Towers at the End of the World

Here is the story I told around the campfire at the End of the World festival.  Before I get to that, you all should know, strangers are welcomed warmly, there is whiskey, a fabulous bonfire, and story telling at the end of the world.  <3

Once upon a time... there was a woman -- as she was out walking one day, she saw across a field a tower.  She was seized with a desire to climb the tower, so off she strode across the field.  

As she walked, fear and self doubt joined her. "It's too tall a tower, you can't do it.  Why would you even want to try?  Who do you think you are anyway, climbing a tall tower like that?  This isn't your field, you know.  You are probably trespassing."  As she walked, and they harangued, she had a realization that all the gods, the goddesses, the heroes that walk into battle with fear and mayhem and chaos... they may not only bring those things with them to aid them in the battle, they may also be feeling these things in their own hearts.  She said to fear and self doubt, "You can come with me, but you're riding shotgun and you are to aid and abet MY interests now." They simmered down a little at that, having been recognized and allowed to accompany her.  Now and again at a bump or a dip in a field they'd pipe up though.

She reached the tower and went in.  At each step she took, she folded a tiny paper crane (one tiny crane goes on the fire).  Each 1:1.  Each team meeting.  Each meeting with a boss, with product and program managers (starting with handfuls of cranes on to the fire), each presentation, each company meeting, each meeting with directors, each meeting with vice presidents, each step all the way to the top of the tower.

At the top of the tower she stepped out into the air.  In the far away distance she could see another tower.  Or maybe it was a mountain, at this distance it was hard to tell.  Between here and there it was only fog.  She couldn't see the bottom of the tower over the edge, nor the lands that lay between her and the next tower.  

And then the staircase on the inside of the tower started crumbling.  As it fell, she realized she couldn't go back the way she came up.  And then the outside edges of the tower started crumbling.  She took a deep breath and stepped off the edge of the tower (all the rest of the cranes go on the fire at once).  It is unknown whether all the cranes set free eased her landing with the lightness of their wings, or whether, untethered, they flew off into the sky.  As she hit free fall, she sang her people's daily practice:

At the edge of the world, I gaze at the moon

Light and shadow reflect light and shadow.

My heartbeat is magic, mystery enfolds me,

As I am blessed, I bless the world.

Teacups

My leadership coach thoughtfully provided me with a parable the last time we talked 1:1.  It was this:

A business man trying to get to the next level in his business tried everything he knew of and was not making progress.  He asked everyone he knew and no one could help.  Finally he met someone who told him of a faraway master who could solve anyone's problem, be it love, health, business, or anything else.  The man thought to himself, "I will go see this master, perhaps he can help me.  So he travelled across the sea, he travelled through the desert, he travelled through the mountains until finally he came to the master.  The master asked, "What have you come to me for?"  The man explained why he had travelled so far.  The master said, "You are not yet ready.  Come back again when you are ready."

Mystified, the man left.  He travelled back home, back through the mountains, back through the desert, back across the sea.  He went back to work, wondering what he was missing that would make him ready.  He worked very hard for many months.  After these months, he thought surely he was ready now.  So he gathered his travel plans, he travelled across the sea, he travelled across the desert,  he travelled through the mountains, until he again came to the master.  "Master, I am returned, I believe I am ready now."  The master looked into his eyes, paused, and said, "Go away.  You are not yet ready."

Perplexed and a little upset, the man left again.  He travelled back home, back through the mountains, back through the desert, back across the sea.  He went back to work, wondering what was missing that would make him ready.  He worked very hard for many more months.  After these many more months, he thought surely I am ready now.  So again, perhaps with more trepidation this time, he gathered his travel plans, he travelled across the sea, he travelled across the desert, he travelled through the mountains until he came to the master.  He said, "Master, I am returned.  I believe I am ready now."  The master looked into his eyes, paused, and again said, "Go away, you are not yet ready."  

