The Nobility in All of Us

The Eagle Newsletter - October 2021

Welcome to The Eagle, a monthly newsletter on strategy, risks, and the creation of safe and thriving business environments by Laurence Duarte, founder of Strat & Shield Co.

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Dear Ones,

How do you feel today?

Let’s take the inward road and begin to awaken our gift of feeling.?After all, we are human?beings?before human?doings.

I know it is hard to do so, given all the stress and distractions in modern life and the culture’s old scripts in which feelings are seen as weakness, vulnerability and frailty. We are so often on autopilot, declining to pay attention to our feelings, our gut, not listening, not caring to the most important person on earth: us.?

But, there is great danger and violence to exile ourselves from our bodies: We become impoverished, numbed, fearful, lost, constricted. Behind our lack of inward listening lies a loss of brainpower and the ability to speak and say what was being thought from the source of our giftedness, dreams, hopes, ideas and creativity.

Let’s face it, if we want to be of service to our leadership, offering the necessary presence, empathy and authenticity, and listening to our teams, customers, families, friends, and the world, we need to start with ourselves. How can we lead in the right direction if we don’t know what we are really made of?

Our body gives us a physical experience of the world. It is where we find the mind talking with a constellation of emotions and feelings, where we learn to trust ourselves, our own experience, what is care for us, versus what is kryptonite.?

I understand, with so many “numbing” modern materials at our disposal, it might be tempting to outsource our well-being — actually, the lack of it. But by taking back our responsibility for what we feel in our body and checking the disconnect and dissonance in it, we get a deeper understanding of how we love the world and how we are loved back.?

When we start paying attention to what is inside, it becomes easier to accept everything that supports our energy, happiness, confidence, growth, strength and safety, and refuse everything that makes us feel small, exhausted, sad, bewildered, poisoned.

We all deserve to meet the world as we are.

Nothing Grows from the Middle;?It Grows from the Edges

“At some point, we each encounter the perplexing paradox: Our love for life meets the ineffable no against it.” - Sarah Blondin

I like the month of October. It represents the quintessence of autumn, when we notice and appreciate the transformation taking place around us. It is an invigorating time to gather our thoughts, in the same way that we might once have collected crops. As the days grow shorter and the blossoms that brightened our gardens through summer’s heat begin to droop and wilt, we tend to acknowledge the changing season, understanding that we, too, are in transition.?

Even if the borders are reopening, we are not quite in the world, and we still feel anxiety inside and outside, as well as a sense of heartbreak and sorrow about the world. If the pandemic teaches us anything, it is our lack of immunity in this life. “Why was I born if it wasn’t forever?” said Eugène Ionesco. Yes. Before 2020, we didn’t necessarily think we’d live forever, but many of us assumed that our work, social and personal lives, our habits, customs and traditions, would generally be continuous, cumulative, serially accruing depth and meaning. We learned the hard way that is not the case. And the temptation might be to turn away, becoming fearful, angry, righteous, bitter or cynical.

But it is not what we are made of.?Finales can be deceptive if we forget that they serve as overtures to new beginnings.?It is possible to live courageously in the shadow of difficulties. We are made for this world.

Where to start? Be an example of grace in the fear. With you, me, doing the mending that is right in front of us, immediately ready to reach, to touch, to comfort, to thaw, to restore, to heal.

This is our invitation.

The Nobility in All of Us

We need to remind ourselves of the nobility in all of us. When we have a sense of it in our own minds and hearts, we can recognize it in others and start acting accordingly — with respect.

Recently, I came across one of the most important and fascinating discoveries in the last decade of neuroscience, the mirror neuron system. The mirror neuron system (MNS) contains a class of neurons that respond to both observed and self-produced actions. In humans, mirror neurons are in a part of the brain that is predominantly involved in speech perception and production. It might explain scientifically what we have noticed empirically: What we are exposed to, we might mimic/become ourselves. It can help us understand negative behaviors. It can also encourage more positive encounters with goodness, safety, creativity, authenticity, love and generosity from people.

Leaders, what you model in your workplace, you will get back in spades.

When we harness the power of mirror neurons, modeling self-awareness, self-restraint, empathy, tolerance, collaboration, kindness, candor, creativity, empathy, honesty and curiosity, we get amazing rewards. These elements combine to create an atmosphere of constant surprise and delight, not only for our team but also for our customers. The connected, curious, empathetic mindsets feed off each other and subconsciously encourage all team members to perform at a higher level. A team that’s really in sync not only feeds on its own creativity, but its work is elevated to levels that individuals can’t achieve on their own.

