Today I’m using it in a bit of a different context.

I started this blog 110 posts ago. I started it because I felt I had something to say. Every week, for a little over two years, myself or another self-leader has shared a bit of our journey towards leading ourselves with you.

Now, I feel like it’s time to listen. I haven’t run out of things to say, exactly, and yet I am becoming convinced that what I have to say can wait, and perhaps should wait.

I have been feeling this coming on for a while. yet I didn’t have the guts self-leadership to call it, and to move forward and do it.

Now is the time.

I’m stepping back from blogging, for at least the next six months.

You won’t see me here before September (Labor Day is my deadline in my mind), and I have no idea what you will see here after that.

Nothing is wrong. I’m not sick or broke or divorcing or moving. I’m not hoping to provoke people to beg me to keep writing.

I am not going to try and justify this break by saying that it’s really for the best or telling you to be happy for me or promising that you’ll be so glad I did this because in six months you won’t believe what I am going to reveal or produce. I’m simply saying it’s what I have to do right now.

I’m not scared, yet I am very curious about what will happen over the next six months. I wonder if I will miss blogging; I’m sure I will. I wonder if I will read more or less of the blogs of other people. I wonder if I will cook more, read more, watch more TV, spend more time with my family and friends. Maybe I will do less of all those things.

The website will still be up, clients will still be served, reservations for coaching slots will still be honored (you know who you are). if you have any questions about that piece, send me an e-mail or post a comment.

I will miss you.

Thank you for coming here so faithfully over the last two years, for commenting, e-mailing, linking, listening, and talking back to me. I said when I started that I wanted The MOXY Project to help people to feel known and not alone. You all have done that for me, a hundredfold.

See you later.

Lead Your Life.

Trust The Process

In gearing up to teach another year of English to partially-willing pubescent souls, I had to harness my writing-teacher chi yet again. Convincing these iPhone-holding, Facebook addicted texting machines that the writing process matters seems to get harder by the nanosecond. The accessibility of information is so quick that they want to write an essay or a short story in minutes, as opposed to weeks. Over and over I say, “This is a process, and it is full of opportunities.” We were all teenagers, I am sure you can see eyes rolling when I say such things.

It seems the worst punishment I can impart on my students is to revise. I am pretty much submitting them to a form of sick torture when I say, “You will be turning in a complete rough draft.”

“Uh, Mrs. Wirth,” says generic sassy student, “if it’s complete, isn’t it final?”

No, because most of the time our first ideas are not usually our best.

And, as is the case over and over again with the writing process, this is a metaphor for life. Sometimes our first drafts, which are our own ideas or visions for our lives, are not always the best. Then, when we are very brave, we ask ourselves how I can revise my plan? Could a different plan be somehow better or more impactful than what I first envisioned?  How can we dare to imagine bigger, better or different things for ourselves?

Despite the fact that students flippantly and eagerly post their thoughts on Facebook for all to see, they are extremely hesitant to share their writing with a peer. But, since my cruelty knows no bounds, I not only make them share their thoughts with one real live person, but groups. Yes, they have writing groups. I think their agony is rooted in the fact that this act of revision is done in person. There is no screen to shelter the facial expressions of their friends and classmates as they muddle through one another’s drafts. The writing process invites us to be part of a community. Revising, whether it is a life plan or essay, is not meant to be done in private. The time and energy that goes into this refining process should be shared.

When I look at a student who has loved their short story and tell them that the plot or character is good, but it could be better, I am encouraged when they look overwhelmed. That look means they are invested. They will revise despite the challenges.  They will go back to their community of writers that is also invested to reshape the story to make it even stronger. This is what a good community does for us.

I have been revising my own life plan for past few months; it’s been tough. My life circumstances required me to step back from my own first draft and change my plot.  Because I need to honor my students in all I do, I fought this revision long and hard. I kept thinking that my first plan would work or that something else would just pan-out, and I could continue living my own scenario, but it didn’t. However, I am on a great looking second draft.

Self-leadership is being open to and occasionally inviting revision. I would say that ninety percent of the second drafts I get are better than the first, but they have not been crafted alone.

