It's Okay Not to Know

I was doing it again.⁣

⁣Something was being hard. I had a thorny problem to help a client with, and our next session was soon. To prepare, I was reviewing my notes from our last few meetings. ⁣

But instead of diving deep into the problem with wonder and curiosity, I was dog-paddling on the surface, judging myself for not knowing what was going on. My inner critic totally had my inner genius pinned.⁣

In fact, much harder than not knowing what to do was the thought that I’m *supposed* to know what to do. And also this one: “SO-AND-SO (insert name of insightful coach friend here) would know EXACTLY what to do.” ⁣

My judgment about my relationship to the problem was keeping me from dealing with the problem. That is, my self-criticism was standing between me and my power to be effective.⁣

So I paused and asked myself: What is it that I’m supposed to know? And the answer came back immediately, clearly: It’s okay not to know.⁣

Big exhale. Once I gave myself permission not to know, I was able to stop beating myself up, relax, and get really interested—looking for clues, noticing anomalies, sparking inquiry. The session that followed was very productive.⁣

This event (more recent than I’d care to admit) reminded me of a counseling retreat I attended a few years ago. The leader asked us to investigate our “waking dreams” of the world. What, he asked, was some repetitive fantasy that we were living out—say, some kind of archetypal quest, or battle, or journey, or other recurring motif that we found ourselves in?⁣

I had a few, but keenest that morning was that there was always someone sitting behind me and judging the bejeezus out of me when I was coaching or counseling. I even knew their names. These were real people—skilled counselors that I knew and had worked with for some time. In fact, they were both at the retreat.⁣

So, we brought it into the room. I sat down to counsel someone and one of those actual people from my fantasy-from-hell sat close behind me to observe. ⁣

I took a deep breath and put all my focus on the client—observing the hurting person in front of me and not myself. I relaxed into trusting my instincts. We moved through some hard stuff in a relatively short time. ⁣

When we finished, the client was in tears and my heart was full. When I turned around, my “judge” had tears in their eyes as well. And then they spoke: “I judge you to be a wonderful counselor.” It was a very healing moment.⁣

But not completely healed—yet. You would think that I would just get over this sooner or later and be done with it. But it’s an old wound that opens from time to time, perhaps tied to a need for approval (and safety) that got worked into my wiring from a very young age. ⁣

But I’m okay with that. Because, for many of us—coaches included—our greatest gifts are often closely connected to our deepest wounds.

Feeling Your [Pesky] Feelings

I was once helping a CEO navigate a significant transition in their organization. As part of the process, we asked employees to respond to an anonymous survey. ⁣⁣⁣

⁣⁣⁣Some of the feedback was quite frank. But that’s what we had wanted and encouraged, and I admired this leader for their willingness to lean into the hard parts. I compiled the responses into a briefing and gave it to them on a Friday afternoon. I wanted them to have the weekend to process it before walking back into the office on Monday morning. ⁣⁣⁣

I urged them to take time to move through the information and let it move through them. Feel the anger, the indignation, the sadness, the sense of defeat. Do whatever they needed to do: go for a long walk (or a frenzied run), punch a pillow, drive to a deserted spot to yell, lock their bedroom door and shed some tears.⁣⁣⁣

“Don’t worry,” they responded. “I’m tougher than you think.”⁣⁣⁣

“Oh, I know you're tough,” I replied. “I’ve seen that you can power through pretty much anything. But I'm giving you a permission slip to be messy and vulnerable. If anything decides it wants to come up, let it come up. Don't try to manage it at this stage. Owning and letting that energy out will make it easier to stay more centered and more focused on your people next week.” ⁣⁣⁣

“Guess what?” I continued. “You get to be *both* an accomplished CEO and a whole, complicated person. Yahtzee!” ⁣⁣⁣

It’s so important to feel your feelings. There’s a real benefit in recognizing, acknowledging, and being with them as they are. After that, you can strategize how to channel them most effectively. ⁣⁣⁣

But denying them to yourself isn’t going to help anyone, because they WILL find a way out. They will leach out of you and onto others when you get triggered, in all manner of active and passive aggressions.⁣⁣⁣

Shame is especially insidious, and it can be super strong when you’re in a position of authority and feeling the burden of visibility. Particularly if you’ve bought into the problematic idea that you’re supposed to have it all together—that you’re supposed to be beyond pesky annoyances like feelings.⁣⁣⁣

If you cut your feelings off at the knees, and don’t admit them even to yourself—especially hurts—you never really see them. Which means you never see a part of yourself—likely a very tender and hurting part, at that. And seeing them is the first step to dealing with them in a way that will help you and those who depend on you.⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣

The world needs more leaders who are in touch with their own humanity. (This includes CEOs, managers, parents, teachers, pastors, politicians, and even life coaches.) The compassion and grace you show to yourself will cascade and have impacts throughout the entire organization. And, unfortunately, it works the same way with bitterness and self-judgment.⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣

As Brene Brown reminds us, this life project is not about BEING right. It’s about 𝙜𝙚𝙩𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 it right, and the getting can be messy and awkward. No matter what level you play at, there’s a lot to learn, and it takes practice. ⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣

So, whoever and wherever you are, here is *your* permission slip to be a whole, complicated, feeling, soaring, stumbling, still-figuring-it-out person. ⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣

"He Lived at a Little Distance from His Body."

