3.3 Discipline 1 - develop
We are developmental beings. And this determines so much of who we are and what our life is like as a species.
The great majority of species get by on a whole lot of instinct with maybe only a little bit of learning. We’re the reverse. We have some instincts that help guide us, but mostly we have to learn how to be human. And keep on learning and learning.
And this is a good thing because our ability to learn and develop has given us…
A special ability to make progress.
For example, back in the days when we lived as hunter-gatherers we did a remarkable thing, truly remarkable…
We transitioned from living in might-makes-right hierarchies to living in super-cooperative groups.
Our ability to cooperate has been the key to our success globally. It’s allowed us to adapt to a remarkable range of diverse environments—from temperate zones to the frozen tundra, from steaming jungles to scorching deserts. It’s allowed us to build our numbers into a mass global population of billions.
But we are deeply conflicted about self-development
There are times when growing is easy and fun and we really like it and are eager for it.
But there are a whole lot of times when it’s challenging. Sometimes a little bit challenging, sometimes very challenging.
And there are times when it’s just simply painful. When we don’t get it for free. When we pay the price in pain.
“Growing pains” they call it. But that’s a lightweight phrase for what growing is like when it’s painful.
You know the phrase, “growing pains.”
That’s a ridiculously lightweight term for what the pain of growing is really like.
Sometimes growing is easy and fun. But there are lots of times when growing can be painful, really painful.
We don’t get it for free. We pay the price in pain.
And unfortunately, the most important parts of our development are often the most challenging and painful.
And at those times we like the result better than the process. We don’t like the growing part, but we like….
To have grown.
We the growing without the pain because…
We humans will do just about anything to avoid pain.
That’s just how we’re made.
Where does the pain come from?
In order to develop ourselves, in the big ways, in the deep ways, we first need to…
See ourselves as we really are.
Not too negatively, not too positively, but just exactly as we are. Just as human as we are.
For some people who have had the good fortune of growing up in a family where their development was supported day by day in a loving way, seeing who they are is not all that hard because they’ve got their act together.
But for people like me, it’s painful. Because we have blind spots. Or in my case blind swaths.
And a blind spot is simply some part of ourselves we have not looked at directly and owned as part of ourselves.
Most of us come out of childhood with some kind of unfinished business. So we still have maybe a little, maybe a lot of growing up we still need to do.
But we don’t like to admit that.
Instead, it’s very human of us to want to have the highest possible self-esteem. Even if we have to make it up.
We want the best, happiest, most together self-image. And we want to project that so we have a stellar public image.
We’re willing to fool ourselves so we can feel really good about ourselves. And in the process we’re denying our humanness. And the fact that we are developmental beings. And that have so much to learn as we grow up.
For many of us, it’s too much. We can’t get it all done in the span of our childhood. So we become adults who still need a lot of work.
And if we do not have compassion for ourselves, for our humanness, seriously deep compassion, then we’d rather not look at the work we need to do, and that’s what makes a blind spot.
I remember thinking, “I’m a good person. I have good intentions. I do good things for other people. So that’s enough. I’m fine as I am. Nothing more I need to do. Just stay the course.”
But of course, given my shut-down, anti-development childhood, there was a whole lot more I needed to do.
And it’s true that…
You can be a good person, a moral person, and still have blind spots.
It was only when I got desperate that I got help. I had this nagging, mostly unconscious feeling that something was wrong with me. Like I wasn’t quite a real person.
And it was only when I was exhausted with pretending to be who I was not, that finally that nagging dissatisfaction, that elemental protest in me, rose to the level of consciousness and I finally signed up for some real help.
And that help was sobering. My first therapist, David, told me, contrary to my sacrificial-savior perspective…
I can’t take care of you. You’re going to have to do your own work. And the rewards will come, but first comes the pain.
He was telling the truth. And this is the hardest thing about moral self-development…
It’s got a hard start.
It’s hard to learn how to go through the pain instead of letting it block you and stop you and limit you and shut you down.
Here are a couple things I learned from my therapy journey.
The first is something like a paradox. It’s important to see the big picture, to know how serious the work is going to be, and how extensive, so you don’t fool yourself. And so you can be strategic.
But you can’t take it all on at once.
So in my case, I had to see that my drive to earn approval, which I brought with me right out of childhood into my adult years, was the central factor in how I was screwed up and screwing up my life.
But if I had tried to take it on all at once, it would have been too much and I would have shut down.
So I had to focus in on doable steps. Improving first one relationship, then another. Changing how I did my activist work. Changing it radically, but one day at a time. Inch by inch and row by row.
It’s not that you don’t have some surprising leaps forward along the way, but they are the exception not the rule.
Seeing ourselves as we are is one of the very hardest things for us humans to do. It’s not fun to see our limitations, imperfections, or missing pieces.
But now, a second learning. One that is especially important for activists.
Not only do we have to see ourselves as we really are as individuals, we have to look deep into the nature of humanness, we have to see ourselves as we really are as a species. And this is our biggest blind spot.
Because to look back through human history, to look around the world at the human present, to see the evil we do and the suffering we cause, not just here and there but on a pervasive, mass level, can be utterly painful. Especially if you want us as a species to be so much better than we are.