Self-leadership is also about gathering a community to surround you as you modify your life’s plans. For as much as I have resisted this change in my own life, I am grateful for it, but I wasn’t smart enough to realize that on my own.

How can you invite revision in your own life’s story?

What community do you need to craft a beautiful second draft of your next chapter?

We are all engaging in our own great life stories. As most good stories do, they have surprises in the plot, unforeseeable events and incredible characters. And, very few people want to live through their stories alone. We want to compose our stories in communities that challenge, affirm, and push us toward our goals. This is why I ask my students to participate in these writing groups, because the end product is so much more substantial when it is loved by many eyes and minds. These communities that we create throughout our lives remind us that our whole is process is valid.

Spring Break is coming up, which makes me think of camp, which reminds me what a hard time I had when my son went away to camp this summer. He’d been gone before for a few nights at a time, to stay with relatives or friends, but this was 6 days, hours of driving away, with no contact. The camp did post pictures every day, and my friends whose kids had gone before told me stories of scouring the online albums for hours each night, searching for glimpses of their offspring. I told my son that I would pay him 1$ for every picture he was in, and the first night he was grinning cheerfully in 4 pictures. Clearly missing me.

While J was away, I watched this TED video of Ric Elias. In 5 minutes, this survivor of the plane that landed in the Hudson River in January of 2009 called out every lazy parenting choice or barely acceptable rationalization that I’ve ever had. He shared three realizations that he gained from his near-death experience on Flight 1549, and then encouraged the audience to consider what would change in their life if they left his talk and got on a plane that met the same fate his flight had. One especially poignant point he made was that, as a direct result of committing to be happy more than right, he has not had a fight with his wife in two years. That hit home. But it was when he talked about his biggest lesson; that “Above all, I want to be a great dad”, that I really felt the impact of what it means to be a present parent.

I was at the gym a while ago and picked up a parenting magazine someone had left. My kids are beyond a lot of the stages that this particular magazine described; we’re done with potty training and sleep issues (although the picky eater drama continues), and so I felt a bit nostalgic as I got to the end of the magazine. I remembered the years I would read these issues cover-to-cover, seeking to glean all the wisdom I could from the expert opinions and tips that had worked for other families. Those were the days.

And then I realized that there was one clear and consistent theme presented clearly on every page of that magazine. The articles, the pictures, even the ads promoted this concept ruthlessly, and once I saw it, it was inescapable. Each issue, from this one to the ones before my time, proclaimed one essential requirement of parenting (perhaps with many variations and options), and that message was this: Be present.

Think about it. If you are a parent, when have been your best moments as a parent? I’m confident your first thought was of a time when you were completely present with your child(ren). Whatever you were doing or not doing, whatever was being said, eaten, or played with, you were present. You were there, not distracted or annoyed or self-conscious.

If you have a parent, I’m equally sure that your best moments with them were when they were 100% with you. It didn’t even matter what you were doing, where you were, or even who else was around, because you didn’t notice or care. You had the undivided attention of the person who was most important in the world.

This is the power of being all-in.

Self-leadership is just as important in my parenting, if not more, than in other areas of my life. If I am preaching self-leadership to my clients but not exercising it in my own family by empowering and coaching my children to lead their own lives, something is very wrong. Being present – with my children, my spouse, my friends, myself, my situation- is always, always, the most powerful choice I can make.

Yes, I am saying that I learned about the power of being present as a parent while my son was away at camp. Thank you very much, Alanis Morissette.

The last words of Ric’s talk were questions that he challenged the audience to ask themselves. The very last question was: “And more than anything, are you being the best parent you can?” I learned while my son was at camp that whatever your initial response, if you want to become a better parent (or spouse, friend, partner, employee, individual); a better self-leader-  the answer is simple: Be present.

Lead Your Life.

All of us have dreams; clients usually contact me in the first place because they have dreams that are becoming urgent or in some way demand attention. But sometimes a client with a dream is different. They are different because their spouse, or partner, is not supportive of their dream.

This lack of support can look like a lot of different things. It can take the form of concern about finances: “I just quit my job to go to grad school so now we need your income to live on,” to feeling threatened: “You’d better not become more successful than me” to outright sabotage: “I told the kids you weren’t going to be around as much anymore because your new project is more important.”

