Nonetheless, it is not very powerful to write a goal statement from a place of avoidance, as in “I don’t want to overreact,” or “I don’t want to overeat,” or “I don’t want to lose money in the stock market,” or “I don’t want to scare my employees.” This actually focuses your attention on the negative condition and increases the likelihood that you will get more of it. We talk about this, in simple terms, as writing a goal in toward language rather than away from.
At a deeper level, though, we humans have a continuous energetic exchange with the universe, in which we are constantly training our subconscious as to what we really want in life. The Law of Attraction does not understand away from, only toward. As with all laws, there is no judgment or evaluation attached to the objects of our attention. In fact, the entire concept of goals and noxiants is a human concept, outside of what exists in nature. The Law of Attraction is much simpler than that. Anything that occupies our mental energy is expanded and brought into our life in greater quantities.
With that, it becomes vitally important that we learn to say no to the things that do not fit our particular vision of how we want to exist in this life. A good friend of mine once said, “Until I hear and understand your no, your yes means nothing.” Take that to an energetic level and begin to understand that you are constantly telling your subconscious where to focus energy. By saying no to the things in life that do not fit your path, you allow extra mindshare to dedicate to your heartfelt yes.
By saying no to what does not fit, you do yourself—and everyone else—a great service. If something in your life does not work, begin saying no to it. At the same time, find those parts of your life that most fit your highest purpose and align with your path, and practice actively saying yes to those things. The power of no is in defining boundaries. This, in turn, provides clarity and power to every yes that follows.
THE POWER OF SAYING AND
Prioritize. Make tough choices. Be selective. These are some things that leaders often are called upon to do. This approach, however, can create a tendency at times for leaders to get locked into a pattern of exclusion. When most people think of priorities, they think of this or that. They think about which choice they will make, and as a result, what will go undone. Prioritization is often associated with making sacrifices and only being able to do some of the really good things we would like to do.
While this is a great practice and requires the skill of discernment, it can become, like anything else, an overused approach to leadership. Real leadership always considers how thoughts engage other people and how we create a consciousness for success among groups of people.
The other way to think of these things is in an “and” world. How do I create more market share and drive down costs? This is at one level, but I think that all of us need to consider some far more important and questions.
I once worked with the CEO of an environmental science group. He made this statement: “We would like to be able to make all the power we want and have healthy fish populations.” That really stuck with me. I think about that often. How do we have plenty of energy and a clean planet for future generations? How do we create solid, healthy communities and create global awareness? How do we create lives that enjoy the abundance of this earth and preserve it for future generations?
Each of us, in all of our individual endeavors, needs to consider the important ands of our businesses. As our global connectivity increases, there is no more hiding in one corner of the world. We are an interconnected globe, and we all need to learn to act as such. The ability to understand, identify, and relate to multiple stakeholder groups and maintain these multiple perspectives is one of the most important ands we can have for our world.
THE POWER OF EMPATHY
Empathy is the basic capacity of humans to relate to others through the emotional information we sense by tuning into others’ experiences. The absence of empathy creates the psychopath. Empathy guides us and allows us to join into groups with some feeling of safety or to steer away from situations that seem unsafe. It provides us with the opportunity for deep personal connections. It creates emotional bonds in groups. Expanded empathy leads to heightened intuition. Empathy is an absolute requirement for effective leadership.
Empathy is a complex set of behaviors and processes that we learn over time. To understand it, we must realize that it comes into play through an interaction between the frontal lobes of our brain and our amygdula, the most primitive part of our brain, where our fight-or-flight responses live. When we are born, our amygdula is nearly fully developed, whereas it takes our frontal lobes until we are in our twenties to develop fully. During that time, we learn about what our experiences mean and determine the useful information for us in life. Through these interactions, we create a set of beliefs that forms the basis for internal conversations between the frontal lobes and the amygdula about what actually occurs around us.
Our amygdula is the first part of our brain to perceive information from our feelings about others. We look at another person, and our feelings respond first. The amygdula is the fastest processor in the brain, although it takes in less information than other areas. It is high speed and low resolution. The amygdula processes simultaneously with the frontal lobe, which is low speed and high resolution. Because of the dynamic between the two parts of our brain, most events that we encounter that have an emotional content are first interpreted by our amygdula and then by our frontal lobe.
Our first and potentially strongest emotional response is sometimes one that we learned earliest in life, maybe as young as age four or five. When we begin thinking about our thinking and thinking about our feelings, we begin to teach our amygdula new responses, and that allows us to move into a stronger and more mature state of connection with others. When we were four or five years old, our responses were dependent in nature. With maturity, we learn to be independent, then interdependent. Through mindfulness, we learn how to feel what is happening with others and have it guide mature and connected action on our part. This is how we begin to lead in confusing or chaotic environments.
We learn to train our minds to take on our belief sets and expand our ability to connect with others in meaningful and powerful ways. Through this, we can consciously choose how we engage with other people and how we use the power of empathy to relate to others. As a leader, this skill is fundamental to leading and influencing others. We first understand where others are by stepping into their experience and understanding how it would be for us.
THE POWER OF INTEGRATION
As we begin to take responsibility for our lives and the impact we have on the world, we must grow increasingly clear about how we spend our time and energy. We have discussed how we created our life exactly as it is and how we must begin to choose the areas that will occupy our consciousness. As we begin to work with larger groups of people and our passions take us to areas of increased complexity, we are presented with the opportunity to get feedback about our own focuses and blind spots, as well as to encounter people who have significantly different focuses.
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