S4E2: Evolve Yourself

This is the No Ego Podcast, where we ditch the drama, end entitlement, and transform your world place. I'm Sy Wakeman. Hello, welcome to another episode of the No Ego Podcast. This one is a special one. We're kicking off season 4, which is Wild to believe that we've been doing a podcast for that long. I hope you enjoyed the time we took to use our podcast to go back to the basics and all the early reality-based leadership philosophy and strategies, our early tools. That was the primer. If you haven't already gone back and from season 1 listened, it is like free amazing training. If you haven't listened from season 1 on, and gotten those basics, then I hope what I'm going to give you in season 4 will blow your mind. But we're going to go graduate level on our work in season 4. So I'm so glad that you're here. Season 4 is going to be all about evolution, your own evolution, evolving yourself as a leader so that you can walk through the world more skillfully, more peacefully, more kindly, and Still get the work done that we need to get done, still create meaningful experiences for our people and deliver great results. But there is a way to do this with a lot less harm to ourselves and others, a whole lot more sustainability, less reliance on pure resilience, and a lot of reliance on readiness. There's a way to walk through this world today, not only skillfully but with an air of peacefulness in a level of what I would call higher consciousness. And it is vital that we modernize our leadership philosophy, that we are able to not just try and impact the world but to allow the world to evolve and impact us so that what we take back out in the world is much more refined. It's, it's full of wisdom. And so I'm going to come to you Yeah. A bit shorter podcast, but we're gonna start hitting on what this means, the whole evolution piece, and how you can move through the world differently, how you can create a workplace beyond ego, and really make the invitation to people to come in and evolve themselves, bring their most evolved self to work, and really do something meaningful without paying the price that we pay when we're out of alignment or out of balance. And so I'm so excited. We're going to have some bonus time with guests, but a lot of this is going to be Sy just taking you to the next level. That's what we've heard from you in the audience that, that you want. So here's a question for you. Are you feeling at all unsettled now that we are over a year into the pandemic and we have had so many— hopefully we've had so many sometimes difficult conversations about the true state of class and race and how ingrained our racism is and how ingrained our privilege is that we don't even recognize it. And as we've had those tough discussions and we're a year into this and it doesn't look like the world's going to go back, I hope the world doesn't go back because it wasn't working. But as we emerge and create this new world place and workplace, I have a question for you. Do you feel at all unsettled? And the reason I ask this question is restlessness is the key call for evolution. If you're not able to be at peace in your world, whether it's at home or working from home or out on the front lines, if you are restless, I want you to pay attention to to that feeling of restlessness, because it's most often a call for evolution. But when we feel restless, we usually try and focus on our external world. What do I need to change in my job? Or what do I need to change in my relationship? Or what do I need to change in my situation? What do I need to change externally to be happy? When happiness, a state of contentment, is regardless of what's happening in your external world, is not about geographical changes or job changes. Now, that could be something that caters to a preference of yours. Perfectly fine. It's a free world to go after more of what you prefer, but it will not fix restlessness. Restlessness, being unsettled, is a call inward to evolve. And what's interesting about leadership is that leadership, just through the granting of a title, we give power. Now, the definition of power in this context has really changed over time. Mark Nepo, if you haven't discovered his amazing writing, he has a daily meditation book that's profound. He has a quote in there of his own that says that initially the definition of power was able to be, and we've turned it into to be able. And that difference we've suffered ever since. We suffer the difference in that definition. So instead of promoting the people most able to be, the people that have done their inner work, the wisdom seekers, the elders, the most peaceful people, the people that have really done this wisdom work. We are promoting the people who were able, you know, were able to do, and those individual contributors. And the people that we promote, we believe we promote them to manage the work of people. But what we really need in a modern leader that I'll be talking a lot about is that we need modern leaders to know it's not about managing the people. We should use good standardized process to— and automation and basically standardization to manage most of the work and the workflow. We should be using process and insisting that people comply with the process. We don't need fancy and clever to rob us away from the efficiency we can gain. We don't need optimization. before we need