More Lessons from Planet Earth

Even as I write this the lessons from last week, and it was a big week, are drifting off into the depths of my psyche. I remember it had something to do with the father wounding and the constant battle over the years to heal this wounding but last week a new insight appeared.

I had some confronting meetings last week that lead me to a realisation of the importance of emotional intelligence in business and in life. I had always known that my father was emotionally void and distant but I did not realise the depth to which that disease had afflicted me, until last week. Confronted with a situation where I had not lived up to expectations with tasks I had agreed to do, in a new business partnership. This greatly effected both of my partners as they where waiting on me to do what I needed to do in order for all of us to move things to the next level. Now I had real honest reasons why these had not been done. Business and making a living got in the way, but this was not the issue. My partners are both coaches and have a deep understanding of the human psyche and helped me to realise just how far I am from being able to connect my extrinsic world and my intrinsic world. 

The extrinsic world is the face we all put on when we go out into the world, and the intrinsic world is that deeper knowing self that would seem to be very fragile and hence why we don’t lead with this part of the self. When they expressed there disappointment and frustration at the situation I found myself getting angry and upset. Angry that they did not understand how difficult it had been for me and disappointed that i had let people down. This led to the realisation that the centre world of the entrinsic, as I have now termed it, is the most important part of self to understand. Now this maybe easy for a lot of people, however as I looked out into the world in pain, anger and frustration, I realised that it is void in much of our community.

This confronting meeting led me to the understanding that what people really want is to connect with the true self of others. In that I mean is that part of you that is the expression of whom you really are, vulnerable, scared, seemingly delicate and fragile. It takes a great deal of internal honesty with yourself to be able to express this fully to others. You see I have been trained to be a pleaser, anyone else with that affliction? My pleasing gene is so strong that it will over ride my true self, my real desires and place the feelings of everyone and everything above mine. It also leads me to be less honest with myself about what I can and cant do and what my true desires are. If I did connect to that honesty it may not be possible to live out the genetic desire to please. On the extrinsic side, the outer world, I am very honest however on the intrinsic side I sacrifice my honesty to myself so that I can fulfil the pleasing gene. 

So now what? It is one thing to have the realisation and another to integrate it so you can live it out in the world.

How do we break free from seemingly genetic patterns and subconscious subscripts handed down to us from generations past? The secret may lie in the entrinsic part of ourselves. There is a physiological side of the human body that is always trying to place the body in a state of homeostasis. That is our bodies attempt to balance our internal processes of things like hot and cold. This entrinsic side of ourselves is our homeostatic self trying to balance the inner emotional world with the expectations of the external world. So the secret may lie in our connection to our entrinsic or emotional, feeling self. In that sharing our true feelings about what is going on for us may actually help us to break free from these habitual patterns regardless of whether we found them ourselves or whether our parents and their parents handed them down the line.

Feelings in business, now there is a novel idea! 

So what am I feeling at this moment and what are the fears and hesitations that appear as I attempt to connect with them. As always the key is engagement, so if connection is the intrinsic identification of our feelings then engagement is the action to which feelings are expressed extrinsically. Sharing the fear, the hesitation that we may upset another or not please versus the desire to show the world that we are strong is not easy. It takes courage to live from the heart, but isn't this what makes life worth while?

I think writing a blog is a good way to over come some of this, as long as there is honesty and to the most part I am attempting to do just that. It’s not easy, it is not free from fear but it is cathartic. How will everyone take it, I don’t know, all I can do is be as honest as possible. Now this is not always going to please others. In fact it may often disappoint, but it is much better to disappoint upfront that to let down later on.

So how will connecting to and engaging with your true self, that inner world of emotions and feelings help you and your business? I believe we as a human race have a desperate desire to connect and engage with the true self of others, to know people at a deeper more real level. Let’s face it we all have fears, phobias, habitual patterns we are not proud of and those dark things hiding in the closet. I think when we engage with others at the real level of the entrinsic self we open up the ability for others to 'get us' and therefore employ us. I often talk about engagement as the most important thing in business and maybe in life. As the more we engage with anything the more successful we are likely to be. So what would happen if we engaged in the entrinsic self and opened up and shared the truth of our lives?

I have an amazing job that I am so grateful for as I get to connect with people like this on a daily basis. However it also gives me the ability to hide from myself as it is always about the other person, so in essence I have set this up beautifully so that I can continue the patterns of the genetic self. Well I wonder what would happen if this changed?

What would happen if you changed?

So with the all the fear and phobia that this blog may disappoint some of you planted firmly on my sleeve I post it for all to read....

Here's to honesty with the self...cheers.