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Three Benefits of Personal Development

Get Started with Personal Development, Personal Development

I’m writing a course on a pathway for personal development, and I’m struggling. I’ve learned a lot over the years and I like to share a lot. That overcomplicates things. And people are very busy and don’t want complicated. There are a handful of people who want to know all the in’s and out’s, but most folks are looking for the most efficient way to move from where they are to where they want to be. I get that. But I still struggle with it.

And gosh, where do you even start with a course on personal development? As I’ve noodled on this in the early mornings this past week, it dawned on me that perhaps the place to start is by sharing the three key benefits of personal development. There are lots of benefits, some that people cannot begin to imagine when they start with personal development. However, it isn’t even useful to attempt to describe what people cannot understand, even though I’m tempted to try.

I can winnow the benefits of personal development down to three things I think everyone can understand. These three things aren’t complicated: [Read more…] about Three Benefits of Personal Development

Facing the Failure of Being Nice

Crucial Conversations, Radical Candor, Vulnerability

There is a silent and mounting price to being “nice”. I’m talking about the version of being nice that is at the expense of being fully, straightforwardly, breathtakingly honest.

The price compounds over time. It taxes us, silently reducing our belief in ourselves. It injects and then maintains (or even nurtures) dysfunction in our relationships. As time goes by, it calcifies. It becomes more difficult to remove. The failure of dishonesty begets more and more failure. The dishonesty becomes concretized. Embedded. And it becomes increasingly harder for us to face.

And yet that is what we have and what we must work with. There’s no amnesty. No ctrl-alt-delete. No reformatting the hard drive. And so we must work with what we already have. If we are to evolve, grow, heal, and integrate, anyways.

It is a movement so simple and yet so anxiety-provoking. The movement? Turn into the places that scare you. Face the failure. Your feelings of failure. Face the fear of the implications of addressing what has not been addressed for so long.

Why is this on my mind? I saw this just this week. In Lauren and in myself.

The Liberating Power of Vulnerability

Vulnerability

Sam (not her real name) leveled her gaze and looked me directly in the eye. “I’d like to hear from Otis,” she said. She and her team had just answered four powerful questions that lead to trust via vulnerability. My colleague, Pamela, was guiding this part of the workshop and had opened up this exercise by sharing her own answer. Then the twelve people in this group followed.

Sam came to the workshop skeptical. She said this directly in the opening. So when she leveled her gaze at me and looked me dead in the eye, I knew. I could feel where she was coming from and sense what her agenda might be. Pamela said, “No, Otis doesn’t need to go… we consultants don’t go. I just did it because we didn’t ask your boss to model it… so I did.”

Sam pressed. “I’d still like to hear from Otis.” And here’s what happened…

Nice vs Kind

Crucial Conversations, Psychological Safety and Candor

Do you think of yourself as a “nice” person? If so, you may have a problem. I don’t know, of course. But you just might. Hold that thought, and answer these two questions…

Do you think of yourself as a “kind” person?
Do you think “nice” and “kind” are one and the same?

I’m asking you these questions because it is like the theme of the week this week. It is the theme I’m seeing in my clients and family: well-intentioned people who have values like “compassion” and “honesty” and “service to others”… and who see themselves as “nice” people are tripping themselves up left, right, and center.

And I get it: “nice” (for most of us) is our social conditioning. But it is often doing us and others more harm than good. So what do I do when this comes up in conversation with others?

I have them think through the potential differences between “nice” and “kind”. When I share the way I define those two words, they seem to have a “light bulb” moment. A flicker of recognition. A glimmer of hope. Want that light bulb? I’ll give it my best shot. Here goes…

[Read more…] about Nice vs Kind

Working with Difficult Relationships

Psychological Safety and Candor

From time to time, we all have them — difficult relationships. Sometimes, they seem forced upon us. Other times, what started off as a good or great relationship goes south and becomes difficult. Sometimes, well, it can seem like we’ve become a magnet for them for some time period of our lives. And sometimes they appear as a recurring theme or challenge over the arc of our lives.

After writing last week’s article — Even an Imperfect Intervention — I heard from a subscriber who had some questions. Clearly, from the questions they asked, they are as sharp as a tack. While they asked several questions, this one captures the gist of it:

“As I was reading, you point out that the idea is to cooperate, to make the person you are having a conversation with feel safe. I am wondering how this works when you are talking with a person who does not care about your safety, does not care about hurting you, yet it is someone with whom you have to find a way to cooperate or at minimum communicate with.”

It’s an excellent question! I will share with you an expanded version of my response. Difficult relationships? Here goes.

Even an Imperfect Intervention

Internal State, Psychological Safety and Candor

We are wired to cooperate. The September 2018 edition of Scientific American contained an article entitled “Why is Homo sapiens the Sole Surviving Member of the Human Family?” That article explored why, among the various branches of the human family present at the time, the branch you and I emerge from survived. One of the two reasons? Cooperation.

So, why so often do we ourselves not act this way? Why do we not cooperate? Why so often are we at cross purposes with one another? Even to the detriment of the group we are a part of, to the detriment of the group’s purpose, and the detriment of the individuals involved?

Is there something we can do about this, in ourselves? The answer is yes. And, in fact, I believe you and I have an obligation and a responsibility to do so. But what can we do? And can we do it now?

This all came tumbling into my awareness just this morning as I listened to a very remarkable person we will call Megan. Megan will help us see why we don’t cooperate and will also show us how we can lift the thin veil between tearing one another down and lifting one another up. Megan points us to the essence of personal development. She has a lesson to teach us all, and I have her story to tell…