Maturity
The vast majority of us behave mechanically and act on autopilot. Our ambition is often consuming and our egotistical behavior is always «wanting more». We tend to become a «victim» because of the sufferings caused by this lifestyle. As a consequence, some will go through periods of deep doubt or great loneliness. There is an age when our ego begins to take up less space in our life. Now is the time to give more importance to the meaning of what is important to us, our values, than to the ego itself. Our lives are then less stressful and our centers of interest are transformed, including choosing those with whom we want to be.
Maturity allows us to recognize reality with greater clarity even if there is still personal work to be done. The «conscious shift» is not an end in itself, it cannot be acquired by money, nor by the best courses in personal development. This personal awareness manifests day after day. We finally connect to the source of everything and let ourselves be guided by life itself without seeking to control it. This is where the great difficulty lies. Let’s learn to free ourselves from a way of thinking built on a strategic and sequential mode. These are not goals that we need but a genuine and loving intention.
If You Read Us, You Need A Conscious Shift
Our ego needs to take less space in our life. Not only our ego, but also our ideas, our activities, our emotions. Being coached will balance your cognitive agility and your emotional groundings and will contribute to distillate what matters to you.
We get into a world where it becomes mandatory to feel uplifted and lighter. Heavier your mind will be, less it will be to move fastly with flexibility. Coaching is an investment. Your better investment if you want to be prepared for a better and greater future, enlighten your daily life and build up a conscious shift.
No longer merge with what emerges
Our environment is more and more violent. Chaos settles in our life and also our thoughts. This is the opportunity to stop judging what is happening and to initiate our individual and responsible journey. We manifest this world more than we undergo it. Living in full awareness is about continually remembering our human condition and observing ourselves with benevolent observation.
This awareness strengthens our immunity to events that occur. We observe them but we no longer merge with what emerges. We maintain an observer posture and we don’t merge with the event. Wild and destructive emotions are no longer likely to distract us from our path. Our passions are expressed but the horses no longer gallop or at least we can control them more easily, without emotional drama.
We have been conditioned to react to multiple threats from the origin of our species through survival mechanisms, such as fight or flight. It is time for today’s leaders to learn to transcend this primitive reaction. To move to a higher level in which we will create the neural pathways which will result in a neurocerebral harmony between our emotional center and our cortical era.
Living in non-violence and seeking peace requires that we understand and recognize the beliefs that determine them. These helping beliefs will gradually rebuild our reality. We will manifest peace through deep and regular work on ourselves.
The important thing is not only to understand it but to do it yourself and practice it today.
Uplifting Practices During Turbulent Times
The complexity of the events that surround us, the toxicity of the excess of information and the exaggerated stress that accompanies them, invite us to take “breaks” more frequently. Figure out what is really essential and somehow take responsibility for what really depends on us. Our leadership will gain in power and legitimacy, far from individual and collective dramas.
Giving yourself time to observe yourself is undeniably an inexhaustible source of inspiration. The times have come to know how to pay attention to what really matters, without worrying about what others will think. Coaching is there as a reminder and to guide us in this exciting journey.
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom”
The “Prajñāparamitā” expresses the search for perfection of the “great knowledge.” It is called transcendent wisdom (prajna, from “jñā,” which means “to know” preceded by the prefix of insistence “pra”). Wisdom is mainly an acute perception allowing us to recognize the fundamental nature of all things and concepts like emptiness.
Everything is only perception for the brain. We all wear glasses, and we don’t even know their graduation. Our blindness is sometimes staggering. Recognizing this is already the first step towards wisdom which requires “restraint,” certain prudence in the conscious interpretation of our perceptions.
Developing consciousness consists in choosing our representations and being able to read the phenomena that surround us. It means being attentive to the biases that lie at all times. The wise leader imbues with a specific form of discernment, strength, and lightness. He is consistent and aligned with his values and with others. His knowledge inspires others.
This knowledge reflects specific know-how to distinguish what is essential. What is critical is to free ourselves from an ego that poisons us and creates mental confusion. This ego has allowed us to socialize and gain confidence since early childhood, but it is time to get rid of it with some kindness. Let’s start by nurturing that ego rather than repressing it. “The bird that comes out of its cage does not renounce its cage; it frees itself from it”, says Christophe André.