The man said, "Master, with all due respect -- what do I need to do to be ready to even receive an understanding of the steps I must take?  It is expensive and frustrating to come this far only to be told I am not ready!"  The master said, "You are not ready, but let us take some tea together."  The man thought, "Finally!  We are getting somewhere!"   

They sat down to tea.  The master, as the host, bid the man, as his guest, pour himself a cup first.  Then the master poured his own cup, and then reached over to pour more tea into the man's cup.  The man's cup was already full though, and the tea started spilling on the table.  Still the master kept pouring.  The man said, "You are spilling the tea, what are you doing!?"  Still the master poured.  The man jumped up and away from the table to keep the tea from spilling on his clothes, saying, "Why do you continue pouring, the teacup is full and the tea is spilling off the table!?"  The master finished emptying the teapot, sat it back on the table, leaned back and looked at the man.  He looked deep into his eyes and said, "When you come to me, you cannot hear what I have to say because you come with a full mind.  Until you empty your mind, you cannot hear what I have to say anymore than the teacup could accept any more tea.  Anything I said would have been lost on you, like the tea on the table."

She told me this story with a specific intent (of course).  I had been telling her that someone I met with seemed not to ever want to listen to me.  Besides the obvious of sending this individual a prioritized agenda ahead of time so they would be able to prepare on the topics of importance, she said, sometimes people need to empty their minds before you can get to the matter at hand.  Let them empty their teacup.  It might take 45 minutes to an hour the first time you meet, maybe a half hour the next time you meet, and so on.  Some people need to empty their teacups before they are ready to discuss in a collaborative way, so best to let them empty their teacup.

This has been very useful.  When my introvert daughter started talking the other night, I committed myself to letting her empty her teacup.  She and I talked for four hours.  When I wanted to interrupt to share something, I reminded myself, she needs to empty her teacup first... My quiet girl has maybe a teahouse going on, many teacups. My younger extrovert girl empties her teacups all the time rather than building a house out of them.  Often still tea everywhere, but that is how she connects.

In accordance with my pledge several months ago, I have found a therapist.  She asked me if I share things with my friends the day after my leadership coach shared this parable with me.  I said, "I have some friends, that I share... some things... with..."  I often feel though as though my friends come to me to empty their teacups, but that teacup emptying is not reciprocal and that they do not want me to share either my tea or empty my teacup.  Often I opt not to, because like my oldest daughter, I have a virtual teahouse at my disposal stored away and I have much to share that I want to share.  Often I opt not to because... Often I opt not to because I perceive their troubles are weightier than mine and I should not add mine to theirs.  Or sometimes it feels awkward to share something lighthearted after hearing something sorrowful or difficult.  Or simply, I start and it becomes obvious to me that while they wanted to empty their teacup with me, they don't really want me to empty my teacup.  Sometimes I know that people want me to share my tea and empty my teacup with them, and because I so often feel pressure not to share my tea or empty my teacup, I find it very difficult to do so.

For now this sits as an observation.  If you feel I am not emptying my teacup or sharing my tea (I suppose, and you'd like me to), be patient, ask some leading questions.  I may not have answers to your deepest questions, you may not have answers to mine, but come to my teahouse and share in my tea and empty your teacup and I may empty mine.  (If I don't, it's probably because I'm trying to figure out quite how if you seem reciprocal. It's complicated.)

Queen Bees & Their Hives

So, I was talking through this with Yeshe Rabbit with whom I presented a class on ethics this past weekend.  As we were going through feedback, she said, "I think one area that you don't need to "improve" but might need permission to "enact" is in projecting confidence as a leader. You did great in being receptive and kind. You also deserve to know that you are allowed to "be in charge.”

This is part of why I'm doing the leadership workshops I'm doing -- to figure that piece of things out because It's A Thing.

