On Whole-Hearted Reflection

Hear me read this post.

A few days ago I post­ed a few “reflec­tions,” which I described as a lit­tle less than full-fledged med­i­ta­tions and a lit­tle more than thought­ful prose. Hmm­mm. I’ve been think­ing about this def­i­n­i­tion, and also about why reflec­tions might be valu­able to any­body as they con­sid­er ways to strength­en their lead­er­ship capa­bil­i­ties. Let me share some of these thoughts and then I want to offer one more reflec­tion on “whole-heart­ed­ness” — based on the ancient Chi­nese sym­bol for Yin and Yang and its impli­ca­tions for self-study.

To me there is a real art to reflect­ing. It is the art of lis­ten­ing with­in. A good reflec­tion isn’t quite yet the answer to one’s prob­lem, but it can be the por­tal to that answer. Let me explain. A col­league I coached a few years ago was strug­gling with her career direc­tion. She could leave her job to find anoth­er com­pa­ny. She could ask for a posi­tion of high­er respon­si­bil­i­ty with­in her cur­rent com­pa­ny. She could make the leap to con­sult­ing. These were her choic­es and she was also grap­pling with the grief of los­ing a par­ent. Her ener­gy was con­strict­ed and she was cir­cling but could­n’t find the right place to land. Some­how, she had to fig­ure out a way to loosen up and let an answer come to her. Over and over in our con­ver­sa­tions she seemed to come back to the ques­tion, “What should I do?” But one day the air seemed to clear a lit­tle and ques­tion trans­formed itself into “What do I want to do?” That tiny break­through made things much eas­i­er. It was the right ques­tion. If I were going to write a reflec­tion for her about this shift, in short­ened form, it might look like this:

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Every­day I won­der what I should do. All my choic­es bring their rights and wrongs and all of them have to have their day in court. They are clam­or­ing for an answer. How am I to make this judg­ment? With­out warn­ing, some­thing goes off in my head. Whereev­er it came from, this thought rede­fines me. Sud­den­ly, in a qui­et room, I take my time to prac­tice this ques­tion again: What do I want?

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The reflec­tion is like a per­son­al his­to­ry of think­ing and feel­ing, with a good ques­tion at the end to sig­nal the very place where both an open­ing and a “stuck point” occur. We do not yet have the answer, but we do have the right place to wait for its com­ing. It is one thing when, as if in a dream, we do not know at all how to get out of town — or that we must — that’s real­ly stuck. It’s quite anoth­er to be con­scious­ly wait­ing for a train that has­n’t quite arrived at the station.

(And by the way, the per­son I coached now does occu­py an expand­ed role at her company).

I believe the val­ue of these reflec­tions can be enor­mous for any of us. They require slow­ing down the rac­ing process­es of think­ing and feel­ing. This builds con­scious­ness so that every­day dilem­mas and con­flicts are not “act­ed out” but delib­er­ate­ly attend­ed to. In my expe­ri­ence, when peo­ple don’t bring the right reflec­tions to con­scious­ness they end up yanked along by their untend­ed feel­ings rather than mak­ing more delib­er­ate choic­es. And this can have a dra­mat­ic effect on their rela­tion­ships at work. Peo­ple under stress, attempt­ing to solve inner ques­tions that lie out­side aware­ness, often turn their “shad­ow” sides to the world. They can become impa­tient, blam­ing, dis­mis­sive, mis­trust­ful, and judg­men­tal, spawn­ing in turn these same qual­i­ties in oth­ers. They may do things, like make com­ments that are insult­ing, as sim­ply a way of dis­play­ing the stress and leav­ing clues for oth­ers — some­times very painful ones — that an inner con­flict is out of con­trol. The cir­cum­stances being faced cer­tain­ly may be quite stress­ful, but the real stress may actu­al­ly be com­ing from the unan­swered ques­tions on the inside. If I am strug­gling with know­ing just what to do to become suc­cess­ful, for exam­ple, I may become very defen­sive about my per­for­mance, tak­ing things very per­son­al­ly or read­ing into oth­ers’ behav­iors all kinds of moti­va­tions that just aren’t there.