Sometimes, the partners opposition isn’t voiced out loud, but is expressed indirectly through passive-aggressive behavior such as losing phone messages or important documents, questioning decisions, and presenting a bad attitude in general.

It’s very tricky territory to navigate when a client wants to problem-solve what to do about their unsupportive partner. Most often, I barely know the client myself at this point, and to insert myself into their primary romantic relationship feels uber-awkward as well as spectacularly unprofessional and unethical. I usually call a time-out and punt to “marriage counseling is above my pay grade” while still trying to have a constructive conversation around my clients’ personal responsibility and choices. Which can be hard, when she doesn’t have any money of her own. Or if he only has free time at night or on the weekends, which is when his wife needs him to watch the kids.

Occasionally, dynamics will show up repeatedly in such a way that it becomes clear that there are other issues in play. Money and power and intimacy are potent- sometimes toxic- elements of any relationship, and no one is immune to their effects. What’s hard for me (and obviously excruciating for the client) is when these unhealthy components bleed into the work that the client and I are trying to do together.

(And when I say “together,”  I mean that really loosely, since my clients pretty much generally kick ass all over the place and I just cheer them on while trying try to keep my hair looking presentable. Easier said than done.)

That is the point at which I want to ask: “Are you having the right conversation?” I mean, I’m no psychologist- oh wait! I am!- but we all know that most disagreements, especially in marriage, are not about what they seem to be about on the face. My friend John likes to say; “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always control.”

For example, say you are my client. You are having a conversation with me about how you are going to get a second job and start squirreling away money so you can afford to start this side hustle, but all the time there is this voice in the back of my head that is getting louder and louder with each financial calculation you make.

And the voice is saying: “The problem is not that you don’t have enough money to do what you want to do. The problem is that you and your spouse do not trust each other enough to have a no-holds-barred conversation about priorities. The problem is that you have yet to put everything on the table and hold nothing sacred; not that cable subscription with the channels you love, not the pension fund or the savings account for that trip you want to take for your anniversary. Not the shopping splurges, or the ski trips, or the meals out. Not the gym membership you never use or the boat you use even less than the gym membership.

The problem is that somewhere along the line the two of you lost the mutual purpose of your distribution of resources. Maybe you started drinking more lattes and doing more wine-tasting.  Or maybe you started more college funds and IRA’s. Maybe you have to pay for an care of a parent, or child. Maybe you bought – or lost- a house. Possibly. Likely, one or both of you got – or lost- at least one job since you first got together.

Times change. Priorities do as well. So have an honest conversation with your partner about what is most important to you right now, financially and otherwise. Speak your heart, and listen, really listen, to your partner’s. Commit to one another anew that you will steward your resources for the good of the other and the betterment of the world.

(And that you will do whatever it takes to keep Justin Beiber at the top of the charts. Oh, wait, that was me.)

Please, for the love, take the time and energy you are pouring into plotting this whole strategy with me, and invest it into your relationship with your significant other. Do not tell yourself –or me– that you deserve to do something for yourself and that you refuse to feel guilty for wanting more. No one is saying you don’t deserve it and no one wants you to feel guilty either. You are not auditioning to be a makeover guest on Oprah here. You are trying to become more fully yourself, and your partner has committed to be all about that with you. So don’t fire them without even giving them an interview.

I do want you to feel connected, trusted, supported, and fully known, and that won’t happen if we keep our plans for your future a secret. Because these kinds of secrets end badly for everyone. Even James Bond.

So stop talking to me, and start talking to the one who was, once, your biggest fan, and most likely still is.

And when you’re done talking, call me. And we’ll do this.” 

Who do need to have a right conversation with?

Where have you been avoiding the issue, or thinking the issue is something other than what it really is?

What would the issue be, if you knew what it was?

Let’s talk about that.

Lead Your Life.

Several years ago, I was co-facilitating a leadership training when my colleague asked the room if anyone could think of a time in their life when their skill set (what they could do) matched up with their principles (what they valued). As the room fell silent, a perfect instance came to my mind. I gulped and said: “Well, actually……I have one.”

