I got trapped in my own bathroom the other day. The old glass knobs, as charming as they are, don’t work well. Try as I might, I could not get the door open.  After a moment of claustrophobic panic, I sat on the closed toilet seat to contemplate my options. 

No one else was at home and I had left my phone on the patio. Hmmm.

There, facing me on the bathroom wall, was a fresh set of probing questions I had hung there the day before, almost as if I knew I would be stuck there soon to contemplate them. 

I read the questions. 

And reflected on them. 

For about sixty seconds. 

Then I started plotting my escape.

There I was, with nothing but time to ponder, the kind of time I regularly bemoan I don’t have enough of; instead I was the poster child for Pema Chödrön’s saying: “Never underestimate the urge to bolt”.

I’m a seasoned conscious leadership coach; you might expect me to be good at sitting still by now. Or maybe that’s just what I expect of me.  

At any rate, I found myself below the line, judging myself harshly for not being willing to just stay put.

Instead, I got myself the heck out. 

Despite that I was stuck on the first floor, it took a surprising amount of courage (and more attempts than I care to describe here) to get out of that small window. It even hurt a bit. 

But the actual escape is not the triumph I want to celebrate. Being able to see myself for all my tendencies, helpful and not, and being willing to accept and forgive myself after the fact for wanting to bolt—this is a much greater victory. 

I was very candid last week to a local executive group.  I don’t mind what happens.

I said no to a large leadership project (and the revenue potential). I don’t mind what happens.

I’m putting a pause on the Conscious Leader Forum despite its success. I don’t mind what happens.

I don’t mind what happens comes from Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks (short overview here).

It’s important not to mind what happens because I am a limited amount of time. In this finite life, even the best life I could possibly imagine, I’ll need to ceaselessly say goodbye to possibilities.

I don’t have time. It has me.

At best, I have 2000+ weeks left on this planet.

In leadership, I might want to throw in the towel soon or do something leaderly for 1000+ of my weeks (I anticipate the later). Let’s say I settle on the short side and work/lead for 250 more weeks like some leaders I know who have this timeline in mind.  

That’s 250 more Monday mornings. 250 more Sunday morning coffees contemplating life and the week ahead. 250 more weekly team meetings (I riffed off @TimAdamsWrites to make this very real).

Armed with this constraint, you might imagine I feel despair. This is precious little time, you might say.

But I don’t feel despair at all.

I feel more accepting that I will never accomplish all I want to—that there is no magical moment in the future when I will feel I have “arrived”.

I realize that I will need to say no to lots of things that I genuinely want to do. In practice, I am still resisting this notion quite strenuously at times.  I still say yes sometimes when inside I want to say no. Learning to say a whole body YES! and a clear NO are what conscious leaders practice. I am practicing. It is uncomfortable.

Ironically, as I learn to let go of certain “obligations” and beliefs about what I “should” do, I feel free!

I’m invigorated by my finitude.

I am so curious to find out what I will do with my finite weeks.

I don’t mind what happens.

I am a limited amount of time. So are you.

I cannot get out of my own way right now. 

I have a half-written blog post about Oliver Burkeman’s last column: the eight secrets to a (fairly) fulfilled life. I abandoned it because it felt too shallow for these times. I’d like to finish the post sometime soon because I do love his conclusions. 

For a few months I have also been doing a deep dive into attachment theory.  I read The Mother Wound and am currently reading Hold Me Tight.  So many dots are connecting for me between secure attachment (or its absence) in infancy and later attachment needs in friendships, romantic relationships, and in the workplace. I’d like to write this post soon too. At the moment, it feels too ambitious. 

These half-finished posts are a symptom of something deeper. 

I find myself in an uncomfortable place right now: 

• I am emotionally very tired. I can still feel a lot of joy, though I am causing myself a fair bit of suffering too.
• I find myself pulling back from some relationships because I don’t have the bandwidth to invest right now. This is scary and unfamiliar territory to me because people I love may think I don’t care. 
• I have a huge feeling that I am not accomplishing much. What I can do, in the face of a world that seems in decay, can feel too small. I get confused and don’t do much. 

I don’t think many of us have come through the past couple of years unharmed. 

I have not. 

I am burned out. 

A new (joyful) relationship brings complex parenting needs.

I have some fractured relationships I feel sad about.

Chandler Coaches needs more TLC. 

It’s risky to tell you this: Will you be drawn to work with me, or want to run far away? 

What is true for me is that when I get in the room with a leader or a group, I come alive. Coaching leaders is in my bones. In the safety of showing up wholehearted, we do great things together.  

While I keep feeling my feelings, and learning to tolerate discomfort by staying in the messy middle, I wonder if you’ll consider taking a chance that we can support each other?  After all, the cure for burn out is not self-care, it is to surround ourselves by loving support.

My hunch is that you might need some too. 

I did recently. I didn't mean to. I was trying to do my best. But my initial results certainly did not reflect this.

Before I tell you about it, let’s flash back to last summer when I impulsively bought a camper and realized “wherever you go, there you are”. And instead of having the fun-loving summer I hoped for, I suffered. I was faced with my deep longing to find a loving partner and my fear about doing so. Happily, on this front, I have some joyful news to report. Through the fall, I found courage. I opened my heart (and a profile on Bumble). Miraculously, I have met a soulful man. Truly. I feel such joy. I could go on and on.

But I am going to tell you instead about how I screwed up.