That’s what James Joyce says about Mr. Duffy, in his short story “A Painful Case.”⁣⁣ I think many of us have worked out a similar arrangement. ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣
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We’re often alienated from our own bodies. Instead of inhabiting them, we become hyper-vigilant (or half-awake) brains, dragging around unfamiliar and uncooperative meat-sacks.⁣⁣
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How does this happen?
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For starters, it’s so easy to get caught up in the noise and tumult and To Do lists. It’s not unusual for us to pay much closer attention to what’s happening on our little screens than to what’s going on inside of us. ⁣⁣
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We have smartphones and dumb bodies.⁣⁣
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Or perhaps we disconnect from our bodies as a coping strategy, because they carry the scars (visible and invisible) of old hurts and painful conditioning.⁣⁣
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Even those of us who pay hyped-up attention to our bodies and do all the exercises and drink all the organic smoothies may be just as disconnected. That is, more driven by shame-based shoulds and comparative anxieties than real attunement to the signals our bodies continually send us about our needs. ⁣⁣
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We can get to the point that our baseline is skewed. A certain amount of tension and uneasiness just feels “like us.” A close friend once said that he was scared to get a massage, because he was afraid that it would relax him too much. He wasn’t sure who he would be without his nervous energy.⁣⁣
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Paying attention to our body can cue us into mental and spiritual conflict and dis-ease that’s existing just below the threshold of consciousness, so subtle that we’ve normalized it.
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Sometimes when a coaching client is having a hard time articulating a feeling state or a complex knot of beliefs, I’ll ask them locate it in their body, maybe even give it a shape, color, and pressure. And then discussion of the body sensation provides an opening—perhaps triggers a memory.⁣⁣
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⁣Once, as part of an intro class to regulating the nervous system, I was doing a breathing exercise. It didn’t have any kind of visualization or inquiry component: just pay close attention to your breath, and don’t take the next one until your body asks for it. I did it for just a couple of minutes and then, spontaneously, was racked with sobs. ⁣⁣
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I had no idea that was coming—the teacher hadn’t warned us in advance. But there was a big cache of unshed tears hidden in there, and attunement to my body gave me access to it. And you can bet that stored sadness had been showing up in other ways as I went through my day.⁣⁣
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Some very effective approaches to healing trauma are body-based rather than mind- or story-based. When we have a trauma response, there is a whole bunch of hard wiring that gets activated. Sometimes, it may be more productive (with skilled support) to allow your body to follow its own wisdom and complete the physical action that was interrupted in the trauma, than to rehash all the accumulated details and feelings and beliefs. Less talking, more shaking. ⁣⁣
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Early on, I was almost exclusively focused on the “story” side of healing. Get your head / attitude / beliefs / intentions right, and the body will follow. I’ve since come to see that as a one-sided, even impoverished view of the human ecosystem. ⁣
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The body and the mind / spirit each offers a door to the other side, and things work better if we travel easily back and forth between them, and stop thinking of them as separate. They are dynamically interwoven parts of the whole that is you.⁣⁣
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Stop. Right now. Take a breath. Get in touch with the fact that you are a body located in a particular space at this specific moment in time. What’s going on in there? ⁣⁣
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Feel the ground under your feet or the chair supporting you. Tune into your jaw. We typically carry a lot of stress there. How tight or loose is it? What's the feeling behind the tension? How about your neck? Your lower back? ⁣⁣
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How about your eyes? They’re always on, and we’re always looking at something else through them. Rarely do we put our attention directly on them. They might feel really tight and tired. As the poet David Whyte says, “When your eyes are tired the world is tired also.” Give them some love, and note the change that follows. ⁣⁣
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Trauma is a full-scale bodymind event, and so is healing. ⁣⁣
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Duffy, it’s time to pull it together.⁣

All the Right [White] Stuff

Awhile back, I had to make a quick trip to New Orleans to pick up a computer part. I like to drive, so I took a meandering scenic route. It wasn’t till nearly an hour in, when I stopped for coffee in a small town, that I realized that I had meandered out of my house without my wallet. Instead of my billfold, I had grabbed the leather case with my business cards. No credit or debit cards, no ID, and I hadn’t installed a payment app on my phone yet.

Shit.