My example was technically about my husband, who at the time was a high school wrestling coach and English teacher. He had been coaching for a few years and had a reputation of being hard on the kids but fair; the kind of coach who expects a lot and who gives a lot in return. He loved coaching and spent hours helping kids perfect their moves and technique.

On the night of the biggest match of the year with my husbands team against their cross-town rival, I arrived late. I don’t remember why. I do remember walking up the pathway to the gym, hearing the shouts and yells of parents and fans from inside, and thinking “Man, there are a lot of people here tonight.” I walked into the gym and the match had already started. I looked, but couldn’t find Chris (my husband) at first. Instead of Chris being at his usual spot on the side of the mat, coaching the wrestler, my husbands best friend and assistant coach, Matt, was there. I started to make my way to a seat in the stands, all the while scanning with my eyes as I was walking to see where Chris had gone. Finally I sat down and looked out at the mat—and there he was, refereeing the match.

This was astonishing to me.

How could the coach – of one team- in a huge match of cross-town rival high schools- be allowed to be the referee?

The short answer: Because his skill set matched his principles.

Apparently, they had waited an extra 10-15 minutes for the referee to come to the match, but he didn’t show. The coaches started talking about what they would do if the ref was later than half an hour. They knew they couldn’t wait longer than that to start the match, by league rules, so they needed to find another qualified ref. Someone who knew the rules inside and out, who could be trusted to be fair, and who would do a good job.

Enter Chris Mollkoy.

The coaches unanimously agreed that Chris was a fiercely committed, excellent and knowledgeable coach of his own team (Skill Set), while also possessing unimpeachable integrity and ethics (Principles). To a man, they decided that he was the one they would all trust to judge the competition that evening. He was given the jersey, told to suit up and that he would be allowed to use his own whistle.

My husband was known for his integrity. He had been elected to be the Teacher’s Union representative to the school board without even running or asking to be nominated, because his fellow teachers knew that he could not lie to them.

Chris is one of those people with low interpersonal intuition; what you see is what you get, and he doesn’t have much of a filter when it comes to saying what he thinks. He’s terrible at changing his behavior to suit a situation, which is awful at family Christmas parties (“You suck at karaoke!” “That color looks awful on you!”) but awesome for people who need to know they are being told the truth (“This is what will happen if you choose to go on strike”).

Chris’ fellow teachers were convinced that it would be physically impossible for Chris to stand up and deceive them into accepting terms or contracts that would actually work against them, so they appointed him to speak on their behalf on a regular basis.

And what do you know, it worked like a charm. Someone with zero political savvy had school board members eating out of his hand. Here was someone who didn’t play games, wasn’t conniving, and simply did what he said he was going to do.

As I watched my husband referee the biggest wrestling match of the season, my heart swelled with pride. Here was a man who didn’t seek the spotlight, who was uncomfortable with effusive praise, who really just wanted to do the right thing by his students and his sport. Right place, right time, right person.

Right skills, right principles.

Right leadership.

Happy Birthday, sweetie. You are my hero!

 Lead Your Life.

That last part describes a pretty rational process. Did I mention I worked with college students?

My point, and I do have one, is that the pressure my students felt to make The Right Decision was immense. Enormous. Gigantic. And I often felt as though no matter what I said, they were still going to stay up half the night talking and texting and Facebooking in desperate attempts to figure out the perfect solution to whatever problem they had convinced themselves was just about to ruin their life.

Until the day I said to one student, in the car, at the intersection, on the way back from Starbucks yet again: “The good is not the enemy of the best.” 

I’m pretty sure I remember her making a kind of violent movement after I spoke that phrase out loud. She jerked towards the window in a gesture I thought might indicate her opening the car door to jump out en route, but she didn’t do that. Instead, she sat back in her seat, inclined her head, and said what I consider to be the money phrase: “I guess I never thought of it that way.”

 And then we were off and running.

 I knew our conversation was meaningful for her, but I didn’t actually realize what an impact that one phrase had had on her until a few years later when we were catching up over lunch. She was talking about that particular period of her life that she had been in during our trip(s) to Starbucks, and she told me that the phrase “The good is not the enemy of the best” had totally transformed her perspective. In her words, it had given her “room to imagine that there were possibly more options- and more definitions of success- than I had previously believed.”

