Discovering that part of yourself that is hidden, but others do know it

Many years ago, I came in contact with the Johari Window model. It was such a realization!

For those who don’t know it, I strongly suggest you to research on that.

The model comes from the understanding that our qualities, talents, potentials and everything that is valuable for us (I will be calling this our treasure) can be distributed in 4 different areas of a matrix:

An area that is known by you and others. Most people know that you have that treasure in yourself and it is the thing you can put down in your CV without thinking. It is natural and that gave you your job position or your friends.

Another area is that in which your treasure is known by others, but for some reason, you don’t know it. It is often due to self-doubt or the lack of self-esteem, but others recognize you for more than what you think you are. Good managers and friends will help you to develop that part of yourself.

The opposite is in another quadrant of the same matrix; you know your treasures and others don’t. It can generate frustration, but if you manage it well, it will create surprise to others that you do have that skill!

The last quadrant is the most mysterious as it corresponds to that part of your treasure that neither you or others know. Although many will consider this a problem for the self, it is in fact the guarantee all of us have that we can always change. There is always a potential to be explored and new experiences to be lived, no matter our age or condition.

Explore it!

But I would like to work on those parts that are hidden. We may call them potentials or seeds and for some reason they are invisible, at last for some people, maybe ourselves.

First, why are there things others see about us that we can’t see?

OK, there are lots of BAD stuff others see that we don’t, but again, I would like to focus on those POSITIVE things: our ability to crack a joke when things are tense, the fact we cook gnocchi very well, our talent with kids or the fact we smile, even when things are going bad.

As per my experience, it means we are missing our own greatness… it can be because of self-doubt or just very negative thoughts that as horrible landlords evict positive sensations from our minds.

The solution may not be easy, but it is healing: talk to other people. Talk more.

Learn from them what they see from you. Yes, some things won’t be nice to hear, but others will be ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL.

And believe it over those horrible landlords… You and I, and everyone, have so much more inside that comes to the eyes, even our own.

Prosperity & peace

I think it is intuitive to link prosperity and peace, after all the more prosperous a place is, more peaceful will be. I wonder if the same is true for people…

In the past few years, news has come up of very prosperous people who would be suffering for some reason or another, even going to the extreme of suicide.

It is true there are not too many news to reach to the conclusion of money does not bring happiness… or peace. However, if you know someone who is really prosperous in terms of wealth, you probably know that person has many problems and has to face many crises. Worry and anxiety is a common trace associated to prosperity.

Maybe we have to look into prosperity beyond money or material wealth. When we look at a very prosperous country, besides their material wealth, there is an immaterial wealth: their culture, their values, their touristic places and many more things.

In the same way, besides wealth, every person has a huge treasure of qualities, inner powers, and talents. When those people join others, that treasure replicates in an infinite way.

In fact, looking back into countries that did not have a material wealth some time ago – like India or China – by investing their energy in their immaterial wealth, they are nowadays considered prosperous countries… So, if a person does not have material wealth, but they are connected to the immaterial one, then they are, without a shadow of doubt, very, very prosperous.

Now, because their focus is on the intangible part, PEACE will be developed since it is there too.

So if you feel you are not experiencing peace, work on acknowledging your own prosperity. Peace will come.

If you are not feeling that prosperous, tour around your inner wealth from time to time, and connect to your inner peace. Prosperity will come.

Healing within

One thing I remember very well about my childhood: my bleeding knees… Yes, I used to run and fall a lot! After some time, it would create a dark skin over the wound, particularly after applying some type of painful medicine. Eventually, the skin would have gone, again more bleeding and at last I would look at my knee and see it completely healthy, ready for another run, another fall…

One day, my fall was bigger than the normal: I was practicing judo and I’ve broken my arm. My master, perhaps afraid of consequences, decided to deal with it and the results were horrible; I still have to make effort to touch my right shoulder with my right hand!

And there are wounds that seem to never leave you alone – I still wear glasses for reading, an outcome from bad reading habits.

But these are all physical and visible – or at least they can be felt. However, as humans, we accumulate many invisible internal wounds. Most will be healed in time, others will leave sequels and a few will lay unsolved.

