Our Souls at Work
“Stand still. The trees ahead of you and the bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or branch does is truly lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.”
I have often thought of leadership as a labor of love. This is true for leaders in all walks of life, including in one’s family, but my particular expertise is in the organizational realm so my thoughts here specifically are directed towards leaders in companies and organizations of all types, although I am sure they can be applied in any other leadership context as well. While “labor” connotes work, and work in and of itself is oftentimes not pleasurable, the “love” part of this equation transmutes an experience that otherwise can be devoid of satisfaction to that which has deep meaning and can serve to connect us to others and our world in deep and profound ways.
Over the years, I have observed within myself and in others with whom I have worked that it can be particularly difficult to experience the “love” part of the alchemy that can turn a potentially mundane activity into something deeply meaningful. Without this integral aspect, we can find ourselves prostituting our time and effort for material gain without the depth of meaning that we need to truly prosper and thrive as human beings.
When I look back on my career, this has been a particularly acute aspect that has been peppered throughout my experience spanning many years. Thankfully, I have had deep connection to the people whom and I have coached, consulted to, and worked with, and I have experienced profound growth, and joy in that growth, along with them. These experiences have taught me that there is “gold in them thar hills,” even though it doesn’t happen all the time, or even as frequently as I would like. But to know that the possibility is there is oftentimes enough to keep building the capacity to experience this result ever more frequently.
While I have been “successful” and have consequently accrued the outward signs of that success – e.g., money, reputation, status – a belief that has operated underneath my conscious understanding of reality is that it all has come with a price. “Accomplishing success is great but there is a trade-off that occurs that requires paying for that success with one’s well-being” describes this particularly powerful aspect of my belief system that has surfaced over the years. To replace this belief with another, more expansive and life-affirming one has been one of the areas of focus for my personal development efforts.
Given my personal work in this area, I am particularly attuned to seeing it in others. Thus, in my work with leaders, I have often been surprised with the willingness with which this tradeoff is made. So many of them have made the choice – conscious or not – that this tradeoff is required to achieve their career destiny. This bargain results in a seemingly continuous struggle to stay motivated, do the right thing, be the leader they want to be, all while managing the bombardment of expectations, requests, obligations, etc. The resulting disconnection with what truly matters in their work lives has implications that go far beyond just the workplace, potentially extending to their sense of identity and meaning, making this Faustian bargain potentially very scary indeed.
Thus, there is a sense of loss that I believe is particularly acute in today’s world, especially given the tremendous shifts currently taking place. We KNOW there is something greater in us and the changes happening around us are providing us opportunities to catch glimpses of what that might be, although we find ourselves still tied to what has been.
So then, what do we do when we are lost in our work, from our work, from ourselves? When we notice we aren’t getting the results we want and that working harder, faster, better leaves us back to the same place we started, lost in the middle of a cacophony of meetings, deliverables, requirements, matrices, objectives – losing connection to any sense of meaning or purpose that originally led us here in the first place?
When we are truly “lost,” what must we do? We must let go of the planned path ahead, and be still. We must let go of our identity that once may have served us but which now acts as a constrictive cloak that we continue to force-fit ourselves into even though we have outgrown its contours. The resulting pressure feeling like a water balloon being squeezed at one end makes us feel “off,” disconnected to our work, separate from ourselves and to what matters to us.
We must also wake up and pay attention, pay attention to everything we’ve given away in this quest that has taken us outside of ourselves, all the games we have played to make ourselves safe and untouched, as well as to our creative gifts that are longing for expression. If we are feeling grief in our work or workplace, we don’t know what’s underneath that grief unless we fall into it.
Ultimately, we must settle into the silence amidst all the voices inside of us that drown out the call for real and meaningful change. The ability for profound silence may lie dormant inside of us but it awaits our noticing ourselves, for we are lost and the only way we can know where we are is to be still, wait, listen, and heed what arises within us. The glories of our future await us, but the path towards this greatness begins with the simple connection to what’s inside. As the poem above says, Remember, the forest knows / Where you are. You must let it find you.