Sometimes I think…
Our species would rather die than see ourselves as we really are.
And if that’s true, that might help explain why we are so passive in the face of the terrible danger we’re in.
And yet…
If we take the journey through the pain into the truth, we get to compassion.
Because we understand that how we are made is not our fault. It’s our problem, definitely, but it’s not originally our fault.
We didn’t make ourselves. Evolution did.
And when we have truth and compassion working for us, we can be so smarter and more effective as we fight for ourselves and each other.
Development that’s the opposite of nurturing
It’s quite possible for us to use our powers of development in ways that are not good for us.
For example, I’m thinking now about my time as a sacrificial-savior activist. I had to learn how to live that life. It wasn’t automatic…
I had to develop the ability to suppress self-care.
I had to develop the ability to keep working when I was exhausted.
I had to develop the ability to neglect friendships.
I had to develop the ability to live inside the savior fantasy.
I had to develop the ability to lie to myself. I couldn’t afford to let myself know how much I was hurting.
I’ve come to love this ability we have to develop ourselves, so I hate using that word in a context where it goes absolutely against everything I value.
And when I was a kid, in order to fit into my family and my church community…
I had to develop the ability to shut myself down.
I had to develop the ability to hurt myself.
I had to develop the ability to block healthy self-development.
And there’s more. If you want to secure a place for yourself in the ruling elite of an exploitive society like ours, you’ve got some serious work to do…
You have to develop your ability to shut down empathy at will. Or permanently. That’s so you can take advantage of others without hesitation or inner conflict.
You have to develop your ability to bully people and scare them into submission.
You have to develop just the right touch so you can maximize exploitation while not driving people to the point of rebellion.
You have to develop political savvy so you can stay on top under shifting conditions.
You have to develop your early warning system so you can tell when a former friend has decided to turn against you for his own gain.
You have to develop your ability to lie and gaslight and subvert.
You have to develop your ability to come across publicly as a paragon of moral virtue. You need this smokescreen so people don’t realize just how evil you’ve become. Including maybe yourself.
The Deep-Nurturance OS opposes all of this hurtful, evil “self-development.” Which in my own personal lexicon I prefer to call anti-development.
Deep-nurturance self-development
There’s a lot to self-development based on deep-nurturance. It asks a lot of you, that’s for sure. And yes, it has a hard start. But the further you go into it, the more it feels like a constellation of happy blessings.
Let’s dive into those.
The pleasure of compounding
You know about compound interest…
Say you have the good fortune to be able to set aside some money each month to invest in a fund that pays interest on your principle. You can choose to have them send you the interest you earn each quarter, or you can reinvest it.
If you reinvest it, you’re compounding. Each time you accrue interest, you keep it in the fund and it becomes part of the principle. And because your principle is now larger, your interest becomes larger, and the total value of your fund increases.
At first, it increases slowly. So slowly lots of people opt out and try for quick gains in stocks with hot reputations. But if you stick with compounding, as time goes on your gains are bigger and bigger, until you get to the point that when you open your statement at the end of each succeeding year, you’ll feel like shouting “Hallelujah!”
I think there is a similar principle at work when it comes to moral self-development, which I like to call…
Compound development.
As you work on yourself, each bit of progress you make feeds the next bits of progress you want to make. So it’s much the same thing as…
The rich get richer.
And this happens because…
The more you develop yourself, the better you’re able to do more self-development.
And the reason is simple. You’re not just developing yourself, but…
You’re learning how to develop yourself as you go.
You get better at it because you develop the skills that go with self-development.
And with each victory you have more faith in your ability to make progress, so you’re more willing to take on each new challenge. And that very willingness makes you more successful until the process becomes self-reinforcing and you now get to enjoy…
The power of a positive feedback loop.
When this happens your relationship with self-development changes. It’s no longer a struggle. More and more it becomes a pleasure. You might even get to the point where beyond the specific benefits it brings you love it so much…
You’re into it for its own sake.
And…
The pain/pleasure ratio flips.
In the beginning phase, there’s significantly more pain than pleasure. But as time passes, the pleasure increase until it eclipses the pain.
And then…
Self-development becomes more play than work.
And that’s an absolutely great place to be in your life. And personally, I would say that getting there is worth every bit of struggle it takes along the way.
Imagine this…
You’ve worked your way through all your major blind spots. Maybe you’re working with a coach or a therapist and you decide to dig to see if you can find any more trouble that needs to be dealt with, but you discover that you’ve got all the big stuff handled.
So you don’t have to be scared of what’s inside you anymore. No more inner landmines. No more bad surprises. You won’t get blindsided.
Sure, you’ll still have development that you want to do. And you’re looking forward to it. And now you’re so good at it that it comes relatively easily. Each step forward that you take is a sweet bonus not an urgent necessity.
This can really happen. You can get to where you’re able to…
Fully focus on creating the future instead of wrestling free of the past.
Your life can become your own in a way it never was when you were driven by unconscious dynamics and maybe you felt like a marionette with your childhood issues pulling the strings.
Flow for activists
What do I mean when I use that word “flow”? I mean what musicians or athletes are referring to when they talk about being…
In the zone.
Or…
Playing out of my mind.