Learning from the physical world may help us healing internally:

• We should be careful about not hurting ourselves due to the same circumstances over and over again. To practice introversion, to sustain an inner dialogue and to meditate will help us to prevent that.
• And if after talking with the self, we are still stumbling on the same stone, maybe we can go and look for someone who will help with that.
• Some wounds are too deep or too big to be ignored and they threaten to maim the soul. Patience and perseverance in healing by applying several techniques will help dealing with them.
• Let’s overuse kindness, compassion, mercy and forgiveness, particularly with the self.
• Some wounds seem to integrate themselves in our personality, changing the way we are not for the best. A therapy may help us to change ourselves back to a healthy being.
• Adopting a spiritual path will definitely help us to deal and to manage those wounds with which we will have to live.

Inside, there is a powerful source of energy - Reason 59

From time to time, we all lack energy, which is a generic name for all that stamina, that vital force that makes us want to get up, exercise, go to work, change the routine or to serve many others.

Then people look outside: movies, songs, drinks and food, good company, big parties, you name it!!  And these remedies do work, at least for some time.

However, a leader looks inside: experiences and teachings, virtues and values, inner powers and talents; the wonderful inner world…  They also work and they will keep working as much as the person wants, because these reserves are always there.  Not only that, the more an individual uses his or her inner resources, they will increase.

Outside sources of energy and vitality are limited, while inner sources are infinite; to tap into them, leaders need to have introversion, but not in the sense of withdrawal from the world.

Introversion is precious, because within each person, there is a vast treasure just waiting to be acknowledged and used accordingly.  By making a time to be by oneself and, with a methodology like meditation or reflection, to explore one’s inner world, a leader is boosting her or his energy.

(Excerpt from the book 82 Reasons to be a Leader)

You are an explorer of your own self! - Reason 35

At any time, a leader has always a place to go.  It is a place to which she or he wouldn’t need to take a flight or even a car ride, because it is there, within themselves.

Then, he or she can explore all that is inside a human being: virtues, values, powers, talents, dreams, feelings, and can learn to use all of these treasures with more confidence.

The motto of a leader who is this type of explorer is: Look inside where both power and protection can be found.  It is particularly useful during stressful situations or crisis, as the leader uses that mental and spiritual space to reflect and to make decisions, instead of just looking outwardly and reacting.

It also serves when the leader is going through a period and everything is alright; it is a time the leader takes in which to further enjoy these inner resources that are abundant and everlasting.

Others who haven’t developed the ability to go as deep as a leader will find their internal resources are not ready and available a time of need.  But leaders will go so deep they even will be able to help others in their own exploration.

(Excerpt from the book 82 Reasons to be a Leader)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY: the year of 8

Life is a miracle. From the biological point of view, statistics show that a new life is an almost impossible feat, and yet every day there is a birth… RIGHT NOW, a baby is being born, a mother wolf is licking its new cub and a new whale is starting to swim in the oceans of the world.

Celebrating a birthday is not a small thing. It means a reverence to that miracle and at the same time, a commitment to help life to continue.

On January 12^th, I have the honor to celebrate mine. I feel humbled by the thought I was given a chance to live in this wonderful world.

However, it is not a single birthday; I celebrate two birthdays on the same day. How? Besides my birth, on that same date, in 1983, I got in touch with the subtle part of me, the soul that I am. It was and it is still is an incredible experience.

Every year I do something different and special for that celebration. For this double birthday, I would like to play with the number 8. After all…

• ·        2018 ends in 8…
• ·        My physical age is 53 and when you sum the numbers… yes, right, you get 8! Wait a second… my SPIRITUAL age is 35 and guess the result of summing its numbers…
• ·        And summing both ages, I get 88 – so, DOUBLE EIGHT!

There are eight affirmations I feel that have helped me to live spiritually in a very non-spiritual world. Each of these is associated with a spiritual power, which you can check on my blog about it.

I hope they will work as a gift from me to you. After all, a birthday means gift…

EIGHT AFIRMATIONS

THAT ENABLE ME TO LIVE AS A SPIRITUAL BEING IN A VERY MATERIAL WORLD

b d
i d

Time management in unmanageable times

When I was just starting to work on IT, trying to understand computers and users, my job was pretty boring... So, I got distracted with some booklets I found scattered around. They came from a Time Management course my boss took and two things stroke me: first, the interesting ideas and, second, how my boss just ignored them...

Time management is a wonderful tool and an incredible theory, but its use in the practical life, a VERY BUSY practical life, is not so easy for it demands discipline and focus.

