Turning Lead Into Gold

The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo

My friend Chris gave me quite a gift, the book The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo. It’s got me thinking about my life purpose, and for all the longing I have to know it, just how ardently I try to avoid doing so for the fear of what I’d have to give up to lay it all down on the line to actually go for it.

The Alchemist reminded me of what I already know… that each of us already knows enough to get started (so long as we are willing to act on that), and that most will not because it isn’t possible to know the whole magilla up front. So we wistfully say, “I just wish I knew my purpose so I could do it and end this ceaseless longing in my heart” rather than telling ourselves the truth by saying, “I have a feeling to just try this, which would give me unequivocal feedback as to whether that is the right direction, but until I am certain that moving in that direction will put me in a situation that is at least as good as the mediocre but tenable one I’m in, I’m not going to do it.”

(Then, there are the minority who are constantly striking off in some direction, but who refuse the unequivocal feedback they receive from the universe, thus giving them the freedom to keep striking off whereever they like, believing they are living their purpose but for all the intentions and the striking it really doesn’t amount to much at all.)

As you can tell, Chris’ recommendation has kicked off within me a “taking stock” of sorts. He gave me quite a gift. I’ve recommended the book to several people, including Michelle and Scott, and the timing, for them, was perfect, too.

In the past when I’ve “taken stock”, it has been primarily about my work. This time, its more broad based. My wife and I have moved to 11 acres in the country. She’s given up her very successful career as a psychologist. We’ve found out the house on the property has mold. It’s a 20 year old manufactured home we’d hoped to live in for 3-5 years until we saved enough to pay cash for a eco-savvy house. Now waiting isn’t an option: building a house is a priority as we are living in a rented 31 foot travel trailer I affectionately call Plan B.

The whole scenario has been very stressful. I was talking to my parents about that, and my Mom said to me, “Please take good care of your self.” That struck me as so odd. What I realized is that my old working definition of “taking care of my self” isn’t relevant any longer.

“Taking care of my self” used to primarily mean to me getting to the gym, eating right, taking nutritional supplements, getting enough sleep, spending time each week outdoors, meditating/praying, etc. And I am not saying those things aren’t important. But for me, I am clear that you can do all those things and not take good care of your self.

“Taking care of my self” now means to me to work with my inner state of being so that the inner state is not harming my body. Sure, all those things I listed above (and more) can temporarily change the inner state while I am doing them. Perhaps doing all those things could even have some form of residual effect. But the feeling I am getting is that for me–for Otis–taking care of the self means seating the soul in the body, and then maintaining an inner state that enables the soul to do its work through the body.

I no longer equivacate “doing” all those things as taking good care of myself. Even if I cannot do all (or some) of those things, I can work with my inner state of being directly and, and, that is more important than doing all the other things which take time and it becomes easy to think that just doing them is to take care of the self. I think that is off the mark.

The net? It has dawned on me that doing is not tantamount to taking care of. If my inner state of being is out of synch with my soul’s work and with what is beneficial to my body, I can do all the external things in the world I want to do, and they won’t mean that much.

So there you have it. Right now, I’m dialed in on working with where I am at with living my life purpose and what it means to “take care of my self.” No answers. But a feeling. And I am remembering one of my favorite songs of all time.

“Even my best friends, even my best friends, they don’t know.

That my job is turning lead, into gold.

And I’m search for, I’m searching for–

The Philosopher’s Stone.”

Van Morrison, The Philosopher’s Stone

Leading from Behind

This journey to becoming a leader has taken some unusual twists and turns. It is hard to know where to begin. But the net is, I thought I’d be stepping forward into something. Yet it seems like I am actually stepping backward into something.

Stepping backward is not a bad thing. Particularly if, due to unconsciousness, arrogance or both, you have put your self in a position that is ahead of where you are, where you should be, or both. The net is, in this case it feels right.

Let me make this less obscure by giving you two examples. Mind you, these are just two examples of how my life is changing as I work with One Client, the one client I am on retainer with this year in order to assist myself in the journey to becoming a leader.