These inner inse­cu­ri­ties are not a prob­lem, they are an oppor­tu­ni­ty, but they require time and atten­tion and will­ing­ness to search with­in. Not all stress is inward­ly caused, but I sense much more of it is inward than most of us like to acknowl­edge. For an addi­tion­al per­spec­tive on some of these ideas, you might want to take a look at the Slow Lead­er­ship blog. It is premised on the need for “slow­ing down” as a spe­cif­ic strat­e­gy for improv­ing businesses.

Now here is where the Yin and Yang come in. Good reflect­ing requires the abil­i­ty to con­sid­er both our light sides and dark sides, our strengths and also our mis­takes and prob­lems. It is a bal­anc­ing act of “inner” and “out­er,” tied togeth­er in a con­tin­u­ous loop. Joe McCarthy’s excel­lent post­ing on prac­tic­ing and preach­ing is a great exam­ple of this loop. Effec­tive reflec­tion some­times takes us down into very dark ter­ri­to­ry and some­times into joy­ful and uplift­ing dis­cov­er­ies. This is why I like the ancient sym­bol so well. Dark flows into light and light flows into dark­ness, and each con­tains its oppo­site just to make sure we get the point that noth­ing is ever absolute­ly pure. Yin and Yang are not about good and bad, but about polar­i­ties, such as the revolv­ing pas­sage of the sea­sons. There can be good and bad win­ters, but today it is just this sea­son, in its con­stant­ly evolv­ing tran­sit to the next. It’s no sur­prise the sym­bol itself may have come from ancient astro­nom­i­cal calculations.

What this means is that for us to learn about our­selves, we have to take an atti­tude that hon­ors all sides of who we are. It is what I would call “whole-heart­ed­ness,” which means to me bring­ing all of who I am to some task, whether that task is writ­ing a post­ing here, serv­ing a client, or fos­ter­ing a liv­ing part­ner­ship with my friend, Jane. I bring my whole heart, not just the good parts or the bad parts. I bring it all — and I’m will­ing to work with it all. Whole­heart­ed­ness brings togeth­er sur­ren­der, love, pas­sion, and com­pas­sion. It is a kind of intel­li­gence that embraces intel­lect, emo­tion, spir­it — and mys­tery. If I adopt this atti­tude in my self-knowl­edge work as a leader, I will become increas­ing­ly aware of my con­flicts, my inse­cu­ri­ties, my needs, and my tal­ents. And I can start to bring a whole pic­ture of myself into focus. I can begin to car­ry my life-ener­gy into my chal­lenges in new ways. I can begin to con­nect more coura­geous­ly and patient­ly with others.

There is a par­tic­u­lar kind of grace that comes with a whole-heart­ed approach to self-under­stand­ing. There should be a word for it, although I doubt there is one. The ego-less see­ing of one’s true val­ue is quite a won­der­ful thing.

But, if I stand back from whole-heart­ed­ness or only focus on a part (if, indeed, I only want to see my good self or my bad self) then I real­ly am not whole­heart­ed and I will try to com­pen­sate. I’ll try to hide some part of who I am — prob­a­bly by pro­ject­ing it onto some­one else. I won’t let in what is yet unknown, and this, of course is the whole trick to self-knowl­edge, isn’t it, let­ting in the unknown?

A good reflec­tion may help open just that door.

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Whole-Heartedness

Slow­ing down, I risk see­ing more than I bar­gained for. But I will take the risk any­way. What is lead­ing but learn­ing to fol­low an inner rev­e­la­tion into the out­er response of the world?

Let the dark mat­ter come for­ward out of the shad­ows, the things I’ve avoid­ed; let the light mat­ter come for­ward; the things I’ve been blind to. Today, I will look them all in the eye and intro­duce them like old friends.

Whole-heart­ed­ness is a gift of the gods, shat­ter­ing every oth­er mirror.

Who am I to expe­ri­ence this good Self, exact­ly as I am?

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