Time stops, the background recedes, your inner critic stills, and there is only this one thing in front of you, this sweet, compelling challenge, which, because you care so much about it, lets you in on its secret and yields itself to you.
Flow is one of the very best things life has to give us. Even witnessing it can be thrilling…
You’re watching a basketball star as he snakes his way through his opponents, twists front to back like a dolphin as he leaps and slams the ball through the net with his own signature finesse, and it looks so graceful you can’t imagine it takes any effort at all.
Your favorite singer sits down at the piano and sinks so deep into her music that she’s no longer performing. She’s gone lost inside. You never want this moment to end.
From the outside flow looks easy. From the inside, while it’s happening, that’s also true…
The experience is one of ease.
During a flow experience you’re not struggling, you’re not working at it, you feel light, free, uplifted, because…
You’re playing, not struggling.
Getting there, though, is anything but easy. It takes the total engagement of your mind, body, spirit, heart—all of you.
It can be an experience of…
High excitement.
Which is how most people talk about it.
But it can also be…
Deep contentment.
That’s how it is for me these days. Less excitement, more serenity.
Now here’s the tricky thing about flow…
You can’t command it.
Will power won’t produce it.
It comes as a gift.
Does this mean we have to sit on our hands and feel helpless while we wait for it to show up? No, because…
Flow comes from a system.
Which you can work on and develop.
It’s like with intuition. Try to grasp it to control it and you choke it.
But you can prepare the way for it. You can invite it. You can whisper sweet somethings in its ear.
You can…
Make yourself so ready for it that it wants to come to you.
Where exactly do I find this thing people call “the zone”?
If you don’t have enough challenge…
Your life goes to sleep on you.
If you have too much challenge…
You get overwhelmed and shut down.
So what you want is a challenge that’s…
Just right.
Just right for what? For your skill level. But what does “just right” really mean? It doesn’t mean you stay with what’s comfortable. You push beyond the boundaries of your past success.
You take one step forward—one serious step. And there’s risk in doing that. Which is what makes flow exhilarating. And scary. And it’s what makes you feel so alive.
When people who study flow talk about the challenge-skills balance, they mean something more complex than an easy equilibrium, because in this place…
Your skills are a little off balance with the challenge.
The challenge is running a bit ahead of your skills. That’s the gap. And it’s in this gap that you find what’s called “the zone.”
The art of this off-balance balance is something to master if you want to have the peak moments of flow. And this is something you can master.
So, for example, as your skills move up you can make the conscious choice to move your challenges up, too.
Of course, you might be thinking…
I don’t have a choice about challenges. They just keep coming at me fast and furious.
One of the blessings of the sustainable operating system is it helps you take control over your work so you won’t be so much at the mercy of external events. But still, even the most masterful leader can get hit by a surprise challenge that feels way too big.
So then the rule of thumb is go get help. Which is a leader-like thing to do. You put together a team that does have the capacity to handle the challenge. Which thus shifts the CS balance to just the right place and puts you back in the zone.
Now having preached this uplifting gospel of peak experiences, let me take a moment to blaspheme.
You don’t always have to push. You don’t always have to be out there at your edge. One step back from the edge is also a wonderful place to be.
I want you to be able to enjoy, not just the highs, but also…
The quiet moments of leadership.
For example…
I’ve learned how to negotiate with our elected officials. I’m not scared of meeting with them anymore. I still pay big attention in case someone throws me a curve ball. And I still have plenty of growing edges elsewhere, like asking major donors for money.
But with the politicians, I enjoy every minute of the mastery I worked so hard to achieve. I don’t have the highs I used to have when I was still learning how to work with these folks, but now I have many moments of pure pleasure because I know what I’m doing.
One more note about the gap…
It’s in here that you find the secret to mastery.
If you practice the same-old, same-old, you might add polish to your skills, but you don’t really develop your abilities. If you reach too far ahead and try to practice things you aren’t ready for, you’ll just fail.
Top performers work on what’s in their challenge-skills gap. They work on the skills that are just right for growing themselves.
And when they grow out of the gap they’re in, guess what, there’s another one just ahead, so they never have to quit having the fun of developing themselves.
Focus in service of deep work
When I first learned about peak moments or being in the zone or the flow, I read that time stops and the background recedes. So I thought I had to make time stop and make the background recede. Wrong idea. There was no way I could do that because that’s not the way flow works.
Those two things are examples of the…
Consequences of flow state, not the causes.
Flow comes from focus, so that’s the place to focus…
Time stops because you’re so intent on what you’re doing that you have no attention left over to think about time.
The background recedes because you have no bandwith for it.
What helps you focus? Many things. Here are four of the most important for leaders of deep activist work…
When you feel your mission deeply, when it’s innately compelling to you, when you pursue it not because you feel you should, but because you love it, then it can sweep you up and away from distractions.
When you work in deep alignment with your natural talents and the strengths you’ve developed from them, then you’re at your confident best. Which makes it so much easier to focus than when you’re struggling and stumbling and second guessing.
When you have a daily practice of mastery, a system for continually developing your skills and your core abilities, then you’re learning from everything you do all day, and day by day you’re steadily becoming stronger.
