As the end of January draws near you may be finding, as I am, that your enthusiasm for all those great new years resolutions is starting to wane. Three weeks into the new year I have already fallen off my new eating regime several times, my strategic planning is still incomplete, and I find myself getting far too busy working “in” my business (rather than carving out that critical time to work “on” my business that I preach to my clients about).

But aren’t I supposed to be the one setting the perfect example of how to do it right – all the time? Aren’t I supposed to walk my talk every moment of every day?

That’s what I used to think. That is the “lie” that I still uncover at the source of my exhaustion when I catch myself yet again trying to be perfect – to hold myself to a standard higher than is humanly possible. It has taken me years to come to terms with the fact that this is actually what makes me good at what I do as a coach, trainer and consultant. The books I have read, the courses I have taken, and the experience on my resumé have certainly contributed to my expertise, but the real learning has come from my own struggles to apply this “book learning” into the real world – starting with my own.

The truth that I can see in my moments of sanity is that, just as a child learns to walk or talk by getting it wrong in a thousand different ways before they finally get it right, I cannot learn to “walk my talk” without giving myself permission to fail at it – repeatedly. I watched my son struggle single-mindedly for months, falling incessantly and getting more than a few bumps before learning to walk at 10 months. Now at 17 months, each day brings new excitement as we try to figure out which words the sounds he is experimenting with are intended to be. His insistent whining demonstrates his frustration that we don’t always understand him, but this doesn’t stop him from continuing to try. On the contrary, it only seems to increase his resolve to communicate.

It makes me wonder at what point we lose the innate sense of capability and potential we are born with as children and become the “grown ups” who see failure, mistakes, and not getting it right the first time as valid reasons to stop trying.

Talking with my coach last night I recognized that, up until about 10 years ago, my child-like naiveté that I could do anything I wanted if I just kept trying was relatively intact. Then, in the first three years after returning home from living in Japan, I experienced a fall from grace. I met with financial hardship, loneliness, and, after investing a huge amount of time, energy and passion in a business partnership with a close friend, the devastating pain of betrayal and the end of that relationship. It wasn’t until last night that I realized how profoundly I had allowed this experience to change me. Despite my deep passion and need for collaboration and partnership, since that failed partnership experience I have shied away from allowing myself this experience in a deep way on either a business or personal level even with my husband.

As this realization sinks in, I find myself asking, “What would my son do?” He has just learned to climb up on the kitchen chairs by himself. Yesterday I saw him looking at the table, strategizing how to get on top of that as well. I fear that it is only a matter of time before he takes advantage of a moment when my back is turned to make his move. What if he gets up there and falls? Surely it will be painful, but will it stop him from trying again? Experience tells me that it won’t. Just six weeks ago he figured out how to climb out of his crib and was rewarded with a substantial bump on the head. Of course we lowered his crib so that he has not yet been able to duplicate the feat, but I regularly catch him trying to get his leg up over the bars to repeat his accomplishment.

As we get older and master more skills, it only makes sense that we will take on bigger and bigger challenges. Like my son, the higher we attempt to climb the greater the pain if we fall. For many, like myself, the memory of a really painful fall makes us shy away from the edge – but at what cost? Last night I began to get a glimmer of the true cost of my choice to “play it safe”  after my own painful falls on my journey to climb to higher levels. It has impacted my energy, my authenticity, my self-expression, my integrity, my financial stability, my relationships and even my health. The person I was before “the fall” ran her life on the belief that fear and passion were two sides of the same coin and that in going in the direction of my greatest fear, I would find opportunities to express my passions in the most fulfilling and lucrative ways. The results in my life and, more importantly, my joy in the process of getting there, validated this belief. The person after “the fall”, runs around wasting tons of mental, emotional, spiritual and physical energy trying to figure out how to make sure she won’t fall before she will even attempt to climb again. As I write this I recognize that, rather than ensuring success when I do make my next attempt, I am defeating myself before I start precisely because I am not starting at all!

So as I look back at those pesky new years resolutions I can see that I have not been giving them my full effort. I have not really committed to them for fear of failure. But I have a choice to change that. I can and I am giving myself permission to keep failing and to be just as “naively” excited about trying the next time as I was the first. I am going to practice being more child-like – more attached to the excitement and sense of possibility of mastering a new skill than I am to the discomfort of failing, however many times and however painfully I need to fail to get there. Rather than allowing my fear of failure to prevent me from trying again, I am going to accept that failure is part of learning. Like my son analyzes the results of each failed attempt at vocalizing a word, adjusts it slightly, and fails better the next time, I am going to stop expecting myself to succeed at each successive attempt and instead only ask that I “fail better” than I did the last time – that I learn something that moves me forward.