Bees came up as an analogy — 

• I posited that Queen Bee is just another role in the hive (a pretty unique one, but a role that someone's got to fill none-the-less), 
• She countered that Queen Bee is a primary essential part of creating the “ground of bee-ing” for the hive (I love the concept of 'ground of bee-ing!), 
• I noted that hives can and do expel queens they don’t like and can raise & install new queens
• PROCESSING:
• Going from worker bee to queen is complicated: cannot approach from the side for validation from others as having done the right thing.  There is a queenly way to gather this feedback appropriately, and that’s something I need to figure out from essentially a hierarchical rather than lateral or serving space.
• Exposure and queen-ness as ‘just another role’ and one that I happen to be filling does not provide the internal source of validation and I am looking externally for validation.
•  Though leadership as service really resonates with me, I’m not sure it’s doing me a service right now, as it were, as I have been applying it as the concept of putting everyone else “first”. A woman hit on it during the workshop Sunday — she's in the military & she noted that they really drill into you ‘mission first, unit next, self at the bottom, supporting all the rest’.  And maybe that’s really effective for men (questionably, granted), but for women who have societal role of nurturer who are expected to put their needs last already and are taught to seek external verification/validation/approval often at the expense of their own authority…  I think I might need to own my big sister bossiness (in moderation, and if I may shift analogies for a moment) for a bit or something.
• The other piece that stuck out going back to the hive metaphor was that idea of the hive rejecting the queen or at least making her life really unpleasant by being unsupportive.  Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy, BUT if the little girls aren’t happy, probably ain’t mama happy either… So there is some degree of need for acceptance in there as well, both of being ‘part of the hive’ but alsoof being the queen.
• And figuring out how to collaboratively create that functional ‘ground (or hive) of bee-ing’ while retaining the organizational role & responsibility accorded to being the queen and owning my decisions with internal validation (and accurate discernment & identification of when external validation is also appropriate).

Having brained it, the next trick I’ll have to figure out is in the appropriate embodiment of what that all means in vivo rather than in vitro (or caput).  As well as in figuring out where the analogy breaks down and iterating until the edges smooth out...

And now I’m going to go watch Eddie Izzard & his piece on bees again because aaaaaaaahhhhh beeeeeeeees!

On Leadership

"Leadership is not just required from people in leadership positions, it is required of every one. -- Katrina Messenger

Thursday was the first day of a course I'm taking called Mastering Leadership.  Ostensibly it's mostly work-related, but also kinda not.  The first video they showed was this one:
http://youtu.be/uAy6EawKKME. It's by Dwayne Dudly on Leadership Everywhere and you should go watch it because it's good.  You never know when you are going lead someone somewhere they didn't know they needed to go.

Much of the rest of the course will be about self-awareness, acting in accordance with that self-awareness with intention, and accountability.  For folks who are part of CAYA, this should sound like a familiar refrain.

We started with a minute of mindfulness.  A "check in".  I can't remember if there was a minute of reflection at the end, but there was a corresponding "check out".

In my practice, right action requires clarity of intent & accountability, at least to myself, often to many others.  I think this is going to be a good course.  And it is obvious that it will be applicable to so much more than just work.  The tricky dynamics of work will be where results are first and initially most powerfully observed, but, as leadership does, I have no doubt that it will appear elsewhere in my life as well.  Already I'm testing theories, and had a tentative confirmation of theory.

It seems a little orthogonal to what this blog is ostensibly about, but... not really.  CAYA's Ground of Being is Joyful Service.  A leader is just someone helping a bunch of people get to where they're going.  My other Joyful Service is in connecting people with the information they need to make changes in the world.  In their lives. In The World.  Librarianship is, I think, a calling as much as any other calling.  I do librarianship sort of in a background sort of way, by enabling access to electronic resources, and at this point I do that by leading and coordinating teams of people to assist in that end goal.

One of the early discussion points Thursday was about approach to life.  There are three ways you can approach life.  (There might be a humorous fourth, but it seemed a group serious about their participation and I didn't feel it would be appropriate to bring it up in the moment...).

• Do-Have-Be: I do this, so I can have that, so I can be something (being follows doing/having).
• Have-Do-Be: I have this, so I can do that, so I can be something (being follows having/doing).
• Be-Do-Have: I am something so I do this which brings me that (being provides what one does/has).
• (The fourth is Do-Be-Do-Be-Do & it's a song and a dance of a life).

