The Fires of the Forge

An Update

I have become increasingly clear about where leadership is at and how emotional intelligence ties in to that. My life is changing right now in pretty significant ways.

I am now working with one client, full-time to support them in a major transformation effort. The net of that is that I am not really teaching leadership any more, but simply doing it.

I am also seeing that as I attempt to do leadership (the old physician heal thyself thing), just how flawed the current model of leadership I use--that we all use or try to adapt from--is.

As that shift is happening, I am becoming more clear that part of my purpose for the next year is to share that journey with others. That impacts this blog.

Lastly, my wife Sara and I have gone under contract to buy 11 acres of land in Oregon's wine country, a two-year dream we have been working on together to begin a new way of life and of living.

All of this is dramatically impacting my perception. I am becoming increasingly attuned to life, to my purpose, to what is important, to where I feel the need to move towards.

This past week I went to see Otto Scharmer--author of Theory U--and participate in his workshop Leading Profound Innovation. That was a remarkable experience, and I highly recommend his work and his workshops. I had some powerful insights there, and flew directly to the one client I am now working with for a year. Wow. Right out of the learning lab and in to the field.

Friday morning, before catching my plane, I had a chance to meet with my friend, Gary, to discuss what emotional intelligence is, how it relates to leadership, and how leadership is related to the problems of the day. That conversation pretty much filled up the large whiteboard in his office.

As all the above has been working on me, in me and through me, my thoughts and feelings about leadership, emotional intelligence and the problems we face today have been gelling. As I flew home from the workshop with Scharmer, from working with my client and from talking with Gary, I knew it was time to start writing my "manifesto".

My manifesto will simply be a document within which I state and share:
1. I think the current form of leadership is dying and why;
2. the framework I am using to become a leader relevant to these remarkable times;
3. the resources I've read and that I use to support each facet of the framework; and
4. an invitation to each reader to accept personal responsibility for the problems we collectively face

I don't know how long it will take me to finish the document. What I do know is that as I work on each part, I will share it with you here. I've written the introduction, which I will now post. I hope that if you find it useful that you will share it with others.

I hope that, over time, a community of leaders will form around using this framework, modifying it, adding to it, and, more importantly, supporting one another actively in making the shift. Whether that will happen, time will tell.

Right now, it is just step by step. My next steps are to embody the content of the manifesto in my own life and work, and to write it as I am moved to do so by shifts in my perspective, insight and experience. That is what you will be seeing here.

Catching Up

I'd like to share with you what I've been up to, which obviously hasn't been blogging! I may have taken a hiatus from blogging, but it was for good reason.

I've needed to get real with my self in a couple of areas. I will share more about that later, and what I learned about my leadership as a result. For this post, I'd like to simply share one thing I've been focused on during these past 30 days of learning and reflection.

Have you thought about why it is so bloody difficult to get anything more than an incremental change in the results you and your team produce? It is a virtually endemic problem: leaders everywhere push-push-pushing for the next level of results. It works for a little while. They make progress, a lot or a little. And then, over time, all they can seem to manage is to eke out small, incremental changes. Or they plateau. Or, worse case, entropy or inertia sets in.

When they hit the diminishing returns, plateauing or backsliding, many leaders try to "shake things up." Not a bad idea, sometimes. But often this isn't a very considered approach--more like an act of desperation, frustration or both.

Helping leaders produce better results is my business, so I spend a lot of time not just thinking about this, but actively working with it. One of the things I did during my blogging hiatus was to really pause, stop and reflect on the products and services I offer and how they can support a breakthrough in results as opposed to incremental improvement. In the past,

I could not articulate with precision the overall approach I use--it was just "natural" to the way I did things. But it has dawned on me that I need to be able to articulate the "big picture" so the leaders I work with can understand the interconnected, interrelated and interdependent nature of the different things I recommend they do.

I captured the overall approach and the ideology on which it is based in four pages. And what I will do is share it with you here. And I want to be very specific about why I am sharing it with you before I begin sharing it over several blogs that will follow this intro.

