by Heather Plett | Jun 25, 2012 | change, growth, journey, Leadership
The first time I attended ALIA, I cried my way through the welcoming address. “Bring your vulnerability and your brokenness,” Michael Chender said, and I thought “Yes, I’ve come to the right place.”
I was feeling profoundly broken and exhausted at the time. Things had gotten difficult and discouraging at work and I knew I was no longer in the right place. On top of that, my husband had just gone through a devastating bout of depression that resulted in a suicide attempt, and I felt like there was no place in my life where I was standing on solid footing.
In my brokenness, I found ALIA and the incredible community that is drawn to it every year. When Meg Wheatley asked, in the Leader as Shambala Warrior leadership intensive I was in, what broke our hearts, it wasn’t hard to come up with a list of things. My heart felt like it was broken into a million pieces, all shattered on the floor.
ALIA is like no place I’ve ever been. It’s a place where you’re encouraged to be curious, vulnerable, broken, foolish, and unsettled. It’s a place where mindfulness comes before anything else, and everyone practices meditation at the beginning and end of each day. It’s a place where learning is holistic, and every workshop includes some creative practice such as dance, music, art-making, and play. It’s a place where people recognize that the world needs to be changed, but first we need to work on changing ourselves.
That first time I attended, ALIA helped me begin a long healing journey out of my place of brokenness. Nobody there expected me to gloss over my brokenness, or rush into fixing it. Instead, they honoured it and gave me a safe place to learn and grow and be changed.
The next year, I knew I needed to go back to ALIA, and yet it was difficult to come up with the funds in my first year of self-employment. Happily, I could negotiate a deal with the administration that I’d do some promotional work for them in exchange for a highly discounted registration rate.
I was in a very different place that year, having been through a lot of healing and growth by then. I was happy to be there in a position of service, able to help people by supporting the organizing and harvesting teams.
I was surprised, however, to find that I hadn’t healed as much as I thought I had. I was still feeling quite tender, and, when I ended up in a workshop that focused on play, I discovered that I wasn’t quite ready for play. At the beginning of the Walk Out Walk On leadership intensive, I still wanted to cry instead of play. By the end, though, it was clear that play was what I needed more than I realized. Some of my healing happened through opening the door to play.
One of the most profound moments at last year’s ALIA was the moment when Yolanda Nokuri Hegngi seemed to speak directly into my heart from her place on the stage. “The world needs more people who know how to navigate in the dark,” she said. Yes, that was a calling meant for me. I’d been through the dark and I was learning how to navigate.
When I was honest with myself that second year (more in retrospect after the fact than in the moment), I realized that, as much as I was healing and growing and learning to navigate in the dark, I wasn’t as authentic as I wanted to be. Partly because I was figuring out how to promote my new business, and partly because I had offered to work in exchange for registration, I felt some pressure to impress and make people happy. In the deepest places in my heart, I knew how badly I wanted people to like me. Part of my brokenness from the year before still lingered.
This year, things were much different again. I hadn’t really planned on going. Of course I wanted to, but knew that it would be difficult to come up with enough funds. I’d said a little prayer about it, and then let it go, trusting that if I was meant to be there, I would be.
I’d erased it from my calendar and wasn’t obsessing about it at all. I felt quite relaxed in my letting go.
And then a remarkable email showed up in my inbox the day before it was set to begin. One of my coaching clients, who has found great value in our work together and who I’d encouraged to attend ALIA, emailed to say that she’d missed her flight and wanted to offer me her ALIA registration and accommodations in exchange for some more coaching.
Wow! What a huge offering! Part of me felt unworthy to receive such a gift, and yet another part of me knew that this was the answer to my prayer.
I booked a flight, rearranged my schedule, and within 24 hours was on my way to Halifax. I was overwhelmed but deeply grateful.
Receiving the gift and believing that I was worthy had a huge impact on my state of mind while at ALIA. I didn’t have to earn anything or prove anything or be anything that I wasn’t. I didn’t even need people to like me. I just needed to be present and receive the abundance that had been offered me. Out of that abundance, I could share my own gifts with those I came into contact with, but not in a desperate, needy way.
Before the first morning’s meditation practice, Alan Sloan told us to sit on our cushions with a regal posture – to think to ourselves “I take my seat and I mean it.” His words leapt out at me. I wrote them on my hand, knowing I needed to contemplate them further.
Those words set the tone for the rest of the week. Each day, I was reminded to be fully present in a confident, authentic way, trusting that I was worthy of being there, worthy of receiving abundance, and worthy of offering myself to others in a way that flowed out of my abundance rather than out of my need.
It was remarkable how things shifted for me. I was no longer broken and needy as I was the first time I was at ALIA, nor was I inauthentic and needy as I was the second time. I was present, confident, hospitable (to myself and others), and full of abundance. I had reached a deeper place in my authenticity.
Several remarkable moments followed that reinforced my theme of “taking my seat and meaning it”. In one of those moments, Bob Wing reminded me (through early morning aikido practice) that standing in my power in a grounded, centred way means that I am less swayed by both compliments and insults. In two other moments, people told me that something I’d shared during the course of ordinary conversation might just be the most profound things they’d take home from the week.
On my last evening there, the annual tradition of having an expressive arts performance/participatory plenary took place. At the start, Barbara Bash (who teaches the beautiful, meditative art of Big Brush painting), was painting at the front of the room with Jerry Granelli (a remarkable jazz drummer) accompanying her. She then invited three people to join her at the canvas. I stepped up, knowing how meaningful the experience would be. She gave us painting instructions and we began, while behind us Jerry instructed the audience in the accompanying music they were to create.
