You're in the flow of leadership when you're 100% in this moment, feeling your feelings, and 75% sure anything good can happen.
Yet life has a way of distracting us from the flow. Fear, anger, strife, pessimism and crisis are everywhere in the world. The challenge is to accept--and not deny--these tragedies and not to buy into the gloom. You're on your way to being in the flow when you put your whole self into the "full catastrophe" of the here and now, and do it with some optimism.
I told a friend who was doing what I call a "complain refrain" about family and life conditions recently, "What if you're happy, and just unaware of it? What if you've overbought your own sad story?" which he immediately dismissed in favor of continued complaints. Later that day (literally) I was stunned when he called back and said that he's indeed happy, and had no more complaints. Well, pretty much. But he sounded very grateful and lighter.
We are sprayed daily with heavy media messages of life's traumas all around us. After all, as they say in the news biz, "If it bleeds, it leads."
To respond at our best, it takes leadership. You can say yes to all of the pain worldwide, and still be surfing this moment, and 75% positive. You'll be taking yourself and others toward a future better than today. That 3/4 full glass is the magic ratio of optimsim to pessimism in higher emotional intelligence.
So stand for the notion that things are better than you imagine them, and when you find yourself fully awake to that, and to the now, you're in the flow of inevitble leadership. I look forward to that, and give the odds of each of us being in the flow, oh, 75%. Isn't that great?
David Peck
The Recovering Leader
