Leading Yourself...what does that look like?

Check yourself before you wreck yourself! Welcome to (un)leaderly, the podcast that looks at the world through a leadership perspective. In this episode, host Barbara Iverson maps out the common-sense reasons for taking time to lead ourselves, and how we might do so. She takes simple, easy-to-master ideas and brings them to life through her stories and examples. And ends with a challenge for listeners who want to develop their self-leadership muscles.

Barbara tells stories from her life and what encouraged her to start a podcast that looks at the world through an atypical leadership perspective. Every week she offers a challenge or task for listeners, to prompt reflection or growth. This podcast is the perfect listen for someone who feels like they don't quite fit to the typical leadership profile. 

Transcript

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On today's podcast, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Unleaderly, the show that looks at the world through a leadership perspective. My name is Barbara Iverson, and I'm your host. Before I get started, I want to say if you are interested in the origins of the name Unleaderly, please take a look at or take a listen to episode two where I talk about that in detail. Today I want to talk about leading oneself. Leading ourselves. What does that look like? Why do we even want to? And what are some tools that we can use to better lead ourselves? So, first of all, why do we need to? I think it's something that if we, if we're not, we we often know what it looks like to not lead well, to not lead ourselves well, or we can point to someone who is not doing a good job leading, often specifically not doing a good job of leading themselves, meaning that they are too easily angered, too easily ruffled, too easily making assumptions or jumping into things without making considerations for themselves, for the people around them, for reality. Let's face that. So leading ourselves is about keeping our words in check and keeping behaviors in check, treating others as we want to be treated, and also managing our thoughts. There's a there's a building in Berlin that I have passed many times that it's written with a smiley face on the side of the wall in English. It says thoughts become behaviors. And that has always stood out to me because, first of all, I think it's really true that the the things that we think, if we fill our minds with ugly, toxic, hateful thoughts, what will come out of us is often ugly, toxic, and hateful. Like you just can't have the thoughts and somehow stop that from bleeding into behaviors. You just can't. If that's what you're filling your mind with, that's something that's gonna come out of you in some way, shape, or form. It may not be something when you can when you're in control, but if you're out of control, if you are in a moment of stress or you're under the influence, maybe even you've had a couple drinks, but you're not fully within your own faculties, those things are gonna come out. So how can we manage our thoughts? And how do we keep perspective? How do we take a moment to figure out is what I'm seeing and and perceiving right now the actual reality? I mean, okay, come on. There's always a bunch of different sides to things, but how do we maintain this perspective to understand what's really happening and what's either in my mind, or maybe this is just I'm falling for some sort of propaganda? There's a lot of things that could be going on. For me, I'm gonna talk about what I do, tools that I use to do all of these things, because that's the best thing that I can offer you. I think, I mean, I'd be super interested to hear from you all the things that you use. Because I think, first of all, this is a process. It is a process. We are in process, we are always maturing, we are always ripening, we are always becoming better people. At least I hope we are. To me, that's part of leading ourselves, that we are becoming better people, that we are discovering better things about ourselves, or we're even discovering worse things about ourselves, that we are turning around into something better. We're not sitting still, we're not staying static, the same thing all the time. We live dynamically, we grow, we develop, we bring in new information, we look at it, we work with it, we take some parts of it in, we leave some behind, but we move in a direction. To me, that's what leading ourselves is about. It's that giving space for development, growth, embracing new ideas, being open to thoughts that we had not thought of before, and saying, I'm I'm open, I'm willing to make changes. And I don't think that this ends at the end of our 20s. The the 20s are a great time for discovery and growth and development, but I think you can be in your 50s, 60s, 70s, I think you can be in your 80s, learning, developing, growing. I mean, honestly, I don't I don't want to stop. I don't want to stop growing. I don't want to stop developing. And that's how I think about leading myself. Like what gives what tools make me the most pliable and able to grow because rocky, dry, unfertile ground is not a good place for seeds to take hold and for growth to happen. It has to be tended to, it has to be cared for, it has to be watered, it has to be in a space that can reach the sun or the sun can reach it. There has to be some curation of the soul, let's say, or the spaces where we want to grow. And that's what I want to talk about today. So, not necessarily how to find those new ideas that we're going to accept or play with or, you know, take on or not. No, I'm gonna talk more today about how