Photo credit: Steven Durbin Photography
If there’s one word I’ve heard clients use a lot recently, it’s the word reality.
It has come up as they’ve talked about what’s happening in their businesses right now. Because some of them are once more finding their pipelines to be a little short on flow. After a few months of order books starting to fill up again, they’re having another moment when the phones aren’t ringing.
Maybe it’s buyer uncertainty around how the new Cameron-Clegg coalition will pan out. Or market panic about the Eurozone crisis.
Whatever its cause, the return of relative silence brings back gut-wrenching, immobilising fear.
In coaching, clients want to put aside what they suddenly see as being the terribly indulgent work they’ve been doing on themselves.
“Right now I have to get back to reality,” they say.
Sometimes their tone is punishing. As if by supporting their personal development I’ve somehow lead them astray and am to blame for the stasis in their business development.
When I ask what getting back to reality looks like, they express different, pressing coaching needs.
“I’ve never really had to market myself before. Help me get my head round that.”
“I need to build my confidence in going into completely new networking situations.”
“Help me get over my fear of proactively calling people.”
These are the issues that are alive for them, and so we’ll go there. And yet I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t give voice to the panic that I intuit. Or question the clinging after control that I feel.
My clients are successful people in their own regard, irrespective of what hand life is currently dealing them. Whether they’re prepared to say so or not, they experience themselves as having much to lose. It’s not just money. It’s their reputation that’s at stake. Their power and influence. Their perceived competitive position versus peers and colleagues.
What has all the effort been for, if it can just all be swept away?
One guy told me of a dream he’d had. A nightmare, really. He’d been at the top of a mountain, and watched on, horrified, as a climber on an adjoining peak accidentally slipped on rubble and fell freely to certain death.
You don’t have to be an analyst to figure that one.
But such conversation takes coaching to a different place again. People want to move forward. At the same time they feel the weight of their own fears. Which need do they address?
Surely, I argue, the answer has to be both?
By all means, explore what you can do differently to open up your business-getting options. Look at your offering. Address your marketing weaknesses.
But don’t make the mistake of cutting off from yourself in the process. Don’t think that self-development is something you do after the crisis has passed.
Facing things in this way allows new questions to emerge:
- What responsibility might you be inappropriately shouldering for the current situation?
- What deep down failing do you fear is about to be unmasked?
- Who are you without your professional reputation and business persona?
- What gives your life meaning beyond this profession; this portfolio?
Life and nature bring times of uncertainty and silence. What if this lull was a normal, natural state of affairs? What qualities and resources in you, other than your cleverness and control, is it calling you to develop?
This is the opportunity in the silence: the chance to integrate; the chance to listen to your own soul.
Great, meaningful, deeply significant work happens when you really marinate in the meantime. It is not a distraction from the creative process, it is the creative process.
What silences have you faced recently? What opportunities have you allowed them to mean for you?
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Tim Brownson, Jen Smith and Jade , Christine Livingston. Christine Livingston said: The Opportunity In The Silence http://goo.gl/fb/69AWV [...]
Twitter: KateBacon
Fantastic post Christine and how timely! Right now allowing my “why” to emerge in the midst of not getting stuck in the mindset that the most familiar, comfortable part of what I do is the only way to generate income easily. Thanks for the reminder that self development is not at odds with reality…but the way to create a new way of being and doing that allows us to bring all of ourselves to our work!
Kate
Thanks for your comment, Kate, and I’m glad the post was useful. I think it’s too easy when business times are difficult to disengage from the deeper parts of ourselves while we pay attention to getting the financial wheels moving differently or better. But that so cuts us off from our creativity. For me, as business people, we need to address both. That’s what allows the biggest shifts.
Lovely to have you here, as ever. Take care!
Twitter: CubeRules
A big challenge is the duality of figuring out problems in the business and having enough perspective to also see the causes and impacts. The weeds are a poor place to get perspective and, yet, we need to beat back the weeds.
The weeds to often win.
This post shows we need both the perspective and the fire-fighting. At the same time.
Very nice, Christine; a timely reminder.
.-= Scot Herrick´s last blog ..The ultimate introduction to your new manager =-.
You summarise things SO well, Scot. “We need both the perspective and the fire-fighting. At the same time.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself!
Thanks for being here.
Hi Christine
Who knows what the “Cameron-Clegg coalition” will bring but things are looking far from good.
Lots of us have had to question the thing we take for granted… job security.
Shows how much most of us define ourselves by our job, by our profession, by the way we make a living.
Once that’s taken away we have to start figuring out a new definition – not easy.
.-= Keith Davis´s last blog ..Laugh and the world… =-.
Hi Keith,
I tend to agree with you on the Cameron-Clegg coalition front. The budget cuts just announced can only be the start, I suspect.
So many of us do define ourselves by our job, or profession. Or at least the way we’ve thought about and done it till now. Reinvention is going to be a need and a challenge for many of us. Not easy, as you say. But necessary for our own well-being.
Great to have you here, Keith. Thanks for contributing.
Hi Christine
Enjoyed contributing and thanks for leaving a comment on my blog – much appreciated.
.-= Keith Davis´s last blog ..Laugh and the world… =-.
Pleasure, Keith!
