. It needs the sunlight of attention.
SLike any trickster worth its salt, it loves a good game of hide and seek. Oscillating between now you feel it/now you don’t with practice, self-belief ushers in new self-identities.
Funny thing is for achievers self-belief can seem irrelevant. A burden. Like a fly you shoo away -a nuisance getting in the way of the drive to accomplish. At best it becomes an item on a list of meta-narratives of self-development you'll get to someday.
So even as I guide people on it, I am clear it can come and go. sDespite hours, days, even years where self-belief is nowhere near -we still accomplish some grand and pretty wonderful things.
A drop goes a long way. Consistently applied.
This insight, which began as the intuitive hunch of a creative, turned into a belief and is now grounded in real world evidence. Based on thousands of coaching sessions with students and clients about their specific living relationship to their talents, my research evidences creative drive is a phenom much larger than we are.
However, a key clause in that contract is that having a talent doesn’t mean it works in your favor. It will carry on with or without us. It doesn’t care unless we do.
INVITATION:
Small wins compound. Be 5% more generous with yourself. It's contagious!
3. Stubborn
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A curious state of mind involves activity in the dopamine system involving motivation, reward, desire and pleasure.
Robert Wright, "Why Buddhism is True"
She said: “On the upside, there’s a spine aspect to belief, a stubbornness I like!”
My coaching people is based in a system of Talent Archetypes. Belief had showed up at the top of my Client A’s list.
She continued: “Between the reality and my beliefs there can be a disconnect; but in my beliefs, I’m like reality doesn’t matter – it scares me when people can accept reality just as it is. I have a hard time relating when people feel “whatever” about things. Or stop at “This is just the way things are".
Yet I also know my beliefs can make me rigid -it’s the shadow of stubbornness. I sometimes wish I could turn it off or be more flexible. Just when I’d like to change my mind, listen to someone's POV, run a different morning route or reach out unexpectedly, my interior rulebook of “A’s Stubborn Beliefs” shuts things down pretty quickly”.
A desire to control all the variables and address contingencies is understandable in times that are a-changing. Yet, like any creative endeavor, personal innovation implies the curiosity to test the sometimes crappy, often enriching, discomforts of ambiguity.
So there's an efficiency to seeing self-belief as a hypothesis, one you are curious to test out for yourself. Like any creative urge, it begins as a journey of trust. The call of a hypothesis is to ground yourself in accrued evidence. Otherwise, self-belief remains aspirational/speculation/all talk until taken out for repeat test drives in your zones of discomfort.
Self-belief has to be earned to embed in your psyche so that in one swift silken gesture you pull it from your back pocket like a never-ending flow of colorful scarves. Keep instilling the circuitry and be sure to have a maintenance plan in place for the off days.
INVITATION:
What’s your experiment?
What are you curious to test out?
What would be so cool to design today or next 90 days?
4. Resilience
nor·mal·ize
ˈnôrmə,līz
verb
bring or return to a normal or standard condition or state.
They realized normalizing the care of their life as a communicator was ultimate self-care
mid 17th century (in the sense ‘right-angled’): from Latin normalis, from norma ‘carpenter's square’. Current senses date from the early 19th century.
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“Before this course, presentations felt like performances to perfect rather than conversations to engage.
I shifted my focus from perfection to presence to learn the value of understanding my audience. Spontaneity, once intimidating, now feels like an exciting opportunity to connect authentically and adapt fluidly. Now, I aim not just for confidence but for engagement”.
- A Student
While self-belief and resiliency make a great tag team, they differ.
Resiliency brings the sticky grit of clear marching orders: “No matter-how-I-frickin’-feel-I-will-get-it-together-get-up-again-bounce-back-to-continue-on!”
Self-belief is more a shelter you return to, than a sprint forward.
Loving practical outcomes, we admire/count on resiliency to keep us on course until the light right around the bend comes into view. Best to have a well-lit welcome mat (of your own design) greeting you at your door.
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In my new robe
this morning-
someone else.
- Basho (1644-1694)
