Happy Wednesday Thursday leaders, readers, and casual observers,
This originally was going to be a Wednesday check-in - I took Tuesday off work due to being sick, and feel surprisingly better for it yesterday - almost as if it was what needed to actually keep moving forward.
Then as these things happen, there was an emergency situation pop up (everything is fine) that took my attention away from work right in the middle of writing. No matter. I’d finish it early Thursday.
And then again this morning, another situation took me away from finishing this newsletter and getting out to you “on time”.
After dinner, and conversations with friends and a mentor, the end result is my slightly messy thoughts that revolve around a central theme - emotions, control, and self-care.
A reminder I will be going live tommorow, Friday, 8.29.2021, at 10am EST here on Substack for the weekly Cultivar Coffee Chat. Bring any thoughts, questions, comments for me from the week, or stories of your own!
Are you valuing growth as a process, or growth as a result?
I get it, things aren’t playing out the way you expected, the way you wanted, or the way “things should be.”
It’s a good time to remind ourselves that expectations, wants, and adhering to the way things should be done all show our attachment to an idealized result that we honestly have no way of ensuring.
Timeline, funding, energy, delivery, you name it. We are grasping for control and certainty in a world where those guardrails seem in increasingly short supply.
These things rarely happen in the conditions and expectations we set for ourselves, and when they do, it’s not just because of our own resilience, capabilities, or bootstrapping. We don’t exist in a vacuum.
We stay resilient and thrive through community, through culture. The only certainty and control ability to manage or pivot to address changes we can hope to wield, comes from trust, communication, and de-centered self awareness.
So if you are deep in the feels about things not “going according to plan” (like I was for a few hours this week) because of unforseen and unexpected circumstance, a lack of awareness on your part or that of a team member, start with decentering your feelings from the issue at hand, acknowledge and move through the emotions you are feeling; then decenter the emotions from the situation.
Why?
Because if you don’t decenter your emotions from the issue, you more often than not create a vacuum, a black hole, where there doesn’t need to be one.
It pulls in and consumes everything around you: you end up blaming other people for something noone has control over, and this includes yourself. Blame, especially if unexamined, leads to resentment. Ownership, on the other hand, moves us forward.
And I don’t just mean ownership of the expression of emotions, wherein you excercise emotional intelligence. Blame and ownership of mistakes and oversight are not parallels.
Ownership of decentering yourself and your emotions from conflict and obstacles lets you see what has you or the team stuck in an objective manner.
So let me tie this to what my thoughts were yesterday.
8am(ish) I hop on Substack, LinkedIn, and check my emails, and from people in my network, I’m noticing patterns similar to what I’m experience in relation to lack of control
Exhaustion.
Anxiety.
Uncertainty.
And yet at the same time … contentment. Excitement. Groundedness.
How is this possible?
I think it’s because many of us are in a transition point.
Of taking ownership of the fact we can only control our emotions, actions, and reactions rather than those of people around us, or the circumstances of the world we live in; yet not knowing fully how to validate and move through said emotions about this reality.
Ownership as Regenerative Harvesting
Where I live, fall is fast approaching: the weather is cooling down and it feels great outside.
It’s time to harvest what we have sown.
That’s not to say the work is done, quite the opposite in fact.
Simply stating you feel a way, acknowledging the existence of an emotion, is not enough.
You are the plant being cultivated as well as it’s steward; you have a choice to either limit yourself to being an annual or coming back as a perennial.
I read an excellent post yesterday from Bob Gilbreath where he brought up the concept of a Phoenix Leader - and I love it. For his context, it’s a perfect framing and one I’ve seen and believe in.
But we don’t all need to burn completely down to rise, you don’t need to burn out. I’d argue that for most of us, if we burn down to ash, we didn’t put in proper maintenance throughout the growing season, choosing to clear-cut at harvest time.
Clear cutting only makes us feel good because we see new growth out of something we thought barren. But it sets us back to nothing, forcing us to put just as much or more effort to get back to where we were.
Just like we can’t control our work environment or the people around us, we can’t control the weather, pests, weeds, etc. All we can do is prepare for what we think we can expect, and be diligent in our actions.
Even when we are exhausted.
Even when when we are anxious.
Even in rising uncertainty.
When we are harvesting the benefits of personal growth, particularly in the realm of self-improvement and alignment with our authentic self, we must do so in a regenerative way that lays the ground for continued growth in the coming months and years.
You can’t grow in a regenerative manner if you are attached to a previous, current, or future version of yourself.
Sitting on our accomplishments and what went right just extracts the work out of ourself and puts nothing towards what our future selves will need. Minimizing our accomplishments extracts the value out of ourselves and hands it to someone else.
True ownership of self is being intentional and cognizant in your energy and where you focus it.
As for me, I’m getting better at putting it towards walking along the path rather than trying to get to the end. And by taking ownership, I’m not alone on this trail.
Want to chat about personal growth, walking a path of authentic leadership, or simply have a story to share? You’re always welcome to book a free call or tune in to Cultivar Coffee Chats on Friday mornings at 10am EST.