Leaders that are present, attuned to opportunities, and comfortable with uncertainty are effective in extraordinary ways. On the downside, that style is wrought with distractions that diminish attention on the bigger picture – what we’re really here to do now to get wherever we’re going. Exploring every possibility or saying yes to every opportunity, thins and blurs the focus needed to notice and catch the ideas that are in our best interests as well as those of others.
Four years ago, my coach, Shannon Presson, revealed my own issue with boundaries. At the time, I was under-employed, so no opportunity went unexplored. I was subcontracting in the public sector, taking every teaching contract offered to me, while working with Gazelles International to convert the Four Decisions™ strategic planning methodology for use in the social sector. I was working very hard, doing things I had a passion for but not getting the professional and financial results I wanted. While Shannon encouraged the possibilities, she also helped me to put some boundaries around my activity by revisiting my personal mission and goals and pushing me to reflect on how those values determine what’s important and what isn’t.
I truly believe my regular and deeper reflection during that crazy period of time attracted the work with MPICT, work that aligns with my values, perspectives and passions. From the start, it was a fabulous fit, yet I kept volunteering and teaching. Busyness has never been a challenge for me, especially when it’s doing things I enjoy. But it was robbing me of that reflective time and space Daniel Goleman, in Focus, describes as the “open focus where serendipitous discoveries thrive.”
We all have this extraordinary gift but too few of us are able to tap into it. The battery of email, texts, news, bills to pay, new opportunities – I could go on – throws our brains into a state that is antithetical to that open focus. In the midst of distraction, creativity dead ends generic viagra from india. I was in a status-maintaining, closed loop of the same busyness until it recently dawned on my that the Universe is going to keep saying “Yes” so I better learn when to say “No”.
Self-awareness is that inner radar that brings our attention to what we do, and equally important, what we don’t do. Mindful self-awareness can interject focus into that closed loop because it improves selective attention, mitigating the pull of unqualified distractions. Mindful self-awareness tunes down the “all about me” mind talk irrelevant to what’s going on in the moment, to observe our experiences in an impartial, non-reactive way.
The trick is how to move from the receptivity that arises from open, mindful awareness of what’s going on around us to the focus we need to act on our insights. C. Otto Scharmer, a colleague of Peter Senge, and co-author of Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society, offers Theory U as this way of being.
I wasn’t making time for that important, middle step of presencing – to retreat and reflect. Hopping back and forth between observing and acting wastes time. Not to say that it’s unproductive, a lot of creative and useful things gets done. But too many of the outcomes are isolated and disconnected from vision, mission, goals and/or values. Too many detours and dead ends.
Observe, reflect, act with the inner radar on. Take doses of the distractions then stop to watch if and where they connect with the flow of your purpose and work. Only then should you say “Yes”.
