Your leaders, whether they show it or not, are human.
After my heart attack – one of my former clients sent me a message saying, “I love you, and your heart attack scared the shit out of me because I relate to you & can’t stand the thought of you being scared….and MORTAL.”
I spent the first 46 years of my life escaping my mortality and humanness, and boy, did it please other people. The “positivity.”
The full of hot air promises to manifest with thought alone. A pretty pollyanna package with tons of mental information, but also hiding disassociation from my own body. I was wearing the masks society conditioned me to wear in exchange for validation and acceptance.
I note the people who, the moment I let any humanness slip – even with humility and an attempt to repair – REJECTED me and LEFT. They only wanted to plastic and polished version of my leadership. But their ability to hold my humanness was never their responsibility; it was always, only ever mine.
I know that when I don’t have the capacity for the messy and uncomfortable parts of being human in others – it is only ever a reflection of the lack of love and compassion I have for myself.
I would rather be rejected for showing pieces of the wild edges of my humanness than be adored for being a masked and performative me.
This may not make for popular or feel-good leadership. Last night the thought “Leadership is a LIE” crossed my mind. It only serves to create an above or below status, and traditionally it requires one to present their masked and plastic performing selves in service of shareholders to the front-facing world, thus leaving an impossible standard of measurement that followers will no doubt, consciously or subconsciously, hold themselves to.
For me, Leadership is horizontal and circularish – I am the other you – I just might be willing to go first. Let’s go together – I’ll be there right by your side.
Yes, dear J, I am mortal, and you can relate to me because I will tell you the truth, and I will tell you the truth is OK – even if it doesn’t feel comfortable.
You are mortal too. It’s not a failure to be mortal. It’s not a moral failure to have a heart attack, or to experience anxiety, or overthinking, or be out of alignment, or to be in the whiplash of grief. Enlightenment isn’t escaping our humanness; it’s loving it fiercely. Stop fighting and harshly judging something that doesn’t need to be FIXED.
What if we put the energy we spend into bypassing, disassociating, shaming, judging, and ignoring our humanity ~into holding it with compassion? This requires entirely new “programming” and muscle memory. It takes practice. It takes repetition. It requires choice, over and over and over – as we are undoing the “you’re doing it wrong” that has become a part of every cell in our bodies and bones.
Most days (I’m still practicing), I no longer need it to be easy; I just need it to be real.
I notice that when I can LET myself be REAL with myself – which means breathing self-compassion and self-acknowledgment for the most uncomfortable states, I experience – when I can gently welcome all parts of me (without the intent to fix or heal or change those parts) – THAT is when my heart softens, and I remember that I am ok.
- Another benefit is I don’t buy as much shit I don’t need.
- Another benefit is that I want to punch other people in the face WAY less.
Some will see my willingness to meet my own suffering as indulging complaints – that I am in a victim mindset.
Who are the victims, really? Is it the ones willing to belong to their own sweet selves with compassion and enoughness, even and especially when it is a tad messy & extremely uncomfortable? Or those jumping through plastic masked hoops to pretend they aren’t exactly what they are?
Make no mistake, this path of self-compassion and choosing the holiness of humanness is NOT EASY. But this is the hard I choose.
