My Blog Has Moved

The Appreciate the Fog blog has moved to the www.appreciatethefog.com web site.
Now that my book, 'Appreciate the Fog: Embrace Change with Power and Purpose' has been published, it made sense to place web site and blog in the same place. I can be reached on:
twitter: @appreciatefog
email: stephen@appreciatethefog.com

My Heart Hurts

"I feel fragile and sad. What shall I do?"  Responses vary but many people have a natural response of putting the hurt behind them, looking for the positive way forward, and getting on with life. That's a great capacity and skill to have. There are times when parking our current feelings and getting on with life is crucial. However, anything overused can be problematic. An alternative, and one not so commonly espoused, is to take some time and be a friend to the part of you that is hurting, or angry, or confused, or whatever it is, and love that part. Ask that part of you what it needs, what it is afraid of, and as a loving friend deeply listen. Loving yourself in those moments of distress and intimately connecting with your feelings and needs, can have potent and lasting healing power, and is a fabulous means to building a meaningful relationship with yourself. It has an integrative benefit where the often shamed and isolated part(s) of you learn to trust, connect and be with the rest of you. Resilience and power can develop more fully in that environment.

This blog site is being replaced by http://www.appreciatethefog.com/wordpress1/

Stepping Into New Places

Every time you step into something new there are potential threats and opportunities. There is the unknown that may stir up fears within you, and also there are the hopes of something worthwhile, else you would be unlikely to venture forward. Stepping into a new space is a new birth and carries vulnerability, the uncertainty and the ignorance of what exists beyond the place you’re at. There can be a significant sense of aloneness and fragility like a butterfly emerging from its’ cocoon. At such times it is great to be companioned by true friends, those who you trust and who offer a degree of safety and prior experience as you learn to grow and expand in the new world. And when you cannot find someone to trust, then is a truly good time to feel a strong connection with your own self, and be open to trusting your capacity to cope with whatever may come your way, even if you have little reason to know how you will manage.

Want Authenticity? Be Authentic

In this crazy rat race we live in it can all too often feel superficial and divorced from reality. You might find yourself alone and adrift when surrounded by many people clamouring to ‘connect’ with you. Where is the real connection? Where is authenticity? What and who can you trust? Start with yourself. Forget your personality and all the learned baggage and protection you have developed over your lifetime. Build and strengthen the relationship you have with yourself, and allow others to see and experience the real you. That can be a scary and highly rewarding journey. Once initiated life and expansion becomes increasingly available, rather than contraction and effort of maintaining a façade. As you become more willing and able to present yourself authentically then you’ll find you draw into your life more people who are authentic with you.

Going Live With My New Site

If you have ever wanted to experience fog, try installing a new application as part of the process. It has largely gone well, with the installation of WordPress running smoothly, settings seemingly going well, and then I imported blog posts from my previous blog site. They all show up in the list of pages. Then I go to the site to view as a visitor might…

The fog is building. All I get is error messages for every link I select. The titles of imported posts are showing, but they all produce errors when clicked. Hmm. Frustration. Anxious because of other matters to deal with imposing time constraints, and and sense of spaciousness amidst all that because no one will find this blog or its errors as I have not told anyone it exists.

Finding a way of relaxing and reducing pressure is a great way of reducing the intensity of self-imposed fog, something I remind myself of when I am wise enough to check in with the part of me that knows. Time to post this and then calmly, spaciously do some problem solving. Finding my way out of this fog will be a pleasure, and I will be a step closer to a fully functioning web site.

My new site is www.appreciatethefog.com.

Authentic Leadership

Often in society the narcissist and the aggressive are rewarded. Much has been written in management literature about the prevalence of narcissistic qualities in leadership roles. Let’s face it, from the first moment we learn to interact with others, as children, we learn there is a pecking order, that the strong succeed, and that you must fight to be on top. The corporate world is full of examples that highlight the validity that these ‘truisms’ continue into adulthood and society in general. These tendencies extend into the way in which individuals maintain their position as much as how they obtain them. Examples include:

• Surrounding themselves with sycophants who praise and applaud the leader, and who will sing all is good while the ship is sinking so as to remain onside with the leader, until there is another leader with more relevance or power
• Making demands and issuing orders without caring what the impact is on the person or group, perhaps relying on bullying tactics to get what they want when meeting opposition, and often with the underlying assumption that their opinion counts more than fact-based research
• Blaming others for things that have gone wrong, never stopping to question their own contribution to poor outcomes or a crisis situation, even changing the truth to divert attention from themselves, or worse still onto someone else
• Sitting in the large chair behind the large desk while visitors to their office are offered a small, uncomfortable chair ensuring the visitor physically must look up to the leader
• Reaping praise and applause for a job well done without considering and recognising those who actually made the achievement possible

Unfortunately examples of such behaviours abound.

