• What Changes?

    What Changes?

    The stories we are telling at any given moment, are the stories we are walking into. — Krista Tippett

    I’ve been spending time in reflection lately, especially as I get pulled unwittingly into so much change in our world right now. I’m talking about all types, shapes, and scales of change that many of us are facing. Personal relationships, work challenges, family conflicts. AI implications, war, economic uncertainty, polarization. A sense of purpose fading under the pressure of ongoing responsibilities. A growing weight of unprocessed sorrow and grief.

    My own reflections have spurred a burning question in me as I see change revealing itself in every corner, outside every window, literally everywhere I turn: What actually changes?

    As we explore this question, I offer a framing for thinking about change and what changes. I propose we look at change as a phenomenon from two distinct views: outer change and inner change.

    The Landscape of Outer Change

    The many facets of outer change are often out of our reach or domain, or even beyond our scope of influence. How can we keep from feeling overwhelmed, losing our sense of agency, or worse, falling into helplessness and resignation?

    The way I see it, it boils down to what we have control over and what we don’t.

    One way I’ve worked with this reality is to investigate the other side of the outer-change coin—the terrain of inner change. Moving my focus to what’s inside me (to at least some of what I can control), opens the door to a surprisingly generous world of options.

    Witnessing Ourselves

    This inner view involves a practice of witnessing myself in action. Paying close attention to some of my control patterns: my attachment to a specific outcome, for example, or holding myself back to influence how others see me. Attempting to manage others’ moods through my behavior. Noticing the ways I’m overly responsible for someone close.

    You may recognize some of these strategies in yourself. 

    Your relationship to change might involve things like denial, avoidance, resistance, fighting it, or shutting down. When I look closer at my relationship to change, I sometimes see that I am flailing around, not sure where to go next, so I resort just doing, doing, doing. This reminds me of one of my father’s favorite quotes: “It’s like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.”

    It can feel like that!

    Where We Have Leverage

    Instead of flailing, I can shift my perspective—and thus my relationship—to change. Especially to change I have little or no control over.

    For example, there is a bit of space created when I observe and shift the story I am telling myself inside. Moving from “I can’t do anything about this” to “What do I really want or need here?”

    Or from “They are doing that to me” to “How might I respond in a way that aligns with who I want to be?” Or from “I’m stuck here forever” to “What is one small step I could take to move forward, and who can I ask for help in this?”

    I’ve learned over the years from the Presence-Based Coaching and Leadership work that outer challenges often present an opportunity to enact change on the inside. And if we haven’t yet considered that one option might be to grow inside to meet the current outer conditions, we can easily get stuck in the suffering of being at their effect.

    I see this both in myself and with my clients.

    Growing to Meet What is

    The fact is that outer conditions might not change—ever.

    But inner change is where our development lives. Here we can find the choice to grow into a different way of being—to move towards more of the human we can be, or, as Doug Silsbee (founder of this work) used to say, “become our best self.” This inner perspective, this self-work, enables us to meet current reality differently.

    Here are a few questions to get you started down this path of inner change:

    • Where in your life might it be helpful to reassess what actually does change?
    • What step can you take to witness and shift your own perspective about the current conditions that might be derailing you or keeping you stuck?
    • What would it be like to focus on the inner change that’s possible—the change that offers you a move toward your own development, growth, and freedom?

    Bebe Hansen

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  • Thoughts on a Sunday Morning

    Thoughts on a Sunday Morning

    There are inner matters and outer matters.

    Both require our attention at different times, stages, phases, and seasons of life. Recently, I found myself losing touch with my inner life, pulled outward by the intensity and noise of the world around me — particularly by the current state of our nation and the wider world.

    There is a constant background hum now, a kind of low-grade static streaming from my phone and laptop about the latest “emergency.” It calls to me and captures my attention. And honestly, it’s seductive. I find myself witnessing in real time what I hold dear as an American citizen — rights and civil liberties I once took for granted — being relentlessly eroded.

    And then, something immediate in my environment interrupts the spiral and brings me back to the present moment. In those moments, I can loosen my mental and emotional grip on the outer world and remember that many of these circumstances are beyond my control.

    I still have agency. Always.

    Sometimes that agency begins with something very small: taking my next breath with awareness and sensing into presence. Receiving the simple nourishment of oxygen. Releasing what is no longer needed.

    This morning, I felt inspired by a piece written by Debra Roberts on Substack (a longtime PBC friend). In her essay, she points toward the small and often overlooked joys of the natural world — insects she lovingly calls “our kin.” Her reflections reminded me of my connection to everything around me.

    From that place, I can rediscover my right-sized place in the ongoing dance between inner and outer focus.

    And then something begins to settle.

    A kind of steadiness in my heart emerges, along with a deeper sense of groundedness in my body. I notice gratitude arising for the hidden and often unseen gifts woven throughout ordinary life. They are here. Available to me. Waiting, perhaps for me to choose.

    And I remember that where I place my attention matters.

    Bebe Hansen

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  • A New Chapter in Presence-Based Coaching

    A New Chapter in Presence-Based Coaching

    Honoring Legacy, Deepening Presence, and Leaning into What’s Next

    Presence-Based Coaching is moving through a meaningful moment of evolution, one that continues the living lineage founded by Doug Silsbee, continued by Bebe Hansen, and shaped by each of you who have practiced and shared this work.

    This work, and the organization that holds it, has always stood for something larger than any single leader or offering. It is a community shaped through practice, embodiment, and shared presence. Since its beginnings, this work has guided thousands of coaches and leaders in bringing awareness, compassion, and wisdom into the way they live and lead. Today, we are honored to share an important transition in the stewardship of this lineage. Beginning in January 2026, Barrett Brooks will become the successor and steward of Presence-Based Coaching and Leadership, continuing the arc of evolution, grounded in the same presence-based values at the heart of PBC.

    Honoring the Lineage: From Doug to Bebe to Barrett

    The heart of Presence-Based Coaching has always been its people.

    Doug Silsbee, PBC’s founder, created a groundbreaking model for integrating presence and mindfulness into the practice of coaching and leadership. His work transformed not just how coaches support others, but how leaders understand and embody their own presence and awareness in the midst of complexity.

    When Doug entrusted Bebe Hansen with this work’s legacy, she deepened that work, continuing to evolve the integrity of the curriculum while expanding its reach to new generations of practitioners. Over the years, Bebe has fostered a growing, global community of facilitators, alumni, and students who embody the values at the core of Presence-Based Coaching.

    Now, Barrett Brooks will step forward as the next steward of this living tradition.

    Continuity Rooted in Presence

    This transition is about continuing a lineage of presence-based learning that has always defined PBC.

    • The PBC curriculum remains unchanged, preserving the foundational teachings that have guided thousands of leaders and coaches.
    • The faculty and the community relationships that make this work meaningful remain at the center of our shared experience.
    • The values of mindfulness, embodiment, and systems awareness remain at the heart of everything we do.

    In other words, what’s evolving is not the essence of PBC, rather its capacity. Under Barrett’s stewardship, Presence-Based Coaching and Leadership will continue to grow intentionally and sustainably, extending the reach of the work even further while maintaining the depth and authenticity that define it.

    From Barrett: Leading With Presence in a Changing World

    Presence-Based Coaching has profoundly influenced my own journey as a leader and executive coach. As both a student and practitioner, I have learned that real leadership is not only about strategy or expertise. It is also about awareness and the ability to meet the moment with clarity and compassion.

    My vision for PBC is simple. I want to honor the brilliance of what Doug began and what Bebe has so intentionally grown. I want to continue expanding the impact of this work in ways that feel sustainable, inclusive, and deeply human. Presence has shaped my life, and I am grateful for the chance to help steward this lineage for many years ahead.

    Barrett brings to this role years of experience in executive and entrepreneurial coaching, guiding high-performing leaders and creative professionals toward clarity, balance, and conscious growth. His work combines systems thinking, emotional intelligence, and embodied awareness, aligning seamlessly with the philosophy that has defined PBC from the beginning. Barrett was a PBC student in the fall of 2023 and received his PBC certification in LIPCC 2025. For more on Barrett, visit >>.

    From Bebe: A Legacy Continued

    This moment is both a celebration and a continuation. When Doug passed the leadership of PBC to me, it was a profound act of trust. Stewardship in this lineage has always been a practice of presence. As I pass that torch to Barrett, I do so with complete confidence. His integrity, groundedness, and embodiment of this work make him the right person to guide the next chapter. I will continue teaching, mentoring, and supporting this community that I love. I look forward to standing beside Barrett and all of you as we grow into what is emerging together.

    Bebe’s ongoing presence within the PBC community will ensure a smooth transition and emotional continuity for students, faculty, and alumni alike. Her collaboration with Barrett will preserve the authenticity of the work while nurturing its next expression

    Looking Forward Together

    This transition is not a handoff; it is a continuation and a collective movement forward. Together, we will keep deepening the practice of awareness, embodiment, and leadership in a world that needs these qualities more than ever.

    As we look ahead to 2026 and beyond, our shared commitments remain steadfast:

    • To honor the legacy of Presence-Based Coaching.
    • To support leaders and coaches in embodying awareness in every dimension of their work and life.
    • To expand the reach of mindfulness-based, somatic, and neuroscience-informed coaching in ways that serve a changing world.

    This new chapter reaffirms what has always been true: Presence-Based Coaching is, and always will be, a living practice of presence and awareness in action.

    We are grateful you are part of this community, and we look forward to stepping into this next chapter together.

    With gratitude,
    Bebe Hansen & Barrett Brooks

    Bebe Hansen

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  • Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee Podcast

    Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee Podcast

    We’re excited to announce a brand-new episode of the “Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee” podcast, where Bebe Hansen of Presence-Based Coaching sits down with Coaching.com Founder and CEO, Alex Pascal.

    In this engaging conversation, Bebe and Alex delve into the profound realm of presence, and how it correlates with coaching. In a world where we’re constantly bombarded by distractions, they discuss the challenges we face in staying focused and how our habits can influence our progress.

    Here are some of the engaging topics they explore:

    • Navigating the pressures of today’s world and its impact on our focus and presence
    • Unraveling the mysteries of habit nature and understanding why we sometimes stall in our personal growth
    • The tug-of-war between moving toward our desires and away from discomfort
    • Cultivating presence through meditation or attention training
    • The connection between presence and effective coaching

    Bebe’s profound insights make this episode a must-listen for anyone seeking to tap into the power of presence and mindfulness in their coaching practice.

    Listen to the full episode from October 16th on your favorite podcast app or at https://www.coaching.com/podcasts/subscribe/

    Ready to be inspired? Here is a short clip from the episode.

    Bebe Hansen

  • Which Journey are You On?

    Which Journey are You On?

    We have long talked about the different tracks that make up our Presence-Based Coaching and Leadership training. I’m speaking here of two concurrent paths of development that take place in parallel. One journey is about the “Doing” as a coach or leader. This refers to the process of learning the specific skills, mindsets, and competencies in order to deliver a coaching or leadership conversation to a client or team that is competent and effective. The second journey is about the “Being” of a coach or leader. This involves practicing the cultivation of your own presence as a practitioner, as well as supporting your clients or team to become more present as well.

    We are fond of saying what matters is not only what you do, but who you are. We understand that the who you are actually impacts what you are able to do. In the Presence-Based work, we build both proficiency in skills and in capacity for how we are able to show up.

    Walking Each Path

    We have discovered over the years that both of these journeys of Doing and Being are inextricably linked and mutually reinforcing. They occur simultaneously, even though one aspect might be focused on at any one time. Picture the double-helix strand of DNA[1], which is the genetic building block of our human organism. These two threads illustrate the distinct yet intertwined nature of Being and Doing. Both strands are needed, and each requires the growth of different aspects of ourselves as coaches and leaders.

    Making explicit these two journeys are what make the Presence-Based work unique. In our Coaching, Leadership and Resilience programs, we include both threads. Through our methodology, we teach acquiring, practicing and proficiency of skills, as well as the internal growth and development of the coaching or leadership practitioner through presence. We don’t see that there is any kind of conflict here. Paying attention to both strands of development is actually an accelerant to growth, whether you are a coach or leader (or client). We find that Doing actually rests upon Being, and putting our attention on our Being will usually impact our Doing (and our results).

    More about Doing and Being

    For example, in the journey of Doing, we (and our clients and teams) may begin to realize that we have some default strategies, patterns and behaviors in life, and in work. These are what we call habits, and they have served us well so far…until they don’t! These automatic ways of interpreting our world are often what is driving our coaching or leadership moves underneath the water line. We may notice that these habits are not always the most effective response to the situation at hand. We may sometimes find ourselves in reaction, feeling triggered by something that’s occurring outside of us. These reactions can push us to take less than skillful actions, that we may even regret later. Think sending that email in anger to a colleague without cooling off a bit first.

    We enter the journey of Being. We learn to increase our ability to witness and then shift our reactive behaviors, which is the result of accessing presence (our Being).  Learning to be more present in any situation can offer us the awareness to make a different choice.  Coming from an internal state of presence, we can shift to a more skillful or resilient behavior, even in the heat of a conflicted or psychologically threatening moment.  Presence–>Awareness–>Choice.