When you have a team around you of people who get you and stand by you and love doing that, then you’re getting what you need. And you’ll be able to relax into focus. And you’ll want to go soaring, not just for yourself, but also for your team.
Put just those four together and you’ll become a force to reckon with.
What hurts focus? Many things, including…
The default, sacrificial nonprofit operating system where you chase crises and use yourself up. And where relational aggression so often goes unchecked. It’s very hard to go soaring into flow when you’re exhausted in the middle of a battle zone.
Lack of resources and support will hurt you, too, of course. It’s very hard to focus deeply on anything when your to-do list is way too long and you feel overwhelmed and you’re trying to manage too many things at once and everything and everyone is demanding your attention urgently in this instant.
Multitasking puts a stop to flow. But…
Lots of leaders feel they have no choice. Multitasking seems like the only way to get through their day.
Nonprofits in general place high value on multitaskers. Just look at the job ads for nonprofit leaders.
And then there’s multitasking paralysis. I’ve been there…
I remember one day I was standing in the middle of my narrow office with piles of papers on my desk in front of me and piles on my work table behind me, and on top of each stack was something urgent that needed to be done yesterday.
I was good at prioritizing, but every single one of these priorities was an absolute top priority and as soon as I reached for one task my mind flashed to another and I started turning from pile to pile, from desk to table and back again, until I was literally spinning in my office.
It’s a radical thing to stop multitasking and start leading through focus.
Scary and exhilarating
Flow can be…
Scary and exhilarating at the same time.
Let’s take a look at the scary part.
When you initially take up the DNOS and get into the flow of it, it’s an unknown, and that might throw you…
Gina: I thought I was getting into my zone, but I’m feeling scared so I can’t be, right?
Rich: That depends. Is the scary part shutting you down?
Gina: No.
Rich: Is it more than you can handle?
Gina: Actually it’s not. I’m still trucking.
Rich: Is it a soupçon of scary?
Gina: No, more than that.
Rich: A good dose?
Gina: Yes, a dose, a good one. I see, not a bad dose. It’s not hurting me. So what’s it doing here?
Rich: Is it pepping you up?
Gina: It’s got me out on my edge.
Rich: Not scattered, not distressed?
Gina: Not at all.
Rich: Are the scary feelings taking anything away from you?
Gina: I can’t think of anything.
Rich: Are they giving you anything?
Gina: They’re making me pay attention and stay focused.
Rich: So could we say they’re helping to keep you in flow mode?
Gina: Well, yes we could.
Rich: What if we call this helpful scary instead of harmful scary?
Gina: That sounds about right. Oh, I like this. Thanks.
Getting into the flow of deep-nurturance is scary because…
You’re being yourself without a net.
And it’s exhilarating because…
You’re being yourself without a net.
I remember when I was doing child abuse prevention, I went on TV a number of times to promote our programs.
Sitting there looking at the camera, with that red light burning, it was freaky to know that thousands, and one time, a million people, were watching me.
What if I said something stupid? Which I was quite capable of doing. Or what if I didn’t get our message across? What if I failed? It wouldn’t be in the tiny venue of a few people in a meeting with parents, it would be in front of the whole world.
Then there was the fact that I was there to teach people about saving kids’ lives. And how could I live with myself if I failed at that? Or what if the performance I turned in was so bad that no TV station in town would ever invite anyone from my organization on again?
Even back then when I knew so little about flow, I knew enough to know this was the wrong kind of scary. It wasn’t helping…
I needed to find a new kind of scary.
I hate performing, but I love giving people what they need. So that’s where I put my attention.
I could still fail at meeting needs, too, but at least I would be in my element. Which focused me whereas performing unnerved me.
So I stopped looking at the camera and looked instead into the faces of the people in the studio audience and made a connection with them one by one as I talked and answered questions, concentrating on what I could give them that they might need.
And when there wasn’t a studio audience, I had to do something else. So I looked at the camera, then into the lens, and then through it…
I imagined just one mom sitting at home in front of me needing to hear what I had to say so she could keep her child safe.
And seeing her there I dearly wanted to give her my best, and did.
By contrast, I remember a presentation I did one night for a group of 60 people. This was a slide show on male violence, two hours with 250 slides. Intense. Usually some of the audience would be in tears by the end. So my heart was usually in my throat.
When I got up in front of this particular audience, though, there were no butterflies in my stomach. Not a ripple of fear. I was pleased with myself that I could be so cool with such dark material.
Afterward my buddy Chris said to me…
“Nice presentation, too bad you weren’t here for it.”
The instant he said it, I understood what I had done. I had distanced myself for self-protection.
That’s when I understood that fear could be my friend. I needed it in the mix to be at my best.
So then whenever the camera panned to me in the TV studio or I began a presentation in front of even a small audience, my intent, my hope, was to keep that just-right kind of fear with me all the way.
In-and-out dance
Sometimes an activist who’s had a string of flow moments hits a bad patch. For example…
I feel like I’ve fallen out of flow mode where I get to have peak moments, and I’m scared that it’s not coming back. I think it’s over for me. Back I go to the drudgery of the past.
How do you feel about your flow mindset?
I love it, I’m crazy about it, I miss it, I want to be back with it, I feel lonely without it.
