Weeknotes #29: Limitations, a window
You are reading ‘Like person, like coach’: explorations at the intersection of personal narrative and coaching practice:
‘My life is not only about my strengths and virtues; it is also about my liabilities and my limits, my trespasses and my shadow.’
- Parker Palmer, How to Let your Life Speak
I’ve read this article tens of times over the last decade. It took me that long to notice this line I highlighted above, on limitations. I carried the message of Parker’s invitation - of listening to what my life wanted of me, rather than bending life to my will - as much as I could. But the possibility that a life lived in alignment involved an alignment also with my own limitation, elluded me. It still does.
What do I learn about what my life needs to look like from becoming more in touch with my limits? For example, in how I need to control the outcomes of a meeting or how things will turn out in a project; or how I need to distance myself from my team because it keeps them at an arm’s length and I retain some sense of control; or how often I come across as a know-it-all because it helps me to retain some semblance of power when I feel powerless about unresolved issues in my past.
“To survive,
know the past.
Let it touch you.
Then let
The past
Go.”
- Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents
‘People need loving the most when they deserve it the least.’
- John Harrigan
Most often I come in touch with these limitations with my therapist, supervisor and friends exactly when I’m being a jerk. In moments and places of intimacy that are hard to manufacture at will. I wonder what I can learn from this about leadership, coaching and responding to the crises of the world. Reminds me of Bayó’s invitation to not respond to these crises with the same consciousness that we created them.
What would it look like to come towards these limitations with so much love that it would defuse their hold on our behaviour? And instead learn to take them for what they are. What if instead of turning words like ‘narcissist’, ‘ego’, ‘selfish’ into ammunition, we’d take the moments we feel tempted to use them, about ourselves or someone else, as opportunities for huge compassion and curiosity?
‘Some people find that when they practice self-compassion, their pain actually increases at first. We call this phenomena backdraft, a firefighting term that describes what happens when a door in a burning house is opened – oxygen goes in and flames rush out. A similar process can occur when we open the door of our hearts – love goes in and old pain comes out.’
- Kristin Neff, Self-Compassion
All of this makes me curious about the possibilities of collective leadership. What if we become less invested in the sterile version of saving the world and changing systems and more committed to coming into presence and connection with ourselves, each other and the long-time project of learning to love.
This past week I’ve been learning about:
1. Betty Martin’s book, The Art of Receiving and Giving - via the brilliant Jessica Dore’s Offerings;
2. Margaret Wheatley, talking about inner work as the crucible of being present to life and the work of change; - via Dave Heinemann;
3. Pemä Chodron , on learning presence and its potent yet silent change-inducing effect.
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