    Over time, there are many milestones and certifications along the way that indicate a certain level of mastery has been achieved in both journeys. These milestones are often awarded to us as coaches, based on a demonstration of our abilities that meet the client’s needs around their stated coaching outcomes. And as leaders, we are rewarded for leading functional teams that produce important organizational results.

    Moving Into the Merging Lane

    Which journey are you on? Perhaps you are mostly focused on skill-building, enrolling in the latest course, listening to a trending podcast, practicing and honing your craft every day. Wonderful! Or perhaps you regularly take time to reflect on what’s most important to you these days, to re-prioritize how you manage your time, find space to be really present with your loved ones, to meditate or relax in nature. Also, wonderful! I suggest that in order to grow further into your wholeness, consider paying attention to both journeys – the Doing and the Being part of your development. Doing so will amplify your learning journey in unexpected and useful ways and move you toward more efficacy and even a sense of fulfillment.

    “Life Is a Journey, Not a Destination”

    I consider both journeys to be lifelong. There is really not a final destination to developing your skills and your presence. I’m using the “and” here intentionally. Both tracks are significant, and often most powerful when coupled together.  Especially in these times, let’s continue to grow both our Doing and our Being. We can offer our presence and share the gifts that we’ve been given. And from that place, as Doug used to say, we can “do the work that’s ours to do.”

    In contemplation of these two journeys, here are some questions to spark your thinking:

    • Do you have a preference (and tend to focus) on Doing or Being?
    • What do you know so far about each of these journeys?
    • What might unfold if you offered time and attention to the other journey (that is not your preference)?
    • How do you experience both journeys together?
    • How does your Being influence the work that is yours to Do?

    [1] “Deoxyribonucleic acid is a molecule composed of two polynucleotide chains that coil around each other to form a double helix carrying genetic instructions for the development, functioning, growth and reproduction of all known organisms…“  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA

    Bebe Hansen

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  • On the Hard

    On the Hard

    I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.

    Louisa May Alcott

    My husband identifies himself as a sailor. He is the proud owner of his father’s 30‘ Alberg sailboat, and he carries that legacy with care and respect for all his father taught him about the beauty and art of sailing. And, Sun Spur is in need of some loving attention right now. She has been in the water a bit too long and recently sprouted a tiny but significant leak in her bowels. This was not a dire emergency (despite my husband’s triggered reactions to the situation), yet she required a trip to a nearby marina sooner rather than later, where she could have access to experienced technicians who could repair her hull and perform some needed maintenance.

    I watched the story of Sun Spur’s situation unfold, entangled with my husband’s reluctance and several dilemmas about how best to take care of the problem (should he travel further to a marina where he could perform the work himself at less cost but more time and effort?  Should he try to find someone to travel to his current marina to fix the leak — which turned out not to be feasible? Did he actually have the skills necessary to repair this leak? You get the picture). There were many nuances and layers between the boat’s objective needs, the potential costs involved (monetary and time), and my husband’s personal history of “do it yourself” mindset.

    Recognizing Changing Tides

    I began to see underneath these surface issues into a beautiful metaphor for what I, and perhaps many of you, might be going through right now. There are so many current forces at work in this country and in the world unfolding at once, it seems hard to catch my breath before the next news item is surfaced. And each event has its impact on each of us, often at deep and personal levels.

    As Sun Spur is still sitting in the parking lot of the second-choice marina at this moment (and that’s another story in itself!), what’s becoming clear is that I, too, am needing some maintenance. I, myself, have some unattended to minor leaks of my own. For example, I seemed to have lost my north star in the fog of rapidly changing seas that have impacted how PBC training is delivered.  I’ve gotten caught up in the urgency of making tough decisions and pivoting quickly to create virtual versions of this work.

    Looking Beneath the Surface

    So, what’s below the water line for me? It looks like my disorganized office space with papers and piles spread everywhere. It shows up in feeling blindsided by deadlines that I had forgotten about in the fray and details of doing. It shows up in my reactivity to others when I’m tired from having pushed myself too hard at work. Or when I skip some of my regular practices (like yoga and meditation), rationalizing I really don’t need them today.

    What’s leaking is my energy, and my Presence. When I was training many years ago in the Toltec work (from Don Miquel Ruiz, author of “The Four Agreements”), I learned that we as humans have some insidious and subtle habits around leaking our own energy. We do this by gossiping or complaining, by becoming buried in social media, by dismissing our needs for rest or connection or quiet time in nature as we get pulled into the ever-changing external context. By ignoring our Being.

    Lifting Out of the Water

    I have learned to operate on fumes pretty well…for a time. And then, I suddenly wake up to discover that I am off course. I realize need to attend to myself, to re-commit to the self-care practices that I know reliably feed me. And, my hull needs painting! What I mean is: my office needs organizing, cleaning, and the disposal of no longer needed papers. What I mean is: I am longing for connection with myself – space to be with my inner world in an unstructured way.  See the view from a bigger perspective.  I need to put myself “on the hard” for a bit.

    This act of pulling myself out of the water invites paying attention to what’s calling me now and discerning what are the few priorities toward which I really want to invest my energy. I want time to re-gather myself as I notice what’s true for me, and for my heart. To stop the energy drains from those familiar things that draw my attention in reactivity and habit. I want to organize myself around my commitments and purpose. To take the rudder of my own ship again. I’m taking a deeper breath and sensing the ground of my own anchoring into Presence just writing this!

    Have You Sprung a Leak?

    Perhaps you have your own version of a leak, or your own hull needs some fresh paint. Perhaps it’s an inner knowing that you need to take a Presence Pause in your life or work. To re-evaluate, re-assess or re-imagine what’s truly needed now, in the midst of this stressful time period in history, and within this precious moment of your life’s trajectory. I encourage you to sense in and name what may be arising for you as you read this blog, and to capture it somewhere for your own reflection. And to give yourself permission to put yourself “on the hard” if needed.

    Now, Adjust Your Sails

    • What might you see for yourself within these metaphors?
    • What’s underneath your own or your client’s water line that might need some attention or maintenance?
    • How can you create some space to lift yourself out of the water or onto the hard, or encourage your clients to do the same, in order to consider what course correction may most be needed in this moment?

    Bebe Hansen

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  • In Presence and Solidarity

    In Presence and Solidarity

    I believe unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word

    Martin Luther King, Jr.

    What do we feel?  What do we say?  What do we do?  How do we support?  How do we serve?

    These questions have become prominent in many conversations I’ve had with leaders, students and clients in the last 2 weeks.  As a white woman, I can’t begin to know the lived experiences of Black and Brown communities in these moments of horror and inhumanity as the racism in this country is graphically displayed for all to see in the recent murders of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, and Ahmaud Arbery in Glynn County, Georgia.  I feel the pain, the injustice and the outrage at what’s occurring (and has been occurring for centuries in this country).

    My hope is that this moment in history is where our hearts and eyes will open and stay open to what’s happening.  To wake up to the difficult truths of the limiting systems in which we are embedded.  These truths that some of us have so easily ignored because it didn’t seem to be affecting us directly…oh, if that were only the case!

    Let us remember we are all deeply connected, and if one of us is hurt, attacked, senselessly killed, disenfranchised, it affects us all.  In the Presence-Based® Leadership work, we understand that we are all a part of the complex systems of our society and are impacted by them. The enormous cracks in our systems in this country are being revealed (once again).  It is also true that every act, no matter how small, has the potential to change the system.  What perspective will we take?  I see these cracks as opportunities to apprehend more of the whole picture. To be able to sense in and know what’s truly important, what resonates with us inside and to take whatever action that is in alignment with that.

    Some of you are working on large system changes; some will take small and quiet steps that ease another person’s difficulty.  Each of us, with our unique gifts, can support the bigger change that is opening up as a possibility right now. You get to choose who you will be in this.

    Our individual and collective challenge, and our inner and outer work, is to be able to face fully in.  To become present to and stand in and with the pain of others, our fellow humans who have suffered and are suffering, ourselves included.  To take compassionate and skillful action against racism and systemic inequalities.  To not remain silent.  To bring our own awareness to bear on how we are colluding with the broken systems.  To bring care and love, and our capacity for Presence into these substantial challenges.  Presence can enable us to open our hearts, to feel, to speak up, to serve, and to do what’s needed, whatever our sphere of influence.

    I am a stand for Black Lives Matter. What are you a stand for?

    Bebe Hansen

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  • Too Many Disruptors to Count…

    Too Many Disruptors to Count…

    “It’s not about the cards you are dealt, it’s how you play them”

    Beatrice M Burton, Bebe’s great, great Aunt

    The quote above reveals a keen insight from my namesake, Aunt Bebe. She was a gambler. In fact, I come from a long line of gamblers on my mother’s side of the family. She used to say these words when things got tough. For me, there’s a lot of clarity in this statement, and it offers a sense of agency in troubling situations. And it implies there is some skill involved.

    I’d say we are living in some troubling situations! There is a lot going on in the outside world at the moment – too many disruptors to count.  I’ll name some big ones: COVID-19, the stock market tanking, oil pricing conflicts, ongoing climate change, a presidential political election to navigate…whew!

    What’s happening for you?

    And what do you notice about the effect of all of this on you?  Are you feeling stressed, cranky, terrified, angry, mistrusting, overwhelmed, hiding?  Are your muscles contracted, do you have a headache, are you shutting down or pretending it’s nothing, really.  Any and all of these inner conditions are understandable, and in some ways are inevitable with all that’s occurring on the US and world stage right now.  We are each navigating this current context, doing the best we can, and trying to get work and life taken care of amidst many obstacles.

    Back to Aunt Bebe.  How does her anecdotal wisdom apply today? I translate her attitude to mean that it’s really all about what we DO with what’s coming at us. And how we BE with it. How we meet (or don’t) our experience. We always have choice, although with the current onslaught of news items, it’s not easy to remember this. We can learn to respond versus react.  How do we get there?

    Learning to respond versus react

    Presence helps.

    Presence is an internal state.

    Presence is embodied.

    In our Presence-Based work, we learn to use the naturally occurring triggering of our everyday lives as a way to wake-up in the present moment. To use what seems to be coming at us from the outside as a catalyst for our own development. This means a practice of noticing where we are putting our attention and to remember we have a choice. But can we feel truly at choice, especially during times like these? Let’s begin by looking at three levels of our experience through the lens of the Presence-Based work: Context, Identity and Soma.

    Looking at three levels of our experience

    For example, we are used to looking outside ourselves at the Context and “fixing” what’s broken out there. What we don’t see is the many interconnected systems that are at work in any interaction (whether it’s between two humans or two countries). We could see that this level of interconnection is being revealed at the moment, even just taking the example of the current respiratory virus and the manner it is spreading. We do not operate in a vacuum, and it will take many of us , working together, to stem the tide of what’s occurring.

    Identity is the self we take ourselves to be. Are we thinking we are a victim to these circumstances? That we have no agency, that the many impingements on our work and lives are out of our hands? Or are we in denial, or working even harder without rest to make sure our families are safe, or hunkering down in protection? Where are we placing our attention? It’s easy to get drawn into the news swirl instead of an awareness of the impact that this situation has on us inside. How can we slow down a notch and take a breath? What is our current attitude toward ourselves, our communities, our world right now? Can we access our own kindness, compassion and hope that we can work together to find real and creative solutions to what we are all facing? Can we put our attention back on our own strengths, courage, and connections and begin to decouple ourselves from all that’s happening around us so we see more objectively, and can make choices from a place of neutrality?

    And how is this all affecting our Soma (body)? Soma means the body in its wholeness, and it is comprised of our biology, psychology, and whole-body nervous system. Our body is biologically wired to survive (thankfully!). Our body and psychology conditions us through many, many experiences in our lives. We have learned from those experiences, devising brilliant strategies, habits and patterns to move us toward what we want, and away from what we don’t want. And our survival instincts can get triggered easily when we feel uncertain or out of control.

    And, our body can become the ground of our Presence, and thus a resource and familiar place to rest in and take skillful action from. Are we inhabiting a posture that is supporting clear seeing, perceiving what’s happening from a more objective lens? How much actual danger are you really in at this moment? What Presence practices are you in (often these are the first to go under stress) that support the cultivation of your own sense of ground and embodiment of Presence?

    Doorways to Presence

    We can see that these three levels of our experience (Context, Identity and Soma) are always operating, and mostly, we live inside them in an unconscious way, that is, they are out of our awareness. These three levels can also serve as doorways to Presence. We can open and walk through any of these doors, in any present moment, and shift into a broader, more life-sustaining view. We can perceive a fuller picture of what’s actually happening in and around us. We can take additional perspectives. We can ask for help. Through an inner state of Presence, we are able to create a little wedge of space between ourselves and our Context, Identity and Soma. This move, of creating breathing space, offers increased awareness, and the possibility of choice.

    We can begin to see more of the richness of inter-connectedness in our context and notice the many systems at play. We can dis-identify from a reactive stance when we notice we feel are feeling threatened or positioned. We can widen our view of who we really are and access our gifts. We can remember what we are truly capable of creating in partnership and in community with others. We can settle our activated nervous system through state-shifting practices, such as grounding ourselves into what’s important or in our values. We can be outside in nature, or practice regular meditation or yoga. Being in the moment through cultivating our own Presence, offers us resources to support navigating these challenging times.