I curate my own soil of my soul and my brain and my body. Then that other part I think is up to you. And of course, all of this you can take or leave. This is just the tools that I have found helpful and I want to share them with you. I'm not a psychologist, I'm not an expert in mental health. It's something I've spent a ton of time thinking about. And it's funny, I was on the phone with my cousin earlier this week, and I was sharing with her some difficult things that I was going through, and she said, This sounds like a lot. How are you caring for yourself? And the funny thing is, when she asked that, the things that I'm gonna be sharing with you today are what came to mind. It's what I thought of, and I thought, like, okay, this this is this is accurate, this is true, this is this is the reality of what it looks like to cultivate, to cultivate my own garden, to curate the soil of my self. And if we can tend to that, then we are leading ourselves and we are ready for the external things that come at us. We're ready for the stressors, we're ready for the difficult conversations, we're ready for the unexpected crap that gets thrown our way on a daily or weekly or monthly or all of the above basis. So it's it's preparing ourselves for that kind of stuff. And I I was thinking as I was preparing for this that actually a lot of what I'm gonna share with you today actually also is a tool that I would recommend for resilience. I'm gonna do a different episode on resilience specifically, but not surprisingly at all, the things that I am gonna be sharing with you actually also would be tools for resiliency. How do we, how do we lead ourselves? How do we curate that soil? So, like I said, I'm gonna be sharing a few things that I do and that have really changed my life. Like these are not things that I think would work, these are things that I do. The first one is breathing. Ha ha ha. Aren't we all breathing? We are all breathing, but we're not all breathing intentionally, and we're not all paying attention to our breath. For me, breathing is connected to both meditation and yoga. So I practice all three of those things. And I'm I'm talking specifically about breathing first because it is the foundation. And the pranayama, meaning like breath practices that I've learned and done through a regular yoga practice, has really made a huge difference in my life. And it's it's actually it's kind of unbelievable. Like I can look back at myself as being someone just even a few years ago who could easily get really angry when something frustrated me, when something didn't go my way, when something came across my desk that I didn't want to deal with, I would really get upset. I can remember actually like physically stamping my feet in anger. And I think about that now. And I actually wonder, what on earth was it that made me that angry that I did that? Because that's not even on my radar screen right now to even think about doing that. I I wouldn't. And it's not even that I, you know, when things come across my desk that are difficult, it's not that I think I need to breathe. It's just become instinctual to start breathing, to take in some air and to let that calm me, let that take me into a different headspace. Simple techniques like counting, breathing while counting has miraculously calmed me many times. Things as simple as breathing in for four, breathing out for four, breathing in for four, breathing out for four. You could also add on a pause, breathing in for four, holding for four, breathing out for four, holding for four, breathing in, like that's box breathing. You could do it for longer periods, breathing in for five, holding for six, breathing out for eight. There's any number of combinations. And if you look into this, if you do an internet search, you will find lots. But it has really changed because that that practice of breathing in a variety of ways has changed my breathing on its own. And it's changed me from someone who can get very easily riled about things or very angry very easily. It's made me much calmer. So I'm gonna meander from breathing also into meditation. Like I said, the breathing meditation and yoga, this is they're all connected. So when I'm talking about one, I'm also kind of talking about the others. The meditation is where I start to become the observer because I observe my breath and I pay attention to what's happening. Now, you may be saying, I am not a meditation girly. You know what? Cool. I never thought I was before until I actually started doing it. And shockingly, I am shocked by this. I was having a really difficult day, totally spiraling with some very negative thoughts. And sort of as a last resort, I was like, maybe I should just like meditate for 10 minutes. And I did, and I can't even believe how different I felt after those 10 minutes. Like it doesn't make sense to me. I'm not someone who was sort of raised to meditate or that someone has explained it to me very carefully, and no, but it's something that I've just started doing, and the doing has been life-altering. Weird, but true. If you come from a more religious background, then you might substitute prayer for meditation. Because often in prayer, you're listening, you're bringing requests, but you're often listening as well. So you can call it whatever you'd like. It's that moment of being quiet and listening and paying attention to your breath and allowing thoughts, like, don't try to clear your mind. It doesn't work. You can't, you can't clear your mind. But you can focus on a thing. You could focus again if you're if faith is important to you, you could focus on a motto or a verse or a saying or something