As I’ve worked with leaders over the years I’ve noticed two patterns of personal growth.
The first is based on the desire for personal agency — a topic I’ve addressed recently (and at many times) on this blog; the second is growth based on transcendence.
Examples of personal agency include:
- Initiating a tough conversation with a colleague, especially one that includes setting boundaries.
- A request for feedback about a known blind spot.
- Wading into a team conflict where there will likely be winners and losers.
- Standing up for an unpopular viewpoint for the good of the organization.
These are all instances of initiative that may involve interpersonal risk and if there’s been a pattern of avoiding risk (and let’s just say there has been), the way forward then necessarily involves personal growth. The motivating energy must overcome past conditioning, self-imposed limits and bad beliefs. To get free requires the push of a rocket’s engines against the strength of gravity. It takes the powerful thrust of personal agency to achieve orbit.
Examples of the second energy, transcendence, are:
- Recognizing that past excessive and typical brooding about a particular problem is unwarranted and does not deserve the feelings (of anxiety, guilt, anger, depression, etc.) given to it.
- Finding that a serious background dilemma (such as, should I go or should I stay?) seems to dissolve rather than resolve without doing anything significant to “fix” the situation.
- Beginning to sense the real reasons behind a conflict, leading to a creative solution that seems to automatically present itself. Tension evaporates.
- Suddenly not worrying about the high stakes nature of a key transaction — surrendering to simply doing one’s best rather than a pattern of perfectionistic over-preparation.
This is more the energy of a hot air balloon helping rise above — and out of — the difficulty. This is the growth of being lifted up. As energies go, it often involves a sense of coming to something a little unexpectedly, even counter-intuitively, but also potentially a sign, a synchronicity or a gift. I may say to myself, “how did I ever look at things the way I used to!”
My sense is many instances of genuine personal growth contain elements of each — some push, some lift. We are required to use our agency — not just wait for the universe or somebody else for answers — and yet to also be awake and available to what the universe and others may bring. It isn’t all one way or another; it’s a combination of energies that in some way are integral to our identities.
This maybe is one reason why we especially admire those who are able to effect personal change. Our admiration may reflect back to us all the places in ourselves where we implicitly know a push will be required along with the right proportion of trust.
We have to apply the full dynamic of our personal agency to the effort because we know we can’t just make transcendence happen. It happens when it happens. In the meantime, what we can always do is be open, live our part of cause and effect while living a little ways beyond it, a personal combination, our unique recipe for the right stuff. There’s something to be said for action and initiation, but also for patience, for the experience of listening for what is new, vulnerable, possible and believing it’s there for us.
It’s okay to be a little lost now and again in the wilderness — if we are lucky, with the bright stars streaming overhead as our whole heart comes with us to sit still at the edge of the cosmos. The sparks of a fire float higher into the darkness, mingling with stars.
Somewhere in the distance there’s the drone of a didgeridoo.
