Try something rebellious with me…Are you aware you are breathing?
Let's take a big inhale through the nose, and then an even longer (calm) exhale through the nose. Did your breath make it down to the belly, or did it stay up in the chest?
Let's do it again…inhale…exhale.
And one more time, this time imagining on the exhale you are leaning slightly back and rooting down, feeling your seat in the chair, or your feet on the ground.
Yeah, that's good. Ok, now…
~~~
Dear Sacred Rebel, Change Agent, Intrepid Traveler,
~ How often do you feel tension in your body, or some form of discomfort?
~ How often do you wish there were more hours in the day, if only you “had the time to [insert passion, hobby, play]?”
~ How often do you find yourself holding your breath, or out of breath, racing through your days?
~ Late for dinner….again? Skipped yoga…again?
~ Answering the question of ‘how are you?’ with 'oh, I'm so busy! I'm so productive!' (yawn)
When we get stuck in these cycles (for hours, days, months, years) of narrow left brain focus, we lose the tether to the bigger picture of our lives. And this can be a dangerous stagnant shrinking lulling pond for those of us who wish to create more harmonious societies, heal the planet, and live lives of fulfillment.
So often with leaders we talk about the ‘comfort zone’ and what it takes to go beyond it. There is unanimous agreement this is where growth and our biggest breakthroughs lie waiting for us.
One such comfort zone is the one we've collectively created around busy, doing, blurting out ‘right’ answers rather than listening, tension, overwhelm, stress, success, time and money scarcity…
In what ways might your striving to ‘fit in’ be holding you back?
If the left hemisphere of the brain is for narrow focus, narrow attention, analysis and rational doing, and the right hemisphere senses the wider world around us, including our connection with the body and our senses and is the medium through which we experience (our being)…
…then with so much emphasis on doing and little attention to our (human)being…
We've become disconnected from the whole – from ourselves, our lives, each other, the planet.
What if we were to risk not fitting into the doing above all else, and experiment with more being (living!) in our lives and our leadership?
How might this widen our scope, deepen our sensing capabilities, broaden our sources of intelligence? And if we paused (yikes!) and allowed the doing, the focus, the action, the analysis to be informed by and take place from there, what might be possible for our lives, society, the planet?
And yet we hardly ever do this, and we certainly are not taught this in many cultures or in our MBA programs.
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift - Einstein
What would it take to go beyond the comfort zone and create a new pattern, in service of your, society's, and the planet's wellbeing?
You might try a few minutes of daily meditation, a walk in nature, or you might go out and buy yourself a nice journal and a special pen, you might sign up for a month of yoga classes, start working with a coach or a mentor, embrace deeper discussions with new communities…and eventually…
And I'm ALL for that. It's kinda part of my life's mission and foundational to a new kind of truly innovative leadership and zesty aliveness in life. I am also intimately familiar with the dedication, accountability, and the more than just a few weeks of practice this takes to re-write the script of doing, since we've had years, lifetimes, of conditioning to encourage doing the opposite.
Fortunately, I know of a fast and reliable (no not your internet speed) way to kickstart the journey of stepping outside our comfort zone…
A practice that brings us directly into that sense of being present and connected with little effort, and more intelligently informs our doing.
Travel.
Travel is our invitation to transform - ourselves, society, the planet.
In travel we step outside our comfort zone, stepping into our senses, becoming attuned to everything around us, and dropping the comfy cloak of fitting in from which we hide behind in our day to day lives of striving for and achieving ‘success' in how others perceive us.
To co-create and shape the big changes we wish to see in the world as leaders, we must first dance compassionately with some changes in ourselves and how we show up. When we open to being, to greater sources of intelligence than the rational mind alone, we can “do” so much more from there, and (bonus!) with less efforting.
Through travel, new perspectives, stepping outside our comfort zone into the unknown, we create rich soil for something new to grow, a place for befriending uncertainty and welcoming infinite possibilities previously unimagined. This is where real innovation emerges.
When we are a stranger in a strange land - no one and no thing - we have nothing to fear in being fully who we are. We are more open to living richly in the present moment. And a truer identity emerges when we step out of our society-shaped labels.
What emerges is a willingness to risk trying new things, discovering ourselves, and what we wish to create, in new ways.
That right hemisphere we shut in the basement of our being comes alive, comes online with effervescence when we travel outside our comfort zone. And from there, we can take action (left brain) from a place of greater awareness. (For more:
Iain McGilchrist, The Divided Brain, Ted Talk)
You already have everything you need.
This befriending of the new and fresh, a disruption of habits from the busy ‘comfort zone’ of our day to day life, permission to be in the present, reveal to us hidden strengths and a deep well of courage.
The resources necessary to travel home to our joy, recognize our purpose, and make a positive difference in the world.
Travel home to the part of you that knows…knows the way, knows her worth, and is ready to show up and lead fierce, free, fulfilled.
And if travel is like love, it is, in the end, mostly because it’s a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, undimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end. -
Pico Iyer, Why We Travel