    A View from Presence

    A view from Presence offers us the opportunity to inhabit an internal state that is more open, flexible, resilient, creative. We can cultivate silence, spaciousness, stillness and possibility inside of us, too. Actions that flow from Presence have a different, more generative impact in our world than those that flow from contraction, judgement, rejection or numbing.

    We can remember it’s not about what cards we are dealt, but it’s how we play them that counts. In the end, we are at choice, and we can choose Presence. Even though it can seem hidden from us as we live within our habitual strategies and patterns that keep us in survive mode. We can choose where we place our intention and attention and inhabit the perspective of thriving during these seemingly unstable times. We can learn to dance in the moment with what’s happening outside and inside us, and become a beacon of clarity, sanity and new perspectives while embodying skillful actions that create the results that matter.

    Here are some questions to support your remembrance of Presence:

    • What am I choosing in this moment?
    • How am I being asked to grow here?
    • How is this situation outside me actually a catalyst for my own development inside me?
    • Who am I becoming, in this moment?
    • How might I shift my inner state to be a resource for myself, my loved ones, my colleagues and communities right now?
    • What grounded and skillful actions do I need to take next?
    • How will I play the cards I’ve been dealt?

    Bebe Hansen

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  • New Year’s Resolutions, Take 2

    New Year’s Resolutions, Take 2

    New Year’s Resolutions, Take 2

    Happy New Year!  How are those new year’s resolutions going? I may be bringing up a slightly sore subject!  As we find ourselves turning the corner into February, many of us are seeing the quiet fading away of what we once felt so strongly about and made commitments to: our 2020 resolutions.

    This is a common phenomenon, one that I’ve experienced many times over the years, and I bet you have, too. For this new year, I committed to overhauling my diet, replacing all the not so nourishing stuff I eat when traveling or am feeling stressed with healthy, whole, less processed alternatives.  At work, I was determined to clean up and organize my office once and for all and stay current with my email inbox.  As the year turned into 2020, I was sure that this time these intentions were strong enough, important enough or just plain needed enough to make the difference. Sigh.

    My New Year’s Resolutions Progress? Not So Great

    As I assess my progress at the end of this first month of 2020, as any good coach would do who kitchen-tests her own recipes, I am not seeing stellar results so far.  And the resolve with which I made these commitments to myself seems to have evaporated!  I suppose I just got busy, or distracted, or overwhelmed, or lazy or…

    How Do We Make Desired Changes Stick?

    Perhaps the deeper question is how do we make these desired changes stick?  How can they become more sustainable than just a good idea? I wonder if you notice a similar dynamic around your own professional or personal resolutions? Perhaps you’ve discovered a useful or easy way to make these commitments real in your day to day life. If so, please let me know!

    One thing I’ve come to understand about my own process in making commitments around behavior change comes from the Presence-Based Leadership work I teach (and try to live!).  We know from this body of Presence-Based work that making sustainable changes is an affair that requires addressing our wholeness, because our habits (those patterns and strategies that take us down the familiar roads of behavior), are also more than just ideas.

    Our actions are actually embodied within our body/mind, which includes our emotions and our soma (the body in its wholeness).  Incorporating an approach of change that includes our three brains (gut, heart and head) is much more likely to create different results.  It’s also about aligning ourselves with ALL parts of us, so that alignment creates leverage, traction and old fashioned “oomph” to get out of the orbit of our habits. To lift off past the strong pull of gravity of our familiar ways of operating in our contexts.

    One approach is to make small steps, with an experimental mindset.  See my last blog of 2019, about incremental change for more details.

    Presence: Your Tool for Change

    Another aspect of creating different results includes approaching change with Presence.  We often omit awareness of the state of our consciousness, which is, in my own and my clients’ experience, often asleep at the wheel.  Some useful brain science is on the books about how our prefrontal cortex can only handle “this much” information at one time (visualize the gesture of my thumb and index finger making a small gap between them).  Because of the way our brain works, we tend to default to our former experience and make predictions as to what’s needed at any moment. And we make choices based on what worked (or didn’t) previously when we decide on a course of action.  Did I say former LIVED experience?  Yup, our whole, embodied self is showing up here again.

    Where does this Presence idea come in?  Presence is the internal state of our being.  We can cultivate our own presence in each of our three centers of intelligence (gut, heart, head). We are most strongly present to the immediacy of the moment when we place our attention from the whole of us on what’s happening right here and right now.  In the present moment.  We are able with practice, to see any situation or choice, from a more objective lens, rather than the perspective of doing what we’ve always done that often feels comfortable or safe or familiar.

    This translates into taking time to be present with the three centers of ourselves:

    How to be Present

    • Mindset: experimental, including fun and ideas for interventions that seem a bit whacky
    • Heart space: open to discerning how we actually feel inside about the change we want to make, and what’s our real motivation for making it? As we sense in underneath the surface and are honest with ourselves, what more do we know about what’s really getting in the way of the changes we want to make?
    • Body (Embodiment): making small moves over a limited time-frame, while locating these change efforts at the edges of the issue we want to be different. This also includes noticing where we find ourselves in the systems in which we are embedded and bringing our attention to what patterns may be repeating over time that move us either toward or away from our change goal.

    Perceiving ourselves and our situation more objectively and explicitly with Presence can open up much more information into our awareness about what’s really happening.  This data can bring with it additional ideas for shifting ourselves and our contexts that were out of our consciousness previously.  Having support of another person (i.e. a coach or peer) is also useful, as that person can offer additional perspectives about what’s really going on.

    Here are some practices I find helpful to cultivate presence and create change:

    Four Practices to Help Create Change

    1. Take quiet and uninterrupted time to really sense into the three centers within you.  Try a sitting practice for 10 or 20 minutes a day.  Keep it simple, focus on your breath.  Check in with your awareness into your 3 centers (Body, Heart, Head).  What wisdom does each have to share with you today?
    2. Pay attention to your inner state – are you agitated?  Afraid? Sad?  Invite everything you find inside you to come more fully into the present moment. Making room for all of you — your wholeness. This offers you more data to understand a more objective view of what’s happening.  And remember, actions always emerge from your inner state.
    3. Set your clear intention for where you are going, without attachment to the means to get there.  Watch what shows up in your own systems.  Look for signs of support, information, people, resources that come into your field of awareness.  Take action on those that seem likely to move you toward what you want.  Continue to assess progress along the way.
    4. Trust the process of change itself – it often unfolds at its own pace (which, by the way, is often a lot more slowly than our ideas would have us believe!).  Remember in your bones that you are indeed always changing on all levels.  You always have a choice to practice something new.  Experiment with what might seem out of the box and interesting that might move you in the direction you desire.

    Ready to Experiment?

    Why not give some or all of these practices a try?  We’d love to hear how it’s going, so let the community know here by commenting what’s working (or not!).  Please share any additional moves or practices here, too, that have helped you or your clients move forward to create change!

    Bebe Hansen

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  • Lessons from Doug

    Lessons from Doug

    They paved paradise
    And put up a parking lot
    With a pink hotel, a boutique
    And a swinging hot spot

    Don’t it always seem to go
    That you don’t know what you’ve got til its gone
    They paved paradise
    And put up a parking lot

    Joni Mitchell Big Yellow Taxi
    PC: Doug Silsbee

    July 30 marks the one-year anniversary of Doug Silsbee’s death from Cancer. I’ve been spending some time reflecting on the many gifts that he brought to me in our multi-faceted relationship as teaching partners, collaborators, business partners, and friends. Doug was a thought leader in coaching, leadership, mindfulness, and presence. As the founder of this Presence-Based Coaching and Leadership work, he had a large impact on those with whom he taught, coached, and collaborated; on the coaching community at large, and on coaching as a profession. And the Presence-Based work continues to touch all of those who engage with it.

    I am honored to be a steward of this work, and as you may know from my previous blogs, this past year has been a challenging and rewarding journey of growing and stretching. I didn’t consciously consider that of course, when I said “yes” to continuing the lineage of this body of work! I am grateful for the learning this past year has offered. As I have whole-heartedly stepped in to take the helm of this coaching and leadership business, the Presence-Based work itself, and to continue the legacy that Doug has inspired.

    Lessons Learned and What Lies Ahead

    As we celebrate Doug’s life a year after his death, I am mindful of some of the lessons learned from Doug. I have clarified some of the values I hold dear in myself and want to express. And I’ll offer some thoughts about my view of what’s ahead.

    A Glimpse at Doug’s Wisdom

    These are some of the qualities of what I’ll call wisdom, that Doug embodied and that I’ve learned from him.  My intention is to continue practicing them. Perhaps you will recognize these, too, and might wish to emulate them as well:

    • Share your heart
    • Be transparent about what’s true for you
    • Walk your talk, as best you can
    • Lead with the spirit of generosity
    • Listen deeply to what’s calling, and place yourself in service to that
    • Author your own story

    My Version of This Wisdom

    Here’s my own version of the values that I’ve discovered along the way that resonate with me currently. Perhaps these speak to you, too:

    • Ask my heart what’s important and meaningful in this season of my life and work; align with and act from there
    • Follow my energy, aliveness, and enthusiasm
    • Leverage my unique and creative gifts
    • Be of service to those who want to wake up and be the best version of themselves
    • Watch for what wants to happen next, and follow that thread
    • Write the next chapter of this work with courage, using my authentic voice

    Where Do You Land?

    As you read these bullet points, notice where you land on the distillations of our values, purpose, or meaning that I’ve written about above. Notice if any speak to you, or spark some of your own distillations.

    I continue to reflect on what these mean for the upcoming year, and what might be in store next? Here’s where these lessons and qualities seem to be leading right now.

    PC: Doug Silsbee

    The Long Game

    I’m actually not sure I have any “final answers” to what’s next for me and for this Presence-Based Coaching and Leadership work. However, I do have a sense of the direction we need to head. Things like the ability to cultivate our capacity to be present to what’s objectively needed now, in this world of seemingly endless and fast-paced disruptions and chaos. Things like connection and inclusion. Care and kindness. Creativity and resilience. Presence and mindful awareness. Conscious and intentional choice. Expanding this proven, integrative methodology based on the principles of Presence, that scaffold human evolution. This body of work that results in life-affirming choice and change – on all levels and scale from global to local to individual.

    Specifically, this work is about developing leaders, and the coaches who serve them for the long game. Diving a little deeper to find each person’s innate capacities, gifts and talents for living and leading from the inside out. Remembering that what we DO emerges directly from who we ARE. Engaging in learning, practices, and community that support our more awake and conscious mindsets, relationships, world-views, and embodiment of what truly matters to each of us individually and collectively.

    We Grow While Supporting Growth in Others

    What I love about the Presence-Based work, and about this coaching methodology in particular, is that it creates a customized opportunity to do our own work as coaches while being of service to others’ growth – in the same moment! We pay attention to not only our skill building around the coaching competencies (horizontal axis of our own development as coaches). We also pay close attention to our habits and patterns as they show up in coaching, and how these often play out in the coaching conversations and interactions with our clients (the vertical axis of our own development as humans).

    PC: Doug Silsbee

    Our Being and Our Doing

    Both of these axis’ are needed for us to be effective in supporting growth and change. The same principle applies here:  who we are as a human—our being—directly affects how we show up as a coach—our doing. Both are critical for engaging the wholeness we are and can be, in service to another’s development. Our coaching clients have these two threads of parallel development going on as well, and in Presence-Based Coaching, we pay attention to both.

    There is so much territory in these two domains of being and doing for exploration, discovery, and insight. And most importantly, this coaching methodology allows the direct and practical application of these discoveries into our lives and work. It turns out to be very rich territory, indeed!

    Being and Doing in Leadership

    These same principles of being and doing, the horizontal and vertical axis of development, and the integration of the two, hold equally true in leadership. Leaders who are actively cultivating their own presence and ability to be awake and aware have a unique edge. That edge is choice. Choice to act in a way that is congruent with our deepest values and purpose, to bring and apply our most creative and resilient selves to the complex situations at hand.

    The often-hidden gem here is that the joy and fulfillment of leadership potential can be enabled by taking a perhaps radical stance. And that’s the perspective of seeing whatever challenges arise in your context, as an opportunity to grow on the inside to meet them. Seeing problems as a catalyst for personal and professional development. What a concept!

    The New Chapter of Presence-Based Work

    PC: Doug Silsbee

    I am ever so grateful to Doug for all that he brought to this world. I am grateful for those who came into contact with his heart and care and continue to feel touched by this work. I am writing my part of this new chapter for the Presence-Based work by developing and sharing my own gifts and the gifts of this work, following my desire to be of real service, and making a meaningful contribution to the consciousness and awakening of those who are called to make this world a better place. At least in our little corner of it.

    Marshall McLuhan said: “There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.”

    And as Doug was fond of saying: ”I want to do what’s mine to do.”

    My Question to You

    I’m getting clear on what my work is going forward. So, here’s my question to you. What’s yours to do?

