I write words in the middle of the night. I call them words, because although they appear as poems, they aren’t poems in the conventional sense. They come through as guidance, a distillation of inner workings, an illuminator of my consciousness. Last night’s words have me pondering what it means to live and what it means to lead.
“You want precise grips, presence gets them.”
As I think about how I’ve operated in business, community and even my personal life, I undeniably prefer precise grips. I want something that is clearly defined, logical even, and I tend to work incredibly hard to get this clarity. Whether that comes through as a strategic plan, or annual goals, or action steps for a new endeavor, precise grips move us through with ease.
But what if the precise grips, in their most whole and beneficial, can’t be found through force and intent alone? What if the strongest grips come through us being present? For presence allows us to become the greatest and most abundant versions of ourselves. This pathway, this recognition of ourselves, may very well be the best way to illuminate precise grips and pathways forward.
In my own life, my best ideas have come when I wasn’t trying, when I wasn’t searching and seeking desperately for answers. My best thinking has arisen in states of allowance and wonder. We are so accustomed in leadership to forcing the answer, as we are often the ones responsible for the answer. This weight can feel enormous. While we may force an answer to alleviate the pressure, we are also adept at accepting defeat if something doesn’t work out and forcing another. We aren’t afraid to be interactive and eventually, we find a solid pathway through.
But what if the pathway through takes even less effort than we realized. What if being a leader actually means being increasingly present in each moment? Accepting this moment for what it is and recognizing the lessons right there? What if in that space, the next step becomes clear?
I often talk about the fact that I have never set personal goals in my life. This has often been looked at with disdain as goals are such a significant part of our performance culture. But I have always felt that they were limiting me somehow. I always knew my mind would create possibilities with the information it already understood and that would put guardrails around what was possible. So why would I want to force the direction? I wanted life to unfold and truth be told, I would never have been able to imagine what has become. I never would have dreamt it possible.
I know lack of goal setting isn’t right for everyone, but I think the presence that I always trusted inherently is. There is nowhere else for us to be except right here. And while we as leaders are held responsible for developing plans, markers and indicators, we also need to find spaces for us to simply be present in today. There is actually no greater place for us to discover tomorrow.