Well, gosh, you’re welcome.

Obviously, the phrase “the good is not the enemy of the best” did not originate with me. I can’t even remember where I first heard it. But I do know that it had a similar effect upon me when I realized what it meant; that I didn’t have to mysteriously and flawlessly arrive at my perfect future, fully formed. That I could give myself room; that there was room, big swaths of green grass and wide open halls that echoed with possibilities. That these alternatives didn’t have to overwhelm me but rather released me from the burden of picking the one and only ideal option in the shell game of life after college.

 The trick, you see, as I and my student(s) learned and continue to learn, is that sometimes, to be committed is enough. Of course it matters what I am committed to; we must commit ourselves to those things which are understood to be good and healthy and true and noble and pure and admirable. Many of us make commitments and fail to achieve perfection through them; very few, if any, achieve perfection without commitment. 

Therefore, today and as many days as necessary going forward, I choose commitment. I will align myself to something or someone that, in my estimation, will lead me farther down the path I want to be on, and feel called to follow. And, if I take a wrong turn or meet with disappointment, I will remind myself that mistakes and correction are all part of the process. I will be grateful that I’m not paralyzing myself with my compulsion to do it perfectly, and I’ll feel the gratification that comes from knowing I’m doing it at all.

 Lead Your Life.

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt, “Citizenship in a Republic,”
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

This month’s “Once Upon A Time” is from my former student and now friend, Kristin. I don’t want to give away too much so let me only say that Kristin is one of those contagiously courageous people who raises the level of everything she touches. Her transparency and vulnerability are admirable, and her husband is extremely stable. So, win-win. Enjoy.

“Have you seen the chickens’ watering container?! It is so disgusting!” I tromp into the kitchen exasperated after catching up on chores.   I just finished my first day as a college professor.  “I  tried to hose off all that green algae grossness and it is caked on there.  We need to get a new one.  Oh and it was a five-egg day.”

As I place the eggs in a carton, marveling once again at their different shapes and sizes, I hear a snicker from the stove.

Nate, my equal partner and devoted spouse of over six years is the culprit.  As he stirs ratatouille with veggies he just picked from the garden, he turns to me, “I wish I had a tape recorder. Did you ever think you would say something like that? Ranting about chicken water and eggs. Did you think this would be our life?”

We both start laughing at this weird reality we are fully entrenched in now.

If someone had shown me the coming attractions to my life a few years or even  months ago, I would not have believed it.  I would have deemed it a hilarious, tragic, fictitious comedy.

Many little steps led to the present, but a huge shift happened just a year ago.  I had been working at a university when I found out there was some re-categorizing happening. I would be getting a “new” job, which was exactly the same as the one I held for the past five years.  However, it came with a sizable pay cut.

I had been thinking about leaving my job which had not presented many new growth opportunities in the way of responsibilities for the past couple years.  I had just published a book, and our “garden” was beginning to be bigger than, well, a “garden.” Ideas swam in my head all day, looking for a home in a blog or essay.  Meanwhile at our actual home, weeds called out to be pulled, seeds whispered to be planted and chickens squawked to be fed.

I needed to figure out what I wanted to say and what I wanted to do.  However, more importantly, another layer of who I wanted to be desperately needed my attention.

Our life had shifted, but I was reluctant to move from a spot I had grown so comfortable in. The culture I was accustomed to told me I was supposed to settle down, be grateful for what I had been given, and enter a predictable routine. However, one conversation changed that.

“Have you thought of a PhD?” It was the voice of my spiritual director.  I call her Yoda.  She doesn’t know this. Her advice almost always comes in the form of genius nuggets of  wisdom or completely intoxicating questions that leave me pondering for days.  I wasn’t used to this kind of directness as I ranted on the phone about my belief in God and the journey of my true self.

“Um, I think I’m too young,” I respond being caught off guard, trying to squelch this idea before it gained any ground.

“What do you want – if you could visualize it – what would it be?” Again she was direct, but I went with it, yearning for some kind of direction.