     

    P.S. The photos here are all taken by Doug. As many of you know, photography was one of his passions.

    Bebe Hansen

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  • The Known, Unknown, and Unknowable

    The Known, Unknown, and Unknowable

    Many years ago, when I first entered the Presence-Based Coaching work as a student, Doug offered three specific distinctions that I found very useful at the time of my professional stretch to learn to be a coach. These same distinctions have been bubbling up recently in my memory for re-examination. I am finding them to be once again useful and timely. The three perspectives are: what I know, what I don’t know, and what I can’t know (the unknowable).

    I’ve been facing squarely into my own personal development work this last year, necessitated by Doug’s untimely death from cancer in 2018. I am witnessing my professional expansion towards a newer identity that is shifting to be a bit bigger. The conditions around me have been supporting the growth of this new sense of myself. I have needed to evolve in order to hold a more forward role in the business as a newly minted solo leader. And the business itself has been crossing uncharted terrain, moving towards the capacity to sustain this substantial body of Presence-Based work without its living founder. I am grateful for a highly committed community of our PBC Advisory Board, who have been holding space and creating opportunities for the latest iteration of the Presence-Based work. This body of work is making its way into a new niche around Leadership Development, its origins from the publication of Doug’s last book in 2018, Presence-Based Leadership.

    My Personal Approach to What I Know, What I Don’t Know, and What I Can’t Know

    These three distinctions of what I know, don’t know and can’t know have been a helpful lens to navigate all of the current transitions I find myself in: personal, professional, business, and the body of the Presence-Based work itself. My hope is that they will speak to a current transition you or your client might be in. Here’s how I’ve been working with them.

    As I apply these three distinctions to my current transitions, it feels important to unpack them in terms of which elements belong within each category. My recent practice has been to capture ideas in each segment. As I articulate which element belongs in each category, I notice I am moved to add a place for the specific “challenges” each perspective brings with it. The “challenges” section further clarifies which of my particular habits tend to arise as a primary strategy to deal with each grouping. These challenges also represent another view or learning edge for me to work with along the way. I’ve presented the details of my exploration below. It is my hope that my personal content may spur new ideas, insights and support for your own, or your client’s, transitions.

    What I know: I love and feel deep resonance with the Presence-Based work. It fits my passions and skills well and I have developed adeptness in it and embodiment of it. I admire its power to impact those who offer/practice this methodology as coaches or experience it as clients. I relish the joy I feel as someone I am working with has an insight that shifts them towards what most matters to them. I align with my purpose through this material. I enjoy being of service using presence to support others to become their biggest and best selves.

    • The challenge here is to remember these “knowns” as organizing principles in my day to day, detailed oriented life! I often get pulled into the weeds and daily grind of scheduling, business operations, even teaching deliveries and travel that can feel compressed time-wise. It is an ongoing challenge to be in my regular grounding practices on the road. Getting some insights here connected to my habit of not taking enough rest/recovery time and the need to add more space to my calendar.

    What I don’t know: The demand for coaches, and organizations who train them. How the Presence-Based Leadership material will be received by leaders (and their coaches). How this Presence-Based work will evolve and what it may ultimately look like/turn into over the years with various iterations and contributors. What disruptors, innovations and market demands (e.g. technology) may affect the way training is even done or preferred in the future.

    • The challenge here is to manage my feelings of anxiety and overwhelm around this, especially when facing into something that calls for a stretch beyond what’s usual or comfortable or easy. To pull back my attention into the present moment when it goes too far into the future and stays stuck in planning or forecasting. Or practice bringing my attention to present time when I notice I am located in the past, getting pulled into (and take to be real) my limiting narratives around deficiency or comparison.

    What I can’t know (the unknowable):  My health (or the health those whom I love). The world’s political, economic, environmental, technological and business contexts. What new local or global trends may emerge that will affect coaching, coach training and leadership development work. Will this Presence-Based Coaching and Leadership work, which seem so vital and needed today, still be relevant down the road?

    • The challenge here is remaining grounded around my purpose and passions (what I know). To practice coming back to center when I lose a sense of myself or when I face into what I can’t control or can’t be controlled. It’s helpful to remember that life is quite short and fragile (Doug’s death brought this fact home to me in an immediate and personal way). It’s also a wake up to realize that I am two thirds of the way through my own life! This unknowable space calls for trust that everything is, indeed, working out in the best possible way, despite the many vicissitudes of life as a human on this planet, in this time-frame. Sometimes, my mind creates doubts when facing into immediate difficulties. And sometimes, as I do my regular practices of yoga and meditation, I am able to rest into the felt-sense of trust in my body and the inner knowing that life’s journey is unfolding with precision for my own development. I am able to surf the waves with a sense of ease and allowing.

    Clarity Arises from Closer Inspection

    Even though the buckets of the three distinctions are an artificial parsing out of a reality that is actually arising as one dynamic flow, I find there is something to be gained from naming each challenge. This allows me the room to sense a bit deeper within each distinction. As I do this, something arises and changes internally for me that produces clarity.

    For example, as I sense into the “what I know” category, I feel a sense of steadiness; an internal confidence that these elements actually represent the deeper and supportive ground as I move forward. As I contemplate “what I don’t know,” I remember the possibility of finding some sort of external support to fill in the gaps. And I can generate internal support by actually framing the opportunity of learning and practicing something new. As I generate the list of “what I can’t know,” what’s actually unknowable — surprisingly, it has the effect of relaxing me and my nervous system. Somehow letting go of trying to control what’s not under my control feels like a bit of relief and liberation. Maybe I don’t have to work so hard! Why spend energy and effort on what’s not controllable? With that awareness, an urge arises to focus back towards “what I know” as a solid ground. And looking back on “what I don’t know” from this sense of solid ground, there is a desire to wake up. I want to pay attention to any early signals of change, to include others for additional perspectives (and to challenge my narrative that I have to do it alone). And I wonder what exactly I do want to learn next that feels exciting and rich and needed now?

    Using the Known, Unknown, and Unknowable to Navigate Complexity

    These distinctions are useful as well in navigating complexity (this topic is a significant part of the Presence-Based Leadership work). Complexity includes many layers or levels of systems that are involved in any pattern. The reality is that complex adaptive systems (e.g. humans!) don’t operate within cause and effect principles.

    In the domain of complexity, occurrences are not predictable or knowable in advance (only in hindsight). It turns out that being able to be present with, and even rest in, what’s ambiguous and unknown, is a very helpful perspective.  And inhabiting yourself in a way that’s present, connected, grounded and flexible, is very useful for both leaders and coaches!

    Of course, I suspect many of you might be facing complexity or are in a transition in your own life, as I was when learning to become a coach, and am now learning to lead this Presence-Based work. Perhaps you are facing things like the restructuring of your company, or a health crisis, or a relationship break, or adult children leaving home, or aging parents needing more of your attention. And our clients experience these transition spaces as well, either personally or inside organizations with new leadership demands, more responsibilities, changing business and technology environments, scaling up or down, mergers.

    Some Questions to Play With

    I offer these questions to you to play with anytime, and perhaps especially during transitions or when dealing with complexity. You can choose any particular area that seems up for you or your clients right now. Let us know what you discover!

    • What do I know?
    • What is it that I don’t know?
    • What is it that I can’t know (the unknowable)?
    • What are the specific challenges to each of these distinctions?
    • And what do you notice in your experience (body, emotions, inner story) as you sink into each one of these distinctions?
    • What clarity emerges from this exercise?

    Bebe Hansen

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  • Presence in Complexity through a Baby’s Cry

    Presence in Complexity through a Baby’s Cry

    I had the pleasure, honor and intensity of being with my daughter and son-in-law last week with their newborn baby. It was a time of extreme emotions for me – deep joy and relief that this miraculous little being made the transition into this world safely. Feeling the baby’s wide-open heart and sensing her preciousness and innocence. Frustrated by my own habits of pushing myself and working hard in the midst of meeting the baby’s objective needs while attending to my daughter’s condition of physical pain from the delivery, overwhelm, and post-partum hormones. Talk about adapting to a new set of conditions!

    I also noticed how these new set of conditions looked a lot like what I have learned about the domain of Complexity through Doug Silsbee’s new book, Presence-Based Leadership. There was plenty of evidence for this, as we all were living together in a small townhouse with a newborn. The situation become a rapidly changing landscape of what was once a fairly predictable and reliably consistent reality. This sense of unpredictability and ambiguity, including not being able to track cause and effect logically, is a hallmark of the domain of Complexity. [1] [2]

    As first-time parents, these young adults have a lot going for them. Both of them are home for the next 8 weeks and my son-in-law is a full partner in parenting. He is eager and willing to share in all baby care. And they’ve prepared amazingly well. They have bought or received all the latest baby care gadgets and equipment, relying on the advice of their friends who are recent parents. They have researched a wealth of information from the internet on infant care and read several latest best practices books. They have available and generous support from their local care providers. And yet…

    Diving into the Great Unknown — Context, Identity, and Soma

    This new context presented challenges that were beyond anything that preparation alone could provide. I could see influences from the three distinctions from Presence-Based Leadership’s Nine Panes Model of Context, Identity and Soma at play on many levels during my week-long visit. These distinctions are a useful way to tease apart any Complex situation into a simpler view of three levels of nested systems. These systems are always interacting and influencing each other yet can be seen as distinct systems. Context is the level of system that is most familiar; the view of the external situation. Identity is who we take ourselves to be and is the interface between these other two (external and internal) systems. Soma is our internal psychobiology and felt-sense that is organized around our very survival, including protecting and defending our Identity.

    For example, baby Sophia’s behavior is visibly driven by her instincts and the need to survive (Soma). It’s surprising to me to see she is constantly focused on rooting around with her mouth for milk, doesn’t like to be in a wet diaper, or just wants to be cuddled. She had no problem letting those around her know she has a need by crying, and the challenge was trying to figure out exactly what she was asking for!

    I could feel the escalating pressures mounting during my stay of many unknown and unpredictable elements of this new context. Around Soma and Identity, I watched the potential entanglements of my daughter’s physical and emotional states (and need for rest) intersecting with my own identity of “I’m an experienced mother here, I know how to do this.” These mixed in with my own past memories of feeling helpless, unprepared emotionally, and deeply frightened about my ability to actually do what was necessary to take care of a new baby, back in the day. And noticing my dawning awareness that my old knowledge was inadequate in this current time period (Context), as infant practices have shifted quite dramatically from when my own daughter was a new born. For example, now babies sleep on their back; in my day, they slept on their stomach! I think I know what to do now…and suddenly that goes against current practice, of which my daughter gently reminds me, which forces me to be open to receiving new information for each arising situation and flexible enough to change my tried and true strategies.

    Taking a Look in the Mirror around Identity

    Not to mention my own new Identity and status as a first-time grandmother – what do I want to be called? How often can I realistically travel back to another state, two plane rides away, to see this baby again given my already busy travel and teaching schedule (not soon enough!)? How can I be a true support to my daughter who feels deeply stressed and to her husband who will be her main support in this new adventure of parenting?

    And my daughter’s own Identity shifts were in the field as well. Like who is she now as a new mom? What happened to the life she used to know and resonate with? How will this baby care taking thing look when it’s time to go back to work? And her growing awareness that her familiar strategies of making lists, taking time out to read a favorite book, or watching a sitcom on Netflix was no longer available in the realm of 24/7 demands of a newborn. How could she cope without those well-worn stress relievers?

    The Importance of Being Present

    What did I learn about living in these domains of Soma and Identity, while gaining new perspectives in the face of these complex conditions and new Context?

    This is where my practice and embodiment of being present was extremely helpful and available, when I remembered them! As I said, some of my old patterns of over-working showed up, and my concurrent tendency to ignore my own physical signals to take a break every once in a while.  When I became aware of the tightness in my body (Soma), and my habit of pushing myself to do just one more thing (Identity)– run to the store for another dinner item, put laundry in the washer, rub my daughter’s feet to calm her, I was able to take a pause, breathe, and ask what did I actually need right then or soon?

    The good news is that, in those moments, I was able to be present with all that was occurring in the environment of three other people and also myself. Every day I actually took time to put on my walking shoes and walk outside for 30 minutes or sit outside in the sun and mediate in nature. Being present to my own needs was crucial self-care and impacted my own ability to be present with those I love, in this challenging environment.

    Useful Complexity Practices

    Remembering and applying some of the complexity adapted practices from Presence-Based Leadership also offered me some welcome perspectives while I was in the fray of this very busy and demanding time with this new family. The principles of Connection, Fluidity and Stability shed additional light onto this rapidly changing terrain. These principles offer useful perspectives, mindsets and behaviors which support our ability to navigate complexity skillfully.

    For example, as I was able to stay Fluid with managing my own self-expectations with the objective needs of others, I was able to make choices that served the whole. And I could provide the needed Stability of taking over baby care when the parents experienced a difficult night and needed to sleep a few hours. Or I could be available when my daughter needed a compassionate ear to listen to all that was going on for her. These moments of deepened my sense of real Connection with my daughter. I also noticed the sense of Connection that I felt around all of us being in this situation together as a team, doing the best we could. We were all Fluid around adjusting, moment by moment, to this new life entering into the family system.

