Choose Risk

“To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.”
--Soren Kierkegaard

I spent my weekend indulging in nostalgia, scanning-and-posting pictures of old adventures and twenty year old family photos onto my private Face Book account. One album contained photos of my climbing adventures: in the past few years I summitted Mt. Adams, Mt. Baker, Mt. Olympus, and Mt. Rainier as well as a 13,000’ peak (Warminwanusqua) on the Inca Trail enroute to Machu Picchu. Upon viewing my album, an old high school friend commented that I certainly lived life to its fullest. I contemplated leaving it at that, because I certainly try to live life to its fullest, but it didn’t feel completely honest to me to make it seem like I am simply an adventurer, motivated by adrenalin alone. Instead, I believe that the biggest part of living life to its fullest is daring to do that which terrifies you. I climbed those mountains because friends inspired me, and because I wanted to push myself outside my comfort zone.

Mark Twain once said, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear...” Each of those climbs forced me to face my own fear and keep going if I wanted to make it to the top. On the Rainier summit, it was my feelings of responsibility to the mostly rookie team that overrode my fear. On Olympus, it was sheer determination and the choice to place my life and my trust in my brother’s hands that allowed me to scramble and rappel up the last few hundred feet despite the 1000’ foot drop to my left side. On Mt. Adams, my first summit, my friend and guide coaxed and cajoled me over a particularly rocky spot with crevasses too close for comfort beneath me. Each of those climbs brought me to tears at one point, but I got through it by remembering to breathe and to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other.

I believe nearly everyone experiences deep wounds or dark nights when life seems unbearably painful. In my experience, when you are living those moments, the best response is to simply breathe, put one foot in front of the other, and get through each day. Friends, family, and even your version of God may seem too far away, or too intangible for comfort. But time always passes, and even the deepest wounds heal if you bring them into the light. Think of all your favorite stories. All the greatest heroes had to go through the shadows in order to come out into the light. Each time they win a battle, they come out stronger and more confident, more ready to take on the next challenge.

I encourage you to look at your life as a hero’s journey, and remember that fear is always based either on experiences from the past or an imagined future state. There is no fear in the present moment. In each moment, there is only choice. As Soren Kierkegaard said, you might lose your footing temporarily, but if you don’t risk, you lose yourself.

Choose risk. Learn to stand with yourself in discomfort, breathe deeply, and take a small step forward towards your new life.

Embrace the Unexpected

I was on the Peninsula this past weekend, celebrating Thanksgiving with my extended family. Sunday morning, my nephews snuggled on the sofa with me while we watched Monsters vs. Aliens. (Monsters vs. Aliens is an animated film starring the voice of Reese Witherspoon as Susan Murphy, an ordinary woman who is about to get married. On her wedding day, a meteorite strikes her; she absorbs a substance called quantonium, and grows into a giantess.)

I pondered the movie on the way home (I enjoy pondering) and determined that there are several messages in the movie that are important pieces of living a vital life. The first is simply that the unexpected always happens. A meteorite hits Susan on her wedding day! No matter how hard we try to fully control our lives, we can never see completely around the next corner.

The second is when Susan embraces her new life. This is after she successfully defeated the robot, and her fiancé just broke off their engagement because he’s afraid her new life will overshadow his career. At this point, she realizes that she has strengths she didn’t know she had, sees the imperfections in the life that is behind her, and is excited about the possibilities of her new life as a giantess. This transition always occurs in the journey to vital leadership when we fully accept ourselves as we are, realize we have untapped strengths, and can live more vital lives.

Next, Susan loses her super human strength, but overcomes her fear, maintains her courage and intelligence, and outsmarts the Alien’s plan to take over the Earth. This phase comes when you fully own the strengths you’ve always carried, and tap into your emotional battery center (known in its scientific form as the emotional experiential memory, or EEM.) This emotional battery center helps you overcome fear and resistance, which then motivates you to move out of complacency or fear, and into a new phase of life.

Finally, Susan knowingly reabsorbs the quantonium, and regains her giantess stature and strength so she can save her friends and the planet. This phase of our lives occurs when we overcome our fear and resistance to being “different” and fully accept our role as leaders of our lives and in our world.

Vital leadership is a hero’s journey. There will be difficulties, sorrows, fear, challenges, and obstacles to overcome. All heroes and heroines must face their dragons! But true warriors press on, tap into their courage and strengths, and push through to the next challenge. So next time an unexpected obstacle shows up in your life, look for the silver hidden in the cloud. Uncover the lesson, accept the new, and step into the next phase of your journey.