“I guess I would want to teach, write, maybe have kids, and work on our homestead,” saying it out loud seemed so scary. I wanted a simple life.  Simple meaning: understanding where our food comes from, enfolding children into a bigger legacy, and knowing our neighbors.  Additionally, helping young adults develop their thoughts, continuing to invest in my own learning and living out the greatest commandment.

She knew I had applied to teach college freshmen how to write.  I told myself that it was just a basic writing course, not rocket science, but it was enough.  I undermined myself at every chance.

Teaching adjunct was not a PhD though – a PhD meant specializing in something enough to become an expert. My fears of being one of the ivory tower types separated from a cultural discourse other than the one happening in my own brain began to surface.

I feared being alienated from my peers and my students.  There was still a little girl in me who longed to be liked even at the risk of subjugating her own voice and gifts.  I was already raising vegetables and chickens and working with students on a small scale – why risk more change?

As I marinated about the PhD over the following week, I began to think about what I wanted in this life and who I am created to be.

The space filled up by a “normal” 40-hour-a-week job, followed by “Keeping up with the Jones’” and trying to compete in matters of career, with kids, with community, and even friends just wasn’t going to work for me.

Nate and I love working in the yard, eating our own food and preserving a way of life quickly going extinct.  People come to seek out our advice and lose themselves in the fantasy world our yard has become. Our lifestyle calls people into a different kind of being and we love that about our home.  It exudes from us. The “cultural norm” is not what we want. It started making a lot of sense that I would instead desire to teach and pursue knowledge at a deeper level.  I was learning that good leaders don’t suddenly “arrive;” they are hungry to learn and grow.

It dawned on me that the excuse of being young was not enough to disqualify me any more.  I was qualified, and pursuing what I wanted in life would bring me further along the path of my journey into who I am meant to be.

The Celtic spiritual writer John O’Donohue wrote:

 “We tend to perceive difficulty as disturbance.

Ironically, difficulty can be a great friend of creativity.”

I was being given an opportunity to use my time and space creatively.  It is a privilege I still do not take lightly.

This challenge was not going to drop into my lap either. I needed to choose and fight to make my life what I wanted instead of waiting for a disturbance or being annoyed at further interruptions.

As the year wore on, I was offered two freshman writing courses and a foundational leadership course for students exploring what leadership looks like.  I went through five interviews and countless resumes.  This was not an effortless process, but I was relentless.  Additionally, I started working on another book and we grew over 100 pounds of produce in the fall. Like I said, this wasn’t easy.

Is this self-leadership?  It is always funny to me when people come to us for advice about their gardens or read my blog. It’s humorous because we would do these things anyway. It is in the core of who are to dive into intentional living, not because we want to change the world. Rather, we want to continue to change our own lives to be in line with who we are created to be.  Only then can we truly help others in this journey of life because we are not serving out of altruism; we are assisting out of authenticity.  And don’t we all wish leaders around us were more authentic?

Authenticity requires that one shows up to their whole self: their grievances, sorrows, their laughter and their joys; to their reality as much as their dreams. And once that tension is realized, one can move into the present knowing that their gift to the world is being the most honest version of themselves.

As my spiritual director said to me on that day the pendulum swung, “You are allowed to dream what you actually desire.”  Sometimes we just need prompting.

Kristin Ritzau is the author of A Beautiful Mess: A Perfectionist’s Journey Through Self-Care. When she’s not writing, teaching, learning, speaking, or sleeping, she enjoys spends time with her husband, Nate, in their garden, cooking, and taking care of their birds:  Curry, Nugget, Rosemary, Buffalo, Kung Pao, Fettuccine, and Marsala.  Keep up with her and their crazy life at www.kristinritzau.com.  

I know, you don’t normally come here expecting to learn cool french phrases. But that’s just for free, today, because I’m feeling generous. And thankful. And isn’t learning self-leadership more than a bit like learning a new language?

Back to finding the hole. Here’s an example: way back in practically pre-historic times, everyone took Bayer aspirin. It was harsh on stomach linings and had other yucchy side effects, but people still took it because it was the best thing out there. Do you remember that?

Then along came Tylenol.

