On Living, Leading, (Re)designing, and Coaching

Living in an "Age of Fluid but Stable Identities"

We all have many identities. For example, I'm a good, smart, and athletic person. But also I'm not enough, wounded, a failure, and an idiot. And I'm also a coach. I'm a Californian and an American, and a son and a brother. I'm a tennis player and a blogger. Sounds familiar? Of course, you aren't me, you're you. But just like me you have identities - many identities. Reflect for a moment about all the ways you know yourself - about all the identities you have.

Identities are really important. They bring focus to our lives, relationships, and work. They open certain possibilities as well as close them. Anyone who has tried to make a mid-life career transition knows too well the power of identities to open and close doors not only in the eyes of others but especially in our own eyes.

Some identities - like being a Mom or a Dad or a winner - can bring great satisfaction and fulfillment. While other identities - like being a loser, someone who was fired, or someone who made a mistake - can bring embarrassment, shame or guilt. In some basic way, the quality of our life seems attached to our identities.

We get that identity is important from an early age. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” is a common question that we get from relatives and other adults when we are kids. We are also socialized into group identities. That is, we get that there is an "us" and a "them." And further, we get that we have to protect “us” from “them.” I grew up in the cold war era where movies and the nightly news were a frequent reminder of the threat "they" posed - real or imagined.

And we reinforce our identities throughout adulthood. We introduce ourselves as our identities ("Hi, I'm Steve and I'm a leadership coach."). And through our conversations we reinforce our own and other people's identities ("Did you hear that she cheated on her husband?" "She's cute, what kind of work does she do." etc.).  We know people and interact with people as if they are these identities.

And notice that even as we pass from this world, we have great concern for how our identities will live on beyond our death through our legacy ("He was so generous with his time and money." "He was the winning quarterback for Superbowl 2007.")

I think that through the lens of legacy we begin to get closer to what identities are and how they function in our lives. Through identities we deny our death. Life is full of change and uncertainty. We've been hurt before and we want to be protected from the threats in our life. We yearn for security and certainty and in our identities we find hope that our yearning is not in vain. And this yearning that identities seem to fulfill, it ties our quality of life to our identities.

In order to provide this security, protection, and certainty identities must be fixed.  That they are fixed is what generates the sense of security, protection, certainty, and legacy we desire. Our identities have a "once and for all" quality to them. For example, "Once and for all I am the winner of that race" or "Once and for all I am the President that year."

But are our identities who we really are? No. Fixed identities live in fixed assessments of a fixed world. But the world isn't fixed and neither are we. Our identities veil what is actually happening by projecting their fixations onto what's happening. Our identities are sourced from the past in continual reaction to the past events and circumstances.

Earlier we noticed that in some way our quality of life seems attached to our identities. It follows that if our quality of life is poor then one option is to change our identities rather than trying to buy, accumulate, or consume our way to happiness.

For a long time, we've held changing identities as suspicious - as something done by con artists and impersonators. Changing identities has been on the margin of society, perhaps with the exception of actors who take on identities for entertainment. But there is a shift happening in the world.

Change is being embraced more and more. The world is changing and change is accelerating. We no longer expect careers, employers, spouses, or communities to be unchanged over the span of our life. More and more people are experimenting with virtual identities (avatars) on the internet. The internet encourages us to understand ourselves as decentralized, multiplicitous, and flexible. And we also get that the identity we are in Facebook or Second Life or, dare I say it, Match.com isn't really who we are - its just an identity.

This shift that we are beginning to experience around identity opens up new possibilities for improving the quality of our lives. More and more we see that we have many identities - none of which is truly who we are - and because of this we can construct and reconstruct our identities to heal past wounds, generate more self-esteem, lift the burdens of shame, make a career transitions, and on and on. Changing identities is no longer on the margin of society but is on the move toward the center.

We live in an “age of fluid but stable identities.”

Take care,

-Steve

Persistent Complaints

Lately, I've been applying the insights of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy to the problems faced by some of my coaching clients.