For four years I’ve been “leading” this monthly executive team tactical meeting for the CEO. When people gave their progress updates, they’d look to Pamela (my business partner) or me. And typically, I’d be running the meeting, so they’d look primarily to me. This meeting, which should have been one of the most important for the the CEO and his senior leadership team, was seen as “Otis and Pamela’s meeting.” This put us in a unique position in the company–and looking back, a somewhat strange one.

Gary, a C-level executive, handed out a single page at last month’s meeting. It was a quotation by Peter Drucker saying that ‘most of what we call management actually makes it more difficult for people to do their work.’ Gary, a brilliant man, is quite passive-aggressive with equal intensity. This wasn’t unexpected. Gary hates these meetings. In one way or another, he lets everyone know in each meeting. The problem is, Gary won’t tell you why he hates these meeting. He pulls a stunt like that, and the energy bleeds out of the room for 1o minutes.

I’ve known for some time that there is something right about Gary’s reasons for hating the meeting. So, at last month’s meeting, I called his stunt. I told the team–all 15 of ‘em–that Pamela and I would contact each to get their feedback on the meeting… how to improve it, whether to continue it. We told them we’d review the information with the CEO, George, and ask him to make any adjustments he wanted to make. So we did.

There we sat with George last Wednesday, reviewing the findings. We saved Gary’s comments for last. I said to George, “He didn’t straight out say it, but what Gary really feels is that you need to run this meeting.” George looked at Pamela and me over his reading glasses, thinking. And he said, “I think I should. I think when people are giving their updates they should look me in the eyes. That will increase accountability.”

The next day that happened, George led the meeting. Pamela and I shifted into a support role. I stepped backward, and boy was that right. It was their best meeting ever, and given that accountability is actually one of their initiatives this year, the note just got sounded right at the epicenter of the organization… as it should be, as it must be. Otherwise, it wouldn’t work.

It is very important for you to know that this would not have happened had we simply resisted Gary. Gary can be so incredibly annoying that we could have avoided this altogether–no one would have expected us to do what we did. In fact, we likely had the “power” to get one of the two people above him to ask him to back down and fall in line. But my instincts told me to open up and move in to it–to find what was right among all that was wrong about what he was doing and bringing. For example, it was clear to all to see that Gary was actually trying to avoid being accountable for his goals. But I could feel it–and I think everyone else could–that there was something right and he wouldn’t–or couldn’t–speak it.

That one act led to one change that may be a watershed for this organization. The reality is that our role there–at face value–has lessened. We took a step back. In fact, at the end of our retainer, it’s now easier to for them to go one without us. Yet, for me, becoming a leader isn’t about remaining needed. It is about learning and growing and supporting my evolution and the evolution of those around me. So, stepping back was right. Stepping back was powerful. Stepping back was the unknown and the new.

I enjoyed last week immensely, though it was quite exhausting. Which brings me to my second example of how we stepped back last week. But that example will need to wait.

What are you resisting now that–if you were to go in to it by asking what is right about it–would enable you to become a better leader? There are always (and I mean always) the answers we most need stuck right in the middle of what we most resist. Go there. I doubt you will be disappointed. I wasn’t. And if you do go there, please let us know here on this blog. You just might start something. And isn’t that part of what leadership is about?

My Strengths and Weaknesses

Here’s what I came up with regarding my own six strengths and six weaknesses.

My Six Most Bothersome Weaknesses

1. Distractability: Continually shifting focus and therefore not bringing things to completion
2. Diminishment: Not valuing what I have completed and therefore not utilizing what I’ve created to its full potential
3. “Helping”: Wanting to “help” others and therefore interfering with their lives, process and timing
4. Intensity: Using intensity to go after and to try to get what I want and therefore causing hurt and harm
5. Activity: Pushing my self too hard and therefore depleting and imbalancing myself (and sometimes the people and environment around me)
6. Insensitivity: Not listening to life, to others and to my higher self, and therefore not being able to collaborate and cooperate to my fullest potential