The reason I want to share my overall approach with you is so you can inventory where your approach to improving results may be lacking. I want to be clear about this: I am not taking on any new clients right now. I am blessed with a full business. I am not sharing the approach to "sell" you. I am sharing it because I am excited to think that the comprehensive and integrated nature of the approach may help you evaluate whether your approach to 2009 needs shoring up. And, if so, you can take action on that your self.

Even if you have worked with me in the past or are currently working with me, I believe you will find this overview very worthwhile and useful. I hope so.

Whoever you are, I'd enjoy hearing from you if you find the overview helpful. Whether you agree, or disagree. Whether you have a compliment, or a suggestion. And most importantly, if, as a result of reading my approach, you decide to change your own... well, gosh, I'd truly enjoy hearing from you. Because the core purpose for this blog is to "give back" and "give away" what I know to leaders who are determined to forge themselves today into the leaders tomorrow requires. The only thing I ask in exchange is to hear from you from time to time if I am accomplishing that purpose.

Working with Perception #7: The End

“The mundane is not a substitute for the sublime. It is just a secret passageway to it.” David Allen

“One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.” Goethe

“Many of our fears are tissue-paper-thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them.” Brendan Francis

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The mundane is a gateway to the sublime. We have enough time. Fears are paper-thin. In this last post in this series, these last three quotations sum up my journey.

I remember when I first started working with my mentor, The Warrior, I was obsessed with “finding out my purpose.” To the point he jokingly nicknamed me “the porpoise.”  I was so busy pursuing the fantastic life of a warrior that I wasn’t taking care of the mundane.

For example, I wasn’t watching my money. I had all kinds of reasons. Second, I was not taking care in my relationships. Third, I had no real plan for my business. In warrior-speak, taking care of the mundane is called “impeccably peeling the potatoes.” I wasn’t.

Now, as I take each step to clean up the mundane aspects of my life, I am finding the warrior. Developing the discipline to effectively deal with the mundane truly is a gateway to the sublime. Reading David Allen’s book Ready for Anything (see "What I Am Reading" to the right) now is just underscoring that insight.

What about Goethe’s quotation above on time? I see that so much about time is about emotion. As I develop control of my emotions, time takes on a different quality. With each step I have taken in working with my emotion, I have taken another step in my relationship with time. I do have time enough, and I won’t create more time by hurrying. Such a hard lesson.

And what of Brendan Francis’ quotation on courage above? Probably the single greatest lesson I have learned is that my greatest fears are paper thin, and yet they repel me like a brick wall.

The essence of leadership is much like warriorship. One of the essences of warriorship is living one’s entire life as a not-doing. What does that mean? Not-doing is consistently taking action that is not consistent with your prior actions. That continually throws the warrior up against him or herself. And, over time, a sword is drawn, an intent harnessed, that rends those paper-thin fears. And the warrior begins to move from strength to strength. The warrior picks up what is called speed.

So what does it all boil down to, this experience of mine? I will put it two ways:

My life experience and my results are constrained by my perception in ways I could have not possibly understood: I know now how to work with my perception, and set myself free. I cannot tell you the heart, the adventure, the meaning and therefore the sense of purpose that has brought into my life and my work.

Know my self (perception): Do my best (action).

If I do both simultaneously I develop more and more self warmth and self acceptance. Then, I can give my warmth and acceptance freely.

Call it unconditional love, if you will. It is the most powerful force in the universe, and every true leader, every true warrior, knows that and uses it to uplift all of life around them.

Phew. It has been a long seven posts, I know. Now, I will take this blog in a new direction. I hope you enjoy it.

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This is the last post of a series that was a follow-up to the October 7th post Leadership, Perception and Emotional Intelligence and concludes a process of looking at the connection between perception and the ability to break through the next level of leadership. During this exploration, I shared a part of my own story through quotations...