One observation is that many people have persistent complaints - complaints about "the way other people are", about "the system", about "working for the man", about "the way things are", etc. But having these complaints doesn't really change anything.  In fact, they're more of a burden that we carry than an effective way of getting our needs met.

IFS approaches people as having multiple Parts and a unitary Self.  From an IFS perspective, Part of us has a persistent complaint.  The beauty of this distinction is that we get to be Self and to work with the Part of us that has the complaint instead of just complaining.  The distance that we get from the Part allows us the space to explore what the Part is really up to?  What is its job? What does it fear will happen if it isn't doing its job?

One of the key insights of IFS is that every Part has a good intention. The Part of us that has the persistent complain is actually trying to protect us in some way.  In other words, there is an underlying care that gives rise to the complaint.  Our reactiveness - our persistent complaints in this case - disconnect us from what we care about. When the Self consciously recognizes and aligns with this underlying care rather than allowing the Part to reactively complain, new possibilities for effective action arise to express the Part's care.

Here's a short self-observation exercise for you to work with this:

1. What are some of your persistent complaints?
2. What are the good intentions and cares underlying your persistent complaints of your Parts?
3. What new possibilities for action (other than complaining) open up through owning that you have these caring Parts?

Take care,

-Steve

But is it integral? Who cares!

I haven't been reading much in the way of integral writings for the last several years.  Today, I dipped back into a few of them.

I keep finding people in the integral community asking the question "Is it integral?" about all kinds of things - leadership, psychology, medicine, law, coaching, etc. as if being integral was the goal.

Whatever happened to pragmatism - does it work?

I'm sure someone will say "But being integral means it works better and in more cases."  This is probably true - we'd need to look case by case - but what I find is that in promoting the question "Is it integral?" we are taking our eye off the ball. Many people who are new to the integral community (and many who are "old" too) are developing a really funky critical theory where being integral is "it" and not being integral is passé. How very non-integral!

Is it integral? Who cares. Picking up the banner of pragmatism, I suggest that a better question is "Does it work?" This question opens are more useful space of possibilities by putting us in more direct contact with the nature of whatever we're questioning and how well it responds to present circumstances.

Take care,

-Steve

Relishing Greatness

Much of the time we live life from the assessment that something is wrong. We do all manner of things because something is wrong.

We change jobs because something is wrong. We get married because something is wrong. We break  up because something is wrong. We go to school because something is wrong. We start friendships because something is wrong. We end friendships for the same reason. We have kids because something is wrong. We move houses, neighborhoods, cities, states, and countries because something is wrong. We call meetings because something is wrong. We launch new projects because something is wrong. We build new products because something is wrong. We discover new medicines because something is wrong. And on and on ...

Everything we do seems to be for covering up the something-wrong-ness of existence. But alas, the something-wrong-ness of existence appears to be bottomless with no end in sight.

This bottomless-endlessness of the something-wrong-ness points, I think, not to something that is true of life but rather something which is true of us - those who hold that there is something wrong.

What it points to is that we are that something is wrong - as an identity. And everywhere we show up ... guess what? ... we find that something is wrong.  That's what we bring to every situation we encounter.

What if the things we did were for being satisfied and relishing the greatness of existence? 

Who would we need to be - as an identity - to have this existence?

What keeps us from living as that identity?

-Steve

On the Power of Letting Go and Taking Another Look

The process of dwelling-in-a-distinction consists of repeatedly "getting" and "loosing" the distinction.

I often remind students in the Integral Coaching courses I teach in that throughout the year they will "get" what coaching is and then "loose" what coaching is over and over again.   And I tell them not to worry.  That this is the necessary process of assimilating and dwelling in new ontological distinctions.

Of course, what they "get" each time is slightly different - slightly deeper in richness and subtle nuances.

Indeed this was and remains my own path as a coach - getting it, loosing it.

Best not to grasp and try to hold on ... that only makes the process more difficult, confusing, and anxiety-producing.  Instead, always be ready to let go and to yet take another look.  Letting go, then taking another look is a very powerful way of participating in our own unfoldment.

