Everyone has this power, some of us just don’t realise it.
When I first began leading and managing teams, I would be irritated by negative and “play it safe” people. My desire to get on and create great outcomes meant anyone or anything which appeared to block the team power or create resistance was simply just a nuisance. That was just one of the many immature attitudes I began my leadership career with.
Many years of experience later, I realised my irritation was more to do with the fact I wasn’t actually looking in the mirror at my own resistance and negativity and loss of power. I’ve always seen the world as a giant classroom and what I didn’t learn via Leadership Development, I learned through reflecting on my experiences.
One of the biggest AHA moments in my life and a huge turning point for me was discovering the power of the mind. Quantum science has been showing us for some time that “by the very act of watching, the observer affects the observed reality”. This startling discovery profoundly changes the world that we live in, and I am not sure yet we have fully grasped the concept. Research such as Emoto’s Water Experiment which shows how water structure changed when exposed to different thought patterns is amazing. In essence what these factors meant for me and certainly what I have experienced is this.
- What I believed about my team was crucial to their success and secondly
- My team always lived up to my expectations.
- Quite often I projected the traits I did not like in myself onto my team and instead of dealing with the unwanted trait myself, I blamed others for it.
This is not a flight of fancy. When the penny dropped and I believed my team could be dynamic, enthusiastic and creative, I focused on those aspects and not only did I encourage those behaviours, when I saw contrary behaviours; instead of getting hung up about them, I practically helped my team find solutions and develop ways to get different outcomes.
Instead of projecting negativity on them, I started to project positive and affirming traits. The fact is our minds are creatively powerful. Imagination is the creative force of the universe. Anything which has been created was first envisaged and imagined. When we experience outcomes we don’t want then we have mis-created, because we have focused on what we don’t want instead of what we do; it is as simple as that. Mother Therese fully understood this phenomenon when she said, “I will never attend an anti-war rally; if you have a peace rally, invite me”.
Instead of anti-war; focus on peace. Instead of diversity; focus on inclusion. The unconscious mind doesn’t understand filler words, so if you say: I don’t want to go bankrupt, guess what you have set in motion? If you say, I am becoming successful and my business is abundant, and believe it, then that is what you will set in motion. This simple fact is hard to believe because much of our mindfulness is unconscious and it is our unconscious beliefs and tapes which are often creating our world. Our job is to become aware of our unconscious faulty beliefs and change them with life-affirming and sustaining beliefs.
Every single one of us is creating, we just aren’t aware of it, or we have disconnected from our awareness of it, and so quite often we mis-create. Much of leadership is about facilitating different mind-sets in order to consciously create rather than unconsciously mis-create. The mind is our creative force, and how we use it is extremely important. Most commonly because we don’t realise or understand the creative power of the mind, we are constantly in Groundhog Day. Our script is set, our beliefs are set in stone, our thinking patterns are habitual, we doubt our actions and our days and lives will trundle along.
Many of you will be familiar with the famous quote from Marianne Williamson “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us” The truth is whenever we are judging or blaming or denying responsibility we are in fact running from the astonishing power of our creative mind.
Deep stuff – and almost incredible to me, until I found that I was wrapping my mind around the axle trying to understand it, and just going back to basics made it much easier to grasp. Forget what you were taught at school, they lied! I taught practical applications of this to a mainly NHS audience in a Resilience workshop earlier this year, and the feedback was stunning. Collectively, we create, form, shape and hone our reality. In fact, there is no external reality – it is just an energy soup, and we can ‘tune in’ to that energy soup in whatever way we choose….. As you say so clearly, Christina, what we choose to focus on is the key.
But when? I find two distinct times are most effective here. The first is when I hear or see something that has an emotional impact on me – I can choose my response (rather than reaction) and select the meaning I want this event to have for me, within a surprisingly wide range of credible options. So often, this is the difference between a good and a bad day. The second most useful opportunity for me is that twilight time between sleeping and being awake. I can choose to evoke the feeling of how I want my life to be – satisfying, and comfortable, or perhaps challenging and stimulating, and that choice governs either the quality of my dreams or the tone of my day, depending on whether I am about to sleep or about to wake up fully. Magical stuff, thanks Christina!
Chris
I remember too when it was incredible to me, but once you know it, you see it everywhere.
I love your last two examples. Here is my generic take on these, when I say “your” I mean it in the general sense. The first is a response or a reaction to an external reality which we have made already. The second is true creation where we decide what we want to create. There is lots more I could say about the pitfalls of the first example, but perhaps I will veer too much into the mystical :). Suffice to say, respond taking responsibility for your interpretation in the first example, and try to live your life from the second example. A tall order I know :).
Sure, Christina, let’s not say too much about the pitfalls – wrong mind-set, I think. ;-) Lets talk about the huge benefits available from the positives instead! But, as an aside, what about why and how this works so well? The mechanisms and forces at play? I suspect that is the stumbling block for most people – I still can’t quite take it all on trust, even now.. Until we can make sense of either the latest quantum theory developments or find good translations of the vedic scripts, we don’t have much source material to work from. There are lots of contemporary interpretations on the bookstalls, but which to embrace? Dr Joe Dispenza – “breaking the habit of being yourself” is my current favourite.
Great topic once more – where will you take us next?