Working with Perception #6: Claiming Your Power

“Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.” Carl Jung

“You must be the change you want to see in the world.” Mahatmas Ghandi

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So far in this series I have been sharing with you through quotations what I have learned about perception--how I got caught up in mine, cratered my career, and then began to work with my perception. Working with my perception opened me up to a whole world I didn't know existed. Further, I began to see how virtually all leaders are constrained by their perception, and don't even know it.

Since virtually everyone is caught in up selective perception and has so thoroughly bought in to social conditioning, everyone is basically dreaming the same dream. The power and the commonality of everyone's perception makes it easy for those who wish to manipulate us... whether it is a boss, a peer, a subordinate, spouse, religious leader, politician or anyone else.

Thus, selective perception and social conditioning are basically the bane of our existence with a two-fold impact. One is that we never release our potential and cannot find fulfillment--with a strong adverse affect on our relationships, results and profits. The second is that we are easily manipulated and misled. And, all the while, we have the belief that we are free.

In these two quotes above, you begin to see something very powerful.

What I learned is that with every little bit that I saw how my perception and social conditioning were constraining me, many things began to happen. Two of those things relevant to these quotations are that I began to gain personal power, and I began to see through other people. You see, we are all manipulating others. The question is, whether the motive is "pure" or not. And when you map out your own manipulations, it becomes much easier to detect when others are doing it to you.

Thus, I began to understand what Carl Jung is saying in a different way. And that quotation is very relevant to these times. CNN reporter Glenn Beck has, in the mainstream media, laid out how we have given more and more power away to the government. The links are at the end of this post. Over time, in exchange for the guarantee of safety, prosperity and comfort we have given more and more power away to government (and religion, and work, and...).

So when government wants more power, all that has to happen is for an event to occur in which it can conjure more fear. Then, appearing to be "helping" us and "protecting" us, we hand over more power because now it is more difficult for them to "guarantee our safety." And we end up with the Patriot Act. But, the truth is, and we all know it, is that we cannot escape the consequences of our actions. Printing money isn't going to fix the financial situation. Locking down borders and frisking every citizen who passes through the security chutes at the airport is not going to keep us safe from people who hate us.

But at the end of the day, the government is not to blame. We are. The government is no more than a reflection of the people. The government has not more power than the people give it. And there is nothing we can really do about it unless we are at least as organized in our individuality as the mass is. What does that mean? We individually must possess a level of sobriety (clarity of perception) and personal power (self knowledge) that has sufficient power to match the opposite extreme of the insanity of the perception of the common man comprising the mass and those who are capitalizing on that common perception.

That's where Ghandi's quotation comes in. The only way out is through. The only thing you need to do is to reclaim what you have given away. If enough of us do that, if we take our power back, then those who have been using our power against us are deprived of the power they use to oppress us. So, literally and figuratively, the only thing any of us has to do is to be the change we want to see in the world, and to do it no matter the consequences.

That is what our founding fathers did, no? We have drifted very far from freedom, my friend. You are a leader. Lead yourself out of the prison of your own making. Then, after waking up in this crazy dream,  reach back, and give those around you a hand.

Tomorrow I will tie this theme to what I saw this week in my travels, and talk about what we need to do as leaders in these changing and challenging times to be of service to those around us.

CNN Glenn Beck: More Trouble Ahead, Five Steps to Deal with It

CNN Glenn Beck: America's Chilling Future

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This is a follow-up to the October 7th post Leadership, Perception and Emotional Intelligence and is a continuation of looking at the connection between perception and the ability to break through the next level of leadership. During this exploration, I share a part of my own story through quotations...

Working with Perception #5: The Dream Part II

This post is a continuation of the prior post...

"All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream."

But, again, why?

Through our limited perception that this five senses level of reality is “it”, we have lost all context as to what life actually is. In fact, we think it is actually possible to lose our life. As in, “that will cost you your life.” Not so. You cannot lose your life. You can lose the use of your body, yes. So, someone could say, “That will cost you the use of your body.” And that is a big deal. But no one has the power to take your life, not even you. You can be The Programmer of your code, you can be The Magician that is capable of doing what Christ was able to do (‘all of this I have done you can do and more’). But you are not, and will never be, The Architect.