Wisdom demands that one be able to understand all aspects of a delicate subject without allowing oneself to be disturbed by one’s emotions or personal feelings. With open-mindedness comes empathy and the realization that everyone has a past that influences their actions. Buddhist wisdom advocates detachment. It is a question of taking note of the fundamental interdependence of all the elements to focus on the only actual room for maneuvering the individual, mastery of his mind.
The Wisdom Of Coaching
Wisdom is a term that we do not use or so little in the world of organizations where leadership considerations seem more appropriate. So instead, we refer to wisdom to describe the moderate spirit of an intelligent and prudent spiritual leader.
Is wisdom the reflection of a spiritual quest or an art of living?
Why coaching is your best option?
By Jean-Christophe Beauvais
A few days ago, the French voted and designated their President for the next 5 years.
During this campaign, there was a lot of talk about the weight of the responsibilities of the President of the Republic, alone at the head of the State, with all the powers that he concentrates and cannot share with anyone.
Willingly attributing it to the peculiarities of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, the journalists often mention the isolation that would systematically affect, according to them, the highest dignitary of the country at the time of taking the heavy decisions incumbent on him in an extremely complex and uncertain environment.
And indeed, to be at the top of the hierarchy is to make heavy decisions, often alone, to play with confidential and sensitive information, to be responsible to the country.
We call it the loneliness of power.
Of course, what applies in politics is transposable to the business world and applies to all business leaders at the very top, alone on the tip of the hierarchical pyramid, legally and financially exposed in case of crisis, responsible for the economic viability of the company towards a headquarter, a board or shareholders.
The subject of isolation nevertheless has two readings that are neither contradictory nor complementary: it is simply necessary to distinguish the situation of “I am alone to lead” from the affective or even pathological corollary “I feel alone and isolated in my role”.
Indeed, a manager is, by nature, alone at the head of his company. His loneliness of the director is very inherent in the function.
It is when it translates into this altitude sickness at the top of the pyramid, this famous feeling of isolation, which leads to the syndrome of loneliness of power.
For the entrepreneur concerned, isolation can increase the risks associated with his function and already present daily.
Most leaders do not spare themselves, working an average of 60 hours a week with the impact that this can have on their personal life and on their health in general and on their mental health in particular: stress, exhaustion, burnout, detachment from the family, psychological suffering…
It is this same stress that can also paralyze the leader in his decisions or lead him to make erroneous decisions, for lack of discernment and anticipation.
For a leader affected in this way, the risk of locking himself in his ivory tower increases and the perception of his team can be negatively affected.
Even if worried, the manager must always look good, always show his poker face so as not to worry the teams. In the long run the teams are not fooled. There is then a risk for the good management of the company, employees imagining that the leader isolates himself to hide something.
And he does hide something: his feeling of isolation, which he thinks he cannot share with anyone and especially not with a member of the structure of the company, even if he trusts.
Communicating about your difficulties would undoubtedly be THE solution to get out of the gear but it is also the most difficult to adopt, because it entails the risk of appearing incompetent or vulnerable. This pushes the leader to entrench himself a little more. Vicious circle and Gordian knot.
Would an external interlocutor allow him to “confess” and externalize his vulnerability without risk to the organization?
For the business leader, for whom admitting his vulnerability is experienced as an unspeakable fault and to be hidden at all costs within the company, a first step could be to exchange with peers, in this case other leaders experiencing the same situation. This can be reflected, for instance, in memberships or participation in networks, fairs, and exhibitions.
Breaking one’s isolation must be based on a personal desire for sharing and openness, and a necessary willingness to admit one’s situation of isolation and the vulnerability it entails. But can it be to those peers I just mentioned?
Undoubtedly, it is possible but uneasy. How often will you see your fellow GM in fairs or exhibitions? Perhaps there are also conflicts of interest (commercial for example) that prevent you from confiding in this or that with another manager.
At this stage of reflection, the use of external coaching is generally the most effective solution.
The coach has the advantage of being outside the company and having an external and neutral look at it, a discussion that would prove much more difficult with a colleague, a relative, or a counterpart.
For the manager, admitting his vulnerability will certainly be effective, but it is also a huge taboo: letting Coaching create a space of freedom where the client can express his feelings without fear. For there is no judgment in the relationship, as judgment is part of what initially led the leader to isolate himself.
Following an accompaniment also allows you to freely discuss your weaknesses without stakes of postures or power.