Tylenol’s first ads started out talking about what we don’t like about taking aspirin- tummyaches, blurred vision, constipation, dizziness, drowsiness, heartburn, lightheadedness, sometimes even vomiting. Only after they had mentioned all the problems with aspirin did they present the alternative. And people listened; now Tylenol towers over aspirin in sales and brand recognition and loyalty.

But this is not a post about beating your enemies through exploiting their weaknesses.

It’s about redefining the holes.

It’s my belief that exercising self-leadership looks like identifying your own “holes” and actively working to fill them. Other words for holes are “weaknesses” or “blind spots”- words describing areas where we fall short. You’ve probably focused some recent New Year’s Resolutions on repairing holes that you’ve noticed over the past year or lifetime or so.

What if I told you that I don’t think those holes need as much of your effort as you think they do? At least not as much get ‘er done, grind-it-out, no-matter-what, whatever-it-takes-struggle.

What if, instead, your holes needed your acceptance? Your empathy? Your curiosity and tender compassion? What if they needed some positive attention, some welcome, possibly a bit of camaraderie or even celebration?

Don’t misunderstand me. All holes need attention, or else our lives will be like that scene in the Princess Bride where Westley and Buttercup enter the Thieves Forest and get sucked underground by the quicksand at the Fire Swamp. Blood, sweat and tears will most likely still be required even if we take this alternative route.

In fact, accepting our holes just as they are will probably be more painful than trying to fix them.

And yet, I’m convinced that in the long run, loving your holey self just as it is will turn out to be one of the most courageous choices you will ever make.

Holes. Everyone has them. Stop trying to hide or patch them. Instead, search for them as one searches for treasure in a field. And when you find them, be gentle. You may just find strength in what you thought was your weakest point.

Lead Your Life. 

If you tarry ‘till you’re better / You may never come at all

The point is that putting off something phenomenal and life-changing until you are “better” is ridiculous and crazy, especially when that something will in itself change your life. I totally resonate with the desire to improve, of course, especially at this time of the year, and I have often rationalized over-preparing myself for something by saying I’m not ready. Not ready for total freedom, when I crave control. Not ready for bliss, when I want certitude. Not ready for a journey when what I’m interested in is the destination.

Hi, I’m Michele, and I used to have practice conversations with my dates in the mirror before they picked me up.

I love the fact that I can always make a different choice. Five minutes from now, I can take a different route to get to the movie theatre and by doing that, I am opening myself up to a degree of risk that I wouldn’t have otherwise.

Or am I?

How do I know the familiar route to the movie theatre is less risky? Because I know the way, so I am more likely to proceed successfully? If that were true, people would never fall in the bathroom. (Think about it.)

I can always, always, ALWAYS choose to take a step forward, rather than backward. It may not feel that way- it may feel like if I take another step forward I will surely burst into flames, but the truth is that the choice is up to me.*

That is the classic definition of self-leadership.

From going to the movie theatre to becoming the person you are created to be, if you wait until you’re more developed or enhanced to begin, you may never arrive at your ultimate destination at all.

For me, the need to delay comes from focusing more on the immediate than the future. When I think about what it takes for me to stop the four things I’m doing simultaneously, get ready and leave the house to go to the movie, I linger and delay. I cling to the comfort and security of known surroundings.

But when I imagine the experience of the movie; the great story, the popcorn, companionship and laughing with friends, I can hardly wait. I decide I don’t actually need to change my clothes and I head for the door.

What is it for you? Moving to a new place? Applying to a new job or graduate school? Starting a new relationship or business? Having a long overdue conversation or making a decision you have been avoiding? Confessing? Joining? Asking? Committing?

As we enter 2012, remember this reality: You can choose your own path. Delaying action until you are a superior or more advanced version of yourself may in fact determine your doom.

Don’t put it off any longer. Step forward into the future that you are creating, this very minute. Embrace responsibility for your one wild and precious life. Don’t let the fear stop you. Our imagination is only limited by our experience; get some more experience and watch the fear wither. Do what it takes. I believe in you.

Do. Not. Tarry.

Make no mistake, self-leadership is hard. But it’s worth it.

Definitely better than any movie you could ever see.

Lead Your Life

*Sometimes what looks like a step forward will in fact be a step backwards, and vice versa. But that’s another post.