How’s that for being clear about what’s in and what’s out of your job description?

Wondering what your life purpose is? Simple. It is to become The Programmer and The Magician. How you do that doesn't matter. Do it. Now, preferably.

So are you going to co-operate with that JD or will you insist on continuing to resist it?

Here’s the kicker (or pisser). Having lost that context of what life is and our JD within life—most of our action is simply folly. It is folly because it is a reaction to a frame of reference that isn’t even real. We are fighting for stakes that are not real, and fighting for meaning which isn’t real.

Besides that, well, bull’s eye. Right on the mark, mate. Go ahead, fire away.

I have to chuckle at myself from time to time. I can imagine my soul looking at me, when I have got myself all wrapped around my own axle defending my fragile little sense of self from some onslaught from another carbon-based unit, thinking it all really matters—that it is a matter of life and death, yessiree. And my soul thinking, “Otis has totally lost it. E.T., please phone home.” But I don’t phone home, I take flail about re-enacting old BS that makes my soul cringe, and my soul up there is shaking its head thinking that I am a spiritual epileptic having a spiritual seizure.

Trouble is, in that moment, I am that. But I am capable of much, much more than that.

Sound familiar to you?

Making It Practical:

1. So what are you making a big deal about, as if it is a matter of dying if you do it or don't do it?
2. Can you see how much your mind is making it good or bad, but that the situation itself is neither?

See if you can disassociate your mind labeling the situation from the situation itself. In that gap, you will begin working with your own perception. And the moment you begin working with it, you start freeing yourself from the ghost in the machine. You start waking up in the dream. You start Programming. You pull the rabbit out of the hat. And, fearless leader, it is only then that you can actually exert any control over the dream.

You cannot wake up from the dream. You'd die. But you can wake up in the dream, cooperate with it and exert control over it. And since that is all you can do, and all you need to do, will you do it? P.S. It's in your JD!

Working with Perception #5: The Dream

“All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream.” Edgar Allen Poe

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What I have found is that being human really all comes down to this. We have an ego. It thinks that the world of form—that this physical plane, five senses world—is IT. We see ourselves as separate from everything else. Believing that we are thus form and separate from everything else, we sense that we have been severed from God and thus have little value. And, to some degree or another, we have this deep fear that we are going to fail, that failure will cause us to become exiled from our tribe, and that we will wander around in the wilderness, hungry, starving and will die in extreme pain, agony and regret.

Something to look forward to, right?

In our worst of times, that is pretty much the operating system (OS) that drives our so-called decisions. Is it any wonder we throw things out of balance so consistently by our wrong actions, inaction, etc.? Is it any wonder we hurt people? Is it any wonder that leaders make fatal mistakes? It’s all fear-based. In the truest sense of the word, it is in-sane. Our perception is insane.

That is the madness of the dream in which we live, in which virtually all of humanity lives. That is the madness of the rational mind when we do not know how to work with our mind. It runs the show, and it thinks all these things. And that, dear leader, is precisely the underpinnings of your perception, and therefore your decision-making process. Not all the time of course. But almost always in the most emotional times, when the stakes are high and the game is on the line.

Now, can you see why I have been telling you that you simply must gain control of your own perception if you are going to lead into this new era we face?

Leaders don’t know how to reprogram their OS. Even Stephen Covey says it, that for all that has been written about emotional intelligence, there is very little that has been written about how to actually develop it. So what do leaders do? They load all kinds of software (books, training, leadership techniques, education, religion, social conditioning, “values”, etc.) on top of that operating system to try to cover up that underlying glitch in their OS. To one degree or another, it mostly works. But, alas, we all know there is something wrong. There’s a ghost in the machine and an underlying angst to our actions. And it will never, ever, fully work to mitigate it by laying more software on top of that flawed OS. We cannot work around that flaw in the underlying operating system.