Notice she’s talking in relationship terms. She’s not using the shoulds her inner critic wants her to smother herself with.
So then I can say…
You love your flow mindset so much, I guarantee you it’s not going away. You’re a fighter, you’re not going to give up on yourself.
Okay, I hear that.
And where are you now in terms of your operating system?
I’d say I’m in some twilight zone between the new and the old. What is this place?
Have you ever noticed the difference between your flow moments and the operating system that generates those moments?
Not till you just asked me that question.
What do you see?
If I fall out of a peak experience that doesn’t mean I’ve fallen out of the DNOS. I’m still in readiness, which means more peak experiences are on the way.
And what if you never had another peak experience in your life?
I’d miss them, but being a deep-nurturance activist even without those moments is a very good way to live. I’d still be thrilled to be here.
Let’s look at your relationship with peak moments. What’s it like on your way into one?
It’s like falling in love. No, it’s calmer than that and more trustworthy. I’ll just say it’s my favorite place to be.
And when you fall out of a peak moment, what’s that like?
I hate it. I panic. A little should on my shoulder tells me I’m a failure.
But what’s really happening? Tell me in relationship terms…
Oh, I’m still in the relationship. Because it’s not about the peak moments. They don’t exist on their own. When I’m having a peak moment I’m in my relationship with flow mode, and when I’m not having a moment, I’m still in my relationship with flow mode.
So…
Nothing to worry about, not when I take my focus off the moments and put it on my relationship with my deep love of focus and flow, and both of them in the context of deep-nurturance. Then I can relax and trust.
Have you ever heard of anyone living in flow 100% of the time?
Actually, never.
For some people these moments are rare, for others frequent, but no one is there all the time. And by the way, what would it be like if you lived 100% in peak moments?
Exhausting. Yikes, I never thought about that. I guess I like the in and out of it, the variety. I can see I need the time out to recover and get myself ready for the intensity of the next high.
That’s what I call the in-and-out dance. When you fall out, you deepen your relationship with peak moments because you miss them. When you go back in, you remember how much you love it there, and that deepens your relationship. And meanwhile the Deep-Nurturance Operating System is home, holding you whether you are in your flow zone or your ordinary zone.
I get it, what matters is to have that kind of home, and I do have that kind of home.
Silencing noble shoulds
The more masterful you become in your activism, including your leadership, the less those old crude attacks of your inner critic work, things like…
You’re stupid.
You’re a nobody.
You’ll never be able to lead.
When you’ve developed some degree of mastery, it’s so obvious that you’re smart and successful that attacking messages to the contrary just sound ridiculous.
So what’s a poor inner critic to do?
Put on a disguise.
Pretend to be an advocate for flow.
Which means it will start telling you things like…
Flow is the best there is, so you should be there.
You had a peak moment this morning and then you lost it. You should have stayed with it. What’s wrong with you?
These are noble shoulds. On the surface they sound supportive, but they’re not. And how do we know that? Because there are shoulds in those statements and…
Shoulds kill flow.
Peak moments are a choice not a should. If you don’t want them, don’t pursue them. They’re not right for everyone…
I don’t care about peak moments. I grew up in turmoil in a desperately dysfunctional family. What I care about is calm and stability and I’ve got that and I’m sticking with it. It’s right for me.
And if you want to get into flow, you get to do it your own way. Sometimes people think the soaring feeling of flow is synonymous with grand. But it doesn’t have to be. It can be synonymous with intimate.
So the most important question to ask yourself is…
What kind of flow is right for me?
Here’s Elise…
I know myself quite well. God knows, I should after all these years of therapy. And one thing I know is I’m a shy person. I do really well leading a small, intimate team. But put me in the limelight and I freeze. I’d work on that, except there’s nothing in me that wants to be in the limelight.
I can do all my soaring into my flow zone right here quietly at home in my happy little nonprofit, thank you.
Inner critics attack us, and lie to us. And the noble shoulds are the worst. If our inner critics really wanted us to be in flow mode…
They’d just shut up.
But here’s something really neat. In flow moments, you’re so focused on what you love that there’s no room for inner critics or judgment or blame or shame to elbow in. It’s…
A delicious kind of freedom.
Forthright, nurturing relationship conversations
I remember in my 20s, how we would gossip about people, in our own circle of friends, in our workplace. We’d go on and on about their faults, that things that aggravated us…
But we didn’t help them.
And why? We weren’t sure how to bring up hard truths without making things worse.
But I think there was also despair at work. We didn’t believe our relationships could stand the test. We hadn’t done the kind of moral self-development we needed, so we could be masterful advocates for each other.
And looking back, I can see that when I was criticizing someone else for what I considered a failing, I was really giving myself a warning. What that person is doing, make sure you don’t do it, Rich.
And what I’ve seen in my years of focusing intensely on self-development, is that the more I develop myself…
The better I’m able to be a solid, unshakable, eager advocate for someone else.
And behavior that used to trigger me doesn’t anymore, because I’m not scared I might do the same thing.
The less scared we are about what we might do, the less we need to police ourselves, the more we’re available to support others. To love them through our advocacy for them.
Because it’s so hard to see ourselves on our own, because it’s so hard to develop ourselves on our own…
We need forthright, but compassionate advocates.