I will keep you posted on my journey of “failing better” and staying excited about it and would love to hear about all of your amazing failures as you work towards making the shifts you desire in your life and work for 2010.

At my writer’s group last week I had an epiphany. I’ve been holding out on you. I have been censoring what I allow myself to blog about. I have been sticking to topics that I think are most likely to be seen as professional, credible, and useful by the business community and staying away from anything too personal or spiritual that might be deemed flaky. Yet the journey to practice kyosei – to build our capacity to live and work together for the common good – is at it’s heart deeply personal and spiritual. This being the case, if I am to fulfill my purpose of being a catalyst for realizing the potential of people and organizations to thrive on the common good, I must be willing to risk being seen as flaky by some in order to be a model for others of how to practice kyosei.

The time has come to unshackle myself from the past. My fears of being misunderstood, of being seen as flaky, of having to struggle to get my message out – these are all in the past. What’s more, I can now see that these challenges were rooted in others’ limitations, not in my own. They could not or did not want to hear my message. “Getting it” would have meant reframing their universe and transforming profoundly their ways of being, doing and having in the world. Those who are ready, willing and eager to be transformed are thirsting for messages and living models of having the courage to be personal, spiritual and fully authentic – the only true source of lasting personal, business and planetary sustainability. It is time to stop being “secretly me” and to begin sharing my work – both the work I do at a personal level and the work I do with businesses – on a wider scale.

It occurs to me that perhaps an even more important question to ask myself is how ready, willing, able and eager I am to be transformed by my own work. What is stopping me from fully engaging in my own work to profoundly shift my ways of doing, being and having in the world?

There are two pieces.

One is my fear of being misunderstood. The other is the reality that I am far from being a perfect example of practicing the principles of kyosei and life-work integrity™ that I teach. These two fears work together most obviously in my writing to block me. My fear of being misunderstood fuels my drive for perfection in my writing. This drive for perfection saps my energy as I scramble to try to figure out how to do it right the first time. It stops me from releasing my message out into the world. (Case in point – the three books I have in the wings – 75% written but languishing in electronic purgatory while I attempt to “figure out” the best way to position them in the market.) If I can release my fear of being misunderstood, I can let go of the need for perfection, thus freeing up enormous reservoirs of energy and passion that I have buried in trying to figure out how to get it right.

Of course this is all tied into the need to strive for achievement, recognition, power and status that is the dominant modus operandi of our society. Because we are so ingrained with this belief that more and faster is better, we live in a constant state of not enough (or not good enough) despite the abundance that surrounds us and, in reality, is threatening to bury us. I know from experience that when I manage to step out of this dominant ethic that drives me to push myself to do more, be more and have more I am more at peace. I begin to allow myself the time to re-connect with myself, with nature, and with the wisdom of the universe that is wanting to flow through me to heal people, business and the planet. I let go of my belief that this work is something I “must” do, and open up to it as something that is being done through me. Not only does this drive productivity (as it makes it easier to step into the flow of actions and priorities in each and every moment), it creates more of the results I was seeking (power, recognition, achievement and yes, money) without all the negative side effects.

So, fellow travellers on the path to fostering lifestyles and businesses that offer sustainable health, vitality and prosperity for all, henceforth you shall find on my blog a more balanced mix of my personal/spiritual musings posted alongside the more “professional” ones. I look forward with curiosity to witness the results in my life and my business of no longer being “secretly me”.

I would love to hear your thoughts and comments about the above, and would especially like to hear any success stories (and challenges!) you have had regarding your own journey of expressing your authentic self in your life and work.

Here is a great video that makes it crystal clear exactly why our consumer society cannot continue the way it has been. It is powerful in its’ simplicity. Watch it and forward the link to everyone you know. The simple truths it reveals will inspire your resolve to find another way.

Watch: The Story of Stuff

Our modern ‘plastic’ economy is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, we benefit from the ultra convenience of being able to pay instantly for something without having to physically carry cash, on the other hand, we lose the instant tangible feedback that good ol’ cash leaving a wallet brings.

Beyond debit, extrapolating the faux security of credit, it’s not hard to see how quickly things can get out of hand.

Perhaps you’ve played with different levels of budgeting with varying degrees of success. But unless you’re hyper-disciplined it can be difficult to maintain the fortitude to persist. Over at getrichslowly.org there’s an interesting blog on using a Per-Diem system to achieve a tangible sort’ve budget. Check it out!

As kyosei is both the name of our company and the fundamental philosophy on which all of our work is based, I thought I would use my next few posts to blog more specifically about kyosei, its meaning, origin, and the way that it can and is being used in business and life today.

