6.14.2010

Vital Behaviors

I spend most of my time working with people who are developing their capacity to lead others. Our work always (it must) begins as an inside-out exploration. You must know who you are and why you are spending all this life energy in the pursuit of impact.

Most of the inside work ends up being about re-writing the internal narrative that a person has been using to choose action and achieve outcomes. Most of the time, that internal narrative is way, way out of date.

It's a narrative that has been written by many disjointed authors. These great writers include Mom and Dad, grandparents, brothers and sisters, teachers, coaches, friends, the communities we live in, college, organizations and the micro and macro cultures we swim in daily. It's a soup that has been slow cooking for years with these various influences/ingredients being added almost without our noticing.

One day but more likely lots of days, weeks, months and years, it dawns on us that this narrative is not working so well. It's not accurate, it's not true, it's not me. And now the real adventure starts.

When I understand my narrative is not really "my" narrative but a clustered hairball of others, I get that exciting and uncomfortable feeling that the next step is really one only I can take. There is no one there to do the work for me.

What liberation. What freedom.

It's my show. I'm the author, I decide what is going to happen next and what it will look like, sound like, how it will be experienced and even...., what the achievements will be about.

Who's ready for this ride? This is the real adventure. The "in public" invention of the new narrative of who I am being. This is big change.