What interests me is the authentic leader. I have been observing one person demonstrating authentic leadership while faced with significant challenges, and it is inspiring. Attributes of the authentic leader include:

• Retaining responsibility and accountability without blaming or sniping at others
• Managing their own emotional response throughout a crisis, and providing a calming presence for others
• Actively seeking the best possible outcome for all involved
• Remaining true to their values regardless of pressure from others, or the behaviours exhibited in their direction by others
• Maintaining their integrity, being honest and truthful, and calling on others in a nonjudgmental manner to do the same
• Modelling resilience and being a resource for themselves, maintaining their own sense of self and self-respect
• Functioning from a place of personal power, being consistently and actively assertive, present, taking appropriate action, and being authentic and requiring that of others

It is unfortunately rare, and wonderful, when such examples are manifest in leaders. I appreciate being around such individuals because it is inspiring to me, and provides me with impetus to examine how I am and check in to determine if I am performing as I would wish to be noticed.

Recognising and Releasing Patterns

Abstract: As children we learn patterns of behaviour from our caregivers. In releasing the patterns we become free to be more fully our Selves. This article offers some examples of how to free ourselves from our own patterning. 

Psychology informs us that we inherit behaviours from our parents. We may directly learn or pick up behaviours from them. We may also develop behaviours to counteract their treatment of us as children; a reason some patterns seem to skip a generation, each generation responding in opposition to the one before. These behaviours can be so well entrenched that we are oblivious to their existence, or the thought processes they support and promote, and the filtering and distortion they create with how we perceive the world. Beneath them our true, unblemished selves exist.

Twelve years ago, while on a course, I was presented with an exercise to determine which parent was the source of my behaviours. I struggled because my father had exited my life when I was seven and I had not had contact with him since. I did not know whether he was alive or dead and I didn’t care. The instructor said, “If the pattern is not from your mother, it’s from your father.” That was the start of getting to know my father.

Certain milestone events forced me to confront my father. In leaving my first marriage I was caught by the fact that my eldest child was the age I had been, also as the eldest child, when my father left. Was I leaving to repeat a family pattern or because it was the right thing for me to do? I eventually recognised it was the right thing for me. However I also learned of some qualities I possessed in common with my father; autonomy and spontaneity in particular, that were suppressed in my marriage and were part of my drive to leave. Subsequently, I’ve done a lot of work around my patterns of behaviour, particularly those that serve to protect me, which also act as a shield and barrier to expressing my true Self. Some of these include people-pleasing, pessimism, and copious quantities of shame and inadequacy. Over time the effects of these have lessened as I have addressed underlying beliefs, values and perceptions.

A couple of years ago, after 40 years absence, my father rematerialised, sending me an email wishing to reconnect. Aside from the initial waves of shock, anger, disappointment, hurt and anxiety, the process of connecting with him via email brought up years of patterned protection against being hurt. Then a gorgeous woman entered my life, a beautiful and precious soul to whom I thoroughly opened and exposed my heart. I had never felt so alive, so free, dropping many of my protections developed from years of survival. Then she surprised me by exiting my life as dramatically as she had chosen to join it. The effect was profound. I felt abandoned. I connected with hurt, rage and anger that had been buried since my father had left. I had and took opportunities to express, in safe settings, the pent up emotion that had been stored and suppressed since I was a child. She provided a fabulous opportunity to uncover and connect with buried emotions, and in the process of releasing these I also gained some incredible insight into patterns underpinning the lockdown.

A significant pattern I unearthed was how everything I have done in life has been based on surviving rather than thriving. Interestingly, a significant portion of my book still waiting for me to move to publishing is about shifting from Survive Reactions to Thrive Responses, and now I understand some of my reticence in getting published. I still had a key to turn before I could authentically speak from that place of Thrive. Now I recognise how I have rejected opportunities that did not fit with my concept of surviving, pushed people away, and ring-fenced myself as a protection. While I have done extensive work on the individual protections and behaviours, the whole paradigm of survival was so pervasive I could not see it, like I imagine a fish cannot see water.

My father eventually arrived on a plane from England to meet. Healing took place. Of most profound significance to me was the clarity with which I have seen in him the patterns of behaviour I have been working to dismantle in myself for so many years. His return stirred up all my old patterning, and I was able to, as far as conscious awareness allowed, release rather than to re-enact them.

While few people can be blessed with a year like that one I experienced, there are things that can be done to identify and release patterns that we have:

• Observe your own results. What are you doing that gets in the way of success or that distorts or narrows your concept of success?
• Seek feedback from people who know you about behaviours that get in your way. This could be family, friends, and colleagues. Where consistency shows up in feedback from multiple people and/or across multiple settings, there is a good chance there is a real behaviour for you to work with.
• Counselling, coaching or other forms of guided journey into self.
• Journaling, drawing, dance or other unguided expressions of self.
• Defining and affirming new concepts of self that contradict old patterns. Work with the resistance that arises and move into a new way of being.

What gets in the way of your success, whether that be in professional, personal, relationship or other arenas? What patterns do you trip over when pursuing things that matter to you? Often our protective patterns show most influence and presence when we undertake something of significance to us, interrupting us to stop us being ‘hurt’ by failure or rejection or some other feared painful outcome. Moving positively into areas that matter can be supported by developing awareness of the patterns and addressing the underlying beliefs that drive our behaviours. 

Working with Self is a life-long experiential journey. It is rewarding and exciting. It is worth engaging with. I hope my journey inspires others to engage more fully with theirs, and I look forward to publishing my book, Appreciate the Fog: Embracing Change with Power and Purpose, for publication.