    Of course, this type of Complexity experience that emerges from changing external conditions applies to all kinds of other situations, not just a newborn in the house! For example, upon entering into our Presence-Based Coaching training program, students can feel stressed and uncertain as they begin to see the limitations of their old strategies and identities. Students are trying to adapt to new structures of the coaching conversation, learning to be present and embody presence while managing new coaching tools and moves that can seem foreign at first.

    These new complex conditions also apply to leadership as well, where a leader might find herself overwhelmed by taking on more responsibly or managing a new global team that is squabbling or in dealing with radically shifting market conditions or budget cuts or hiring freezes.

    Questions to Generate Awareness and Perspectives

    I’ll leave it to you, from my descriptions above, to make your own extrapolations to what variations of complexity might be happening in your world these days. Here are some questions to get you thinking and perhaps generate some new awareness or perspectives…

    • How do you recognize you are in the domain of complexity?
    • How are the levels of systems of Context, Identity, and Soma influencing your current challenge?
    • How do you wake up when your habits put you on automatic pilot, like working or pushing harder (or collapsing) as a strategy?
    • What’s one way you might experiment with the principles of Connection, Stability or Fluidity in your particular situation?

    [1] For more on Complexity as a domain, see this post and Presence-Based Leadership by Doug Silsbee [2] For more information on Complexity in general check out David Snowden and Cultivating Leadership

    Bebe Hansen

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  • Celebrating All of Me

    Celebrating All of Me

    Lately, the idea of including has come into my perception in several arenas. So much so, that it is now something of a theme. I’ve become aware of a burning question: what parts of me am I not including in my sense of myself? Describing this process with kind language, I begin to notice how easy it is to dismiss or brush away aspects of my identity that I don’t particularly favor or like to perceive. Using more truthful language, there are parts of me that I hate, am afraid of, or am ashamed of, and parts that I downright reject. We might call these shadow aspects, or disowned parts (see Brené Brown for more on this).

    What’s Hiding in Your Basement?

    The more I do this work around self-awareness and presence, it dawns on me that these long worn and familiar (and seemingly successful!) strategies I’ve adopted of rejecting or burying these parts not only don’t serve, they actually don’t work. I am unintentionally dividing myself and putting stuff I don’t want to see in my own basement. These parts of me seem out of sight, but are actually in exile, accumulating mold and beginning to smell a bit… because they don’t see the light of day in my consciousness. And sometimes they leak out, revealing themselves in the ways I sometimes show up. Through the Systemic Constellation and Judy Wilkins-Smith’s work, I learned the most basic principle of a system is that everything has a right to belong in the system (family, organization, community, nation), and if that right is denied, if any parts are excluded, the dysfunctional patterns and results of those exclusions get bigger and louder, until the system is at some point able to balance itself, to come into harmony by including, in some way, that which, or those who, have been excluded.

    I could go in a big picture direction at this juncture, and talk about the environment, or politics, or economic disparities, but I’ll stick with the micro scale of us as humans. I offer my experience as a reflection of the bigger principle of including all parts of a system, and as a way to spark your own thinking on this topic for your clients and yourself.

    The Cost of Missing Pieces for You and Those You Coach

    What’s the cost of this habit of dissecting myself into parts, some of which are “acceptable” and some of which remain locked up and hidden (sometimes even from myself)?  I see that there is a big price to pay in aliveness, energy flow, creativity and expression. It’s like the hose of life force gets kinked within me, and not only do the buried parts stay stuck, life energy gets stuck, too. And I find myself enacting patterns like over functioning around work, reducing play and fun, and generally getting cranky towards my loved ones.

    Another way the cost of this habit can show up is in coaching:  when my client brings something to the conversation that feels uncomfortable…is it her? Is it me? Something the client is struggling with might remind me (even unconsciously) of a dis-owned part of myself. I notice I can feel suddenly defensive or shut down or start pointing to the client as the problem. When it actually might be my own undigested experience that is surfacing that I’m concurrently pushing away. And here’s another whole category of those “parts that shall not be named” (a la Harry Potter), that I’ve also discovered: the aspects of me that are generous, steady, courageous, present, able to handle a lot of ambiguity and grief, and continue forward for the sake of something bigger. I notice I push those parts out of my awareness just as easily, until a friend or colleague or client reminds me that I am offering these gifts to them in the moment. And I remember, oh yes, these are me, too.

    Two Practices to Help Reconnect Different Parts of Ourselves

    I’ve been in some recent practices that have been helpful in remembering to reconnect these disparate parts of myself. To include all of me (or as much as I can be aware of in the moment).  Here are two you might give a try.

    1. Pause and Take a Moment of Presence
      When I feel something arising in me that’s unfamiliar (or very familiar, yet unwanted), my practice is to pause and take a moment of presence, to sense in to who or what is trying to be known in some way within me. I’ve been interested to see my growing capacity to witness these various parts. Sometimes that’s all that’s needed to have a little energy boost (freed up from having to keep that part hidden).
    2. Make Space for All Voices
      Another practice occurs when I’m under pressure, to notice in the moment the urge to distance myself from a certain aspect of myself. I am aware of having judgement about “her” as a potential derailer to the “all so important” task at hand. Instead of creating distance, I’ve been inviting and allowing space for that part of me to actually emerge more fully. Acknowledging her with kindness, compassion and love. It has been beneficial to at least to consider this additional view on the situation at hand. I am surprised at the wisdom available by giving these different perspectives some air time in my consciousness.  I can then choose what’s next with more awareness.

    I Invite You to Shift Your Perspective

    Here’s a perspective shift:  let’s practice welcoming these hidden aspects of us we can now perceive and be in contact with. Even the sticky or scary ones, and especially the beautiful and talented ones. We might regard their emergence as information—as data—and wonder what we can now do with the energy and aliveness that becomes liberated—energy that they’ve been carrying all along. I invite you to take some time to reflect on what parts of you might be out of your awareness that are longing to find a home in you. What gifts are actually waiting to be claimed to take their rightful place at your table? For the sake of celebrating all of you, all of us, in our wholeness.

    Five questions to get you started:

    1. What’s your relationship to those parts of you that seem distasteful, or are not welcomed into your identity?
    2. How would you like this relationship to be?
    3. What parts of you (shadow or gift) might need a home within you now?
    4. What do you imagine would be some possible outcomes (both scary and enlivening!) from including more of you in your work, your life?
    5. How might including more of you serve your clients?

    Feel free to share your answers to the questions above or your comments/thoughts.

    Things we resist in others tend to be things that we have not yet resolved within ourselves. Specific traits we dislike in others are often those we dislike within ourselves. I am inviting you to discover and own parts of yourself that you might rather pretend were not there. It’s not easy. It will however open new doors to compassion for yourself and your clients.

    Doug Silsbee The Mindful Coach

    Bebe Hansen

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  • Transitions

    Transitions

    What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly

    Richard Bach

    Transitions…we all know them and have experienced them. I am in one. It feels really useful and liberating to remember that many things have just recently radically changed for me as a result of losing my longtime friend, collaborator, teaching and business partner, Doug Silsbee.  I am navigating new territory.

    Lately I’m noticing in my experience a feeling of being “on my own.”

    Lately I’m noticing in my experience a feeling of being “on my own.” This feels different from other internal spaces I’ve inhabited in my life that are close but not exactly like this “on my own” place.  I am clear I don’t feel “abandoned” (familiar in years past), or “it’s all up to me” (familiar also from my years of being an entrepreneur and pusher of the river). I don’t feel longing, or lonely, or stark aloneness (sometimes called existential aloneness).  As I step back and take a quick glance at my life, I actually feel very supported and surrounded these days, professionally, personally, and spiritually.  And yet, here’s this “on my own” felt-sense that’s present. Frankly, I think it has to do at least partially with Doug’s body no longer living on this planet.  And I continue to grieve his loss.  Of course, Doug continues to live in me, in my history and through those years that our collaboration and the work itself shaped us both.  Those experiences support me in practical ways every day, both professionally and personally, and I am grateful!

    And I continue to grieve his loss

    From the Minutia to the Present

    And when I’m in the middle of the daily grind of office days, sometimes I am able to wake up from my habitual focus on the minutia that make up my usual work routines.  I find myself getting lost in checking emails, tracking progress of projects, delegating (and not being the bottle neck to other’s work!), and coordinating action between lots of moving parts of PBC training and my life as a whole.  Reminders, such as my 2018 vision board sitting across from my desk, abound in my environment.  They are calling me to be present, take a pause…and when I release my tight focus for a breath or moment, I can actually see them!  Being present allows me to acknowledge my transition in leadership, and PBC’s transition as a business.  As I start to relax a bit, I am able to witness a bigger view of the movement that’s always happening around, in and through me.

    Insight: A Strong Wind Arrives

    We had a cold front blow in over the weekend, and as I stood outside on a gorgeous, sunny day with the temperature in the 60’s, I marveled at how strong the wind was in my own back yard.  Blowing the trees around, making a loud racket like a freight train.  I felt excitement and delight at the wind’s heralding of the season changing into fall. I was imaging moving into warmer clothes, having a fire in the fire place, sipping some fresh, warmed apple cider.  Once I came back inside the house, I realized that my relationship to this particular season change was very different to my relationship to the change I’m experiencing now around this transition at work.  Especially around the “on my own” space.

    I felt excitement and delight at the wind’s heralding of the season changing into fall

    Standing outside, I felt connected to the weather, to the earth, to the natural rhythms of the change of season.  In contrast, the “on my own” space feels, well, on my own.  I became curious: are the remnants of my historical experience, overlaid with old narratives of “I’ve been left” or “it’s all up to me,” driving a sense of urgency, of overwhelm?  And the predictable and familiar reactive habits of focusing in the weeds of the daily grind?  As I sense into it, this “on my own” feeling is quite neutral, in and of itself.  Perhaps it is actually pointing to a growing sense of autonomy in me, as I move more fully into the #1 leader role at PBC?  And with that independence comes a sense of more freedom to make my own choices.  I am full of gratitude to have plenty of wise council, additional perspectives and support from many others who care about Doug, me and this work. And some of the hard decisions are mine alone to make.

    Questions I Am Asking Myself

    Here are some questions I am asking myself:

    • How is my experience of the change of season different from this feeling of “on my own”? (Context)
    • What makes it exciting vs overwhelming?( Soma)
    • What assumptions am I holding about the season change, and about shifts in my work life? (Context, Identity)
    • Who am I taking myself to be in this moment, and how is that shifting ?(Identity)

    As you see, I can’t help myself in making distinctions around the Nine Panes, from Doug’s latest book, Presence-Based Leadership.The Nine Panes is the core model from the book that offers nine powerful distinctions, perspectives and practices around leading in complexity.  As I tease apart these differences in the levels of systems of which I am a part (Context, Identity, Soma), these levels of scale continue to percolate into my consciousness. And I am noticing how they affect my experience, my perspectives.

    There’s always more to explore as the seasons continue to change, and I continue to change with them

    As I said, it feels useful to acknowledge that I am still in transition and will be for some time. And perhaps that feeling of “on my own” will be present for a long while, too.  There’s always more to explore as the seasons continue to change, and I continue to change with them. I can’t control the weather change. I can pay attention to my moment-to-moment experience.  And as I do that, I notice an opportunity for choice: I can stay within the confines of my historical views and habits.  Or I can practice resting into a more spacious perspective, like the change of season, and know I am a part of the bigger dynamism of life that is always happening within and around me.

    A Question For You

    If you (or a loved one or colleague) are experiencing any kind of transition, what questions would be useful for you (or them) to contemplate? Feel free to offer your questions below…

    Bebe Hansen

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  • A Video Interview with Bebe Hansen

    A Video Interview with Bebe Hansen

    About her journey, coaching skills, and the PBC transition

    In this lovely interview with Rod Francis in June 2018, Bebe Hansen, recently named Principal of Presence-Based Coaching, shares her personal and professional journey into coaching, talks about some key coaching skills and practices that support learning and change, and a bit about the Presence-Based Coaching transition.

    Thank you Rod for this time together and for initiating this interview. If was fun and enlivening and now is an offer to our PBC community.

    Rod Francis is a graduate of the PBC Advanced course, Living in Presence Coaching Course (LIPCC), and is a Certified Presence-Based Coach.

    Bebe Hansen

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  • Presence in Complexity Series #9: Investing in Embodied Capacity

    Presence in Complexity Series #9: Investing in Embodied Capacity

    Complexity requires embodying new ways to lead.

    The problem is, our lightning-fast cognition says “good enough” way before our nervous system has embodied a new capability. Physiological change and cognitive processing proceed at very different timescales.

    A sound strategy for development requires components for both. We must feed our agile and impatient cognition. And, include somatic practices that build embodied, physiologically supported ways of being. There is no way to shortcut the latter, and the former will not produce the same results.

    Ben, the newly promoted Director of Quality Control, was in trouble. Ben cared deeply about the organization. However, as smart and knowledgeable as he was, he was like a bull in a china shop with the operations people over whom he had authority. He alienated them with his brusqueness, and they understandably resisted. Morale and performance were suffering.