We have to reprogram our OS. We have to wrest power away from our code and put it back in the hands of the Programmer.

That is called developing emotional intelligence, self-knowledge, or whatever you wish to call it.

So there you have it. All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream. And for most of us, at least occasionally, it is a bad dream. Some might say, a nightmare even.

But, alas, that is only because we do not see the full context of life in the moments that matter most, and thus are working with a flawed perception.

Here's my key point here. I don't care whether you believe the above intellectually. Your intellectual understanding of the above is nothing more than a belief. That, and a buck seventy-five American will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks (which is nowhere as good as it used to be but don't get me going on that).

You won't understand this, really, until it is experiential. Until you are right slap dab in the middle of taking an action (reaction, more likely) based on that flawed OS, and in the moment you are acting, you literally snatch that reaction out of thin air and replace it with a real action so quickly that you will swear magic just happened. And you are left wondering, who is the Magician?

This, then, is knowledge. It is experiential. It is not intellectual. It is self knowledge, and self knowledge is power. Precisely the kind of power you should hunt for.

More on that, tomorrow.

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This is a follow-up to the October 7th post Leadership, Perception and Emotional Intelligence and is a continuation of looking at the connection between perception and the ability to break through the next level of leadership. During this exploration, I share a part of my own story through quotations...

Working with Perception #4: The Power of Mind

“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” William Shakespeare

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After I got fired, I was stuck in a strange no-man’s land. On the one hand I was mouthing the words, “This is for the best,” “I knew this was coming,” and “I was planning on leaving anyway.” And all those things were true… in my mind.

But underneath that, in my emotions, was seething anger, victimization and feeling incredibly hard-done-by. This latter stuff, underneath the surface, was more subtle. But to the world, and my friends and family, I showed my nice-guy game face. (It was very important to me to look as if I really had it together. What a farce.)

What is interesting is that if you can look at any situation on the physical plane, it actually is neutral. Even my getting fired, for example, was a neutral situation and it was part of my path and my healing as a leader to realize that it truly was my thinking that made it "bad" or "good."

So are your really bad situations actually, really... bad? How do you know?

You have a soul, you incarnate, you die. Those situations you have in your life fill in the comma I just placed between the “e” in incarnate and the “y” in the word “you” before the final word “die” followed by and completed by the symbol “.” Period.

So what of it, my friend? Why do any of these life situations we find ourselves in actually, well, matter? You come into physical form, you dance around (or flop about, its your choice in any given moment) on the physical plane for one hundred years or so, and then you drop your body. Your body and all those situations are gone. Dust in the wind. Less than the comma I placed above.

So why on God’s green earth do we put all this emphasis on the things happening on the physical plane, acting as if our very soul would be extinguished if that person (or situation) does that (whatever that is) to us? Which, of course, doesn't seem very plausible. Can a soul... die? Seems like a long shot. About the worst that can happen is that you lose to use of your body. But the soul, well, it never left home in the first place. Did it?

Regardless of what your soul does or doesn't do, if you look at your situations with any sobriety, you will see the truth in Byron Katie's words when she says, “Reality is always kinder than the stories we tell about it.”

The bottom line? Virtually everything we tell ourselves about what is happening to us is both significant, and it is not. On the one hand, it is significant because we are here to learn and we can hardly afford to squander the opportunity. That is tantamount to returning the gift of life unopened. And on the other hand, what is happening to us is insignificant because at some point your body will fall away, the illusion of being separate from will fall away, and there will be your soul shining, untarnished, undiminished and timeless. However, will it have learned what it came to learn? Will it have served the purpose it came here to serve?

Through your responses to your challenges, you determine that. Choose well. And, by the way, your choices depend on your perception.

Thus, what you think about life may not be true. What you think about your challenges and the situations you are in may not be true. You don't see the divine blueprint, do you? So how can you know? But thinking, it makes it so.