Take care,

-Steve

What's the point?

Thought for the day ...

"Consider what we often want out of books. We want the episodes to be related to one another in some way, we want to see a plot develop, and in the end we want to be able to see the point of it all. Now, in books there usually is a point, and the author probably tried to put it there, which is why, if it's a good book, we read on. But is there really a comparable kind of point to be found when the text is us? Or do we create one, precisely so that we can live on?" - Mark Freeman, Rewriting the Self

Is there a plot to our lives and does it have a point?

Or do we create one as we look back over the trajectory we've traveled?

What do you think?

Lately, I've been exploring the notion of self-narratives - stories we have about who we are - and under what conditions our self-narratives change - instances when we realize we aren't the same person we were yesterday because we've learned something or developed in some way.  I highly recommend Freeman's book, however, I'll warm you that he is a philosopher and the book is about as far away from self-help as you can get and still be talking about this subject.

Take care,

-Steve

On Being Open

Insight of the day ... only openness can sense openness.

Meaning, only a person who is open can sense the openness of others.  If you are closed, everyone will feel closed to you.

Have a great day!

-Steve

Searching for a Collective Ontology

Last week I took a 7 mile hike with my friend Ken Homer.  Among other things we discussed the observation our most powerful "technologies" for transformation focus on transformation of the individual because they are founded on individual ontologies - answers to the question "What is a human being?"

For example, one approach to answering the question "what is a human being?" that comes from hermeneutic phenomenology follows.

A human being is interpretive (and self-interpretive). That is our experience is shaped by our interpretations and, as individuals, the interpretations we make can and do differ. And this applies to our experience of ourselves as well as our experience of others and our environment.

A human being is product of the interaction of biology, biography, and culture (especially language). That is that how we interpret the everything is shaped our bodies, our personal histories, and the family and cultures we grow up in.

A human being has concerns and takes action to care for them. That is, as individuals, our experience is grounded in "care" and we have agency.

This leads to "transformational technologies" for individuals that amount to shifting how we interpret the world and how we act to take care of our concerns. This is the heart of coaching.

But the significant environmental, social, and spiritual crises of our present day also seem to call for transformation on a collective level. However, we don't seem to have good collective ontologies - answers to the question "What are human beings?" or, said more colloquially, "What are people?"  Of course, here we are asking about human beings as a collective phenomenon.  And, of course, we aren't proposing abandoning individual ontologies only augmenting them.

Ken has a neat idea - that we could look to indigenous peoples who seem to exist more as a "people" than as modern "individuals." I think this is a great idea.  To me it makes perfect sense.

Perhaps the best individual ontology we have is from the work of Heidegger. The above picture is of an Achuar man. The Achuar people are indigenous to the forests of Ecuador and Peru. What we need is the "Heidegger of the Achuar."  Any suggestions?

My best lead so far on this inquiry is to read "The Walking People" by Paula Underwood.

Take care,

-Steve

Authenticity as the Ultimate Calling

I hold that an authentic stance in the world is fundamental to the practice of Integral Leadership (and Integral Coaching too).  Authenticity is a rich topic of inquiry. Today I'd like to explore authenticity as a calling - the ultimate calling.

I've been reading Michael Gelven's commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time. In commenting on Heidegger's analysis of authenticity, Gelven notes that there are four aspects that are true of any calling. There must be:

1. Someone who does the calling
2. Someone who is called
3. Something that is called about
4. That to which someone is called

In Heidegger's analysis, all four aspects of the calling to authenticity involve the self.

1. It is the self that does the calling
2. It is the self that is called
3. It is the self that is called about
4. It is the self to which the self is called

However, each of these reflects a different aspect of the self.

1. The self that does the calling is the self who is "not at home" (anxious) and dreading life - the inauthentic self.
2. The self that is called is the self who is lost in social game-playing and whose identity is socially constructed - again, the inauthentic self.
3. The calling is about awakening to the two possible modes of existence of the self - that the self is either inauthentic or authentic. In other words, the calling lets us know we are not trapped in a life of dread and anxiety because there is an alternative mode - authenticity.
4. The call is an appeal to the self to be authentic.

