One thing I can guarantee, in amongst my grand resolutions, determined decisions and practical planning, is that I will, inevitably, at some point, lose myself, question my direction and doubt how to sensibly put one foot in front of the other. Self-confidence turns to self-doubt and the clear, external, path suddenly seems to fade. The walls of my strident determination are breached by arrows of questioning. Why aren’t things flowing? Why does this feel like such hard work? Am I over struggling? Should I do this or that to achieve my end? Am I even aiming for the ‘right’ end? Maybe I have it all wrong!
I seem cut off from a deeper sense of knowing and I cast about for clues in the mist, but everything echoes my lack of surety. I recently heard the words “hesitate and the universe hesitates with you.” At these times, all is hesitation. It’s easy to slip into a funk. From the outside, other people seem so sure, so consistent, so determined, so one-pointed, so damn good! My grip on myself seems to slip and a small chink opens onto hopelessness. Not wanting to ‘waste time,’ I drive ever harder but to no avail: I get deeper lost in the labyrinth.
These states never last forever, thank goodness, but, like an aching back (or any symptom), they call for something different from me, a shift of position, a rest, a little healing. When I am a true leader in my own life, I do exactly this. I stay with my discomfort, I notice it, I bear it and I stop what I am doing, even just for a little moment, to see what I am missing. I don’t slip into blind panic and keep on trying in the same way. In the stillness, something valuable usually emerges, something that reconnects me with what really matters, and my worldly endeavours are reset into a useful and new perspective.
When, I fail to do this, and instead continue to strive, the work gets ever more unbearable until I am forced, in the end to give up and do something different. Same outcome, different method. More painful. More stupid.
Welcoming these blocked moments and engaging with them in a friendly, unforced way (rather than out of desperation as described above) is actually not that easy to do, because I, like the rest of the world, am deeply conditioned to be ‘productive,’ to fit a certain mold, work in a certain way, and to measure success and failure in external, collective terms.
It takes something to notice what is going on and to stop it. This is where leadership comes in – not the type which seeks to conquer others - the type that is concerned with myself. I like to think of it as ‘leading’ my life, something which it’s easy to assume I am doing all the time, when in fact I am often following outer rules, letting collective attitudes lead me instead of doing it for myself.
Inner leadership means coming back to self – not just the bits we like and think look good to the world, but our fear, doubt, blockages and imperfections too. In our mistakes and flaws hides something which is both socially unadapted, and uniquely ‘us’. Something surprising: an undiscovered potential which takes us out of the collective and brings us more to ourselves. My pattern of losing the way, for example, shows me that I can often achieve far more using a more introverted, passive approach rather than always engaging the endlessly pro-active, extraverted mode which, in our culture – and in my head – is associated with ‘getting on.’
Stepping out of the collective while staying connected to others demands inner leadership. Truly it is ‘more difficult to rule yourself than to rule a city’[i] but that is what we must try to do.
Ghandhi puts it best:
"We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi
[i] Jordan Peterson archive