I made some decisions over the holidays to keep my circle very small from Boxing Day on. COVID rates were increasing quickly and with a partially vaccinated daughter and parents waiting for their booster, it felt necessary. The broader truth though, is that, at the age of 52, I justified to myself that I deserved to have what I wanted most leading into the new year —a new beau to spend time with. 

I was single-minded and not very thoughtful about the rest. 

Sadly, I hurt people I love. 

My life’s work is about helping leaders live and lead in integrity. Integrity is all about taking 100 percent responsibility, feeling feelings, speaking candidly, and making clear agreements.

I spent a couple of weeks convincing myself I was doing all of this.  But, the hard truth is that what I was actually doing was draining myself overthinking the situation, coming up with justifications for my decisions, and apologizing in misguided ways. Essentially, I was making being “right” more important than my relationships. 

My best friend courageously pierced through my delusion with her loving candour. “These relationships matter a lot. You’re being really selfish, and you cannot pretend you’re not.” Ouch. It hurt at the time.

Despite the sting, her feedback was a great gift.

It helped me see how much these relationships matter to me. And I didn't like what I saw in the mirror on this one. I moved swiftly to make real apologies, apologies that didn’t require anything of the other people. A podcast on how to apologize and why it matters, helped me a lot (Part 1 + Part 2...both parts are important).

The people I had hurt received me with a grace I didn’t expect. I am grateful. I will do better. 

Covid, bubbles, holidays, fatigue. None of us are immune to the swirl.

But you might wonder why, as someone who sings the praises of conscious leadership, I’d reveal how messy and imperfect I sometimes am in applying these principles. I questioned myself too. Why share that I fucked up at the risk of deterring leaders interested in working with me?  I think it’s this acknowledgement that makes it worth it: 

I’m living and breathing proof that joy and pain are just the range of what it’s like to be human. Fumbling (and Bumbling) is what living is about. There are no safeguards. We are all just practicing how to love and be loved, how to fail and learn, how to lead and be led. 

I'm always learning. Sometimes painfully, sometimes delightfully. I wouldn’t want it any other way. How about you?

A very open-hearted friend sent me Peter Bevan-Baker’s winter solstice post “Tried, tested, and tired but not defeated”.

It brought up two contrasting sets of feelings in me:

Joy and gratitude:

I admire leaders who invest themselves so fully and care so deeply.

Sadness and Shame:

What kind of leader am I if I pass on sending a year-end message when we all seem to need so much guidance and support right now?

And then it hit me.

I can go around feeling down or I can accept myself for feeling this way and see if I can shift.

Turns out, I do want to be generous, open-hearted and hopeful right now.

And I can do it simply by sharing some things that help me cope and even thrive.

I hope they help you.

On the paradoxical nature of generosity

It would be rare to find someone these days who doesn’t wish they could give or get more support.

What do you want to give of your time? Of your money? Of your things? Of your love? Get crystal clear and ONLY give those things.

Say no to giving things when you don’t have a full yes. Say no to giving because it’s what you “should” do. Say no to giving because you’re looking for others’ approval. Say no to giving what you don’t have to give. Say no to what you aren’t willing to give to yourself first.

Then watch what happens. My bet is that you’ll be able to be more generous than you ever have before.

On the gifts of being open-hearted

A simple practice has brought me some profound open-hearted connections. I ask myself these questions:

• In this moment, am I in trust or fear? (Above/below the line for those who know)
• What feelings are here now? Joy, creative, sadness, fear, anger or any combo?
• Can I accept myself for feeling x?
• Am I willing to reveal my feelings to another (even if it feels risky) as a way to connect?

Sometimes I can. Sometimes I can’t. When I can, 9 times out of 10, the rewards amaze me. 

On practicing hope

Lots of times between 2008-2010, I lost hope. Fertility treatments weren’t working, and I had to face that I might not become a mother.  My then therapist said many times, “It’s not because you hope more that you will be more disappointed if it doesn’t work. Go ahead and hope. In fact, you need to hope so that you can keep going.”

Hope is really a form of imagination and it’s critical to the quality of our lives. A friend sent me this excerpt from The Body Keeps Score.

Our imagination enables us to leave our routine everyday existence by fantasizing about travel, food, sex, falling in love, or having the last word—all the things that make life interesting. Imagination gives us the opportunity to envision new possibilities—it is an essential launchpad for making our hopes come true. It fires our creativity, relieves our boredom, alleviates our pain, enhances our pleasure, and enriches our most intimate relationships. When people are compulsively and constantly pulled back into the past, to the last time they felt intense involvement and deep emotions, they suffer from a failure of imagination, a loss of the mental flexibility. Without imagination there is no hope, no chance to envision a better future, no place to go, no goal to reach.

Many of you know I practice returning to the present moment repeatedly to survive and ideally thrive.  At the same time, I want to remind you to dream, to hope, to envision a beautiful future. Let's make this really practical too:

• What’s something you hope for?
• What’s not in your control? Let that go.
• What is in your control right now? Take one small step toward what you want.
• Every time you lose hope, repeat!

I’ll end where I started and share Peter Bevan-Baker’s words:

"There is no end of broken dreams in our midst, with many recent reveries shattered by COVID, but it is indeed still a beautiful world. And PEI is a particularly special part of this beautiful world."

It’s one day post winter solstice and already we are returning to more light.

May you be generous, open-hearted and hopeful even now. And may it return to you manyfold this holiday time and all year.