Self-development, especially in the early stages, might never be pain-free, it might never be easy, but if you’ve got company every step of the way, if you’ve got someone on your side, rooting for you, being smart about how to support you, then it becomes doable, and pushing through the pain takes you into rewards that make every hard moment more than worth it.
Imagine being on a team of activists where everyone puts that kind of caring first. Imagine having a circle of friends like that.
And maybe you already know what that’s like, but in case not, here’s a dialogue I’ve written how to show the kind of difference just one gutsy friend can make.
Kenny has been in his job for five months. Mandy has been at the same nonprofit for three years. But she was also friends with Kenny before he started working there.
Kenny, there’s some buzz going on about you.
I figured as much. I walked into the lunch room yesterday and the place fell silent. I assumed they were talking about me and that it was not flattering. But I was scared to ask them what’s up.
Well, I know what’s up. Do you want to hear it? You don’t have to…
No, I need to know how I’m impacting others. But tell me this first, Mandy, do they hate me?
Oh, god, no. One of the people I talked to said you’re a great guy and it makes her sad when you screw up.
Okay, how am I screwing up?
Please remember as I tell you this that we’re all human, we all have our stuff.
I’ll try, but no more buffering, let me have it.
To be concise, the three people I talked with are calling you a know-it-all.
Wow. Ouch. I don’t like that.
Do you have any idea why they would say something like that?
No, but it makes me very uncomfortable, and in a way that makes me nervous that there could be truth to what they say.
Tell me about your history of having to know stuff.
Like in school?
Okay, let’s start there.
I was a mediocre student until tenth grade. That’s when my history teacher got me turned on to reading and I became a voracious reader. And I got all A’s or A-minuses from then on.
What about at home, Kenny? How did that shift impact the people there?
Oh. Omg. My dad. It was a shock for him.
How so?
All through my childhood, he berated me, talked down to me, told me I was stupid, always had to prove that he knew more than me.
What happened when you became a reading maniac?
It didn’t take long before I knew more than he did. And I didn’t hide the fact. I got a kick out of putting him in his place. Oh, jeez…
What?
It’s so obvious. How come I’ve never be able to see this till now?
Maybe because it was too painful to see it on your own, but, wait, first tell me what you’re seeing.
I was driven to outsmart my dad.
Was it like self-defense?
Exactly.
And that means…
It was a way of taking care of myself. It put the brakes on his abusive comments. He couldn’t lord it over me anymore. You know, I think he actually started to be a little bit scared of me because I could best him. He certainly backed off.
Did it change your relationship with him?
Not really. He still looked down on me till the day he died, but at least, once I got smart, he had to keep his judgments to himself.
Remembering this about your dad, tell me about being a know-it-all now. Is it still self-defense?
No, it’s not! Well, would you look at that! I’m running an old pattern I don’t need anymore.
You don’t need to defend yourself anymore?
Not here anyway, not with my co-workers. None of them are against me, except I guess when I aggravate them with my behavior.
Okay, but let me play devil’s advocate for a minute. Here we are gearing up to start a new program and you’re the one who’s gone research crazy. You’ve looked at anything and everything that’s the least bit similar anywhere in the country. And then you’ve gone out and interviewed people and gotten feedback. And you’re easily the most knowledgeable on all the state-of-the-art strategies for program design.
So when it comes to program development, you’re not a know-it-all, but you are a knows-a-whole-hell-of-a lot.
Is that a problem, Mandy?
Not at all! I love it. And tell me why it’s a good thing.
Well, I’m intense about research because I want our programs to be the best they can be.
Why? To outshine other nonprofits?
No, actually not. It’s just that I want the maximum result for our teens, so they can make their lives better. Better than mine was as a teen.
And what else? Remember, being smart started out as a defensive move.
Oh, I see. Yes, if we make our programs the best possible, that means it’s easy to defend ourselves against any detractors we might have.
So what you learned to do as a defense against abuse, is paying off now as a proactive strategy for making things better in our community. Is that true?
It is.
So then what’s the problem, Kenny?
It’s that I’m still stuck back in my relationship with my dad. With him, I was acting in self-defense, but I was still acting out. I loved learning stuff just for its own sake, but the primary reason I was driven to learn stuff was to face down my dad.
But I’m still behaving like I’m in danger. Nobody in my life now is remotely like my dad. So that means I get to keep the part of being smart I like and root out the compulsive, defensive, out-of-date part.
Wow.
Mandy, this is such a relief.
What’s next?
At the staff meeting tomorrow, I’m going to apologize to everyone and let them know what we’ve discovered and how, even though I’m not going to quit being a research maven, I absolutely want to stop being a know-it-all. Do you think we’d have time for this?
We’ll make time. And take all the time you need. We care about you.
And then I’m going to ask people to tell me, politely, when they catch me doing my know-it-all riffs, so I can get sharp about how I act out my old stuff and put a stop to it.
I love it. But one more thing before we’re done. You’ve been screwing up and hurting people’s feelings and messing up your relationships, and how do you feel about that?
Terrible. It’s so embarrassing. I hate it.
So do you hate yourself as well as hating what you did?
Maybe. Some. Yes. I guess so.
