Leading With the Love You Are
Peggy O'Neal
A fundamental shift in the understanding of the nature of leading relieves stress and sources happiness, clarity and meaning. You aren't doing anything wrong. | Coachguide | Public Speaker | Virtual Speaker | Facilitator
Maybe …
… love the co-worker who is always late.
… love the person with the behavior you label annoying.
… love your fear of being wrong.
… love the one you already love easily ever more deeply.
J.-Robert Ouimet was a very successful businessman and managed a financial holding company which included the Ouimet-Cordon Bleu-Tomasso Group, founded by his father.?
He lived a privileged life of financial security and experienced a brilliant education. He had a profound faith in his religion and knew and corresponded with Mother Teresa.
One day he shared with a colleague who passed it on to me that his focus was to?love more today than he did yesterday.
As I embrace the knowing that happiness, peace and love are the very nature of my being or self, and that I share my being with everyone and everything, I aspire to do just that – love more today than yesterday – in every interaction.?
Here’s how that played out for me earlier this year. People ask me for real examples of living this way.
A client who is always late and I scheduled a one-on-one session. (Ok, maybe hyperbolic; I think he has been on time once in the many months of our time together. At one point he told me he wanted to stop being late for our sessions, and I told him I appreciated that.) Via email he let me know he would stay in touch if he was running late. He did not. I texted him a few minutes after our scheduled time. No response. Thirty minutes later he texted he would be ready to talk in a few minutes.
You might be able to imagine many of my thoughts and emotions. I’ll share a few.
“He’s always late; do I want to keep doing this?”?
“I should have known. Why do I put up with this?”
“I have allowed this.”?
“Maybe I should tell him we have to reschedule. Maybe that will ‘teach’ him.” However, I knew he was leaving town in two days and wanted to speak with me before his trip.
“He needs to be on time. I know he does this with other people.”
I’m sure I had many others; I didn’t take notes.
I examined each of these and the motivation that inspired them. The foundation of all of those thoughts is based on a belief in separation and an intention to keep me apart from him. That is, they were fraught with judgment, the need to be right, the need to teach him to do things in a way I think they should be done. Did any of this help me experience the oneness that is our essential nature? No, it created distance and corresponding emotions of annoyance, frustration, resentment.
I had a choice to make: to invite him to face being late which would have been my decision a few years ago (to be right) or to love him and be with what arose during the conversation.?
When I stepped back, I reminded myself that I had set aside this time to be with him. What real difference did it make in my life – as long as we ended about the same time as scheduled??
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All of these judgments, opinions, annoyances, were about my egoic needs to be right, to help him keep agreements in the way I thought was important.?
If it wasn’t an issue he wanted to pursue, maybe I should let it go.?
By the time we were on Zoom together, my emotions were still going pretty strong.
I wasn’t sure what to do. I decided to wait. Love him – more today than yesterday. Let him tell me what he wanted to explore and receive guidance about.
No apology. No acknowledgement of being late. No acknowledgement of not staying in touch. You might have been able to see a few fumes coming out of me as I talked myself back to my essential nature. “Remember who you are. Remember who he is. Love him. All of the other is your agenda. Let’s see what he wants.”
I have learned how to return myself fairly quickly once I decide to, to my essential nature of love, peace and happiness, and did so. I let all of my egoic needs go. I was WITH him.?
We had a lovely conversation. Filled with peace and love and allowing. He received the guidance he wanted. He was satisfied. Grateful. He followed up with an email later thanking me for the session.
That’s how I brought love to a conversation that at least at the beginning would have been tense and created resistance – and based on the agenda I thought was important. Obviously, it is not to him.
Each of us would be different in this situation even as we lead with love.?
I recall a story of a man who had been living in western civilization and returned to his native tribe who lived according to traditional customs. They had fields that certain members of the tribe were to care for, and that was to be one of his places in the community. However, he sat on the edge of the field and didn’t participate. One of the tribe members went to the chief to complain. He said to let it be. After some time, the returning member began to participate in the tending of the field. No one cajoled him, no one “required” him, no one made him wrong for not participating. He willingly in his own time joined in.?
What came to me from that story is that if he had been required to participate, there would have been the natural resistance to someone else telling him what to do. He would have brought that energy to the work and group. He may never have participated willingly. But, by allowing him to be where he was and being the example, he eventually joined in.?
Is it possible that love – shown by allowing and trusting – is an enticing invitation? I think so. We can love people with no expectations, and they may well come along at some point. What is more attractive than love? Knowing you’re loved, accepted as you are??
I had wanted to require my dear client to comply with my standards. There may be a place for that. A time for that. But I let love lead and we had a wonderful experience.?
You too can ask before you communicate, “What is motivating what I’m about to say?” Or “What is the purpose of my communication?”
Any sort of one-upmanship, control, domination, I-know-best are motivations of separation.
Then ask, “Is this a motivation that continues an experience of separation? Or one that is based on the knowing that I am one with everyone and everything?”
What might be different for you if you loved more today that you did yesterday?
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We are in the midst of a paradigm shift that is fundamentally changing our knowing of and relationship with reality. We are being asked to know who we truly are and to express that knowing in our relationships, activities, conversations and being. My dream is that millions of us live aligned with our essential nature, beginning now.
With love,
Peggy