Third Practice: Caring for Self

For more con­text on this post, please see:

The Prac­tice of Leadership
Eight Lead­er­ship Practices
First Prac­tice: Know­ing Your Lead­er­ship Edge
Sec­ond Prac­tice: Devel­op­ing Your Com­fort Lev­el with Feedback
Fourth Prac­tice: Lead­er­ship and Influence
Fifth Prac­tice: Dis­cussing Undiscussables
Sixth Prac­tice: On Collaborating
Sev­enth Prac­tice: Per­son­al Integrity
Eighth Prac­tice: Spir­i­tu­al Perspective

The prac­tice of self-care begins with an under­stand­ing that unless I care for myself, I may not have the resources to tru­ly care for others.

I want to start this post­ing with a poem by the Span­ish poet, Anto­nio Macha­do, as trans­lat­ed by Robert Bly:

The wind, one bril­liant day, called
to my soul with the odor of jasmine.

In return for the odor of my jasmine,
I’d like all the odor of your roses.

I have no ros­es; all the flowers
in my gar­den are dead.

Well then, I’ll take the with­ered petals
and the yel­low leaves and the waters of the fountain.

The wind left. And I wept. And I said
What have you done with the gar­den that was entrust­ed to you.

Indeed, what has hap­pened to that gar­den we have been entrust­ed with? Had some­one asked me this ques­tion twen­ty years ago, I might have dis­count­ed them by hasti­ly reply­ing: “I’m JUST FINE, thank you!” and I would have been think­ing in the back of my mind about the next project and dead­line, the next accom­plish­ment, the next thing on the list that I need­ed to get done. After all, I was scram­bling to build a future.

Ah, so many of the lead­ers I have worked with have known how at a cer­tain lev­el to keep body and soul togeth­er, but did not have with­in them the sin­gle best mark­er of self-care, which I take to be joy — in life and work, rela­tion­ships, and self. When I look deeply into the bowl of plume­ria blos­soms at the top of this page (a pho­to tak­en in Maui a cou­ple years ago) I am always remind­ed of that joy. And I ask myself, am I liv­ing this joy today or have I cov­ered it up in my search for accom­plish­ment, in my devo­tion to my causes?

These are my words to me about me, but I fre­quent­ly see the effects of lack of self-care when I work with oth­ers. A com­mon man­i­fes­ta­tion may come from the noble aspi­ra­tion to be respon­si­ble. I once worked with the head of a hos­pi­tal who was so respon­si­ble he had to per­son­al­ly approve almost every­thing that was hap­pen­ing, right down to select­ing fur­ni­ture — a new lamp in one of the patient rooms, for exam­ple. When I became bet­ter acquaint­ed with this smart and sen­si­tive man, and learned more about some of the chaos in his fam­i­ly as he had grown up, it became easy to see that he had replaced his capac­i­ty to care for him­self with his capac­i­ty to “respon­si­bly” care for his orga­ni­za­tion — to do what felt to him to be his job. No one could help him if they did not also feed that pri­vate mon­ster. If a mis­take was made, it was his mis­take and he had to do every­thing in his pow­er to pre­vent mis­takes, up to and includ­ing tak­ing deci­sions away from his emi­nent­ly qual­i­fied staff.

I worked with anoth­er man­ag­er in a hi-tech firm with a sim­i­lar prob­lem, although expressed much more dra­mat­i­cal­ly. He would pub­licly berate those who made mis­takes in con­sis­tent­ly per­son­al ways — mak­ing com­ments about oth­ers’ bod­ies and intel­li­gence lev­els. Luck­i­ly he knew he had a prob­lem, and was ulti­mate­ly able to see quite clear­ly that he was absorb­ing oth­ers into him­self. He began to under­stand that their mis­takes were not his mis­takes. Just rec­og­niz­ing this was an impor­tant first step to chang­ing his relationships.

All of this is about inte­ri­or voic­es that can slam us up against the walls of the inte­ri­or space that might once have been a gar­den. It is how we treat our­selves that is “leak­ing” into our rela­tion­ships. It seems obvi­ous to me that peo­ple who become bru­tal or dis­mis­sive or ambiva­lent to oth­ers are often deal­ing with pow­er­ful inte­ri­or forces that dri­ve the exte­ri­or behav­ior. A per­son who can­not be gen­er­ous with him- or her­self is like­ly to have a very dif­fi­cult time being tru­ly gen­er­ous with any­body else.

This brings us to the sub­ject of heal­ing, and the prac­tice of self-care. To many, these words are not eas­i­ly heard because they pri­vate­ly feel a need to become tougher and more durable and smarter around the hard edges of real­i­ty, even if this means cut­ting them­selves into two people.