    Faced with the very real possibility of losing his job, Ben was committed to learning a new way of leading that would allow him to work more effectively with operations. As part of a coaching engagement, and really wanting accelerate his learning, Ben joined a ballroom dancing class with his wife.

    Accustomed to making things happen his way, Ben clumsily man-handled his wife around the dance floor, producing quick and painful results! With feedback, willingness, and guidance from the teacher, Ben began to experience in his body what it was like to lead. He practiced sensing his wife, joining with her, and moving gracefully together. This worked much better (and was fun and very good for their marriage!)

    Dancing showed him the essence of what it could be to partner with the operations people at work. He brought these experiences back into the workplace and experimented with this new sensibility. Over time, Ben’s experimentation led to real partnering with the folks on the line. Coupling this embodied learning with parallel development strategies, Ben was able to turn his situation around and went on to become quite successful in his role.

    Our marvelous nervous system is adept at encoding life’s experiences into long term memory.

    Faced with a challenging job, Ben did what he’d always done: Focused on results, being direct. He was well-intentioned, but the results his actions produced were far from what he intended. This is what often happens in complexity.

    Like Ben, our marvelous nervous system is adept at encoding life’s experiences into long term memory. We learned well who we should be, and the habits that supported this identity over time. However, complexity challenges our identities in sometimes painful ways.

    Complexity asks much of us. We need new ways of sensing, being, and acting. We can’t create a different future from the same body — remember the popular definition of insanity? When we face challenges, we need new capabilities NOW.

    The beautiful thing is that we know how to train our nervous system to organize itself around what matters to us.

    The good news? The beautiful thing is that we know how to train our nervous system to organize itself around what matters to us. An investment in embodied learning can become a life-long practice in the continual renewal and restructuring of our psycho-biology.

    We direct our attention towards what we care about. Then, we cultivate inner conditions that are aligned and congruent. We invite this aligned state to take up residence in our nervous system, knowing that we are actually, literally, changing the neural networks that shape and define us. In so doing, we are intentionally becoming a different person, a different body, for the sake of effectively leading towards the future that we care about.

    Our development accelerates a natural process that has its own intelligence. We naturally move towards greater capacity, greater complexity, and an ever-larger circle of care. And, there are many methods that accelerate this natural process. Here are some that are particularly powerful:

    • Somatic practices: Like the ballroom dancing example above, we can find ways to practice in our body the capabilities that we need. Tai chi to practice settling our state, tennis to practice delegation and being in conversation, parachuting to practice trust while jumping into the unknown, conscious breathing to practice settling ourselves in high pressure meetings.
    • Community of practice: Find, or create, a community of people who share your interests and who are committed learners. Build regular structures for engaging with these people and practicing together. Be with people who are on a path of development, who are committed learners, and who have some discipline about learning.
    • Who you hang with: Find some conversation and thought partners with whom to have regular exchanges of ideas and support. Find people who are inspiring, who are intellectually nimble and able to take multiple perspectives, who will be direct and honest with you, who can be compassionate and incisive. Be with people who challenge and energize you; with whom you feel more alive and more yourself. (You can trust this feeling.)
    • Challenges: Say Yes to commitments that you don’t know you can fulfill on. Take on projects that demand you be someone other than who you’ve been so far.
    • Out of the box: Disrupt what you normally do in order expand your perspective. Begin small: take a different route to work, change something about how you structure time, write with your left hand, listen to music when you ordinarily wouldn’t. Then, you can travel outside your home country, look through a telescope, visit a national park, visit with people who live a very different life than you live and see the world through their eyes.

    Our development accelerates a natural process that has its own intelligence.

    Consider these questions:

    • What complexity challenge do you face?
    • What new capabilities do you need for this challenge?
    • What practices might build your capacity?

    Doug Silsbee

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  • Presence in Complexity Series #8: Scaling Awareness

    Presence in Complexity Series #8: Scaling Awareness

    Complexity is unpredictable. Our world responds to good intentions and common sense actions with perverse and unintended consequences. Our noblest efforts fail to accomplish what we believe we should be able to accomplish. This is of course a huge challenge to our sense of self!

    And, it’s not personal!

    Complexity is actually normal

    Complexity is actually normal. Even when cause and effect relationships are invisible. And, even when people with different motivations, and our own competing commitments, derail what we intend.

    Guess what? There really are alternatives to working longer, pushing harder, concentrating more, or finding just the right experts to advise us (all of which are brilliant and useful strategies in certain contexts.)

    Leadership techniques such as project management tools, performance management systems, outcome-based planning and complicated strategy development also have their place. However, in complexity, traditional tools often fail to produce the desired results, distorting our view and assuming a level of cause and effect correlation that simply isn’t there. And, they ignore feedback loops, polarities, competing commitments and other inherent complexities that derive from the human condition.

    in complexity, traditional tools often fail to produce the desired results, distorting our view and assuming a level of cause and effect correlation that simply isn’t there.

    Action in a complexity context is less about directing and engineering a process towards our desired outcomes. It is more about establishing an overall direction, discerning the present state of the system and the dynamics as best we can see them, stabilizing our internal condition, and facilitating a collective exploration of this context along with others who can help with the discernment of what we might invite to come forward.

    In complexity, a different approach to leading is more likely to provide learning, build resilience, and and to evoke new responses from the system around us.

    Leaders can cultivate spaciousness within themselves, focusing on the creation of conditions that make desired futures more likely

    Leaders can cultivate spaciousness within themselves, focusing on the creation of conditions that make desired futures more likely.

    Probing, taking multiple perspectives, experimenting, questioning and embracing “not knowing” can often both gather really useful information about how the system behaves as well as actually tweak the system in useful ways.

    Consider these strategies for acting in your complexity context:

    • Normalize complexity. Have real conversations about how complexity is different. Share experiences and feelings. Engage the people in your system about their experience of unpredictability and uncertainty, and normalize it. It’s astounding what a relief it can be when people begin to understand that nobody actually could know what the solution is! We are right where we should be, and we can engage together to explore and discover what’s next.
    • Center yourself. Having done the inner work to be able to de-couple your own inner state from the stresses of your context, act in ways that support the others in your system in doing the same. A group of healthy, smart, creative people who are able to maintain a pocket of sanity and perspective in the midst of a crazy system can accomplish great things. Leadership is largely about building a culture; culture starts with what we embody and model.
    • Design and conduct safe-to-fail experiments: Conduct small scale, cheap, interesting experiments that are designed to explore how the system works, and that can be amplified if they do something worthwhile, or recovered from quickly if they don’t work. These experiments reveal things about the way the system works. Examples: hold the Monday meeting standing up for a month. Encourage a set of employees to work from home one day a week. Crowd-source logos for a new business, offering a small prize for the winner.
    • Organize around direction, not goals. Specific, measurable goals can drive organizing and planning. They also tend to narrow possibilities to one track towards the future. They become standards against which we measure ourselves in ways that actually reduce creativity and blind us to complexity dynamics. It is helpful to articulate an overall direction (e.g., better responsiveness to customer complaints, increased competency at delegating key tasks, more innovative product pipelines) and then to hold the focus on this overall direction while we experiment and amplify what seems to be working.
    Organize around direction, not goals

    The usual ways of leading are often ineffective or even counter productive in complex environments. It actually can be tremendously liberating to be able to name this, to recognize that we’ve been spending too much energy in approaches that actually don’t work, and to play with a more spacious and wise way of leading that recognizes the dynamics of complexity. What if leading could in fact be both easier and more successful?

    Consider these questions. Then change something, take some new action, or have a different conversation:

    • How are you seeking to drive or engineer change in ways that, if you’re really honest with yourself, aren’t working so well?
    • With whom could you have a conversation about these ideas?
    • What simple, “safe-to-fail experiment” might you try in your system? Who would play? What might you learn?

     

    Doug Silsbee

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  • Presence in Complexity Series #7: Resilience: De-Coupling State from Context

    Presence in Complexity Series #7: Resilience: De-Coupling State from Context
    Directing attention instantly and directly modifies our inner condition.

    We live in extraordinary times.

    It is a new form of agency to begin to discover that we can affect our mood, our sense of ourselves, our outlook on life, and our thoughts simply by directing our attention where we choose.

    What do you mean? No drugs, no therapy, no decades of self-improvement reading? Really? Just directing our attention? That sounds too good to be true!

    Well, yes and no. Yes, directing attention instantly and directly modifies our inner condition. And, with practice, we can build increasing fluidity at accessing new perspectives and greater resilience through our factory-loaded capabilities.

    And, no, it’s not always that simple, and, even when it’s simple, it’s not necessarily easy. Let’s break this down a bit.

    The cognitive portions of our nervous system (most frequently represented by the brain) are working constantly to make meaning of the world. We rehash prior experience in order to learn from it. And, we plan for the future by anticipating problems and opportunities and preparing for them.

    The nervous system is exquisitely designed to ensure the survival of the organism in order to perpetuate the species. Most often, in our contemporary world, this is more about perpetuating identity and a pervasive sense of self than about physical survival, but in marginalized groups, in war, in poverty, with refugees, physical survival is indeed what is at stake.

    The brain engages in identity-preserving “survival” activities relentlessly and automatically.

    The brain engages in identity-preserving “survival” activities relentlessly and automatically. Seeing our thinking processes from the balcony perspective reveals an obsessive pre-occupation with re-living the past and preparing for the future. Triggers range from the mundane (a mildly irritating email, or something we suddenly remember we forgot to attend to) to challenges to our identity (a professional public failure, a conflict) to the traumatic and overwhelming (the experience of a car accident, violence, racism or sexism.)

    Obviously, these are very different scales of triggering, but the fundamental processes of disruption of what we experience as “normal” are related. Our stress hormones go up, our heartbeat increases, our thoughts become rapid. We are triggered and reacting. Our inner condition has been disrupted by the outer context.

    In many leadership contexts this experience of disruption, reactivity and disorganization is pervasive and continuous. We get caught up in the mood, pace, and intensity of what is going on around us. We “take on” the state of the system.

    The more responsibility we feel for what is happening around us (and clearly this is the case for most leaders) the easier it becomes to be in a continual state of reaction. Our inner state becomes entangled with our context as we react to events unfolding around us which are not predictable and over which we have little control.

    Sound familiar? You, like I, live in a complex world that is continually challenging your identity. You experience this complexity as triggering precisely because you can’t master and control what is happening. And, you have been trained to believe that you should be able to do so.

    The good news is that you can begin to cultivate the capacity to de-couple your internal state from the context. The cognitive function of “executive control” can be harnessed to direct your attention to something of our choosing. For example, per a previous post, directing your attention into sensation instantly changes your experience of yourself.

    Here, the Subject to Object move of adult development becomes visible and pragmatic. You learn to step outside yourself and take a profoundly liberating balcony view. These four small shifts add up to big resilience:

    We can’t lead if we are entangled with the system around us: overwhelmed by, and therefore undifferentiated from, our context.

    Sense, and name, what is happening in your context. This naming makes it visible and knowable. It puts you on the balcony, seeing clearly what is triggering you or what feels overwhelming.

    • Sense, and name, your own reactions to this context. Bear witness to how your identity is challenged, how you are taking on the stress of the system, how your thoughts are racing and shoulders hunched and attention span decreasing. Take a balcony view of our own experience.
    • Consciously direct your attention in order to interrupt the automaticity of your own nervous system’s response to triggering. This begins to reveal agency in self-regulating your own state. Your balcony view here is that your state reacts to, but is not determined by, the context.
    • With practice and sustained witnessing, you may arrive at the transcendent realization described by Viktor Frankl. After years in a Nazi concentration camp, he wrote that “the last of the human freedoms is to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances.” This is the essence of resilience: the de-linking of our internal state from the context around us. This is liberation.

    I don’t claim that this is necessarily easy. The four shifts described above may take years of practice. Old and deep wounds heal slowly and may always remain triggerable.

    Yet, this de-coupling of state from context is crucial for leaders. We can’t lead if we are entangled with the system around us: overwhelmed by, and therefore undifferentiated from, our context. Our internal state has become part of a self-reinforcing feedback loop. The actions that arise from this state are likely to perpetuate or exacerbate the prevailing dynamic.

    We must embody optimism and creativity and boldness and kindness even when the system around us is overwhelmed and reactive and chaotic and mean-spirited.

    Leaders must learn to de-couple their state from the context. We must embody optimism and creativity and boldness and kindness even when the system around us is overwhelmed and reactive and chaotic and mean-spirited. This resilience is key to leading in a way that is transformative.

    Begin by cultivating your executive control of attention. Well-grounded research  demonstrates that as little as 8 minutes a day of consistent meditative attention practice produces long term increases in well-being, the capacity to take new perspectives, and to sustain equanimity in the midst of disruptions. That’s a pretty big ROI for learning to de-couple your state from your context!

    Of course, Frankl was a remarkable guy. It’s patently unrealistic to expect to attain his liberating realization after a few 8 minute meditation sessions. We performance driven perfectionists naively think we should be able to make anything happen, and happen on our timeframe. This belief is a toxic recipe for suffering when operating in complexity: things really don’t work that way at all.

