Tag: #innerstrength

“For if a lion knew his own strength “

Marianne Williamson said: “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. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. Its not just in some of us; its in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others”.

I read that quote several times over. It struck a bit of a chord. How much have I been holding back from others, when actually I’m holding back from myself.

Bizarrely my first thought was about Henry VIII and when he first started to flex his muscle in his Tudor court. Thomas More had once counselled Thomas Cromwell that by all means tell the king what he ought to do but never tell Henry what he was able to do “for if a lion knew his own strength, had were it for any man to rule him“.

Over the last 20 or so years I’ve been told numerous times how I could achieve greater things if only I had self belief and confidence. It seems others see in us what we don’t, or are reluctant to see.

My imposter syndrome often holds me back. The fear that I’ll be found out as a fraud and totally incompetent. Sometimes the words or actions of others has held me back. Whether they don’t believe I could succeed, or they don’t want me to succeed.

There are still certain people who hold that power over me and I can feel myself physically shrinking. Their tone of voice and ability to make me feel I’ve done something wrong even when I had nothing to do with it, can make me crawl under a rock and hide. Then I tend to shut down because anything I say from here on in is going to be shouted down. Even when I’m absolutely right about something, the other person’s responses can make me question myself. Even when they’ve googled it, found that I was correct, they still don’t back down or admit I was right.

There are some occasions now where I’m flexing my inner lioness. When I absolutely know I’m right, sometimes I will stay and argue my point. But there are times when I feel its really not worth it, so I’ll shut down. If it makes the other person feel better about themselves to try to be superior, even when they’re wrong, there’s no point in challenging it.

More recently I’ve been trying ways to crawl out from under my rock by acknowledging my own preferences and saying no when I don’t want to do something, watch something, or go somewhere, both at home, work and in my social sphere. I’ve started to read, watch and do things that I might actually find some joy in.

I have also started to become more vocal and confident about things that challenge my values and beliefs. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not shouting from the rooftops or banging my drum, but beginning to recognise where I can have some control over my own decisions, rather than doing what everyone else wants.

I might not be ready to roar just yet, but my growl is getting louder.

Finding Inner Me Strength in Others (and maybe yourself)

As a leader in several different aspects of life, at work and at leisure, I need to make sure that my various teams are motivated and enthused about what they do.  Sometimes that’s quite difficulty, everyone is getting Covid19 weary and there is nothing I can do to change the circumstances we are in. 

What I find really difficult is to engage the unengagable.  Some of them really don’t want to get involved, don’t care and are not interested on what goes on in the wider world, or sometimes even within their own team.  These people can sometimes bring others down with them making it much harder to get anyone motivated or thinking about innovative ways to solve problems.  It might be because of the type of role they have, perhaps they don’t see that they have much option but to just go along with whatever is happening.  Any spark that someone might show is very low level and can be missed if I’m not in the right place at the right time to spot it. 

I want people to feel valued in whatever role they play, whether a member of my team at work, one of our bell ringers or someone within any of the other groups I look after outside of work.  Identifying someone’s Me Strength, the thing that they are really good at, can be difficult. Merely saying well done, although nice to hear, doesn’t really help someone see their strengths and learn to cultivate them. 

Allowing someone to use their Me Strength every day is a good way to get someone to recognise it for themselves.  It means that I need to help them identify what their Me Strength is to start with.  Having a greater understanding of what someone is energised by is a start.  This can then allow you to co-create innovative solutions.  It might be that there is another person in the team who can bounce off of someone’s Me Strength and improve their own.  It needn’t be done in isolation. 

Therese Huston https://ideas.ted.com/2-kinds-of-praise-at-work-me-strength-we-strength/ offers some questions that can help identify someone’s Me Strength:

  1. What do you know you enjoy doing but haven’t done yet?
  2. What sorts of activities do you finish and thing you’re looking forward to doing again?
  3. What do you see on your calendar that you’re excited about?
  4. Was there a time when you were doing something and you were so absorbed by it you didn’t notice the time go by?
  5. What did you do on the day that you had your best day?  What made it the best day?

The questions Huston offers to help identify We Strengths are also useful to explore:

  1. What have other people told you that you do incredibly well?
  2. What’s got you noticed?
  3. Where do you feel most useful?
  4. What have you done before that you’re not doing now that had a lot of impact?
  5. What seems to come more easily to you than for others?

Trying to answer these questions for myself is hard. As a leader I do get to do more of what I enjoy and have the privilege of being autonomous in what I do in all areas of my life, therefore I can manifest more of the things I enjoy or am better at doing, to some extent. There are some things that come more easily to me than others and I am able to do them, or others have noticed and therefore played to that strength. 

I am not sure I can remember a “best day”, let alone what I was doing on that day, but there have certainly been days when the time has whizzed by and I’m not sure where it went.

How would you respond to those questions?