If what I am sharing here were actually true, what do you suppose the implications are on the decisions you make as a leader?

Life, when you begin to see in, begins to appear more and more like a dream...

It is your purpose to wake up within that dream...

Which brings me to the next quotation… and what you will find in tomorrow’s post.

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This is a follow-up to the October 7th post Leadership, Perception and Emotional Intelligence and is a continuation of looking at the connection between perception and the ability to break through the next level of leadership. During this exploration, I share a part of my own story through quotations...

Working with Perception #3: Self-Deception

This is a follow-up to the October 7th post Leadership, Perception and Emotional Intelligence and is a continuation of looking at the connection between perception and the ability to break through the next level of leadership. During this exploration, I share a part of my own story through quotations...

“We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.” Goethe

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Learning to work with your own perception as a leader requires walking straight down and through a very dark valley, and it is captured in Goethe’s quotation above.

That valley is self-deception. It was one of the most painful parts of my journey. Why? Seeing that all the pain I’ve experienced that I have blamed on others (and that is the lion’s share of it) was actually set up by me. That, initially, lumps pain on top of pain.

The greatest deception I have told myself was I could have an affair with someone who reported to me and escape the consequences. Behind self-deception is always rationalization and justification—two capacities I had developed into an art form. I justified the potential for consequences because I was “in love.” But that assumed many things, including that I actually knew what love is or what love does. I didn’t. And yet, at some level, I did. I rationalized it away. I ignored it. The whisper of truth from my core was overwhelmed by the roar of the rationalization in my mind.

Here is the pattern I see in my self-deception. I want (wants are preferences, prejudices or desires) to take an action even though I need something else or know (at some level) that action it isn’t based on truth. So, in order to proceed with what I want over what I need or what truth is, I deceive my self to produce a rationalization. Having conjured the rationalization (and some of mine are truly brilliant), I proceed in pursuing my want. That act will inevitably fall apart at some point because it is not based on truth, to my utter (feigned) dismay. I’m brought right back to what I knew in the first place. And I feel great guilt and shame—and it is unbearable.

So what do I do if I remain unconscious to this? Simple.

I blame someone else for deceiving me.

Making It Practical:

1. Who are you blaming right now, and for what? And when you blame them, what self-deception on your part made it possible for that person to harm you in whatever way you believe you have been harmed?

2. What are you telling yourself you have seen, and have accepted, and yet you have a niggling feeling that you have not, that you are smearing it over with a happy face and yet another intellectual rationalization?

Resources: I've included a book which has gotten great reviews, caught my eye, and is my queue to be read. Here it is:

Working with Perception #2: The First Realization

This is a follow-up to the October 7th post Leadership, Perception and Emotional Intelligence. You will need to have read that post for this one to make much sense.

“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” Albert Einstein

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Albert Einstein mastered his perception to the point that he transcended his rational mind, accessed true mind and tapped in to feeling. Einstein had a feeling about relativity, but it was totally irrational. He had no framework for it. No one did. He accessed true mind, and received the construct for proving relativity. Then, following the feeling of it, and the construct he received from true mind, he then used his powerful rational mind for 10 years developing the level of mathematics required to prove his theory of relativity.

When I began working with the warrior (my mentor), he immediately began "working" me to see how my perception worked. Specifically, without me really understanding what he was doing, he was manipulating me to look at what I thought and felt about my own self. What we think and feel about ourself dramatically affects how we see life. So, in bringing me up against my own perception about my self, I began to see life (and my getting fired) in a different light. In bringing me up against my own perception of life, he brought me up against my perception of my self.

What happened?

When you start to challenge your own perceptions (which you do not need a mentor to help you do), you begin to see that your perception is not inviolate. In fact, perhaps about 80% of what you believe to be true... isn't. That is staggering for most people to contemplate--that about 80% of what they believe to be true is, well, a lie.

