Connected Leadership — How Change, Humility & Self-Awareness Fuel Transformation
Change is inevitable. Every creature, every life-form present on Earth, from the smallest cell to the largest tree, is always evolving, ever-expanding its consciousness in a dualistic dance of being. What’s occurring within my experience, within my environment? Should I change? Is it safe? Am I warm? Am I satiated or hungry? Have you noticed significant growth doesn’t happen in calm water? Have you noticed the greater opportunity for transformational growth within the winds of significant change? Adversity not only builds character, but it also reveals it. Adversity introduces gale-force winds into life experience, inviting us to demonstrate where our center of balance lies.
Ask yourself, where do I move from? How balanced am I? Do I fight with the wind and waves and get tossed about? Do I give up, curse the water, hop-off my board only to return on another day? Do I breathe deep, see my opportunity for practice and alignment and allow life experience to help me discover my center?
This last move is the only move that enables the somatic discovery of true balance and flows within life. Like learning to ride a bike, the body becomes involved within the learning experience. There is the opportunity for the ultimate discovery; I am the ocean that is creating the waves, so nothing is at risk. I am balance itself. Life is happening for me to play in. This is the felt sense of belonging.
Life experiences are not just invitations to practice and discover this powerful immovable balance; they are also opportunities for you to demonstrate yours. As leaders, each of us needs to investigate and know where we move from, where is our center? We must ask ourselves humbling questions. Am I acting in a way I am committed to? Am I acting in a way I would expect of other leaders? Am I reacting to life, or am I grounded and responding to it?
We must each be humble and in integrity with how we show up and be willing to self-check our way of being. Life offers up the opportunity to align to something greater than us, not just something better than now.
As with all life experiences, with all change, there will be those who do not align with what we are for as leaders, those who disagree with where we are going and how we are getting there. Through life, we will witness those who are reacting and those who are flowing. All of these experiences are perfect for everyone involved, for they offer existing leaders the opportunity to bring in new team members through a compelling vision while offering those departing leaders the opportunity to practice and self-reflect.
We are always demonstrating leadership. Which style are you demonstrating? Which style are you committed to? Are the leadership styles you are demonstrating and the leadership styles you are committed to aligned?
When we embody humble, divine, graceful leadership as a way of being, we effortlessly demonstrate expanded ways of being to all of our aspiring leaders. Welcome to life and the invitation it offers through its offered-up experiences. Life is not just an invitation to live and react; life is an invitation to flow, move, respond, and grow organically. This is the opportunity we are offered to demonstrate and embody each day.