I am ever so curious to see where this journey leads.  I am ever so curious to see what this year brings.

I Commit

From Yeshe Rabbit: Ritual for Women's History Month (March)

http://yesherabbit.squarespace.com/way-of-the-rabbit-contemplation/2015/3/2/womens-history-month-ritual-can-you-commit-to-women

In addition to and in alignment with the ritual that Yeshe Rabbit has come up with, I have a couple of investments and commitments that I am making as well. I am towards the outer edges of introverted. In business astrology Meyers Briggs, I come up consistently IN, the last two letters are variations on TJ (most often) and FP (less often). In DiSC, I come up outer edge central C. None of these tend to be the majority in leadership positions, and yet here I am in my day to day. 

Big investment/commitment #1 (only in the sense that I'm talking about this first) is that I have signed up for a Mastering Leadership program to help me work through all the stuff that goes along with being a strong and intentional leader as well as give my career a kick it needs. I am also paying out of pocket for it which is sort of an oof and definitely a glad I have an annual bonus to pull that from!

Big commitment #2, I have long sort of suspected that I'm on that border where introversion meets social anxiety but also sort of worried that there are so many people with "real" issues that mine weren't really that bad... One of my coping habits is compulsive (obsessive?) info gathering and organization -- conveniently useful in my chosen field! A couple of long time friends are in clinical year/prep for final boards to become counselors, so I swallowed a lot of 'oh god, so awkward!' and talked to them as part of that info gathering coping. That in and of itself was a huge first step. I don't want to be defined by something like this. I've spent a big part of my life swallowing my fear and anxiety, trying to push myself to just do things anyway. It has often paid off well enough that I find it worth it to continue to challenge myself in this way -- see also: my first commitment above. Their unanimous advice after asking a bunch of questions was GO SEE YOUR PRIMARY CARE PROVIDER YESTERDAY. So that was an interesting response, I thought. I thought I "just" needed some tools to process through and modify thinking and behavioral patterns (and I don't think anyone would disagree), but apparently there can be a physiological component too. So, after sitting with things procrastinating like a mofo (avoidance being one of my less productive coping responses) for a couple weeks, today I made an appointment with my doctor, right after getting off the phone from doing the screening call for the leadership program.

I'm committing to take care of me. I've given so many women at work the advice that they *must* get the oxygen mask on for themselves prior to trying to get it on other people while at the same time finding myself masking (successfully and NOT) gasping for air as I try to navigate complicated and ambiguous passages with no air.  I committed about six months ago to stop bullying myself for not living up to my own impossibly high standards. I say weird things. I can't word or brain sometimes, to the point that one of the managers that reports to me and I have running jokes about it (he's got some similar but different stuff going on). Me and my monkey brain are still working on this, identifying triggers, and trying to be kind to myself when I recognize that something has set me off. Trying to remember that the stuff that I say that is so totally something only I would say is part of what I bring to the world in being a uniquely contributing human being.

I don't share this information about myself lightly. I don't want to be social anxiety girl. I don't want to build a community around me that gives me a pass because I'm terrified. I don't want to be terrified. I'm not a survivor because I'm not a victim. I am working towards an improved, more intentional me. I just have some shit to take care of and I have some human elements that I will always have and will always need to consider mitigation strategies for. I'm ok being an introvert, I need to transcend the anxiety stuff though.

This is big magic, complex alchemy. It is staring my shadow in the face, meeting it eye to eye and getting to know it so well that I can move from responding via reflex to making considered choices. This is the path to enlightenment. And every day, my commitment to myself is that I will chop the wood, carry the waters of self care. I will get my oxygen mask on first as best I can manage and then move on to tending to others. I will show myself compassion when the right words are hard to connect outside my brain moving a million miles a minute with my mouth that is too often struck dumb as if it isn't connected. And because I Will, I will. In Love: for myself, my community of women, for the world.
http://youtu.be/Lm38Ojh61lY