Many of us hold the
belief that "realistic thinking" is skeptical if not pessimistic, but
in fact realistic thinking is inquisitive, exploratory, and highly creative.
The inner critic is
an expression of the safety instinct in us -- the part of us that wants to stay
safe from potential emotional risk -- from hurt, failure, criticism,
disappointment, or rejection by the tribe.
When you hear the
voice of self-doubt, ask that voice, "What are you trying to do? What are
you trying to prevent or protect me from?"
The Hebrew Bible
uses two different words for fear. The first word is pachad…. Pachad is the
overreactive, irrational fear that stems from worries about what could happen
about the worst-case scenarios we might imagine.
There's a second
word used for fear, yirah. Yirah has
three different meanings: 1. It is the feeling that overcomes us when we
inhabit a larger space than we are used to.
2. It is the feeling we experience when we suddenly come into possession
of considerably more energy than we had before.
3. It is what we feel in the presence of the divine.
We feel pachad when
the ego perceives something it feels will wound the ego's fragile self-concept
in some way. We feel yirah when the ego
perceives that something has the potential to bring us into transcendence of
the ego.
Fear is a state of
consciousness. When we consciously step
into another state of consciousness, fear gets displaced.
Analyze truth,
possibility, probability. Often, we fear
a very nonspecific outcome. Get specific
about the outcome you are worried about, assess the likelihood of its occurring,
and check to see if you have any evidence that it's going to occur.
Fear paralyzes us by
threatening the worst-case scenario outcomes, without having us think about
what we would do if that outcome occurred.
Pachad causes the
specific behaviors of escape and avoidance.
Criticism hurts when
it mirrors what we believe about ourselves.
Becoming unhooked
from praise and criticism is one of the major shifts we must make in order to
play bigger.
Challenging and
influencing authority are not skills we're taught in traditional education, but
they are critical skills for playing big.
Drop the idea of
"self-promotion" and think about the concept of visibility
instead. How can your talents and
accomplishments and ideas become more visible to audiences, influencers, and
decision makers within your organization or your field?
Hiding strategy #1:
This before That. "This before
that" are the false beliefs we hold about the order in which things need to
happen…. We come up with tons of these stories about sequencing around our playing
big. The problem is, they are usually
false.
Far more often,
brilliant women feature others' ideas to sidestep claiming their own thought
leadership.
A leap is never a
decision. It's the decision + the
action.
Our callings
challenge us to view our pain about the world differently -- not as something
uncomfortable to turn away from but as an indication of the brokenness we're
meant to help repair.
At the outset of
work or a calling, you'll sense that you aren't the person you'd need to be
complete the calling in your heart.
Perhaps you can see that you'd need far more courage, or comfort dealing
with conflict, or patience. That's not
just your inner critic talking; it's true.
You aren't the person you need to be to complete the calling -- yet --
but pursuing the calling will develop those lacking capacities in you. Herein lies the dual purpose of our callings:
to enrich the world and to grow, in just the ways we need to grow.
Where we think we
need more self-discipline, we usually need more self-love -- not just self-love
as an attitude, but self-love manifested through the routines and rituals that
we set up to enable the changes we desire to happen naturally and with ease.
In Germany, where
people have to opt in to being organ donors, 12 percent of the population opts
in. In Austria, people are automatically
categorized as organ donors, per the public policy, and have to opt out if they
so desire. Only 1 percent of the
population does so.
We're more likely to
be successful in achieving our goals if we are motivated by a spirit of
self-care rather than guilt or self-criticism.