So the first realization I had was that while I believed I was seeing straight, the vast majority of the time I was not. Whereas getting fired and destroying my life as I knew it and finding a mentor were the two posts of the gateway through which I stepped, the first realization after crossing that threshold was that my perception was very, very limited. You may get that intellectually now, but until you are assailed, left, right and center, by the problems your limited perception is actually causing you, your intellectual idea is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.

If you care-fully read Einstein's quotation, you will see what I was brought up against. Read it. Do you see that he what he implies that we create all our problems?

When I use this quotation in our work with leaders and their teams, I find that executives read this quotation in a very limited way. For example, "it applies only to the problems I create." They do not even stop to think about whether, to all intents and purposes, we create every single problem we face. And, in that little gap of thinking there are those problems we do create, and those problems we don't create, then there is an out. Because, in one way or another, we can rationalize that just about every problem we face is primarily caused by someone else.

For example, when I was angry as fire at the boss who sacked me, it was very clear to me from day one that she had a vendetta against me--as I would not submit to her. And she was a woman who wanted to be obeyed. So, there was my out. I could blame her for firing me. I could further excuse myself because that tryst with woman who reported to me had ended.

My life began to change the moment I saw that I created that problem.

So, seeing that, all I had to do was change my thinking about it, right? Well, right. But for many people, when they read that quotation, they make some interesting assumptions about what it means to change their thinking. For many, it means they need to get smarter, and that implies getting information they lack--through reading, study, being mentored or whatever.

Einstein was able to raise his thinking because he found out how to shift his awareness from rational mind, to true mind, to feeling... and back again. He learned that he was literally assembling reality.

Thus, to shift from "the same level of thinking" isn't about becoming smarter, which is an activity of the rational mind. It is about shifting perception, which will always enable you to assemble your reality in a different way. When you shift your perception and assemble reality in a different way, you see possibilities that were literally outside your frame of reference. Therefore, those possibilities were totally unknown or appeared impossible. The significant problem was unsolvable.

What I wish I could do for you is to connect you, for even one moment, to a feeling about to what extent your mind is creating your current reality. I wish, for even one moment, I could connect you to an understanding as to how your intellectual belief that you understand that you assemble your reality is actually preventing you from experiencing and acting on that understanding.

Listen. I cannot shift my perception at will. Yet. But I know, through my direct experience, I can feel even in this moment with every fiber of my being, that I am assembling reality in this very moment, and that I can change that reality. That is a very powerful, abiding knowing because of an experience I had while driving through Montana.

Here's what I can tell you, based on my own experience.

1. 100% of the significant problems I face I "cause." There are two factors to this. First, there are those problems that arise directly or indirectly through my own actions. Second, all the remainder are in my life to force me to grow, which always involves shifting perception.

2. If I really am living that understanding in 1 above, all blame, victimization, feeling hard done by, etc. is eliminated from my life. Therefore, all there is is personal responsibility and the obligation to act.

3. Free from the burden of excuses, I can then begin to work directly with my perception (sometimes). When I can muster enough personal power to shift my perception, then the answers are revealed. And not only is the answer revealed, I can assemble reality in a different way and that aids in being able to act on the answer.

So that, my friend, was my first realization--that my thoughts create my world... and all the problems I face. Therefore, it is no more complicated than shifting my perception to solve them. It is not complicated, but it is not easy.

Emotional intelligence made practical, the way I teach it, means learning a set of practical skills to shift your own perception. We will get to those skills in turn. But I will tell you now the "core four" are mastering the power of the right question, the power of mirrors, the power of conflict, and the power of stepping through resistance and interrupting habit. Working with each of these--and particularly in combination--does a number of things. Not only do they work on loosening your perception, working with them requires you to build discipline and intent (otherwise you will just read about them and think about using them). Further, as you actually use them--win, lose or draw--you begin gaining personal power. All of these are required for you to take your self and your leadership to the next level.

