Sunday 9 February 2014

The Truth Can Set You Free .....

Many people, even very successful people, harbour deep beliefs that that can work against their apparent drive for success. Very often these are also unconscious.
To see what I mean, try the following experiment. Say out loud the sentence: ‘I can create my life exactly the way I want it, in all ways - work, family, relationships, community.’ Now notice how you react to this - the ‘little voice’ in the back of your head says: ‘Who am I kidding?’
Imagine as you move towards your goal there is a rubber band symbolising creative tension, pulling you in the direction you want. Also imagine a second rubber band anchored to the belief of powerlessness pulling you in the opposite direction. The closer we come to achieving our vision the more the second band pulls us away. This force may show itself in many ways. We might lose energy. We might question whether we really wanted the vision. Finishing the job might become increasingly difficult. Unexpected obstacles develop in our path. People let us down. So how do we deal with these two tensions? There seem to be three coping strategies:
·       We let our Vision erode. We pretend that achieving everything we set out to do wasn’t so important after all, or that circumstances have somehow changed, or that we have done pretty well already.
·       We focus on what we don’t want. This is the strategy of those who worry about failure. They point out the unpleasant facts if goals are not achieved. We focus on what we don’t want rather on what we do. What’s wrong with a little fear of failure? Nothing as long as you don’t get hooked on it, living l as if you can only achieve if in a state of fear and anxiety. Even when you succeed, you worry about losing any gains.
·       We use the strategy of ‘willpower’. We psych ourselves up to overpower all forms of resistance. ‘Successful’ people see this as synonymous with success. The problems with this are many-fold. First we reach our goals but the effort is enormous. Those hooked on willpower may actually go and look for dragons to slay. Second there are often terrible consequences, if not at work often at home. Finally this strategy leaves the basic problem unaltered. Despite considerable ‘success’ your underlying beliefs have not changed, you often have an inability to achieve a sense of peace.
These ‘coping’ strategies are to an extent unavoidable. They are deeply habitual and we cannot change them overnight. Real achievement will not come as long as we hold un-empowering beliefs. How can we begin to change this? We can begin by a disarmingly simple but profound strategy: telling the truth. It often seems an inadequate strategy, as people want a formula or technique. It is in fact far more powerful than any technique.
Commitment to the truth does not mean seeking the ‘Truth’, the absolute final word. It means a relentless willingness to root out the ways we limit ourselves from seeing what is and to continually challenge our theories of why things are. Things we are unaware of hold us prisoner. Once we can see them and name them, they no longer have such a hold on us.
One of the classic examples of this is in Charles Dickens’s ‘A Christmas Carol’. Through the visitations of the three ghosts on Christmas Eve, Scrooge sees more and more of the reality from which he has turned away. He sees the reality of the past, and how the choices he made have whittled away his compassion. He sees the reality of the present, , such as Tiny Tim’s illness. And he sees the reality of his likely future, if he continues in his present ways. But then he wakes up and realises that he is not a captive of these realities. He has a choice and he chooses to change.
Significantly, Scrooge can’t make the choice to change before he becomes aware of his current reality. In effect, Dickens says that life always avails the option of seeing the truth, no matter how blind and prejudiced we may be. If we have the courage to respond to that option, we have the power to change ourselves profoundly. Or to put it another way ‘The truth can set you free!’
References: ‘The Path Of Least Resistance’ by Robert Fritz, The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge                 

If would like to learn more about asking great questions, my new book 'Purple Monkeys' A Leader's Practical Guide To Unleashing The Power Of Questions To Deliver Great Results' will be available shortly. For More information go to my website www.pmpgenesis.net or simply click the HOME button on the right.

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