I spent the summer with great minds and this is what is now emerging.
The Way of Integrity
I was re-reading The Way of Integrity from Martha Beck – which I highly recommend reading if you haven’t yet – and I was laughing at how much this book had, without me consciously knowing it, been a friendly companion and influenced my life over the past few years. At the end of the book (spoiler alert!), Martha’s words gave language and rang true to the self-discovery journey I have been on. “When we fully dissolve the lie of being isolated within ourselves…We forget ourselves as small, doomed beings on a threatened planet, and remember ourselves as… ‘the love that moves the sun and the other stars’”.
It took me the writing of my own book to properly listen to the voices in my head – essentially going on my own version of Dante’s Inferno described in Martha’s way-finding quest – to learn to appreciate them, as well as to unlearn and dissolve the unhelpful messages that no longer served me or the planet I was trying to protect. And on the way, I found my Self.
No Bad Parts
I discovered a calm and curious version of Me that knows to move compassionately and courageously through this world. To let her take more space and lead the way, I had to do some negotiating with different parts of Me who thought they had to be in charge. This took a while and a regular practice – I call these my internal ‘Me-etings’ – and over time, it helped me transform my relationships with my inner and outer worlds.
The funny thing is that I later learned that my intuitive experience strongly resonated with the Internal Family Systems (IFS), a non-pathologising therapeutic model developed by Richard C. Schwartz and validated over four decades of practice all over the world. In his excellent book, No Bad Parts, Richard brings together foundational concepts and helpful exercises to reconnect with our inner wounded and protective parts, as well as our Self. Grounded in systems thinking, he also explores the transformative potential of Self-leadership, both for inner but also outer connectedness.
Self-leadership
This is a journey I’ve been on – both leading a range of initiatives and also observing the ways ‘leaders’ lead. I’ve been trying to internally figure out when things go wrong – or right – and why they do, and finding ways to avoid repeating unhelpful cycles or unnecessary suffering that could be avoided. One of my current working hypotheses is that when humans are not leading from their compassionate Self but from a wounded or protective ego-centred part, shit hits the fan. And of course, context hugely influences how one is able to – or unable to – access their calm and connected Self. When our planet is on fire, it is becoming increasingly difficult and crucial to respond with a calm discernment. Yet, it is our responsibility to access our resources in ways that give life and connect us to our collective humanity. And to sometimes refrain from ‘doing’ when our ego is not in check and our action swims in the anxiety of ‘I-am-not-doing-enough’.
Instead of being in service to life – and not including myself in ‘life’ – I’ve been playing with Self-actualisation as an active form of recognising when I am or not in integrity, as well as helping others see when they may have stepped out too and invite them to come back in. This is where the BRAIN Huddle comes in handy.
Whole Brain Living
If we get curious enough about the way our brains work and how it influences the way we lead our lives – or initiatives or organisations or sectors – we can learn to rethink and train ourselves to become better leaders. Complementary to IFS and parts work, Jill Bolte-Taylor offers a fascinating and neuroscience-informed approach to understanding ourselves. In her amazing book, Whole Brain Living, Jill blends neuroanatomy and psychology to describe the two emotional and thinking parts of our brain – four characters in total – and provides a super helpful tool to call upon them: the BRAIN Huddle.
These four characters emerge from brain cells which exist in every human being – although some of us – and some of our leaders – appear to over use or under use some of our cells…:
- Character 1 is the left thinking brain. This is the rational, highly functioning, organised, lover of to-do-lists. It is also where lives the ego-centered consciousness that defines each of us as individuals.
- Character 2 is the left feeling brain. This is where the emotional inner child lives with our deepest pain from the past and anxiety about the future. This is where our ego-based fear, our fight/flight/freeze brain circuitry, and our emotional reactivity in the present, live.
- Character 3 is the right feeling brain. This is where playfulness, spontaneity, and endless creativity and possibility exist. This part is open, tuned into the present moment, kind, entrepreneurial, experiential and full of radiant joy.
- Character 4 is the right thinking brain. This is our blissful present, expansive, open, consciousness. This is our loving and nurturing capacity to experience a feeling of connectedness, peace and wonder.
Imagine the world if we could train ourselves – and the leaders around us – to lean more into our Character 4 – Self – qualities. In the BRAIN Huddle, we get to practice to work as a team and navigate our responses based on what the situation demands of us.
Now, in reading this, you might feel tempted to pack your bags and move into your Right Brain for a while. It’s wonderful there but I wouldn’t recommend it for too long, you may end up inadvertently spraining your ankle falling down rocky stairs because you were so elated by the sight of a sacred kingfisher… That’s why Whole Brain Living is the way. The Left Brain is great at keeping you safe and organised – as long as they do not think they are the only ones in charge and learn to integrate with the other parts…
Patterning
I can see a common thread through what these great minds are teaching us, and that makes my body cells tingle. They’ve come at it from sociology, systems thinking, psychology and neuroscience – yet what I see are all tools and practices to find our Selves. In all of these books, I spot inner work for systems change, the potential to create a more beautiful world by transforming ourselves, through the way we think, relate, move and lead our lives, with integrity and integration.