Walking Across Bridges
Are you aware of the bridges you’re avoiding?
Maybe you’re working so hard you don’t even know there’s a short cut across that raging workflow river.
Well I didn’t know I was resisting a walk across until the other day. And it took a friend, a trusted guide, to help me see the metaphorical bridge I was avoiding.
As I make my way across my jungle bridge of possibility I remembered a lesson by Peter Shallard: that we all have two areas of growth to embrace: our network and our capabilities. This sure feels true.
Let me explain. Network: the nurtured relationships that interconnect us to an ever far reaching social web. Capabilities: our personal skillsets that combine to communicate the solutions we offer.
Now I could go into mega amounts of details of what specific items sit within these two intersecting spheres. And yet, in my opinion, how willing we are to grow our Network & Capability, is THE key pre-requisite to our mission success. In other words, how OPEN are we to embrace growth?
Go ahead, take a beat to see if you agree. If so, then the question is: how willing are you to SEE how you’re doing in these two areas?
How scary is it to examine the added skillsets that would have impact on our endeavor? And what’s the resistance within to looking at these fears?
I assure you that I really do know how strong the urge is to NOT to want to take a good hard look. I can also tell you that not looking is also not seeing the bridges of possibility that are right there waiting to be crossed.
Perhaps you’ll join me to get curious and just brave enough, vulnerable enough to re-consider the top limiting beliefs that impede our willingness to invest in ourselves; to accept help; to open up enough to see the bridges.
So here’s a hammock visual for your mind to take a comfy pause.
Stretching Open
In your mental beach hammock ask yourself:
Do I believe in change as a positive force?
Do I believe people can change?
Do I believe I can change?
If you’re hesitating on ANY of the above, then you may want to explore how to help yourself be more open.
Understand Myself defines openness as exhibiting:
A high degree of creative and aesthetic sensitivity
+
An interest in abstract concepts and ideas with an intellect open to experience
Now I can teach you the first part, how to have a higher degree of artistic discernment; but what needs to budge first, within you, is having the interest in adding this skillset.
Sure, it’s also up to me to persuade you that being competent enough with art direction is a key capability for success with any modern day mission. And I’ll say that’s a given because we’re all presenting our endeavors in parallel to national and global brands that DO have their branding dialed in beautifully for an instant level of audience trust. So if your stuff looks disjointed, you’ll not get attention and you’ll not get traction.
So what keeps us from being open to the experience of adding key capabilities to grow our network for maximum impact?
Well you may have guessed that it’s FEAR. We feel it as resistance. And it is subconscious. And it’s like trying to see our own shadow. And it’s damn hard to face and overcome alone.
The good news is that we DO have the free-will to catch and modify our mind reflexes to better trust and embrace our vast potential. I have learned that it helps to know that fear is self-protective. At one point, these “ways of being” were modeled for us and/or traumatized into us as protective behaviors. Of course we’ve ALL picked up armor stories.
So please come meet me down by the beach.
Embracing Possibility
Let’s take a look at the our Openness Potential.
We’ll redraw our open learning heart as a circle.
This will be the concept of our Maximum Openness. That’s represents our unlimited willingness to embrace new beliefs to allow for new learning experiences. Essentially it’s our willingness to embrace change.
To that we add two more circles, one for our Maximum Network and another for our Maximum Capability. Now let’s add them up to equal the fourth circle of our Maximum Potential.
Now stay with me here . . .
Look at what happens when we pull back with our willingness to embrace what we might need to learn. That green sweet spot of Potential really shrinks down. Our green circle gets so small; so limited. We can see it as a box walled with limitations that show up within us as aversions, resistance, hangups and even terror. Bumping into our walls is stressful. It can drain us to the point of exhaustion. We start to believe that our failures define us. We either give up, get sick, or both.
Limited Openness = Constrained Potential = A World of Stress
What’s the take-away?
Our endeavors can only go as far as we are equipped to embrace the experience of our own growth. We all live in a box. Yet, we can all make progress on the walls of our box to let our Potential expand.
Openness can be called Willingness. So how willing are you to trust just enough to be curious?
In the case of business ventures it means being willing enough to:
Follow the most time efficient path
Look at the core skillsets that might be missing
Inventory the capabilities that are better handled by an outside a vendor
Decide to experiment (and experientially learn) which tactics work best
Adventure means you are willing to stretch yourself beyond your current limits
Sadhguru – Founder of isha.sadhguru.org
I’m offering you my ear.
What’s your key frustration? What’s your biggest worry?
This is your chance. I’ll listen and write back.