standardization. We actually need, in those cases, leaders not to manage people, but to radically simplify the work being done and hold people accountable to that simplification. What we need leaders to do, modern leaders, is to manage the energy of people, to manage the energy of people away from why we shouldn't have to, to how we could, to manage the energy of people to focus on multiple positive possibilities multiple positive possibilities, to manage the energy away from what the issues are and just incorporate those issues into a good view of our current reality, and then help connect people from this unpreferred or could-be-improved-on reality to a better future. And so leaders, in order to do that, need to have done a lot of their inner work, and it's exciting for me to talk about that. I just was able to write a foreword for Jared Narlock. He's coming out with an amazing, amazing book. I've got to make sure I get the title correct. It's called Becoming a Peaceful, Powered Leader, and it's all about this inner work. And people skip the inner work stuff. I will give a whole day's training and Rather than say, you know what, I'm going to take this and use it to do my own work first before I try and go out and work with others, which a great place to start working with others is with the willing, those people also doing their own work, those people who aren't just saying, I'm going to bring my whole self to work. I want you to bring your most evolved self to work and your most evolved self home. The most often asked question is, but how do I get them to do this? Or how do I make somebody do something? I'm like, you cannot make somebody do something. But if you raise your kind of frequency that you walk through the world, right, you will make an invitation towards what you allow and not enable what you don't allow. And not only that role modeling, but the invitation then will help people understand, here's the reality, and I would invite you to step into that and to grow beyond it. But you can't make people do anything. But the point I'm making is, rather than doing any work on themselves, they immediately cycle it into the external world. So how do I apply this to my team? And it's very, very interesting how this happens, because instead of doing the inner work and then coming out and being different, they want to intellectualize it immediately, hearing a strategy and going, okay, how do I directly apply this to my team? And coming through the same funnel, strategy after strategy after strategy, just is not gonna change your world, because reality is reality. The only thing you can change is how you walk through it and then invite your team to walk through it differently as well. So for season 4, we are going to be talking about evolution and walking through the world more skillfully. And it really is all about doing your inner work. So we're gonna have 2 themes. So evolution, evolving, that's the inner work that you forged into wisdom. And there's a lot of undone work here, and any undone work here will show up when Your internal world meets the external world. It's where those 2 meet is in the mess. And how thrown off-center you are, how tired you are at the end of the day from all things coming your way, has to do with how evolved you are. Because you can move through the messy parts of your day, and it can feel like you're swimming through mud, or it can feel like you're walking through air same day. And this isn't just feelings that are pleasure versus pain. We're transcending that. You can walk with a centeredness, a peacefulness, that you can feel pain and pleasure at the same time, but they don't make up your whole world. They're feelings, not states of being. So when you do your inner work, then that allows you to move through the messy part of life— and all of it's messy, right— more skillfully and more peacefully. And you're aware of the invitation that you're making to the world. And that's a great question for self-reflection. When I walk through the world, what's the invitation I make to people? Do people feel expanded when I'm with them? Do they feel more free and easy to talk about dreams and hopes and their potential? Are they focused on what we could create together, or are they focused on— is my invitation to them Tell me all your thoughts and therefore your negative feelings and judgments about the world. Like, what am I inviting to folks? Am I inviting the victim story, or am I inviting them to feel and then make sense of their world in a way that they can also move through life very differently? And so any undone work in the inner realm comes out and shows up in the external realm. So if I have low self-worth, it will show up in the external realm as people-pleasing and violating my own boundaries and saying yes when I mean no. If I have feelings I've ignored in the internal world, like cravings of my soul type of feelings, or if I'm not aware of what my feelings are— and feelings are such great information to give you clarity— if I haven't spent time with them, then I will show up in the external world unclear. Mm-hmm. And be influenced by the attempts of others to control or bargain or come up with those preferences. My ability to be in the external world in a centered place is absolutely directly related to the inner work I'm doing. So what is inner work? I think it's really 3 things that we need to