Practical Action:

1. What is the greatest problem you are facing in your life right now? Where are you stuck, frustrated or hurt?

2. Sit quietly. Pull that problem all the way to you.

3. Ask, "In what ways are my thoughts triggering emotions or actions that are actually reinforcing that problem?

There is no need to act on any insight you have at this time. Just see if you can get a feeling for the direct linkage between your emotions/thoughts and "the problem", how, in effect, the thoughts and emotions are literally giving that problem life. If you can get a feeling for that, well that then is enough for now. But if you feel compelled to act on your insight, then by all means act.

Working with Perception #1: My Gateway

This is a follow-up to the October 7th post Leadership, Perception and Emotional Intelligence. You will need to have read that post for this one to make much sense.

“A teacher for one who seeks enlightenment would say that the first step for the student is to truly see that life is somehow out of sync or off-kilter, that there is suffering if you will. And that this “out-of-kilterness” is a consequence of our own attachment to things that are inconsequential.” Garr Reynolds

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On a given day in March 2002, I left my house in Park City, UT to head to work in Salt Lake City. Eleven inches of snow was to fall that day in the ski resorts only seven miles from my house. As tempting as that was, I was the General Manager for a division of a Fortune 100 Company, ADP, and duty called.

Actually, I was more curious than dutiful. I was curious because my new boss was in town... unannounced. One of my VPs had seen her at a hotel in Salt Lake City that evening, and called me at home to ask me why I hadn't told her my (our) boss would be in town. I slowly hung up the phone with a racing pulse. The hammer was going to fall. And I knew it. I drove down into the valley that morning somber, but eerily calm and ready to face the piper...

When I arrived at work, there, in front of the mahogany double doors leading to my corner office, were my boss and the corporate HR guy from Atlanta. We walked in my office, I walked out with my severance, past the outplacement consultant there to transition me, to my car and I left. And I did the only thing I could do. It was truly an act of survival to keep my crumbling world from crushing me. I did what you would have probably done, too, in my position. I went skiing.

I got fired for several reasons. But to net it down, my Achilles heel that made it a lay-up shot for my boss was an serious indiscretion with a woman who reported to me. That indiscretion was over and done with, but this new boss wanted me out and she took the gap. A gaping gap. It wasn't that complicated. She was ruthless and I got what I earned and what I needed.

For a good while--months--I felt incredibly angry and victimized. But as much as I wanted to continue to feel victimized and screwed by this boss, something was out of kilter. At first it was a twitch I could deny. But as time went on, the pain dulled and I hated her less, that out-of-kilter feeling became a continual, gnawing angst.

I had to face it. I had destroyed my life. And I was suffering. I couldn't deny it any longer.

What I specifically could not reconcile--what was so out of kilter--was how I could be such a nice and earnest guy, and yet do something so utterly terrible, sinful, incomprehensible and shameful. This out-of-kilterness revealed an unbearable suffering that would not be denied.

As luck had it I found a mentor. More than a mentor, really. A warrior. And I took that gap. I stepped out of my old world (there wasn't much left of it) and in to his, into a world that was beyond anything I ever could have imagined or could ever describe to you. I spent five years in that world. I took what I needed and I've moved on, but I am changed forever by what I learned.

There, in cracking my world wide open, and entering his, I learned to work with my perception.

And it isn't magic. It is just a lot of hard work. It is free. And it will cost you whatever attachment you most fear losing. That is the power of the quotation I chose above, the quotation around which I am telling you my story. What was the inconsequential thing I was attached to? The time isn't right to tell you: it will be revealed as I share what I have left to tell. But I will tell you this. I will give you this hint. The most inconsequential thing that I was attached to appeared to be the most important thing in my life.

I don't know, but I think you may find the same thing for your self. It is the last thing that we won't give up that ends up owning us.

Tomorrow, the story will continue. Now, I hope you have a better feeling for the quotation above, and for the story I just wove through it.

Making it Practical:

1. Can you feel the out-of-kilterness in your self?

2. What are you attached to? In other words, what are you unwilling to give up, and what is that attachment costing you in terms of lack of action, right now?