Take a moment and listen back over our conversation. We got to the bottom of your know-it-all behavior. We know where it comes from. And what was your motivation? Bad intentions or good intentions?
Good intentions. I was stopping abuse. Maybe I had some bad intentions toward my dad. Maybe in part I was punishing him.
Was it good for him to have someone stop his abuse?
I’d have to say yes. Very much so.
If you were your own best advocate, Kenny, what would you say about all this?”
I just wanted to take care of myself. I didn’t ever ask to become a know-it-all. I never wanted to hurt people’s feelings. That behavior was not me. It was me acting out. It was not my moral core. I believe in love. I believe in treating people really, really well. It’s what I put my life into every day, both here and at home.
So you’re taking responsibility for your behavior?
Yes.
But still you did all that hurtful stuff.
This is confusing. Yes, I did that stuff, but I was unconscious. And now I’m conscious, and I’m taking responsibility going forward.
What more do you want to ask of yourself?
I think this is enough.
So do you hate yourself for what you did?
Hmmm. Not exactly. I hate that I turned myself into a know-it-all.
But when it comes to your relationship with yourself…
In this moment, I’m actually feeling compassion for myself because I can understand how I became who I became.
And is it fair for you to ask others to feel compassion for you, too?
I would like to ask that of them—after I apologize of course.
Where does that leave you?
I’m going to use my smarts to connect with people instead of setting myself apart from them.
Are we done for now?
There’s something else nagging at me. Do you have another minute?
I’ve got lots of minutes if you want them.
I think I have one more piece of work to do. When I learned how to beat my dad, that felt like a triumph, and it was. But still it left me without a dad. So there was an underlying tragedy. I had an opponent, not a dad.
What I can see in this moment, for the first time, is that even though my dad is in his grave, I’m still keeping him alive. I’m still living my life in opposition to him. He’s like a ghost haunting me.
And why haven’t I let him go? Is it just that I need to hit refresh and update myself? Maybe. But I’m also suspicious that some part of me doesn’t want to let go. Maybe I had some crazy hope that if I could beat him at his crazy game, the shock would wake him up. And then he’d see me and respect me. And maybe he would decide to do the kind of personal development he needed to do to become the kind of man who could actually love his son.
I think I need to feel my way into the deeper levels of sorrow that go with having a father but not having a father. And I need to mourn him, not his death, but his life, that he was so closed down and angry. And how he destroyed his relationships, relentlessly, one after the other, right up to the day he died. Such a lonely, lonely man.
And how he never got to enjoy having you for a son?
That’s right. He missed out on something really good here. He missed out on me.
Kenny, I see your eyes glistening.
Yes, this is really painful. I can see that I really need to let go of him, decisively, in a final and forever way. I want to be proactive instead of reactive. I want to root him up out of my life and lay him to rest with a farewell blessing.
Listen, Mandy, I want to thank you for being such a gutsy friend. You have a way of telling me hard truth so I can hear it and do something with it. That’s a remarkable talent, and I so, so appreciate you.
I’ve loved spending this time with you.
Nina works for Luke at a nonprofit that does community organizing and trains people how to take successful political action. Luke begins the conversation…
I’m wondering if I could give you a bit of feedback this afternoon?
Sure, I mean you’re the boss, you get to do that anytime you want.
Okay, but I’m not talking about work feedback. You get an A-plus for your work, Nina. If you’re willing I’d like to give you some personal feedback.
How bad is it?
I don’t think you’ll like what I have to say, except I think you will.
What’s that mean?
I think you’ll be able to do something really good with it.
Are you mad at me, Luke?
Not at all. What I want to tell you is something that makes me sad.
Well, then, have at it.
You’re the best trainer we have for our Introduction to Organizing workshops. You’re the one who gets the best ratings and the most requests. And we see more of your graduates actually getting involved in organizing.
I love hearing that, but there’s a but coming isn’t there?
It’s an and not a but.
Same difference.
Maybe so, but I’m going to make it an and. You do great work, and there’s something you do in the last ten minutes of each workshop that doesn’t hurt your work, but I think hurts you.
I don’t understand.
I’ve seen this three times, Nina, and I asked Jodi to sit in on the final day of your last two workshops and she saw the same thing.
Please tell me.
You know how we’ve talked about the special way you connect with people?
Yes, I don’t know what I do exactly, but since I was a kid I’ve had the good fortune that people like me right away and keep on liking me.
In a moment of whimsy, I told Jodi a good name for you would be Puppy Heart. You just always seem so glad to see people and to find out how they’re doing and what they’ve been up to. People warm to you from the moment they first meet you. I’ve seen it again and again.
And the problem is?
The problem is that during the last 10-15 minutes of the last day of your series, you seem to go cold on the group. You’ve enveloped all these people in your warmth for days now, and suddenly just before the end it’s like you put out both your hands and push them away. It’s like you flip a switch and your energy shuts down and you go inside. Last time I witnessed it, I felt like you were abandoning these sweet people who had become so attached to you.
I had no idea.
At every break people are flocking around you. At the end of every other day, people surround you with happy chatter. But on the final day, they give you polite applause and leave quietly and go out for drinks together. And you deserve to get wild cheers and lots and lots of heartfelt hugs, instead of silently packing up your stuff and walking out to your car by yourself.
