Ankle Deep in a Fire Walk:
By: Trina Hamilton
Tags: Leadership, Recovery, Mindfulness, Covid 19, Resilience

Ankle Deep in a Fire Walk:

Photo by Joshua Newton on Unsplash

When I asked my client what he wanted to focus on in our coaching conversation, he had a not-so-simple response. “I want clarity. I want to become more certain. I want to better understand myself so I can navigate my life better.”

Oh, me too, my friend.

We so long for certainty. We long to get a grip on ourselves, to figure ourselves out so we can do life better.

This wasn’t the first time in 2020 that I’d heard a leader ask for such clarity. If this year has taught us anything, it’s that nothing is certain. Life’s volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity aren’t new — they existed long before VUCA became part of our corporate lexicon. But in 2020, someone cranked the “U” dial to eleven. Perhaps more than ever before, we are living and leading in collective — and global — fear and uncertainty.

And yet, leaders are conditioned, even obliged, to show up as resilient, burying our inner suffering for the sake of carrying on. We look inward to fix whatever is wrong in us that keeps us from solving uncertainty.

Our inner grasping for the security and comfort of certainty is risky in these uncertain times. As humans, we long for a sense of meaning, yet we feel confused. We long for connection, yet we feel isolated. We long to show up authentically, just as we are, and yet we armor up against the exposure of our vulnerabilities.

Faced with the potential danger of our surrounding chaos, we sidestep our deep longings for meaning, connection and authenticity. They’re too risky, too vulnerable. Instead, we shift into a reactive stance of self-protection and self-preservation. Perhaps we numb, stuff, deny, distract, or disconnect ourselves from what matters most. Or we control, polarize, entrench, or push our way forward, convinced that any movement equals progress.

While our impatient efforts to control what life deals out to us is forgivably human, it’s also futile. And we live with the resulting discomfort this effort against reality creates in us — in our mind, body, and spirit.

Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron, said “Each time you stay present with fear and uncertainty, you’re letting go of a habitual way of finding security and comfort.”

We have a choice. Instead of pushing down or pushing past the discomfort of fear and uncertainty, we can create from it. We can trust ourselves to feel the discomfort and empower ourselves to create from what matters most to us. This realignment, this recovery, requires us to become comfortable with the discomfort of exploring our inner world without resisting what’s there. To get curious about what we’ll find and courageous enough to look at it.

I know how hard this can be. My last article was deeply personal. After pressing send, I fell into a spiral of vulnerability and over-exposure. I felt the discomfort of fear and uncertainty in and around me. It was hard to stay in that discomfort, ankle-deep in a fire walk of my own making. After a lifelong habit of finding security and comfort by numbing feelings I didn’t like or understand, these past few weeks have been an intensive course in learning to breathe through them. I am learning I can stay with my discomfort, knowing it’s the fire walk between who I am and who I am becoming.

We can stay with our discomfort, knowing it’s the place between who we are and who we are becoming.

So how do we do this? In my last article, I introduced what I call the Recovery Zone, an empowered and creative space for you as a leader to become present in this moment, with self compassion, and align to what matters most to you. To recover from the discomfort of uncertainty and chaos, we must start close in.

“Start close in… start with the first thing close in, the step you don’t want to take. Start with the ground you know, the pale ground beneath your feet…” David Whyte, River Flow

Once in the Recovery Zone, you can become more connected to and empowered by your creative self. You can do this by spending just a few minutes responding to the following sequence of exploratory questions.* (This is also a downloadable worksheet called Create from Uncertainty on Recover to Lead’s Resource Page.)

1. Right NOW, what words describe what you feel? 2. Right NOW, what, if anything, can you change, do differently, let go of, or control**? 3. Right NOW, what matters most to you? What values do you want to honour? 4. Right NOW, what’s a new way the best parts of you could see this situation? NOW, take 4 deep, full breaths. 5. What do you see now about this situation? How has your perception shifted? 6. From NOW, what empowered, creative actions do you commit to?

This introspection isn’t about solving uncertainty. It isn’t even about getting comfortable. It’s about creating what happens next, through you — through the best parts of you.

If nothing is certain, everything is possible. When we start close in, when we recover back to the best parts of ourselves. We become empowered. Now, we can create what’s next.

What will you create?