Here is Brené Brown championing vulnerability and empathy for business leaders to inspire you.

A Code of Honorable Conduct in Leadership

We are living in an unprecedented level of uncertainty. If it’s any consolation,?research ?shows that our brains are not built for this much uncertainty and so many setbacks.

And even if we are trying to figure out what the “new normal” should look like in an effort to future-proof our organization, using the pre-pandemic toolkit — data, data and more data + more tech —, we know it is not enough.

Management is not a science but an art of living and being in the world.

Matrix, frameworks, studies, statistics and reports are of course important because they are tools to build and implement our vision, our strategy. But they can’t define who we are as managers, leaders, board members and CEOs.?

To be the benevolent and wise leaders on whom companies depend, we need to settle into deep trust, resolve and power. That means looking not for answers but for?ways, ways of practicing, looking and understanding and therefore being filled and overflowing in heart?to other people.

Let’s see how we can make it happen.

I found the work of Saint Bonaventure and his code of honorable conduct inspiring while I was researching new ways to nourish the dialogue on conscious leadership that will protect and develop companies, their employees, clients, stakeholders and the world.?If you study philosophers, poets, spiritual guides, heroes’ journeys, one of the lessons and invitations is always to move inward to ourselves. For Bonaventure, by looking inside ourselves we can see that our mind has threefold capabilities: memory, intellect and will.

Memory?helps us live in the here and now, with the ability to remember the past. To use our past stories to understand our present moments, to help better our tomorrows. Memory is also the ability to imagine, and that helps us transcend time.?That’s why, before moving forward, stopping and returning to some lessons we learned during the pandemic will create a better present and, so, future.?

Intellect?helps us understand, question and reason with ourselves, others and the world around us in relation to truth and what is right and good. Intellect helps us to remove our masks and stand naked as our authentic self, who we really are. When we are capable of understanding the why, looking in both directions, approaching truth, we can use our knowledge in better ways and arise with the most original, innovative, gifted ideas for the world.

Will?is here defined as a combination of deliberation, judgment and desire. Will is about the choices we make. To make choices we need to understand our decisions and have an inquiring mind. It is our YES decisions and our NO choices. It requires a call to presence. Our will can be considered that element that flows between Memory and Intellect and represents the flow of truth. It is what the world sees from us — our actions and their consequences.

When we recognize, understand and balance these three capabilities, we find stability — regardless of how we are weathered — and, more importantly, growth and vision.

We Belong Together

I think one of the most beautiful lessons we learned from the pandemic is our craving for the other. If we set aside the apparent polarization and craziness of the collective, below the surface there is this enormous appetite for belonging and its scariest fear: not belonging to any tribe, any group, any family.?

First, let’s remind ourselves that we are the same and we all belong there: We are all?necessary?to life, and we need to be of service.?Look around. We need the other to live, to work, to be in many ways. It is because of the gifts of others that we know what is going in the world, get vaccines, have food on our tables, and, more importantly, find a reason to love, laugh and live.?

Then, find a tribe that fuels, nourishes, elevates us as human beings and leaders.?A tribe that believes that consciousness will bring a better world, better heart, better thought, goodness in every way if it is handled properly.

“If goodness can’t be dreamed, it can’t be done.?”

- Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I would like to leave you with an invitation for reverie. I have noticed in many of us an absence of dreaming, as if the pandemic drained it and replaced it with a taste for cynicism. Do we want to mimic the line from Joni Mitchell’s song: “all romantics meet the same fate someday, cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark café.” That does not need to be the case. It’s a challenge, but maintaining hope and wonder, even in the darkest of times, is not only necessary, it is medicinal.??

“Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities;?Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.”?- Gloria Steinem

It is time to remember who we really are, and dream!

I thank you for taking the time to do this reading with me. I am so grateful to journey alongside you.

Meanwhile, please remember I am always here for you. I built Strat & Shield Co. to remove obstacles for my clients and work through their pain points, clearing the way for them to move forward confidently, nurtured by a healthy and safe company culture of their own making. If you have any questions, please reach out to me. I’d be honored to answer any inquiries that arise.

Ask Away

Be safe and be watched over until we meet again in November.

Laurence

* Here are The?Hoffman list ?of emotions and sensations and the?wheel of emotions ?to help expand your vocabulary and label accordingly what you feel. The first step is to notice our emotions via bodily sensations and then label our emotions.

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