that means something to you out of your religious tradition. You could pick a sort of mantra. You could pick something very simple that I am loved, I am powerful, I am accepted. You can repeat in your mind whatever you need to to center yourself so that you can listen better. Because I think part of this is listening to our bodies, that our bodies know what's happening around us, and our bodies want to talk to us, want to tell us what they know. And meditation is a way to listen. And it can be guided. There's a lot of apps out there. You can learn to meditate with a guide to help you. I encourage you to look into that if you have never done it. And then, like I said, yoga is connected to this. I have done a daily yoga practice. There was a bit of a break for a few months, but I've basically done a home yoga practice every day for about five years. And it also has really changed me. It's I people are always like, Do you need to be flexible to do yoga? And I was actually trying to think, has it even made me more flexible? Like maybe, but the flexibility isn't the thing for me. For me, the thing is like managing pain, managing joint pain and managing that sort of I'm not 20 anymore, pain in my body. But it's also, again, it's helped with the meditation, it's helped with the breathing and holding poses and learning to breathe through pain or boredom or frustration or being slightly off balance, like learning to breathe through that has been huge. And it's also exercise, it's movement so that when I am doing it, the goal is to get out of my head and into my brain, into my body. I almost get out of my head and into my car. If you're an 80s kid like me, Billy Ocean, thank you very much. That will always be there. But get out of my, well, that's get out of my dreams. Anyway, oh my goodness. Get out of my head and into my body. And for you, it could be yoga, it could be playing basketball, it could be lifting weights, it could be going for a run, it could be going for a walk. There's any number of things that you can do to get your brain, give your brain a break and focus on what your body is telling you. Focus on that moment and whatever it is, but some sort of exercise that can get you there. I've mentioned this already, and that is observing, putting myself in the place of the observer. And to me, this goes beyond just breathing or meditation, but it's also this putting of myself into that position where I try to step away and assess a situation from a different angle, from a different perspective. To say what's really happening here, what is mine, what is not mine here? What do I need to take responsibility for? What do I need to let go of? Because sometimes we hold on to things that are not ours. And sometimes we borrow trouble that is not ours, and putting ourselves into the position of the observer can allow us to decide much more objectively what's my part in this and what isn't. And then you can go from there. You can decide if you need to make changes or if this is something that is just not yours. So finding that role of the observer. And in that process, too, I think part of this thinking is to say, is interrogating our thoughts, ideas, and emotions. There are so many times, I think, again, this is our bodies talking to us when we start to feel hot or cold or sweaty or shaky or we get a headache because our body is trying to tell us something. We're uncomfortable. And we can use the word that we're triggered from that kind of thing. And the question is, what are we supposed to do with that? What are we supposed to do with both the thoughts that can pop into our head, but also the physical responses? From my perspective, what's been very helpful for me is to, so to speak, to interrogate those, to say, what is going on here? What do I need to pay attention to? What do I not need to pay attention to? As an example, there's a workshop that I give based on the book The Culture Map by Erin Meyer. Fantastic book. Explains so much about the cultural baggage that we all take with us. Even as someone who, for instance, I have lived outside of the United States for around 25 years, but I will never stop being American in my, it's where I was raised, it's where my family is. I may not behave as a typical American anymore. If I ever did, I don't know. But I can understand behaviors that Americans do because that's my background. I can also understand from all of my time living in Germany, I can understand behavior that Germans do, but I don't always anticipate it. Once it's happened, I can step into the role of the observer and think about it, but it's not instinctual to me the way an American response would be. But anyway, I've done workshops on this, and there have been so many instances of people really getting riled up at the content. They get very upset, and I've had people storm out. It's really, it's really kind of wild because I think it's fascinating, but other people think about it differently and respond differently. So there you go. But what I started doing is before starting those workshops, I would say, all right, everybody, some of this content might set off alarm bells in your brain or make you feel uncomfortable or produce a physical response in you. You might feel hot, you might feel cold, you might feel shaky, you might get a headache, I don't know. You may have a response, you may have something that tells you this is uncomfortable. And instead of yelling at me or walking out or turning off your brain or making comments to your neighbor the whole time, I'd like you to sit with that discomfort, interrogate it, find out where it's coming from and what's actually going on. Because