    Relaxing, being present, and engaging in our worlds in new ways is both liberating and calls for more patience than our driven world easily supports. Baker Roshi said, “Enlightenment is an accident; practice makes us accident prone.”

    Start now.

    • How does your inner state reflect the outer conditions in which you lead?
    • How are you taking on the conditions of your context?
    • What exceptions have you noticed? What is an experience of your state being very different from what was going on around you?
    • How might you experiment with de-coupling your state from your context?

    Doug Silsbee

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  • Presence in Complexity Series #6: Leadership Presence in Complexity

    Presence in Complexity Series #6: Leadership Presence in Complexity
    Leadership presence is the means by which our internal feeling states are shared into our relationships.

    Leadership presence is the means by which our internal feeling states are shared into our relationships.

    Consider this thought experiment. You are walking down the sidewalk alone, at night. Someone is coming the other way on the same sidewalk, a hundred yards away. There’s nobody else around. How does this feel?

    Well, how it feels depends on a lot of things. If you are a woman, and the other person is a man, it’s likely to be different than if it’s the other way around. We sense the race, gender, age, manner of walking of the other person. Our nervous systems, unbidden, manufacture stories about the other person and the situation that may be wildly inaccurate but which we believe to be factual. As our two bodies sense each other from a distance, we each assess the relative power and risk in the situation. By the time we are within 50 feet of each other, both of us know who is going to step off the curb and defer to the other. No language is needed. This is an example of a relational field.

    Another example. We sit through a keynote with a compelling speaker. The speaker looks around the room, sensing the audience. She takes her time, changing her voice and cadence, injecting humor to shift the feeling in the room, using both animated movement and stillness in her body to produce affect and dynamism in the audience. We are spellbound, riveted. We feel our own energy and aliveness, knowing that the moment is special, and that the whole room feels it.

    We could analyze what she is doing in terms of presentation skills and non-verbal communication techniques, which is part of the truth. However, it is more precise to say that she is attuned to the audience, that the audience senses this connectedness with her, and that collectively, we are experiencing a relational field within which something remarkable is happening.

    Consider that our relationships are, in large part, interactions between biological systems. To pretend that communication is simply a matter of speaking the right words ignores millions of years

    Our relationships are, in large part, interactions between biological systems.

    of biology and a lifetime of accumulated experience. Relational fields are the invisible, yet palpable fields of energy that connect us when we are present with someone.

    Skillful leadership has this kind of attunement. Presence can unite. Presence can build relatedness and connection.

    Rather than the traditional heroic model of leaders acting on the world, and shaping it according to our intentions, we begin to experience leadership as a deeper process of acting with the world.

    Why should leaders in complexity be concerned with this? In short, our internal condition is a significant factor in the dynamics of complexity. Our nervous system is a component of the feedback loops that build or undermine a system’s resilience. Anxious, driven, and over-focused leaders reinforce teams and organizations that are themselves anxious, driven, and over-focused. Settled, open, creative, and optimistic leaders foster the same traits in the human systems around them.

    In complexity, much is unpredictable. However, when we learn to de-link our internal state from this unpredictable context, we begin to embody states that are congruent with what we care about.

    We can reduce the pervasive anxiety and stress within ourselves, and through our presence, in the system around us.

    Because of the relational field, our internal state is transmittable and palpable to others. (The examples in this post illustrate this principle.) Through presence, our state of creativity, optimism, settledness, and resourcefulness becomes available to others. Our nervous system becomes a resource for others. We often can’t know solutions to the complex, intractable problems we are facing. Yet, we can reduce the pervasive anxiety and stress within ourselves, and through our presence, in the system around us.

    A striking example was shared with me by Charles Casto, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s senior executive in Japan during the Fukushima disaster. According to Casto, the remarkable leadership of Naohiro Masuda was a significant factor in avoiding catastrophe.

    Masuda was the superintendent at Fukushima Daichi’s sister nuclear plant 10 miles up the coast. The sister plant, Fukushima Daini, faced similar conditions after being overwhelmed by the 2011 tsunami.

    Barking orders and jumping into crisis problem-solving would likely not have worked in the immediate aftermath. Faced with rapidly changing and terrifying realities (magnitude 7 aftershocks, power out, sharks in the parking lot, uncertain fates of loved ones, potential nuclear meltdown, etc.) Masuda was calm and measured. He provided updates on aftershocks, and simply waited until the immediate chaos had settled down, allowing staff members’ own sense-making processes to catch up to the realities, and then to move fast when needed. What might have seemed to some a slow reaction to a crisis situation actually became crucial to moving fast and efficiently when it was time to do so.

    Our inner state becomes an attractor in the complex system of our context.

    The more resourceful and congruent we become, the more our energy and presence begins to shape the relational field in which we are interacting. Our organizing principle as an individual becomes an organizing principle in the system. Our inner state becomes an attractor in the complex system of our context.

    We are living in unprecedented times. The cross-currents of unpredictability are disruptive and, for some, terrifying. The humans with whom you live, work, and share benefit from the stability of your presence.

    In fact, your presence is an important part of your response to what is happening around you.

    • Who around you is stressed and anxious and ungrounded?
    • How are you stabilizing yourself, in the face of what’s going on in your world?
    • How might you extend your presence through the relational field around you in order
      to be a resource to others?

     

    Doug Silsbee

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  • Presence in Complexity Series #5: Embodying Congruent States

    Presence in Complexity Series #5: Embodying Congruent States
    To the extent that the system around us being chaotic or fragmented means that we are chaotic and fragmented internally, we have lost the boundaries that distinguish us from the system.
    To the extent that the system around us being chaotic or fragmented means that we are chaotic and fragmented internally, we have lost the boundaries that distinguish us from the system.

    Wow, what a world we live in!

    It’s a New Year. And, we face a level of risk and uncertainty that I’ve not experienced since the Cuban Missile Crisis. My father is in the hospital, facing difficult decisions about surgery. My plans for the next weeks are completely subject to events. It can feel that there’s not much ground to stand on.

    We are all constantly sensing and reacting to what is going on around us. When things are difficult or chaotic, this can be triggering in many ways. Our inner condition is sometimes completely invisible to us. More often, we just believe that our impatience, urgency, fragmented attention and tight shoulders are the inevitable results of our circumstances. We tell ourselves that we’ll take some time off when the project is complete. Or when our new team member gets up to speed. And, we endure.

    We miss the fact that our taking on the condition of the system makes us part of the problem. To the extent that the system around us being chaotic or fragmented means that we are chaotic and fragmented internally, we have lost the boundaries that distinguish us from the system. Our nervous system has become inseparable from the organizational culture and the system dynamics around us. We have lost our perspective, and with it, our capacity to be useful.

    This, from a client engagement a few years ago:

    I worked with a leader a few years ago who had established an audacious business goal with her team. Ruth was a brilliant and charismatic leader, but in spite of her stellar track record in a very specialized role, also harbored inner doubts about her qualifications, and feared that she’d be “found out.” The stakes were high for her whole team.

    In an unconscious effort to prove herself and accelerate the initiative, Ruth often dominated her tense and fast-paced team meetings. She interrupted, taking over others’ ideas, creating re-work, and disenfranchising team members in the meantime. This hyper-driven results orientation was adding to the stress in the system, and incurring significant costs in performance, workload, and team members’ ownership of the business goal.

    De-linking our inner state from our context gives us the freedom to represent and embody something entirely new within the systems we intend to influence.
    De-linking our inner state from our context gives us the freedom to represent and embody something entirely new within the systems we intend to influence.

    One of the great discoveries of the human condition is that we all have the capacity to direct and organize our attention in ways of our own choosing. We can de-link our inner condition from our outer circumstances.

    De-linking our inner state from our context gives us the freedom to represent and embody something entirely new within the systems we intend to influence. We can become an antidote to reactivity. We can be both a symbol and an instigator of a different way of being.

    De-linking provides the freedom to choose an organizing principle, an inner state, that is in fact helpful and supportive of the future we intend to invite. We become internally congruent with a value, a cause, a destination that matters to us. This freedom gives us the possibility of becoming ever more intentional about what we take a stand for.

    It is crucial that we embody what matters to us. Embodied leadership is how we turn minute firings of neurons into dams, books, trips to the moon, lasting relationships, financial success, and social justice. A future we care about. A culture of curiosity and experimentation. Relationships that are compassionate and supportive.

    As I write this, I am awaiting a call from the hospital in New York where my father is facing a difficult treatment decision. There is no question about where my embodied commitment lies. I have a very busy couple of weeks ahead of me. And, if he chooses to have surgery, I’m going to be with him.

    I am fully congruent in this. Sure, there are complexities that will need to be managed, events rescheduled or cancelled, and consequences. But, for me, that’s just details. My priorities are clear. I am going to be with my father.

    Embodied leadership is how we turn minute firings of neurons into dams, books, trips to the moon, lasting relationships, financial success, and social justice.
    Embodied leadership is how we turn minute firings of neurons into dams, books, trips to the moon, lasting relationships, financial success, and social justice.

    Holding the focus of what we care about is not simply a matter of a mental picture, or a set of words that describe what is important to us. It’s a matter of taking these things in so that we experience them as a felt state, as an inner condition, as an organizing principle.

    Ruth was prime for coaching. She intuitively knew that she had become part of the problem and recognized that she needed to shift something. Over time, she began to see how she was adding stress to the system. She experimented with replacing the old narrative that it was “all up to her” with a new narrative that her “team had the chops to deliver” on this goal. She began to organize her attention, and actions, around the assumption that her team could solve most of the big strategic and resource deployment issues that they faced. She didn’t have to provide constant motivation.

    Embodying this new narrative took time and practice. Ruth increasingly saw her urge to interrupt, and let it pass. As she held back more and more, she also explicitly communicated her confidence in her team’s resourcefulness. She settled her own internal state, which in turn helped team meetings become more relaxed, productive, and creative. She asked questions, sat back in her chair rather than leaning forward, and allowed pauses and silence where previously every moment had been pressured and packed.

    She extended calm confidence into the team environment. They in turn stepped into this new space in astonishing new ways.

    Here’s the key. The behaviors that become problematic for us as leaders were acquired previously in our lives in conditions that no longer exist. But, because these behaviors worked at the time, they became embodied as tendencies that tend to emerge under pressure and stress now, decades later.

    When we practice in this way, we cultivate useful and resilient states that are available to us both now and in the future.
    When we practice in this way, we cultivate useful and resilient states that are available to us both now and in the future.

    We can harness the same mechanisms of neuroplasticity and embodied learning to develop and integrate new congruent states, organized around commitments, futures and values of our own choosing. When we practice in this way, we cultivate useful and resilient states that are available to us both now and in the future.

    • What habits do you engage in that actually reinforce unhelpful dynamics in your relationships?
    • What resourceful internal state do you wish was available when this happens?
    • What conditions produce this state? And, how might you practice it when those conditions are not present?

    Doug Silsbee

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  • Hope in Bad Times

    Hope in Bad Times

    To be hopeful in bad times is not foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

    What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

    And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

    – Howard Zinn

    Doug Silsbee

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  • Presence in Complexity Series #4: Resourcing with Presence in Challenging Times

    Presence in Complexity Series #4: Resourcing with Presence in Challenging Times
    We live in very unpredictable times. And, this has profound effects on our moment-by-moment experience.
    We live in very unpredictable times. And, this has profound effects on our moment-by-moment experience.

    Complexity, for leaders who are accustomed to making things happen, is an uncomfortable space. Lack of predictability can trigger us in ways that reduce our resourcefulness when we need it most.

    As a ready example, note your own reaction to the recent US election. What has been your mood? How are you reacting to breaking news? How do you feel this in your body?

    Whatever your belief system, we live in very unpredictable times. And, this has profound effects on our moment-by-moment experience.

    Complexity triggers our attachments and aversions. Where we sense opportunities to reinforce our identity, our energy ramps up and we act to build ourselves up.

    Conversely, when we feel under threat, aversions arise. We naturally act from fear when our sense of who we are is put at risk by circumstances we can’t control. Both attachments and aversions are likely to cause us to respond in ways that are less than helpful.

    Awareness of our internal experience, and specifically of the physical sensations that are always present within us, turns out to be a powerful doorway for resilience and creativity.

    Please try this brief experiment.

    Take a brief break from reading. (I know, I know… it’s a cliffhanger and you’re super busy and you just want to get the takeaway and move on. But, consider …. right now, you’re actually either avoiding doing something you don’t want to do. Or, you’re seeking to learn something new. Either of these will be well served by your taking an actual break. Pausing is a win either way. Trust me on this!)

    Now, read this paragraph. Then close your eyes. With awareness, take a full inhale, hold it briefly, and then allow a very long, slow and complete exhale through your nose. Be fully present. Sense the breath exiting your nose. Feel your chest and torso settling. At the end of the exhale, notice how you feel different. Specifically, what changed? Identify three words that describe how you feel different. Now, close your eyes and do this…..

    — Pause for experiment! —

    Directing attention itself changes, and regulates, the condition of our entire nervous system.
    Directing attention itself changes, and regulates, the condition of our entire nervous system.

    These three phenomena did not happen because you took a breath. You take many thousands of breaths every day. Whatever changed did so because you directed your attention to your breath, and more generally, into the sensations that are constantly present in your body.