The computer part wasn’t expensive, but it was critical. I was going to need about $25 to get it. As I wanly contemplated the extra two hours that would be tacked on to my trip if I had to return home, I noticed that there was a branch of my bank across the street.

It was worth a try. I cleaned up as best I could (translation: I exchanged my flip-flops for running shoes and smoothed my t shirt and shorts), gave myself a pep talk, and went inside.

I was greeted in the lobby by the branch manager, a friendly dark-haired woman with a French last name. I explained my predicament, expressed my profound embarrassment, and asked if she could help. I told her my account number and showed her a business card with my company name on it. She had the teller pull up my accounts and ask me a few questions. I had enough right answers, apparently, and they gave me $75.00, though I had the feeling I could have asked for more. They couldn’t have been nicer. I was (and am) sooooo grateful.

As I got back into my car, however, it occurred to me that there was one other thing that I brought in with me that worked in my favor: my white skin. I wondered, given all the same circumstances, if I had been a person of color, would it have gone the same for me—a stranger in that small Louisiana town? All the bank personnel that I saw were white. I never got any sense that they were the least bit suspicious. The spirit of the questions they asked weren’t so much to test me as to confirm my story.

I imagine that if I were a person of color, if nothing else, my baseline anxiety in that situation might be higher, anticipating a few more hurdles. And that subtle difference, if palpable, might fuel the concerns of the bank personnel. I hope that that wouldn’t be the case, and that any customer, regardless of their skin color, would feel as valued, supported, and at ease in that environment as I did.

And I’m not meaning to imply that I think that any of the bank personnel would be deliberately or knowingly racist (if they were at all). But I’m also aware that context matters. Unconscious bias matters. Our assumptions about people matter. We’re caught in cultural and historical webs that perhaps we didn’t spin, but that we have a responsibility to question and pull apart, so that we can all rise together.

Because while bank accounts sometimes come with perks, privilege always does.

Go Easy, Pardner

On yourself, that is.⁣

When you feel that panic rising in you—Did I buy enough? Will I be able to pay my bills? Am I taking care of my people properly? Am I doing pandemic correctly?—it’s probably not just about the coronavirus. ⁣

Big events like this stir Your Stuff. Besides the biological / evolutionary imperatives that get activated to protect yourself and your tribe, things in your attic and basement get knocked around. Old boxes of hurts and fears and slights and trauma get jostled and long-hidden contents spill out, right there in the toilet paper aisle of the grocery store.⁣

Even if you’ve done a lot of work on yourself and the water in your pond is generally pretty clear, events like this tend to stir up some of that bygone residue on the bottom. ⁣

That’s been true for me. For instance, the other day, I got into an uncomfortable and completely unnecessary confrontation with someone in my neighborhood. ⁣

“DON’T TURN THE CAR AROUND, DON’T ROLL DOWN THE WINDOW, DON’T OPEN YOUR MOUTH“ my better judgment screamed at me as I turned the car around, rolled down the window, and opened my mouth to start something. Without going into specifics, I was in a heightened anxious state and my old stuff about Doing it Right and avoiding judgment got pinged.⁣

And afterwards—this was the sign to me of my progress—I was extraordinarily gentle with myself. Even though I felt mostly responsible for the fracas. I even stopped the car and made a conscious choice to laugh about it.

I intuited that the best possible way to ease out of it next time was to be easy with myself right now. To break the trance that something huge was at stake, and not to up the ante and my anxiety through extended self-flagellation. (Hmmm. That always sounds kind of dirty, doesn’t it?)⁣

And it worked. This morning I unexpectedly ran into the same neighbor in close quarters and I immediately and quietly sent them love and grace. I also trusted my instinct that it was better for us not to dialogue—yet. I still have some work to do, and this person has a pro-level passive aggression game.⁣

Feeling that spin? Is the anxiety building? Tears welling? Take a moment to note it. You don’t even have to analyze it. “Churning.” “Feeling afraid.”⁣ "Getting sad."

The very act of pausing and naming it helps. It begins the process of dis-identifying with your panic (or other strong emotion) and connecting with the larger part of you that is more than this emergency. ⁣

The more you can flow into the witness position, the lighter the hold anxiety will have on you. Don’t get anxious about being anxious. ⁣

And as you get more attuned to your inner workings, you’ll be able to give it a more descriptive name: “Afraid of losing my house.” “Worried my parents were right and I’m a screw-up.” “Freaking out about the 401K and my retirement.” That then becomes the ground for fruitful self-inquiry. ⁣

And, if at times your attempts are for naught and you melt down or ugly cry or lose your Schlitz, gently name that, too. Give yourself an extra big helping of self-compassion.

Remember that (1) there’s a lot going on, both outside and inside, and (2) there’s a lot more to you than your fire-breathing, shoulders-tensing, snot-dripping fit. And then let that Schlitz go.

Seriously. There’s much better beer to stockpile.⁣