With roots in (more…)

I received a link to this video on youtube this morning from a friend. It reminded me how much power we have to create our world the way we want it through simply making choices about the story we choose to tell ourselves and others. Creating a kyosei world where people are thriving on living and working together for the common good depends on more people choosing inspiration vs. cynicism. As you watch the video, pay attention to how you feel listening to each version of the “poem”. I hope this link inspires you to rescript the stories you are telling yourself and others in your life and work. One day post-inauguration of Obama, this video is a powerful reminder of our capacity to be part of leaving the doom and gloom of the past and creating a vibrant future for us all.

At this time of year, many people’s minds turn towards making a fresh start and creating positive changes in the new year. While this is a laudable idea, all too many people end up frustrated when they look back on their year (or even the first quarter) to see that many, if not all, of their New Year’s Resolutions fell by the wayside. Here are a few ideas I recently shared with my coaching clients to help them experience greater success and fulfillment in 2009. (more…)

My husband and I had a gorgeous baby boy this summer. As the first few months of parenthood are a marathon of sleep deprivation, when we discovered the secret to getting our son to sleep through the night – swaddling – it was all I could talk about for weeks.

(For those of you unfamiliar (more…)

While this story begins with talking about depression, don’t be too quick to turn the page. It is also a story of hope, inspiration and the power that living an authentic life has for building a network to support your success.

First, the bad stuff. Depression and stress disorders represent the fastest growing category of disability claims. They currently account for more than $9 billion in disability claims, or 30 percent of the estimated $30 billion that disabilities and presenteeism (the problem of employees being at work but not fully functioning) cost Canada’s economy each year (as reported by the BC Business and Economic Round table on Mental Health).

One of the most disturbing things about this increasing trend toward depression, stress and other mental-health related disabilities in the workplace is the fact that, while 80 to 90 percent of people with these disorders can be treated successfully, only one third of them actually seek help. (more…)

Recently my husband and I traveled to the heart of Silicon Valley to meet my new nephew. While for me the baby was the star attraction, my hubbie was more enthralled with the wheeling and dealing of my brother-in-law, a senior lawyer in a law firm that has assisted such tech heavy-hitters as Google and Sun Microsystems with their IPOs and acquistions.

And so, between baby coddling sessions, I managed to tear myself away from our adorable new nephew long enough to join in their candid conversations about the lessons of Silicon Valley.

Having lived in Vancouver, my brother-in-law was passionate that Vancouver has all the critical ingredients to become a booming Silicon Valley itself – yet has not developed the spark to ignite the mix. Like the San Francisco Bay area, the Lower Mainland has great universities and colleges, is a great place to live, and has a thriving economy with sophisticated investors ready to go. In spite of this, the leadership and long-term thinking have not emerged to integrate these resources sufficiently to achieve the hotbed of technological business seen in Silicon Valley.

Ultimately, the key ideas that emerged from our discussions were relevant for businesses of all sizes to thrive. Here are the top three themes:

1) Blur the Lines

In Silicon Valley, Stanford University maintains close ties with the venture capital community and encourages research and development with practical business possibilities, spawning such companies as Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Sun, Google and Yahoo!. While the mentality is changing in Canadian institutions about the many benefits (for students, businesses and society) of such collaboration, in the past these links were often discouraged due to an academic purist view that considered research tainted if it was skewed towards business spinoffs.

While scandals in the pharmaceutical industry illustrate the importance of separating research from business interests to some extent, purists often lose sight of the fact that without business-funded research, much of the life we take for granted today would not exist. Rather than advocating all-or-nothing approaches, business, government and academic leaders need to become more comfortable with diving into the gray zone and, in so doing, leverage the highest benefit for the common good.

2) Compete – Together

In a global economy, larger businesses are conscious of the economic necessity of looking beyond their borders in a literal sense. Closer to home, however, small and mid-size businesses need to stop focusing solely on developing internal skills and expertise in order to become more competitive in their industry. They must learn to adopt a wider view and identify long-term strategic alliances by asking which other organizations have a complementary mission, vision, product or service and challenging themselves to think about collaborating to maximize the strengths of all concerned.

3) Be Willing to Fail

The final thing that stood out for me about Silicon Valley was that, while there are many successes, there are even more failures. My brother-in-law had numerous stories of friends and acquaintances on their second or third attempt at startups. In fact, stemming perhaps from a ‘debugging’ mentality shared amongst truly geek entrepreneurs, business failures were considered necessary steps towards success, creating learning to be implemented in the next version – Business 3.0, perhaps?

Entrepreneurial success is not just about good ideas getting adequate funding – it requires commitment, passion and ingenuity on the part of the entrepreneurs to follow through to success. Of course there are those “lucky” ones who were in the right place at the right time, but business success still comes from a unique vision combined with the courage to persist until the dream is realized. In the end, the main source of “financing” any dream is still the currency a person holds in his or her own heart.

Andrea Jacques

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