Category: leadership

When we find ourselves blocked, unable to reach our goals, facing constant obstacles, we feel “stuck” and usually blame life or others. We essentially focus on circumstances outside of ourselves to explain our own failures, our obstacles, our negative outlook and despair. Do you know that often we are the ones getting in our own way of success?

Amazingly enough, we can get in our way without even noticing, let alone understanding why we are doing it.

I experienced a difficult year in 2016, and seemingly chose to end it in hospital. I was hit by a car on New Year’s Eve as I was crossing the street at a pedestrian crossing on my way to celebrating New Year. I now realize how difficult it is to notice what is happening to us when we get caught up in the whirlwind of our lives, losing sight of the direction things are taking without our own awareness.

Of course I heard ”bad luck,” “crazy driver,” “poor woman” as I was lying with broken bones, an unrecognizable face, waiting in emergency at the hospital for an operating room to free up for immediate surgery. Morphine kept it all in semi-consciousness, but I could already sense a blessing in disguise. I couldn’t shake a feeling of gratefulness, and not only because I was still alive.

When our lives are filled with challenges, constant personal growth and we “barrel” down… we may need to be reminded of the need to be gentle with ourselves, to slow down, and stop dimming our light to cope with darkness. I know the time had come for me to take care of myself, the needs of my body, and honour myself. Keeping my energy to myself, rather than shading light onto others, was going to create the space for a more positive, loving, and accepting view of my life to eventually replenish.

Unable to use my right arm, I could no longer write; I could no longer work. I stayed home for months forced to do nothing but think and dream, and live a very limited life. What a blessing! I learned to receive rather than do. I allowed others to help and got to appreciate the joy of friends allowed to make a significant difference into my life. How many times had I stopped others from helping me in the past? How often had I allowed myself to receive freely from life?

I was given the opportunity to stay away from my usual circumstances, from my work environment – which I so often considered to be the very reason I was “stuck”- to actually take a look inside myself. It is truly amazing how often we get in the way of our own success, and there are many reasons why we organize for our own failures. We may indeed approach our own goals in a way that keeps creating the same unsuccessful results.

Should you feel that you have been standing in your own way, as I have, you may want to take a piece of paper and investigate how you have done so and why. Let us compare notes in my next blog.

In the beginning of the year, it is customary to set our intentions for the coming months and send around our best wishes. In international relations, experts and practitioners either report on achievements in the past year or publish their forecast for the new year. The year of 2015 will be remembered as yet another challenging year, while 2016 seems just as daunting with old geopolitical realities resurfacing. Looking ahead, 2017 will be even more complex, we are told, with an array of developing conflicts coming into sharper focus. Is this the world we are preparing to hand over to our children?

In addition, as humans, when faced with difficulties and deprivation, we tend to pull back. We isolate ourselves, shutting others out, and turn into self-preservation mode. We hoard ideas and energy, keeping to ourselves, thinking that we will be safer and richer, when in reality we deprive the world and make ourselves poorer in the process. Yet, we all have the capacity to change the world in small ways, which can snowball into major transformation. Conversely, negative thoughts and energy will also travel, snowballing into group movement and resulting in significant destruction, sometimes paving the way for positive change down the road. The point is that change in the world will only come from individual ideas and actions intended as transformative. Even better, whatever may come our way should be met with positive intent. Intentions are contagious. They have a ripple effect; they spread and expand well beyond their original purpose.

We often doubt that we can make a difference in a world of over seven billion people. Perhaps more importantly, we are not usually open to anything that comes our way and certainly not well disposed when what we hear from the news is, for the most part, horrific reporting—whether it is about the refugee crisis or terrorism. This is usually met with a sense of tremendous heartbreak, anger at the insanity, or worse – total indifference, given how horrible stories have become the “new normal.” To be real, the world seems in a terrible state, and who on earth would embrace whatever comes with love and kindness to intend genuine transformation…

There is an interesting body of literature that describes the world we see, the atrocities, the weather patterns, which seems so destructive, as a world deconstructing an old pattern of behavior – an outside world unraveling – while a new internal way of being is pointing to the emergence of a new world yet to come. The unravelling will create enough space on the outside for the new, generated by individuals shining brightly on the inside to fill that space.

Here is a thought to start the year! After all, new beginnings seem to start in January when people review their intentions for the year, when so many of us are heading for the same goal. Let us be swept up into the energy of change! Each and every one of us carries within us the capacity to change the world.