Welcome to Week 37 of the Authenticity@Work Leadership Tool-kit! My intention for this series is to share a quick tool each week to help you lead with more authenticity, adaptability and inspiration so we can together create workplaces where we bring the best of ourselves and inspire others. So grab a journal and an accountability partner to make these practices even more powerful for you!
In last week’s post we talked about the Self-Limiting Loop and where we need to broaden our patterns, beliefs and perspectives. Did you name your inner allies who give you a fresh perspective on difficult situations?
Much of the time, we don’t even catch ourselves during a saboteur hijack until we’ve said or done something we regret later. As we talked about in week 17 of this series, Saboteurs are beliefs that live rent-free in our heads and essentially zap our energy. They are coping mechanisms we developed a long time ago to deal with our fears and insecurities.
Even if we sometimes get an inkling that we need to step back to get the Director back in charge, the saboteurs plan a new skirmish, and we’re back in the drama playing out in our heads. Our saboteurs skirmish all the time. They’re not to be reasoned with, argued with, or judged. The best way to deal with saboteurs is to name them, become friendly with them, and recognize them when they show up. We can then gently but firmly ask them to exit and decide which allies we need in the forefront. We can then bring ourselves back to a choice about who we want to be.
When saboteur hijacks occur, we often take action from the place of the saboteur and not from our authenticity. When that happens, we can choose to beat ourselves up (that would be my Flog Me Now), or we can just recognize we’ve been hijacked, return to our center, apologize, and make amends.
This Week’s Tool:
Question to ask yourself: What are situations where you find yourself triggered? What opens up if you choose be before do?
Get your Inner Director back in charge! Once there, I picture myself standing and watching a circus carousel. As it goes around, I can choose from among all the allies I have on the carousel, which brings me back to a centered place of being.
Get the latest resources for Authenticity@Work (this tab will get updated with all kinds of cool resources). Curious to know more about the book? Read the reviews about Wired for Authenticity here.