pay attention to. Inner work one is feeling your feelings. When we won't just be in the feelings, we tend to then intellectualize them into grievances in the external world. So people who do a lot of venting, or people who do a lot of over-talking and over-explaining and, and can't just make a clear point, and the minute you don't agree with them, they just want to talk you and control you through, you know, 2 hours of discussion where it really isn't equal, but they just don't even see that, right? All that control stuff comes with not sitting with their own anxiety and understanding what that's about. So feelings are important. And what I say about feelings is sit with your feelings until they tell you their name. So a lot of people, it's like, oh, I'm angry. No, sit with that anger. Be with it. Don't intellectualize it. Just be with it. And how do you be with a feeling? We've talked a lot about this because I found out during the pandemic a lot of people don't know this basic human skill of just sitting with feelings. It has nothing to do with here. And the best way to get into your feelings is to breathe. Mm-hmm. That breath will help you embody and just feel physically. Feelings are physical things. And feeling those feelings, then they'll come out some way physically. But a lot of times your breath, it's just energy. Your breath just expands that energy and you feel them and they dissipate. But a lot of times people just go to the surface level feeling like I'm sad or I'm glad or I'm mad. And even when I started asking people how they're feeling, and a lot of our certified facilitators have brought this up, people don't even know how to give names to their feelings. And they're having to get charts out and say, you know, like, let's come up with some conversations, some names for our feelings. Like, your anger— is it disappointment? Is it heartbreak? Is it grief? Is it abandonment? Like, what is underneath all of that? Is it disappointment in yourself and your lack of boundaries? Those feelings have such amazing information. So when you have a feeling, Most people try and just go externally, either shop it away or numb it with a drink or intellectualize it as a venting or agreements. And feelings are a sure sign to, like, get involved with yourself. When people are feeling less than content, they tend to outsource their emotional state. So there was a relative in my life that was treating me poorly, and I just kept getting so confused, like, why she would treat me consistently so poorly. And I just felt so sad and hurt and angry. And when I sat with that feeling and I just said, I'm open, tell me your name, it was interesting because it was, it was self-disappointment. And the question changed for me. Instead of, why does she treat me like this? Why do I continue to be in relationship knowing I will be treated like this? And when that changed, I realized I had been outsourcing my emotional state to her, hoping for something different, instead of internalizing it and saying, what is my bottom line? And not trying to change her to fit with my bottom line, but just directly ask for what I need. And when that is not something she chooses or can provide, then to just limit my exposure to the situation. And there's all kinds of ways that our feelings lead us external to try and work it out with the person or change the person Or figure it out, or insist that people act differently. The first place with those feelings is to insource your emotional state and to really move back in. And first of all, identify your feelings and what is the information there. The second part of inner work is self-reflection. And self-reflection is short to midterm. It's short-term— what's my part in this mess? What Can I do to help? How could I move through this in alignment with my values and beliefs regardless of the situation? What would great look like for me? What do I know for sure? It gets me out of overreaction and it is into regulating my own emotions. It's an adult piece. So if my feelings are consistently out of proportion to what's happening in the moment, I need to self-reflect. And it could be that I'm hungry or angry or lonely or tired. It could be something I'm just not self-caring very well. Or it could be that I need to bypass my ego and unhook and move into a different way of walking in the moment. Self-reflection is really good to change, to interrupt the ego's work and to disconnect and stop believing what you're thinking and to move into higher levels of consciousness, use all of your intelligence and move forward In a groundbreaking way. That's where the miracles happen, is when you have that shift in perception and you can just move forward differently. So feelings are good information. Self-reflection— they usually direct you to self-reflection, like, you know, what am I doing? And self-reflection usually shows you where your ego's playing you. So instead of, I've had a crazy busy horrible day, self-reflection will lead you to say, I have chosen to set few priorities or boundaries today, and the day I got was really the one I co-created and orchestrated. If your feelings are out of proportion— now, if it was really a tough day, then, you know, there are some interruptions. Pain is real. I'm talking about the suffering part. But the biggest part about your inner work— those are just the things that direct you downward— is Something