Courageous Acts of Kindness

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." --Margaret Mead

Homelessness is one of many challenges facing the world, and has multi-pronged contributing factors. The multiple causes of homelessness in the United States make it one of those issues that seem impossible to solve. However, there is a daily practice available for all citizens that can make a difference in a homeless person’s life: view and treat them with dignity. The homeless are human beings with the same feelings, needs, wants, and desire for respect that we all have.

Last winter I stumbled upon a website for an organization called Finding Grace Homeless Initiative, founded by Lynn Blodgett. The website (see links on left of blog) profiles Lynn's photographs of some of the homeless in America.

His portraits are beautiful. They capture the souls of the homeless people he photographed, and poignantly remind us of their humanity. In the forward of the book, Danny Glover says, “We cherish our democracy in theory, but to honor it in practice we must all participate and collaborate in the improvement of our society. No individual can end homelessness, but we can each find our own way to embody the struggle against it. We must decide to act. But first we must decide to look.”

By looking, and seeing these people as human beings, with stories that we cannot even begin to imagine, we can shift our perception, and open our eyes to possibility rather than judgment. Each day, each of us makes choices, and every choice we make has a ripple effect on the world and our own lives.

I watched the new Sandra Bullock movie, The Blind Side, last week. This movie, based on the book “The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game,” tells the story of Leigh Anne Tuohy and Michael Oher, a homeless teen that the family takes in out of the cold. The story is a call to action to all of us, reminding us to tap into the best side of our human nature, and find a way to embody the struggle we are all engaged in: to create a world where each of us can live into our highest potential, our planet is vibrant with life, and we have learned to balance the human needs for compassion, community and wellness with prosperity and financial wealth.

Please do not fall into the trap of thinking one person can’t create change. Although some issues require a partnership between many, there are thousands more examples of individuals who had the courage to make choices that created ripple effects of goodness in the world.

One smile, one word of encouragement can make a difference between hope and despair in anyone’s life; and all of us, together, can create partnerships of progress for the things that matter most. I urge you during this Thanksgiving season to offer a smile and a word of encouragement to someone you would ordinarily pass by. Sometimes one person’s small but courageous act of kindness can start a revolution of change.

Curiosity in Leadership

I was on the Olympic Peninsula recently, celebrating my niece’s 5th birthday. Before the party, I took two of the girls (aged 5 and 3) down the street to the local playground. Both girls tested their mettle against new challenges, and showed off their latest tricky tricks. As we were walking back to their house, the 5 year old stopped to tie her shoe –one of her most up-to-date skills. While stooping over to grab the laces, she looked out at the world sideways and upside down, and noticed that things looked radically different from that angle. Celebrating her discovery with her, (and remembering that sideways and upside down were a couple of my favorite angles to view the world when I was her age) all three of us spent the next block and a half walking crouched down, with our heads upside down near our knees, peering out at the world from this delightful angle. Unfortunately --since we almost fell off the curb-- I decided that at least one of us should probably be conscious of safety, so we wouldn’t veer off the sidewalk into oncoming traffic. Since I was technically the adult, I reluctantly accepted that role. The two of them wandered several more blocks with heads down and sideways, viewing life through that interesting perspective, before moving on to new discoveries.

Curiosity and a playful attitude towards life are some of the greatest lessons children can teach us. So often we reach a certain level of mastery and believe we know everything there is to know about life, our job, or our organization. Our lives get so busy with the importance of daily tasks and schedules, we rarely take time to shift our perspective, to listen to other viewpoints, or to simply breathe and notice the beauty, surprise and lessons that surround us in little things each day. Unfortunately, without new perspectives we stay stuck in our attachments to the way things are or the way we think things are supposed to be and miss new possibility.

A large part of the focus at KIC Coaching is about getting curious . . . about yourself, other people, your organization, the world. Albert Einstein stated that you can never solve a problem on the same level it was created. Marcel Proust opined that the only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. Did you know that Einstein’s theory of relativity resulted from a question he had wondered about as a teenager: “What would the universe look like if I was riding on a beam of light?”

I encourage you to take a lesson from the wisdom of my nieces, (and Einstein and Proust.) Take a different route to work. Listen –and really hear—your child’s perspective on life. Look for a different angle on a common argument. Re-frame a question –one for which you don’t have an answer—by examining the assumptions that are embedded in it. Try something completely new and different with no goal except to learn something. In other words, simply change up your routine. You never know what discoveries you might bring to light!