you might think that you're upset about what I just said, but you might actually be upset because it's revealing a truth about you that you find uncomfortable. So lean into that discomfort to find out where it's coming from and what you can learn from it, because that discomfort is telling you something. And you don't want to miss what it's telling you because it's gonna come back another time in a different way. So listen now. And that has been incredibly helpful because it's again putting ourselves into the role of the observer is less judgmental and it's more curious. It's approaching that response with curiosity to say, wow, where is this coming from? Because I'm sure you've experienced this. How many times have we gotten upset about this thing in front of us when in fact we're more upset about that, this other thing that we don't want to think about. I might get mad at my partner because he forgot to buy milk, but what I'm actually upset about is something that he said to me in passing yesterday that we haven't dealt with. I think that I'm mad about the milk, but I'm actually mad about the other thing. I think I'm mad about this, but I'm actually mad about that. So if that's true, what is that? And what do I need to do to deal with it? Shifting gears outside of our own heads. Another thing I find incredibly helpful in leading yourself is actually to have good friends who are life-giving, not soul-sucking, but who offer different perspectives, aren't afraid to say, let's have a reality check here. And also who prompt you to do things that maybe you're waffling about or you're just not sure, and you just need that little that little push to get you to do something. I have had so many times in my life where a friend, when I am in a moment of doubt, a friend who Knows me, cares about me, wants the best for me, and also has a different context, has either asked a question or pushed me in a direction that I am so grateful for later. If you don't have life-giving friends like that, find them. Find them. Find friends where you work or where you worship or where you work out or who do a similar hobby to you. Find them online, find them wherever you need to. You don't have to know someone for 10 years for them to actually be life-giving and someone that you really enjoy who can speak truth to you. You don't have to know them that long. It's helpful, it's nice, but everybody starts somewhere. And the last thing I would say that is really helpful for leading yourself is finding a creative outlet. For many people, that's some sort of hobby, whether it's painting or writing or knitting or model trains or model airplanes or flying homing pigeons. I have no idea. There's any number of things out there. But having that creative outlet where you can maybe turn off your brain and focus on something else, then you can give yourself the opportunity to make something as well. We are creative people. We desire to create, to make things, to bring things to life. And this is a fantastic way to lead yourself, to give yourself something that is very life-giving. Being creative is life-giving. For me, I've done any number of things over the year. I love to cook and bake. I really enjoy making something out of essentially nothing that I can enjoy, that I can give to friends and family for them to enjoy. And I'm also a potter. I have been doing pottery for about seven years. I learned right before COVID and actually got good during COVID when I rented a wheel and threw over 150 kilos of clay. But that for me, right now, is one of the most life-giving things I can do for myself. Spending time on the wheel. It's amazing to have mugs and cups and bowls and plates that I have made with my own two hands and glazed and fired, and now I use them. And that is incredibly life-giving, and it's a gift that I give myself all the time. Your thing might be something completely different that doesn't provide you with tableware. It doesn't matter. It's gotta be something, though, that you can do that you enjoy. You don't have you you don't have to be good at it. You definitely don't have to be good at it. But if you love it, do it. Do it regardless of how good you are at it. Just just do it. Do the thing that you enjoy. Find it if you don't already know. Try different things. But when you find that thing that you love, make sure that you have the capacity and the ability to grab onto it and do it. There you go. So this is my these were my thoughts on leading yourself. It's not rocket science, but it's intentional. And I hope that I have shared something today that might resonate with you that you might start doing or put more time into. And my little challenge that I want to leave you with today is to find a breathing technique that you maybe have never done before. You can go to YouTube or whatever, and you'll find, I'm sure, a lot of videos on this. But look into what kind of breathing techniques are there and just give one a try. Set a timer for five or ten minutes, maybe five minutes. Start with five. Do a breathing technique for that time. See what happens. See where it goes. Learning how to lead ourselves is not easy, but it's simple. It's a way to check ourselves so that we don't wreck ourselves. And I think that's truly the the crux of the whole thing. How can and how can we be the best version of ourselves? That doesn't happen overnight, that doesn't happen without work, and it doesn't happen without intention. But I appreciate you taking the time to listen and to maybe give a thought to changes that you might be interested to make. So thanks for joining me. As always, thank you to Lilia Keys for our intro and outro music.