Pema Chodron, the Amer­i­can Bud­dhist nun, has writ­ten that we can let life hard­en us — or, if we can stay open, we can let is soft­en us, result­ing in a new way of being. If I choose the route of hard­en­ing, I may also find that I need many com­pen­sa­tions, more toys, more mon­ey, more pow­er, a big­ger house, more hous­es, a job with more sta­tus, big­ger and bet­ter addic­tions, new accom­plish­ments that demand I work hard­er and hard­er, become ever more “respon­si­ble” and smarter than oth­ers in order to assuage my own per­son­al but unac­knowl­edged need for joy. And there it is, I’ve said every­thing I know about self-care: it is a need, not a pref­er­ence, not an add-on. It is a neces­si­ty for life. And if the need for joy is not accessed, it will come back in a dif­fer­ent form, as a symptom.

An admin­is­tra­tor I know did some refined work to begin find­ing his own joy. He knew he need­ed to do some­thing because he pos­sessed an inex­plic­a­ble sense of malaise about his life and work, and he would find him­self mys­te­ri­ous­ly becom­ing upset with his wife and chil­dren. Giv­en a chance for some soli­tude and for a lit­tle reflec­tion, mem­o­ries of his father spon­ta­neous­ly appeared; mem­o­ries of the ran­dom beat­ings he received as a child with the buck­le end of the belt. Now in mid-life he was strong enough to deal with these mem­o­ries, and he began his self-work by tak­ing one of his own belts, cut­ting it up and, with a friend as wit­ness, bury­ing it on moun­tain-top. The malaise had a source.

There are parts of our­selves that we can hard­ly hold, and those parts obscure the bowl of plume­rias, spoil the gar­den of a soul.

You may have expect­ed me to say that the prac­tice of self-care is about eat­ing well, giv­ing our­selves time for renew­al, exer­cis­ing reg­u­lar­ly, find­ing our art, med­i­ta­tion, bal­anc­ing out life and love and work. The capac­i­ty to do those things is sure­ly very impor­tant evi­dence, but I believe they are actu­al­ly expres­sions of some­thing deep­er. And if we are strug­gling with such activ­i­ties, or they don’t bring us last­ing joy, if they are just a dis­ci­pline, it is entire­ly pos­si­ble there is a lin­ger­ing need for self-for­give­ness for what has hap­pened to us, and what in our inte­ri­or life — in what we say to our­selves — is still hap­pen­ing to us today.

When a leader has this kind of inner prac­tice of for­give­ness, so that their joy is nev­er lost, he or she can nat­u­ral­ly become immense­ly and pos­i­tive­ly influ­en­tial. Let me explain through a sto­ry. A friend and for­mer client who is CEO of a small enter­prise (about a hun­dred peo­ple) once got some uncom­fort­able feed­back from a mem­ber of his orga­ni­za­tion. He was informed by an employ­ee that he had made an off-hand com­ment in a meet­ing that could have been con­strued as racist. Now this is the sort of mis­take many peo­ple in exposed posi­tions like to deny or dis­miss as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. But my friend is a very fine leader. He did not argue the point nor did he dis­count it. He sought more infor­ma­tion and under­stand­ing, and, of course he offered a pri­vate apol­o­gy. But he went fur­ther. He used this inci­dent as an avenue to open up an impor­tant con­ver­sa­tion about racism in his orga­ni­za­tion. With the per­mis­sion of the per­son who brought him the feed­back, he shared at an all employ­ee meet­ing what had occurred, thank­ing and rec­og­niz­ing the “mes­sen­ger” for com­ing to him. He also asked every­one to share with him any oth­er instances where he said some­thing that could also might be regard­ed as racist. He was using what had hap­pened to him as a pos­i­tive oppor­tu­ni­ty for both per­son­al and orga­ni­za­tion­al growth. You may say, this must have cre­at­ed ten­sion for every­one. Of course! But he also, in his open­ness and hon­or­ing of the mes­sen­ger, began to build the path past it.

This is an entire­ly dif­fer­ent way of respond­ing to a mis­take. I believe only some­one who knows and expe­ri­ences a very gen­uine joy in self, who lets life soft­en rather than hard­en, also can do work as a leader of such excep­tion­al beau­ty and grace. You could say, well, the CEO was mod­el­ing his lead­er­ship through inter­per­son­al courage, but this diverts us from know­ing what stands behind the mod­el­ing and the courage. And that would be the prac­tice of self-for­give­ness, the renew­al of the gar­den in which a per­son — you or me — is tru­ly free to grow. When the gar­den is grow­ing, and we are tend­ing it, we become curi­ous instead of defen­sive, acknowl­edg­ing rather than deny­ing, able to embrace a com­mu­ni­ty and be embraced by it. When the voic­es of inte­ri­or crit­i­cism retreat, there — beyond all the cov­er-ups and false pre­tens­es of per­fec­tion that hide our vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty — there, the joy abounds.