    The experiment asked you to shift your attention from cognition (like the reading and meaning-making you’re doing in this moment) to the present-moment sensations that arise in your body (like during the breath pause.) You could repeat the breath pause, and if you do it sincerely and with attention, you will get very similar results.

    By experimenting in this way, we can discover many amazing things. Here are just a few; there are many more. All come factory-loaded in the world-class performance package included with your precious human body!

    • in any moment, we can choose where to direct our attention
    • we have an attention selector. Neuroscientists call this “executive control.” It is like the channel selector on a TV, that can be used to direct our attention where we choose
    • inside us is a wealth of constantly changing and dynamic experience
    • sensations provide rich information about ourselves, including how we are reacting to our context
    • directing attention itself changes, and regulates, the condition of our entire nervous system
    • attention brings us into the present moment, making us immediately more aware, creative, and resourceful.

    There is a lifetime of fascinating things about the workings of human consciousness to explore here. Please don’t take these claims on faith. Investigate for yourself. Verify, from your own experience, how these claims hold up.

    Complexity is a feature of our context. We are constantly being buffeted by events, many of which are unpredictable and therefore triggering. This requires different ways of leading than we are prepared us for.

    We can learn to lead in complex and dangerous times with creativity, resourcefulness, spaciousness, and choice.
    We can learn to lead in complex and dangerous times with creativity, resourcefulness, spaciousness, and choice.

    Leaders are trained to observe the world, collect data, and base decisions on that data. It is crucial for leaders to recognize the dynamics of complexity in our context.

    However, if we focus our attention exclusively on what’s happening in the world, we will gain important information. And, we will miss essential information about our internal condition, as we are reacting to this context.

    Attention practices are essential. We must learn to sense, within our own aliveness, how our context is affecting us. This is revealed, with immediacy and clarity, in the rich tapestry of sensation-based information within us. It is revealed only in the present moment.

    From this foundation of awareness, we can build the capacity to cultivate inner conditions of our choosing. We can learn to lead in complex and dangerous times with creativity, resourcefulness, spaciousness, and choice.

    This is not futuristic. This is now. The exponentially increasing risks and complexity as we face a very uncertain future require this of all of us.

    I invite your reflections and comments:

    • How, specifically, do you experience triggering inside yourself in the current context?
    • What do you sense is being asked of you now?
    • What are you doing to resource yourself in order to respond creatively to this context?

    Doug Silsbee

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  • Presence in Complexity Series #3: What Does the Body Have to Do With It?

    Presence in Complexity Series #3: What Does the Body Have to Do With It?

    Everything, really! Our body structures our interpretations of the world around us, generates our reactions to things around us, and determines the actions we take. Attention in the body is the key to staying resourceful when the world isn’t cooperating. It is how we can bring bringing awareness and choice into our reactions to the world.

    These urges drive our relationships, our connections with what’s important, our curiosity, and our avoidance of danger.
    These urges drive our relationships, our connections with what’s important, our curiosity, and our avoidance of danger.

    In the previous post, we saw how our identity gets challenged in complexity. We are constantly confronted by our limits. We know we can get things done, but our project is plagued by delays. People we usually can count on disappoint us, and we find ourselves angry. Something unpredictable happens, and we tell ourselves we should have seen it coming. Or, we are surprised by our over-reaction to a provocation that ordinarily wouldn’t seem a big deal.

    The person we imagine ourselves to be would sail smoothly through all this. But, the person we actually are isn’t sailing smoothly at all!

    We find ourselves set back on our heels over and over again by realities that confront us with gaps in our capabilities. Or, call into question the very competencies that give us pride and meaning and a sense of self.

    Relax… this is simply complexity challenging our identity! It’s normal!

    Identity is an embodied phenomenon. Our identity, our reliable sense of self, is held in place by attachments and aversions. Attachments are urges towards experiences that are safe and pleasurable and that reinforce who we believe ourselves to be. And aversions are urges to avoid what is unsafe, unpleasant, or challenges who we believe ourselves to be.

    Attachments and aversions can be felt in the body. For example, the tightening in our belly as someone gives us difficult feedback is an aversion. The small surge of energy when we see an email in our inbox from someone we made a request of is an attachment. The impulse to eat just one more cookie is an attachment; the resistance we feel to drafting a touchy email is an aversion.

    When we begin to look, attachments and aversions are everywhere. They are the direct experience of the urges within our body as it constructs and defends our identity. These urges drive our relationships, our connections with what’s important, our curiosity, and our avoidance of danger.

    Attachments and aversions are… the direct experience of the urges within our body as it constructs and defends our identity.
    Attachments and aversions are… the direct experience of the urges within our body as it constructs and defends our identity.

    These urges are constant and vigilant. They steer us automatically towards what strengthens identity and away from what threatens identity.

    How is this pragmatic?

    In our coach training and our work with leaders in complexity, we practice awareness of our interior experience. We slow ourselves down. We pay attention. When we focus on our experience, there is lots of information. We miss it when we are running fast, but the information is there for the reaping. We just have to learn how to look.

    We can use this information to guide us as leaders and humans. Sensing attachments and aversions reveals our body acting to strengthen or defend identity. We can learn to stay present to our body’s precursors to action, intervening and choosing before it is too late to choose.

    Five minutes ago, as I sat here writing this blog post, a text message arrived. A close colleague was inviting me to collaborate on a choice piece of work overseas, three weeks from now. I could feel my attachments. My heartbeat quickened. My energy rose. I sat up straighter. I watched my thoughts began to race as my nervous system automatically began to figure out how to fit this into an already packed calendar. I watched myself generate stories to justify doing so: this work would pay well, it’s overseas in a cool place, it’s with a high profile client, it would be fun and gratifying to work with this colleague, etc, etc…

    All true. And, I recognized the feel of this pull. I saw clearly how the opportunity tugged at my identity by triggering multiple attachments. I saw that these strong identity-driven urges to say Yes were leading towards a commitment that would require abandoning several other promises that I had already made to my family and to another project that is very important to me.

    In the past, I would have found a way to make it work, and cleaned up the messes later. Now, I am able to see that my attachment was hijacking me. I replied to my colleague that I appreciated the invitation but couldn’t make it work. And, I came back to writing this blog post, sitting on a rainy morning next to my wife and my dogs, writing what is mine to write.

    Our nervous system is designed to avoid dangers like hungry lions, and operates fundamentally the same with the creation and preservation of identity.
    Our nervous system is designed to avoid dangers like hungry lions, and operates fundamentally the same with the creation and preservation of identity.

    It is the body’s job to keep the organism safe. The mechanisms to do so are elegantly designed to handle this, reliably and below the level of awareness. Our nervous system is designed to avoid dangers like hungry lions, and operates fundamentally the same with the creation and preservation of identity. Like angry spouses. Or, people with power who want to give us feedback. Our body is constantly organizing itself, through attachments and aversions, to navigate the world in ways that construct and protect our identity.

    Unless and until we bring awareness to illuminating the inner workings of these drivers, they run us. We can learn to recognize the experience of our identity being challenged by unpredictable circumstances. We can bring awareness to, the precise physical sensations that indicate our personality is involved in our reactions. We can do this long before our slower and more deliberate thinking processes can figure it out.

    We can use this awareness in many ways in order to become more fluid, creative, and resourceful when the world doesn’t show up in the ways we wish it would.

    Consider, in relation to some significant aspect of your current conditions that you experience as challenging:

    • What is important to you in this situation? How does this situation contain opportunities or threats for your identity?
    • What are you attached to? What aversions are at play?
    • How do you experience these attachments and aversions in your body? In your emotions? In the stories that you tell yourself about what might happen?

    Doug Silsbee

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  • Presence in Complexity Series #2: Identity on the Line

    Presence in Complexity Series #2: Identity on the Line
    Our responses in complexity are often determined, in ways that are both debilitating and invisible to us, by our perspective
    Our responses in complexity are often determined, in ways that are both debilitating and invisible to us, by our perspective

    We experience situations as difficult when they call into question our sense of who we are.

    Among most of the people I know, domestically and overseas, there is a sense of outrage about last week’s election. Among others, there is presumably a sense of vindication, of optimism, of finally being heard. Both of those responses are understandable. Both sets of people are equally convinced that they are in possession of the truth. Our response to the election is determined by its resonance with our identity, with our very sense of self.

    “Challenging” isn’t a descriptor of the situation so much as a descriptor of our perspective on the situation. Our responses in complexity are often determined, in ways that are both debilitating and invisible to us, by our perspective.

    We might believe that things should be otherwise. We tell ourselves: “I should have predicted this.” “I should be able to control this situation or solve that problem.” “I should be up to this challenge.”

    When we believe these things, we will likely experience our situation as frustrating. Our identity feels on the line. We may tighten down and work harder. Paradoxically, these very understandable responses may make it harder to actually change the situation.

    When we see that the situation is inherently unpredictable and uncontrollable, we relax. And, paradoxically, this relaxation can make it easier to see and make new moves. Being present to how our identity is being triggered is a key to this most useful relaxation and acceptance.

    Our deepest drives feed a relentless, unconscious, and automatic life-long process of constructing and defending our identity
    Our deepest drives feed a relentless, unconscious, and automatic life-long process of constructing and defending our identity

    Let’s explore the notion of identity, and see where this leads us.

    Our identity was formed early in life as we sought to discover how to survive and thrive in families of origin that were universally less than perfect. As young children, we navigated this less-than-ideal circumstance. We shaped ourselves to get what we needed from life, and to differentiate ourselves as a person. Successful strategies become embodied in our personality, and eventually come to define us.

    (It’s fun to watch my four year old grandson, Max, doing this…. the amount of will this little guy possesses, and is willing to assert in pursuit of what he wants or doesn’t want at a particular time, is absolutely astounding! He is a force to be reckoned with!)

    Identity is how a developing human becomes solidified as a personality. Our deepest drives feed a relentless, unconscious, and automatic life-long process of constructing and defending our identity.

    The Buddhist notions of attachments and aversions speak to this. They are the self-correction mechanisms that keep identity in place. They are the underlying drivers of behavior.

    Attachments are the pulls towards something (a glass of wine, the admiration of others, solving a problem) that gives us positive experiences. Attachments are what advertisements trigger when they pitch make-up, drugs, vacations, or a candidate that tells us what we want to believe, even if it doesn’t make rational sense. As leaders, getting things done is supported by our attachments to action and results, to being successful.

    Aversions, on the other hand, are the instinctual mechanisms of avoidance. Originally designed to help us avoid predators, they work just as well as drivers to help us avoid embarrassment, looking stupid, or whatever our particular definition of failure might be.

    Attachments are the pulls towards something that gives us positive experiences
    Attachments are the pulls towards something that gives us positive experiences

    Bottom line? We seek what we are attached to. We avoid what we have aversions to. Underneath, and preceding, every behavior and action is an attachment or an aversion. Look and you will see them. They are the internal self-correction mechanisms through which we organize ourselves in life to keep our identity intact.

    So, back to complexity and suffering. Situations that are VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) challenge our identity as someone who can control events or make things happen.

    Complexity activates our attachments and aversions. We are attached to solving the problem or making progress or achieving results (because our identity is linked to those things happening.) And, we have an aversion to looking inadequate or failing or staying stuck (because our identity is linked to those things not happening.)

    Our experience of a complex environment is, in fact, directly correlated with the identity we have built over a lifetime, and now finds itself challenged by the very complexity in which we are leading.

    Similarly, our view of the election results depends on our whether our identity is being affirmed by the victor’s rhetoric. If it is, our attachments are triggered: we feel seen and our energy and optimism increase. Our identity responds to these messages, and we move towards the victor.

    If, on the other hand, our identity is threatened by the victor’s rhetoric, our response is very different. Our aversions will be triggered if we belong to any of the many groups he has insulted, or if our values and the people and things we care about are threatened.

    We can learn to see how our identity is being triggered by the situations we are in
    We can learn to see how our identity is being triggered by the situations we are in

    Unfortunately our biological tendency when our identity is under threat is to tighten down, do more, and work harder. Paradoxically, as we shall see in subsequent blog posts, these may be exactly the wrong things to do when we are operating in complexity. Tightening down and working harder are the instinctual responses to identity threats, but they can make it more difficult to navigate fluidly and creatively and compassionately in complexity. Acting in complexity with conventional, identity-preserving behaviors often makes the situation more difficult, and real progress more elusive.

    When our identity needs, and the attachments and aversions that keep them intact, are invisible to us, they sabotage our effectiveness as leaders in countless ways, small and large. This is true whether the situation is big (like the US election) or small (a difficult conversation with a loved one) or in between (like the teams and organizations we lead.)

    We can learn to see how our identity is being triggered by the situations we are in. And, we can learn to stay present with the attachments and aversions that arise in response to our situation, no matter how strong they are. This is the key to resilience and choice.

    • How does your current context challenge your identity? What risks do you experience, personally, in this situation?
    • How does your current context enliven and invite you to be your best?
    • What attachments do you recognize? What aversions? How do you experience these as reactions to complexity and unpredictability?

    Doug Silsbee

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