Presence for the Holidays

I’ve come to appreciate that the holidays present all kinds of opportunities for high-heat moments — awkward social events, challenging family gatherings, stressful retail encounters.  One of my friends feels so anxious about her family’s yearly holiday gathering that she literally gets ill during the weeks leading up to it.

Last weekend my friend and colleague Sam Elmore of Brinc Consulting facilitated a workshop called “Holiday Presence” in which participants had a chance to explore different strategies for staying present (e.g., not becoming reactive) in the face of work demands, unpleasant family dynamics, and unmet expectations about to what this time of year “should be.”

During the workshop with Sam I made myself  a little talisman fashioned from a bell connected to a piece of leather twine with five knots. I intend to keep this bell in my pocket and whenever I hear it jingle I’ll quietly check in with my physical and emotional state by asking: “What’s up with me right now?” And then if I feel off center or not present, I’ll use it in this way:

I run my fingers across each knot and the space between the knots. Each time my fingers touch a knot I ask myself one of the questions below. Five knots, five questions. Each time my finger runs over the space between knots I take an intentional, deep breath.

1. Who am I here for? (breathe)
2. Why am I here? (breathe)
3. What can I release from my grasp (e.g., an expectation, distractions, judgment, etc.) that will put me into a stronger partnership with my reason for being here? (breathe)
4. What would my wisest friend or teacher whisper in my ear at this moment? (breathe)
5. Where in my body can I imagine compassion hiding, taking safe refuge, and reminding me of its ongoing presence? (breathe)

(Note: In advance of the big family gathering or office party I will take a little time to reflect on the first two questions and imagine one or more wise friends or teachers whose presence I want to feel with me over the holidays.)

Staying True to Yourself

We live in an age of compromise.  We’ve learned  to be practical and to make concessions — not a bad thing. But there are times when compromise becomes a trap. It becomes a rationale for doing what is convenient, comfortable, and expedient at the cost of our integrity. “Let’s compromise” can at times become a rallying cry for pushing aside our values, abandoning our aspirations, and denying our very well being. It happens incrementally and often in the heat of organizational turbulence when our focus is on simply surviving.

In Standing in the Fire I wrote about the importance of “knowing what you stand for” as a way to locate your clarity and courage when you most need it.  Recently Elizabeth Doty has written an exquisite book called The Compromise Trap: How to Thrive at Work Without Selling Your Soul. Doty provides six personal foundations that enable you to stay true to yourself. Each of these foundations is brought to life through stories of leaders who have struggled with and overcome the compromise trap.

One of my favorite chapters describes ten misconceptions about compromise. Here are five of my favorites:

1. Compromise is always healthy

2. Good companies don’t create unhealthy pressure

3. You have to go along to survive

4. You’ll always know if you’re crossing a line

5. Refusing to compromise means fighting back

Have you felt pressured to “play by the rules” in ways that undermined your integrity?  If you lead in high-heat situations the answer is probably “yes, on an ongoing basis.”  Here’s a good place to begin if you want to reaffirm your personal compass and reclaim your integrity  – take Doty’s Personal Foundations Diagnostic. It’s free and takes just 15 minutes to complete.

Making Peace Our Purpose

Purpose matters. Like a personal gyroscope, clarity about and commitment to a guiding intention in the heat of challenging interactions gives us a way to keep the ground underneath our feet even as others are being swept away in the heat of the moment.

I’m reading Getting to Peace by William Ury who writes in his introduction:

Never before in human evolution have people faced the challenge of living in a single community with billions of other human beings. Anthropologists have identified more than fifteen thousand distinct ethnic groups on the planet. Far from bringing a lessening of conflict, the ingathering means, in the short run at least, a heightening of hostilities as people are forced to confront their differences, as jealousies and resentments over inequities flair up, and as identities are threatened by different customs and beliefs. Coming together can produce more heat than light, more conflict than understanding,..

One can either read this with a sense of fear or hopelessness, believing that our human nature dooms us to continued cycles of war and suffering. But for me it reads like a call to purpose — to explore new ways of thinking and seeing that open up new paths for collaboration.

Every time we take our seats at the table — in every interaction casual or formal — we can be the ones who transform heat into light. We can learn to  draw on the creative qualities of group fire in service of peace.