I call contemplation. And contemplation doesn't just look at what's happened in the moment or the direct next thing you could do to help. And by the way, sometimes helping isn't doing. It's like, I can remain silent. I cannot add on to this. I can change the subject. I can express my confidence that you'll figure this out and do very well. I can sit quietly and just be present for you while you— Think through it. I mean, it— the, the helping part, we even externalize. It's like, well, I can't fix the whole situation. And it's like, well, you can lend your credibility to the customer about the situation. There's really always something you can do to be helpful. But if you really want to get down into the B, you've got to do the contemplation that really says, what are my themes here? How in my life have I learned and relearned and unlearned and forgotten And relearned the same lesson. What is— what are some of the red threads that run through my life? What are some of the ways I tend to end up in some similar places? To do a bit more research work in order to really break habits and really live differently and more honestly in the world. You've got to do that contemplation. And in order for you to do feeling, self-reflection, and contemplation, You need a container. You need a space, a metaphorical container. You need a space that are your habits and your dedications, not your external numbing, but your true self-care. Not just self-soothing, but your true self-care. And that's why the people who are doing the inner work, who are doing the evolution, have habits and dedications. I don't even say commitments or routines. Language is really important to me. Some of those are like have-tos. These are loving dedications, like regular meditation, good sleep habits, some type of ritual or habit, whether it is being out in nature. So I just know what mine are, and mine are a couple of walks a day in beautiful places, a couple meditations a day. For me, it involves like reading poetry and some self-reflections to start my day, which is why I love Mark Nepo's book. And what happens when I start to really notice my feelings and my overreactions, and I look at the moment through self-reflection, and then I start to contemplate? It shows me where I need to grow next, where I need to evolve next. In order to walk through the world more peacefully. And if I'm not doing these— this wisdom work, this, this, um, evolution— and this isn't about making yourself a self-help project. You're not broken. You are conditioned. Um, you— some of you have— probably all of you have had some trauma. But we are not broken. We are disconnected. Mm-hmm. From our inner world. And so the brokenness that we might feel and all the books we buy that are self-help books that make us like something to be fixed, it's because you're not connected to what's internal. There's this place you connect into that's just perfect and blissful and all is well. That is always within you. We're just disconnected. And we go within so little. We are so focused on mastery that we don't spend a lot of time in the mystery. We want to know and figure it out. We They want an answer. So what's the one way we should move in the world and do this differently? Intellectually, I can give you that answer, and people ask me about that a lot when I present. But what I would rather you do is know that you know, you have good discernment. It's— you can't do for or unto someone else that which you haven't done for yourself. So if I can't hold space for my own feelings, Without venting, I can't hold space as a leader for somebody else's feelings without venting. If I don't realize how I over-function and take on roles that aren't mine, you know, I can't help you understand what lane is yours. We just have to get away from what I think's happened in leadership development, where I intellectually give you new tools and tricks to use on other people, and we skip you. You have to do the development. You cannot take somebody else farther along this path than you are. And that's why we promote people who are maybe more skilled, but we don't promote people that are more peaceful. And I really want to see leadership return to its original calling, which is able to be, not to be able to do, right? To be able is different. It's able to be. And When we do our inner work, then how we show up externally is with calm, peaceful, solid boundaries, lots of spaciousness, lots of patience, lots of clarity, lots of room for people to do their own work while being held in the vessel, the container we create with our boundaries and our questions. And we lead them in the same thing: feeling without venting, self-reflection, and then. big contemplation. And in the workplace, we have very little room for feelings. We've said that's personal, take it out. So all that comes to us is intellectual venting, and we don't do enough self-reflection, right? As leaders, I talk about it's not what you tell people to do, it's what you get them thinking about and considering. And our development work, this feedback piece, is not contemplation. It is not how does this keep showing up in your life and what's your next theme here? It's how do I fix this with motive to get my next promotion? People aren't fixing something because they're in touch with wanting to live more peacefully. They're fixing it to change their boss's view of them so