Besides, some of the champions in Time Management consider their success based on their ability in managing their time and not in its results. Life, especially corporate and business life, is not happy with a manager, a coach or a CEO who is able to manage his or her time very well... Others would want to see an outcome for that.

Results are quite hard to be experienced and one of the reasons is the unmanageable times you are living. We are living a very particular period of our history, a time that Peter Drücker, a consultants' prophet, has foreseen: a time we are not sure what is going on and we are less sure what will happen in the future.

We can go and make changes in our way of managing times (as I am doing this year), but still we cannot catch up with reality as it was probably more possible twenty years ago.

What to do then? Just flow and let it be? Or maybe creating even another tool to help you managing your time? I would like to explore that…

Let's talk about consciousness. Since I have seen those booklets, I have started my own way of managing time, which helped me to create a basis for courses and seminars I give. My main focus, however is not the method as it is, but the awareness of time the person has to develop.

As humans, we have created a very complex way of considering time. Although we can understand easily concepts as VERY SOON or LATE, we are ruled by a psychological sense of time rather than a real one. For instance, if you enjoy a two-days holiday somewhere, a place where you are happy and everything works fine, you will feel the time is very SHORT, even though it is the same time as when you had to work and finish your company accounts, which probably looked as very LONG.

The trick in Time Management is to reconcile your own perception of time with others' perception and the real clock-time. That means you need to do three things:

• Strength your own leadership. The only way to do something as mentioned before and survive in the process is when you are a leader. Although there are many concepts of leadership, three things are important in relation to Time Management, and you can cultivate them: your self-control, your own sense of being an example and a clear picture of your vision of the present and future for both, yourself and the organization you are leading.
• Value your own values. Rushing around or procrastinating do not only affect your health and others' patience, it may also affect your values. For a check-up on your values and, in relation to Time Management, check these three values to see if they are being put into action or just serving as a decoration for your speeches: patience will help you when others are not committed enough, perseverance will help you to educate others and try again, and introspection (or calmness)will help you to check your own commitment and make the needed changes.
• Use real methods. Ah, that is a must!! You can take as many courses of Time Management (want my cell phone number?) or attend to a thousand seminars, and yet, all of it may be is inapplicable to your reality. Ask three questions and make the necessary improvements: is what I am doing aligned with my needs? Are we, other people around me and i, really experiencing benefit by using these methods? Is there any way i can manage time better?

Well... time is up!! Get up and start to apply your own consciousness into your time.

8 attitudes of self-leaderhship

Seeing the news and the confusion of people and government, employees and employers, there is something missing in the air: LEADERSHIP.

How is it possible that in such a world, with so much information and knowledge flowing around, we don't have capable leaders to solve things that are quite simple? One response is the lack of leadership on the self; due to that, the leader cannot manage his or her own emotions and desires, preventing good decisions to take place.

And how to become a leader of the self? Self-leadership can't happen without some thinking and reflection. In fact, it only happens that way.

To lead the self quite often is more difficult than leading a company. At least, in the case of a company, it is easier to see its results, vision, mission, etc. In the case of an individual, that only comes with deep reflection. Sometimes the person does not have any kind of support from other people for self-leadership.

But there is an easy way to develop self-leadership. Reflection will be there too, but it won't be that you will need to contemplate for twenty years to start seeing glimpses of that. It can start right now...

The eight attitudes are based in an Eastern knowledge on how to deal with inner and outer situations. After all, that is what leaders do: they deal with whatever comes to them. The basic and main difference with a manager is that a leader will look into each case with depth, thinking in the long term, while a manager has to solve things right now.

In other words, when you have a problem in front of you, instead of just reacting and solving the problem as it shows, you prepare yourself, you check possible solutions and you implement that which will last longer.

I will give an example: if you find out you have cancer, a common person will just get desperate and will try as best as he or she can to cure the sickness. If the person is a good self-manager, she or he will research a little bit in relation to the best possible solutions. A self-leader will go beyond, understanding what is going on and accepting whatever can happen, either healing or not.

So, what are these eight attitudes?

• Introversion. It is the attitude that helps preparing the self for action.
• Tolerance. It helps to live in a world full of contradictions and differences.
• Adjustment. It enables the self to be flexible and adapt in any environment.
• Discernment. That is a key attitude, as it enables the self to understand what is coming and make his or her own mind in relation to what to do.
• Decision. It is very important to implement whatever the person feels it is right to do.
• Facing. Not hiding, escaping of fighting; facing means to accept and see how to solve tough circumstances.
• Cooperation. Another key attitude, as it helps the individual to cooperate with others and get cooperation from others in tasks that bring benefit to many.
• "Packing-up". Healing and moving on.