This analysis reveals the path from inauthenticity to authenticity. And the surprise, at least to me, is that the inauthentic self initiates the call to authenticity out of its own sense of anxiety, dread, and discomfort at not feeling at home in the world. This is the good news because it means that we can never be permanently trapped in inauthenticity because inauthenticity holds within it the call to authenticity.

The other observation here is that we can get lost in the "outer" world of social game-playing, this is inauthentic, and leads to dread and not feeling at home. And the resolution of inauthenticity as authenticity is an inward turning towards what is unique, authentic, and true of ourselves.

Lastly, what does it take to hear this call? Being silent. We must be silent enough to hear the call and not be wrapped up in the loudness of our social game-playing.

The appropriate response to feelings of anxiety and dread is to be silent, to sit with them, and to feel them. For within such feelings, the inauthentic self will call for authenticity.

And even if we aren't feeling anxiety and dread, when we become silent as we do in meditation, we will start to feel the anxiety that is always already there lurking at the edges of our experience. For the beginning meditator, this is the first major challenges to continued meditation.

What supports this silence, and therefore our calling to authenticity, is meditation, body work (e.g., massage) and body practices (e.g., yoga), being in nature, and participating in a community that recognizes and calls for authenticity (e.g., a sangha) which is not the norm in society.

I hope this has been thought provoking. I'd love to hear what you make of this.

Take care,

-Steve

On Living Questions

Although I'm not a "life coach", I get asked by at least one coaching client every month to help them find their life purpose.

This questions seems to be central for (at least) two kinds of clients. The first are people aged 20-30 who keep bouncing from one thing to another trying to figure out what to do for their rest of their lives.  One year they are working for corporate America, the next they are in Nepal trekking, and the next they are back in school getting their second degree and working in a cafe.  The second kind of client with this issue are people in their 40s (and sometimes older) who have been working in the corporate world for twenty years. They are burned out and suspect they just wasted the last twenty years doing something that wasn't purposeful for them.

Yesterday, one of my clients asked me, "Why do you think it is that so many people have a hard time finding their life's purpose?"  Here was my response.

People have a hard time answering the question "What is the purpose of my life?" because of how they hold the question. In the Western world (and maybe the Eastern too, I don't know), we are taught to value the answer not the question. Once we get the answer, we toss the question away. That may work fine for questions like "Where are my car keys?" or "How do I get to San Francisco?" But when we are confronting the big questions of life, tossing the question away is tossing away our means of opening to life. Tossing away the question doesn't work because life is creative and full of surprises. And these surprises invalidate or obsolete any answer that we hold onto.

When confronting the big questions of life, we have to hold onto the questions and carry any answers that show up lightly. It is the question that brings meaning and purpose to our lives more than the answers.

When we live our lives amid good questions, the questions have a way of opening up a space and shaping our lives in ways that are meaningful to us.  When people want to find their life's purpose they are usually looking for something meaningful to do with their lives. The practice of "living questions" generates a meaningful life inherently.

So what are good questions?  First, the question "what is the purpose of my life?" is not a good question. It is framed as if there is one and only one answer. And this question lends itself to being tossed aside when an answer first appears.

Good questions engage us in personal paradoxes that are central in our lives. An example of this that arose in a coaching conversation yesterday is "How can I follow my own curiosity to explore life while still feeling that I belong?"

We must engage good questions with our minds, hearts and bodies not just our minds. Good questions aren't academic exercises. We have to feel our way through them. We have to sense our way through them.

To fully engage the question, we must live the question instead of waiting for the answer. By doing this, we participate in the creativity of life.

When we listen to music, read a book, look at art, watch a movie, eat a meal, talk to a friend, watch TV ... we can do so from the question "What question

Here are the questions that I'm living these days ...

• How can one person to make a big difference in this big world?
• What does it take inside me to create healthy relationships with the people I love?
• How can I follow my passion to create a viable life?

What questions are you living?

Take care,

-Steve