The coach is not there to replace the leader but to help him to take a step back, to ask the right questions, to project himself into the future. The sessions are an opportunity for the manager to reflect on his talents, the strategy of his company, etc.
These regular exchanges give a healthy breath of fresh air to the entrepreneur and take him out of his loneliness.
And the sessions must allow the rapid implementation of action plans and behavioral strategies.
In a nutshell:
– the loneliness of the leader is rather classic on the structural level, as it is inherent in his position.
– but when it leads to pathological isolation, there is no point in fighting it head-on to defeat it at all costs, when the use of coaching is out there: available, confidential, and effective.
Jean-Christophe Beauvais
[email protected]
Loneliness of Power
Today’s bosses are under pressure of all kinds and must respect extreme confidentiality on a large number of topics. Because of this loneliness, the leader may tend to turn away from reality and look for an escape. Since time immemorial, men and women have sought to escape this loneliness by any means whatsoever. According to Blaise Pascal, everyone is prey to entertainment, which consists of the desperate search for consolation in the face of the difficulty of being oneself. Henry Laborit will praise flight: “in times like these, escape is the only way to stay alive and keep dreaming”.
To accept one’s responsibility is in large part to sublimate and transcend this loneliness. Coaching will provide a window of opportunity to accompany all those who are faced with a certain isolation and wish to contribute to their personal fulfillment through a satisfying relational life.
Many studies have shown that being surrounded, being able to exchange and share has a positive impact on both our mental health and our physical health. Our hyperconnected society has contributed to the emergence of a very paradoxical loneliness. Isn’t that reason why Coaching emerges to reconnect with oneself and others?
The construction of a relationship linked to conditioned co-production
One of the great principles of professional accompaniment and so little expressed, is the construction of a relationship linked to conditioned co-production. Indeed, our work consists in basing ourselves on this model borrowed from the Buddhist canons.
Look at your hand. She looks the same as a week ago. Yet almost all of your skin cells are dead and replaced. Your hand is not the same as a day ago. Neither does your body. Your proteins are constantly changing. Your hemoglobin molecules don’t live longer than a day. However, they always remain in a fixed quantity in the blood network. The body of man (like that of a bacterium) is constantly regenerating; however, from within, from an incessant movement, a stable organization is created… an autonomy. It is the Chilean Francisco Varela who, with Maturana, underlines the self-organization capacities of the living with the concept of autopoiesis. He works on body-mind relationships and charts the course for a reconciliation of Buddhism and science.The conditions are renewed every moment. It is therefore useless to seek continuity and justify consistency over time. It’s just an illusion. That’s why I’m more interested in what you want to talk about today than what we talked about last time.
At any time, a new set of specific conditions will contribute to the precise contextualization of a new need. As a Coach, I will therefore ensure that the problem or simply the need of my coachee is contextualized. Otherwise, there will be no Coaching. My responsibility is to better live the present moment in order to explore the conditions that will contribute to the appearance of phenomena that will occur at every moment. I am in observation and feeling. At the same time, I try to put myself in the place of the other. This dance of any moment which is of a certain complexity, describes quite well this permanent movement of co-creation in the present moment.
Paticcasamuppāda (in Pali) is the Buddhist concept of conditionality, dependence, reciprocity. “Sam” associates and connects. The spirit of dialogic invites us to combine what arises from the specific conditions that co-produce it. Conditioned co-production is in a way the metaphor of the coach who integrates and connects seemingly contradictory concepts at the same time. We get out of duality and we are interested in the compound and conditioned phenomenon which is related to the circle, to motherhood, to renewal.
A process is recursive when the result of the process itself has an influence on its beginning. The principle of organizational recursion constitutes one of the three bases of complex thought developed by Edgar Morin, along with the dialogic principle and the “hologramic” principle. These three concepts are interrelated. Recursion is inspired by the idea of a retroactive loop (corrective feedback loop) formalized in Wiener’s concept of cybernetics. To this notion, Morin adds those of self-production, regeneration and permanent reorganization. It is a process born of order and disorder that could be infinite, because it is self-generating. The beginning feeds on the end of the loop, the end therefore becoming the beginning.
Conditioned co-production can be understood as the origin of an action.To simplify, we will say that “nothing is without cause and nothing is its own cause” or:
“When this is, that is;
This appearing, that appears.
When this is not, that is not;
This ceasing, that ceases.”