Even when you think in terms of leadership, these eight attitudes can cooperate with your leadership. For instance, Tolerance and Adjustment are key attitudes at the time of making a team come out of a crisis. There are however three ways to use these attitudes, and I will give examples related to that.

The first one is that of a manager: she or he uses tolerance, but after the argument. Typically, a person like that (supposing it is a manager) will send some sweets or a soft email trying to get the team together after screaming at some of its members... It is not a bad use, and no doubt, if you have a situation like that, do it. But it is not what a leader would do.

The second and third one are the ways a leader would use these attitudes. Let's understand the PROACTIVE way of using these attitudes: a leader won't wait for the crisis. He or she will prepare the self through contemplation, studies, dialogues with other people, and other means to improve tolerance. In that way, when some problem emerges, the leader naturally will be able to manage it.

In other words, being proactive is to prepare the self in relation to all of these attitudes so that they come naturally when time comes to use them.

It is possible the situation is really critical and the preparation was not enough. Even though that can happen, the leader will make her or his best to not react. He will listen to the situation, or she will look at what is happening and, instead of tolerance, the leader will use another attitude, for instance, making a decision that can help the moment (Guys, I invite all of you to come to my place this evening...).

The ACTIVE way is all about humility and self-esteem. The leader acknowledges his lack of capacity to solve the present situation, but at the same time recognizes there are other capacities within that can help it.

I will talk a bit more on these when I talk about self-empowerment, but I hope with what was written, you can start using these at least in a basic level.

Radical change management

One of the things I appreciate mostly about my choice of profession is to meet incredible people. I do believe deep thinking can make a difference in a world of such a "shallow" thinking...

Jimena, a very good friend, has made a wonderful effort to fulfill her career dream, by becoming a Master Coach. Even though she is not a psychologist, I have found few people who can understand human psyche like her. One example is a model of change management, based on the emotions people feel. It does look like Kübler-Ross model, but I tell you, it came from her own observations on what happens in the reality of change.

After preparing the model, she decided at some point to try it out: during a workshop at a warm place in Colombia, she just jumped in the swimming pool. When I say she just jumped, I mean WITH CLOTHES AND ALL. She motivated the participants to do the same, what they did. All the emotions she compiled in her model happened there.

I think there are two main aspects left out when we deal with change management in the normal consulting stream, and emotions is one of them. It does not matter about which culture we talk, change, and especially radical change, provokes too many emotions.

But there is another one, and I feel if people could focus on that one, the untimely changes that take place from time to time would be able to be managed much better.

To talk about that, let's understand one thing: every time we react against a change, it makes it stronger. So, to face a change and overcome it with success, it is required to not fight against it.

But, if fighting is off the table, what should it be done? The second aspect I want to mention is the awareness of self-leadership, which allows the individual to respond to the changes. The more the person is a leader on himself or herself, the more he or she will be able to get success.

Self-leadership allows the individual to be calm during a storm and to find solution when only problems are visible. It helps the person to manage the emotions in such a way they don't follow my friend's model.

I will talk about the 8 powers of the self at some point, which is my personal model of self-leadership... for this post, let's think of each power as an attitude to deal with changes:

• When the change is too big to be dealt with, introspection is the best policy. Reflecting from inside will help to find solutions faster.
• When the change creates a situation that is temporary, tolerance is the best power to use. However, if the situation is not temporary, then to be flexible is the best thing to do.
• If the change threatens principles, then the individual must stand to it. Not in an aggressive way, but from inside not allowing change to take those principles away.
• Sometimes, change generates situations which require other people to act along with the person. Getting cooperation is a power that comes from a deep self-realization.
• But apart from all of that, decisions tend to be made with no good results. From inside, the person can discern among the many choices life gives her or him, which one will take him to right solution; then, it is just a question of bringing the power to implement that decision into reality.
• And lastly, whenever some process ends, it is vital to withdraw again. This time, to assimilate the lessons and to just let go of any wounds.

If the person develops that level of self-leadership, it will be easier to manage changes, especially radical and untimely ones.