Omigod, that’s so true. I’ve felt a pang of loneliness at the end of the last day. And then I push it down, because I don’t understand it and I don’t want to deal with it.
Five days of life-changing training and at the end you’re alone.
Okay, Luke, now I’m crashing.
What are you noticing as you crash?
I feel terrible. I’m at a loss about what to say. This is so embarrassing. I’m so sorry I’ve been screwing up like this. This work is so important to me, I don’t want to be hurting it.
You’re actually not hurting the work, just yourself. How about if we dig into this for a few minutes and see if we can find the source?
Meaning the reason I pull back and shut down?
Yes. Do you remember how you got started being the Puppy Heart?
That’s easy. Annie, my therapist, and I have talked about that. I was a super shy little girl. So when I got sent off to first grade and was going to be gone from home all day long, I was really scared. I don’t know where the idea came from, but to keep from bursting into tears I started asking the other kids all kinds of questions about themselves. They really liked that, and I stopped thinking about myself.
And then?
I just kept doing it. Keeping other people happy to keep myself happy.
Is that anything like people pleasing?
Annie and I argue about that. I keep insisting it’s not. She’s suspicious it might be. And now I’m thinking I need to look at that again.
In the ten minutes just before the last ten minutes of your workshop, what are you feeling?
I feel tired. Not just from putting out all that energy so many days in a row. But just tired. Like of the whole thing.
Do you want to quit leading workshops?
No, no, no, I really love doing them. Don’t take that away from me.
I won’t. I want you to keep doing them—but only if that works for you. Tell me about tired.
If Annie were here I could imagine her saying, that my Puppy Heart behavior is “overdetermined.” That’s her word. Psych jargon.
What’s your word?
I’ve got a nagging feeling there’s a too-muchness about my people pleasing.
People-pleasing?
Oh, jeez, I just said that didn’t I? What if Annie’s right?
Would that mean you’d have to stop connecting with people?
Oh, god, I hope not. I genuinely do love that.
What’s the too-muchness then?
I think, let’s see, I think maybe I’m scared that if I don’t keep people happy something bad will happen.
Like you might end up alone and sad and maybe in tears.
I guess that’s got to be it.
Is that fear real?
No, not for years and years. I was shy and scared as a little kid. But I’m not shy anymore. I’m good at connecting with people now. My relationships are strong. Point of fact, I’m a grown up now with lots of life experience, so I don’t need to be scared about things falling apart. And if something falls apart, I know I can put it back together.
So your shutting down behavior, what’s it sabotaging?
I don’t get my hugs.
So that behavior is sabotaging you and you want to put a stop to it for your own sake?
Yes, that’s it exactly. I’m so glad I can see this, and thank you for this conversation. You were right, this bad news is going to be a good thing for me. Now, anything I can do for you?
Hold on a second, Nina, another question. What’s the good thing about sabotaging yourself?
The good thing?
Yes. Take a breath, sink into the question. What’s good about shutting down right after you’re feeling that deep tiredness?
I don’t know. If I had to take a guess, wait, I see it. I’m sabotaging the sabotage!
Wow, what does that mean?
I love being the Puppy Heart. I’m not going to give that up. But there’s a red flag here.
And the red flag says what?
Stop being a scared Puppy Heart and be happy Puppy Heart. With no pressure to do more than what you’re feeling in the moment.
Happy?
Yes. I want to cut out the too-muchness that is a leftover echo of my old, little-girl fear that’s so out of date it’s ridiculous.
Do you have an appreciation for yourself before we stop?
There’s some part of me that wants the best for me. It delivered its message in a messy backwards way, so backwards I needed a friend to help me hear it. But it delivered the message. I’m going to teach that part how to be direct, just like you are, Luke. But in the meantime, “Thank you, Part!”
Please remember what I said in Section 1.2. Forthright, nurturing relationship conversations can be therapeutic without being actual therapy.
Therapists who know what they’re doing, and can do trauma work, and can guide people on a journey of healing, are worth their weight in gold.
But deep feelings and personal history are part of life. They’re part of being human. They’re part of us. They belong to us. They’re not the proprietary property of the profession of therapy.
The more we develop ourselves, the more skilled we become with feelings and history and relationships, the more we care about nurturance and give our lives over to it, the deeper we can go with each other.
Grumpy
Let me add a final note about something that makes me gumpy. In the nonprofit sector, the word “development” means fundraising.
How did that happen? That euphemism. I guess fundraisers didn’t want to have to forthrightly admit what they were up to. Maybe they thought they’d do better if they could sneak up on donors.
Or maybe they had some internalized feeling that delivering services was the noble side of nonprofit work, but asking for money was the seamy side.
I don’t know the history of how development came to be synonymous with raising money, and I wish that hadn’t happened, but given that it did, what I now want to do is take back that word.
I want “development” to mean…
Developing ourselves. And each other. And our communities.
I want every activist who practices deep-nurturing to think of themselves as “Development Directors.” Or better…
Development practitioners.
And to consider this a top priority. And to consider mutual nurturance and mutual advocacy the most important part of their work.
And to see this commitment to nurturance not just as something useful, but as something…
Beautiful.