My Six Greatest Strengths

1. Self Reflection: My capacity, skills and willingness to look at my own self and to change my behavior… and therefore continually increase my sense of freedom and enjoyment of life
2. Clarity: My ability to “see” past the face value of things… and therefore my ability to respond more intelligently
3. Versatility: The broad array of skills I have… and therefore my ability to do most anything I wish and capacity to vision, plan and problem solve
4. Communication: My verbal and written communication skills… and therefore my ability to connect, relate and influence
5. Love of Life: I care–about life and people… and therefore what I do has ever increasing meaning and therefore purpose for me
6. Perspective: I’ve seen beyond the form-side of life… and therefore I can work with life, life situations and people differently than I could before.

Busted

I talked with my wife today, and she busted me. She said, “Otis, I read your blog post. Would you like some feedback?”

“Of course!,” I said. Actually, it was a little more hesitant than that, LOL!

She reminded me that on this new blog, I was going to focus on becoming a leader and sharing that journey. Not on being an evangelist, LOL! So, since it is all about learning, I am going to do what is technically called a “do-over.”

Therefore, let it be known for the record that I just did my first “face plant” on my own blog, LOL! I’m a snow skier. When you go straight over the tips of your skis and smack into the snow, that’s a face plant. Face plants happen so fast you don’t have a chance to finish a full sentence like ‘Oh, s___!” You’re lucky to get to the comma on that sentence before impact.

A really bad accident, where you basically tumble like a raggedly Andy doll on PCP, jettisoning every piece of equipment off your bod… well that’s called a “yard sale.” And in that slow-unfolding type of wipe out, you’ve got some time to think about the impact. This was definitely a face plant. It happened so fast I wasn’t even aware that I was about to eat snow.

So I’m wiping the snow out of my googles, looking around casually to see who noticed, and I’m going to do a do-over. I am going to leave that prior post and not delete it, but now I am going to post again. Sharing my experience of the exercise I am going through without encouraging you to do it for yourself.

I love you, Sara. You cannot believe how much I feel your support on my journey to becoming a leader. So, in the words of a Kiwi ski instructor who ‘pushed’ me off the ledge at the top of my first double diamond,

“Let’s give it a go, shall we?”

Update from the Field(s)

I’ve been pretty busy attempting to live that fancy DDP (Definition, Direction and Purpose) I shared with you. It never ceases to amaze me that the more clear I become, and the more stable my intention, the more arises. It’s been pretty amazing.

The CEO at the company I am now solely working with gave us a verbal approval on a one year, exclusive retainer. That’s huge. That’s the “field” in which I’ve chosen to do my next chapter of work in becoming a leader.

Also, since I last posted, my wife and I are now under contract to buy 11 acres of beautiful land in Oregon’s wine country. We’ve been working together on that project, and working in co-operation with nature (more on that in the future), and things have been flowing. We scared. Cash is tight to make the 20% down required these days and cover some income taxes we didn’t anticipate. The credit market is crazy. And the news today says house prices have dropped another 19% and only 2% of American envision buying a home in the next 6 months. But, we feel this in our bones, we’ve been working with this for 18 months, and there’s the gap. And we think we’ve found our chosen field in which to stand together.

Today I noticed something funny about myself. I’ve seen it before, but not while I was doing it. What I noticed is how I will get “prepared” to produce a work product by doing a bunch of activity that I think is required to prepare to produce that work product. It’s hard to describe. But I can see this in some of my family members–seeing it in them has helped me see it in myself.

This time I caught myself “preparing” to work–and I stopped the activity cold. Dusted and done. I didn’t know exactly what to do, but I knew that wasn’t it. So I stopped. And took Stone, our beloved Blue Heeler, for a walk. As I walked in the “Oregon mist” (what the Chamber of Commerce here calls rain), I could see precisely the work product I was working toward. But!

But instead of working my way towards it, I can now cut straight to it. I don’t know if that makes any sense to you. Personal insights are like that: they are hard to ex-plane. But now I have found myself in yet another field. I just had to walk around myself to find it. And there are springs there, in that field. And the air smells like spring, and renewal, and the new coming into form.