Beautifully put as always. I think our fears can manifest in many different ways and this is another one. We have to see it for what it is and know that it is all reality. Ironically those that embrace the process and the questions will be better prepared for the ups and downs in my opinion. Yes, be practical but temper that with respecting your journey and what your intuition is telling you.
I like that, Jen: “It is all reality.” It is indeed. I think the challenge we often had, especially when the road is more challenging, is to split off from the parts of our reality with which we’re less comfortable: our feelings and our intuitions. And yet they are real and hold so much for us.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment!
Twitter: JarrodLClark
Hi Christine,
I love this article. It’s very helpful for me to be able to not stress out as I face challenges in life. I should allow myself to develop during the process of the challenge and not wait until afterward to do so. Thanks for sharing!!
.-= Jarrod@ Optimistic Journey´s last blog ..What’s Next? That Is The Question =-.
You sum up the message beautifully, Jarrod. Allowing ourselves to develop during the process of challenge is spot on. It IS our learning edge, if only we can embrace it that way!
Glad you enjoyed the article and good to see you!
Hi,
One thing we always fear is change and yet we are in a state of transition everyday.
The question for me is, “what quality in myself do I need to develop in order to go to the next level or rise above this fear?”
Once I concentrate on developing or uncovering that quality the fear begins to lose it’s power over me.
My power lies within and it’s only there I can strengthen it authentically. Great post!
Thanks, Tess.
What a fabulous question to ask yourself at times of change!
You make a great point about us being in a state of transition everyday. I believe that we are constantly unfolding. Each manifestation calls us to learn something new about ourselves, move on from something that’s holding us back, bring forward a new quality, or shift our perspective on something. Life brings us the lessons that prompt each stage in the journey.
Thanks for being here!
Twitter: JulieWalraven
Wow, Christine! Hitting nails on the head again, are you?
As you know, the changes I made caused lots of ups and downs and now the clients are coming in and I got sidelined for a bit with health issues but even though I should be taking it slow yet, I am raring to go.
Getting all the systems going at the same time, taking care of yourself so you stay or get healthy, making wise financial decisions to have something to fall back on for the inevitable feast and famine times in business, realizing that marketing voices can’t be quiet long or the rush will pass you by, and making sure those marketing efforts are driven by wisdom and not fears or misguided advice.
Yup, lots to think on…
.-= Julie Walraven | Resume Services´s last blog ..Have You Googled You Lately? =-.
A fabulous post Christine
I think a lot of so called “fear” of the silence, whatever that silence might mean to an individual comes from the fact that they are outside of their comfort zone.
For a long time they’ve become accostumed to buisness being good and contracts coming in that when everything goes quite and to make the most of the opportunity they have step outside of their comfort zone. They have to confront the situation and get the wheels turning
Thanks, Ben.
You make a really perceptive point about “comfort zones”. At times of real work or business crisis, some brave souls who are more temperamentally oriented to change are able to use the challenge of the moment as a stimulus to totally reinvent what they do. Others need to build bridges from aspects of their current lives to span them across to something new. It’s such an individual thing. But, however they achieve it, that moving beyond what they know and where they feel safe is vital to get things moving in a new way.
I am glad to see someone finally speak up for those of us who find/found ourselves in situations where we had to stay put for a while. I hit the point where the excitement had gone out of the job long before I was ready to leave. Unlike the folks who “jumped,” I took advantage of the rut in the ways you suggest. Because it didn’t take all my energy to do my job, I was able to invest in my personal and spiritual life. There was energy to explore and expand. I eventually realized the passion I had once felt for the job wasn’t going to return, and then also realized it was because time and progress had shifted the job to a new place. I kept up with the shift so I remained an asset to my company, but I also took advantage of this as an opportunity to re-educate. When the time did come to jump, I was ready. When I offer advice to others who say “wow, you’re terrific!,” I often suggest what you are saying here. If the job leaves something to be desired, look at the desire and use the job like the shallow end of the pool. We’re not all ready for the high dive into the deep end of the pool.
Hi Barb,
I’m so glad to have you here and to hear your story. There’s too much “quick fix” out there, both in day to day life and online. Real, grounded change, as you so rightly demonstrate from your own experience, has no formula. We have to find our own way through. I love your metaphor of the shallow end of the pool. At times we all need the safety of knowing we can put our feel on the bottom of something, while we do the depth work elsewhere. Well done to you for following your own unique path and for getting to a place that works for you in a way that was loving and supportive of you.
Silence is never attainable, because our hearing is so sensitive. We aim for silence and in so doing really listen intently to the sound-scape around us… I get the point entirely about ‘getting back to reality’. In my architecture practice we’ve been working up a project recently . with ever more increasing certainty and I felt it was wrong, somehow, simply got in the Ka and went there and was there for an hour or so, and suddenly the decisions we were making were more real and grounded in reality.
.-= Marcus Beale´s last blog ..Holy Trinity Clapham =-.
It’s amazing, Marcus, how sometimes the best way to deal with something is to withdraw from it, even momentarily. It the Ka, it seems to me, you grounded yourself, and so your perspective could shift because it came from a different place. Fabulous! And hope the project’s going well.
Thanks for being here and sharing. Much appreciated!
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