that they can get a different position. And so I'm really gonna call us to step into the world differently. When we're not feeling, contemplating, and self-reflecting, what we do is we externally identify. We start to believe our circumstances are the reasons we can't succeed, or that our day and what happened externally is the source of my contentment. And then we'd start to focus on external circumstances and manipulate things in the environment, and we attach to them that that's our identity. And so when our job is threatened, we feel threatened because we've made that into an identity. When our kids leave home and we're empty nesters, We feel like we've lost something because we identified as a parent. So much going on right now in the workplace that shows up as lack of engagement—it's right there in the engagement scores—is I am disconnected from my own self, and I blame you. I've outsourced my work to you, and so I will go get another job and see if that fills it. I'll go get another job and see if that fills it. Now. You can get another job. That doesn't mean you're running from anything. But as I say, don't leave this job you have until you've allowed it to have its full effect on you, until you can do it peacefully. The time to leave a job is not in reaction to something. The time to leave a marriage is not in reaction to something. It is, I came, I mastered peacefulness in a situation I preferred, and now I prefer to go someplace else. Why is this important? Whatever you run from will follow you. It's very difficult in the new relationship or the new job to, to suddenly have things different, except for the honeymoon period. That's why we talk about if you break up in a relationship, spend a year without just immediately dating, because what most people do who don't want to deal with their stuff is they go from one relationship to another. It's like they're Match.com profile is on the ready, and they spend zero time trying to even put closure on and work through with their past partner. What was it like to be a partner? You know, we talk so much about whether it's our first date or a job interview, the ways that we can impact the world, the good stuff we bring to the table, but we don't talk about What our contemplations have been that we really need to work on. And in fact, it's just not even recommended to volunteer that in an interview. And so we have really gotten out of balance, and that lack of balance certainly shows up. So we need new skills as leaders, new competencies, and that's what we'll be talking about. Talk about how we can manage energy and how we can question our thinking and how we can hold space for many things to be true and create more inclusive environments. And even though it will feel like we're slowing way down, it's going to be creating places for big breakthroughs and focusing people's energy on meaningful work and doing great things in the world. So here's your assignment. Are you feeling restless, unsettled? It's a call for evolution. Build a container with dedications and practices. Really notice your feelings. Do your self-reflection. Start your contemplation. And really identify, where do I need to grow next? And it can be something super simple, like, what has this whole time revealed to me? Where do I need to grow next? For me, I'm learning where I need to grow next is to, um, not answer quickly, to give an honest answer. As an introvert, I need to say, you know what, I will get back to you with that. I really want to spend some time asking me what I want and what I can willingly bring to the table so that I can move through life more peacefully. It can be that little. I just found I had A lot of anger and irritation. And when I self-reflected, it was a lot of like, I know I can do this, or I understand that's not the reality, but I felt I have to. That led me to contemplation, which is how many of the answers do you give take other people's work into account rather than the work that I'm called to bring to the table? So that's just an example that I simply found where I need to grow next is a pause. When I get a request in before I answer. It's been life-changing. If you do that incrementally over time, you will be connected into a state of energy and a state of that excitement that comes from seeing the world in a whole new way. Because every time you evolve, the world looks completely different. So the excitement you feel when you travel is the same energy and excitement you'll feel for life again. So be safe, be well. If you haven't subscribed to our newsletter, we have changed the format. Every week you get an awesome video— I guess it's every 2 weeks— so you get awesome video content. It is the main way we're delivering. We're still going to be out there on social media, but the main way we're delivering is through our newsletter. And it's not sales. You'll get great content. If you're forwarding our newsletter on, have people sign up for themselves. We want to build that community so that we can really make a difference in the world. And if you love this podcast, please rate us. Let us know of any topics or questions you have that you want me to talk about. I would love that. And share this podcast. It's going to be a good season. So be safe and well, friends. This is the No Ego Podcast. Where we ditch the drama, end entitlement, and transform your world place. I'm Sai Wakeman.