It was a beautiful moment that I won’t soon forget. My brush strokes were simply vertical lines on large paper, intersecting with the horizontal line and dots that the others were painting, and yet it felt profound and moving. When I stepped away, the thing that I had focused on with close eyes became a beautiful painting when I viewed it through a wider lens.
Later that evening, Barbara told me how beautiful it had been to watch me paint. “You were just so present in your painting,” she said, “not worrying about what others in the room were doing, but just fully present with your brush”. I smiled. She had no idea how profoundly her words reflected my whole experience of that week.
The next day, just before I left, one of the speakers used the term “confident vulnerability”. That was the second thing I wrote on my arm. It felt like the right thing to go home with.
I returned home at midnight on Friday and the very next day I co-hosted the Horses and Mandalas workshop with Sherri Garrity. I thought that I would be exhausted, but instead I was energized, alive, and very present. Again, I was able to offer of my gift out of a place of abundance and not need or brokenness. I took my seat and I meant it.
There were two moments in the workshop that Sherri lead us in simply watching the horses in the arena, reflecting on how they impacted us and what we learned from them. In both of those times, one horse stood perfectly still and stared directly into my eyes. He did not back down and in his eyes was encouragement for me not to back down either. “We are connected,” he seemed to say. “Your courage is reflected in my eyes.” He was regal, calm, dignified, and fully confident in the way he interacted with other horses in the herd. You could say he “took his seat and he meant it.”
I later learned that the horse’s name is Fintan. He was a rescue horse who went unappreciated for the first 16 years of his life, bouncing from one place to another and eventually ending up at a horse auction. The owner of the farm where we held the workshop eventually found Finn neglected in a field, skinny, with a sway back, overgrown hooves, and halter sores on his face. Yet, by some miracle, his beautiful spirit was protected and Finn remains sweet, gentle and willing to trust. Finn now teaches people about forgiveness, trust, and triumph. He is beautiful, regal, and demands respect.
Finn chose me, and I know he was meant to complete the lesson that I learned at ALIA. Receive the gift, let the abundance flow through me, take my seat and mean it, and go forth with confident vulnerability.
Thank you Finn and each of the people who touched me at ALIA.
I take my seat and I mean it.
by Heather Plett | Jan 13, 2012 | Creativity, criticism, faith, Giving, growth, journey, Joy, mandala, Passion, Wisdom
Recently I was asked to reflect on the greatest learning that I took away from 2011. “Patience and trust are the biggest lessons that showed up,” I said. “They’re lessons I’ve had to relearn a few times in my life.”
It takes a lot of patience to build a creative business, especially if you prefer to follow intuitive pathways and ask a lot of deep questions instead of crafting foolproof business plans. And it takes a lot of trust to believe that the path you’re following is the right one when there are lots of bumps and curves and the destination continues to looks so blurry.
Last year’s word was “joy“, but sometimes, when I’m being honest with myself, I wonder if the word that best defines it might instead be “worry“. I tried to follow joy, but in the process I did a lot of worrying. Did I do the right thing quitting my job? Is this dream really going to pan out? Do people value my work? Are any of my efforts going to pan out? Am I ever going to make enough money?
Recently, a question has popped up in my mind repeatedly when I’ve started to take the worry path.
What if the outcome is not my responsibility?
What if I am only responsible for sharing my gift and not how people respond to that gift?
What if my only duty is to follow my muse and I don’t have to worry about whether or not people like what I produce?
What if the only thing I need to do is be faithful to my calling, show up and do the work, and then trust God to look after the rest?
What if all the striving I do to be a “success” is wasted effort and I should instead invest that effort into being as faithful as I can be to the wisdom and creativity that has been given me to share?
When I take that question seriously, it gives me a great deal of peace. When I let go of the outcome or the sales or the response of other people and focus instead on being faithful to the process and my own commitment to excellency, the knots stop forming in my stomach and I can breathe more deeply.
My mandala practice is helping me learn this lesson. I make mandalas for nobody but myself (even though I’m willing to share them). For me, they are about the process. I show up on the page, pick up the pencils or markers that I feel drawn to, and let whatever needs to emerge on the page. What shows up is almost always about something I need to learn or be reminded of or discover. It’s not about the art. The outcome is not my responsibility.
A few months ago, I was supposed to do a community-building workshop for a leadership learning institute in my city. Only three people registered for it, so they decided to cancel it. I was able to let it go at the time because I was already overbooked and needed the breathing space. They were still interested in the content, though, so they rescheduled it for January 23rd. This time, there are already 14 people registered, ten days before the event. I had to let go of the outcome and trust that, if I was faithful to what I felt called to share, and did my best to let people know, the right people would show up who need to hear what I have to say. The outcome is not my responsibility.
So far, my Creative Discovery class only has 3 registrants, even though I’ve promoted it more broadly than the last class that had much better registration. It doesn’t matter. I feel called to do this class and I know that it will be what those three people (and I) need even if nobody else shows up. The outcome is not my responsibility.
I’m putting the finishing touches on my book and writing a proposal to try to get it into the hands of agents. When I start reading books about how to write a proposal and how to land an agent, I can get my stomach tied in knots over whether I’m doing things the right way, whether I’ll ever be successful, etc., etc. But then I have to pause, take a deep breath, and make a mandala like the one above. It doesn’t matter if I’m a “success”. I feel called to share this book with the world and I will do so even if I have to self-publish it. The outcome is not my responsibility.
Letting go of the outcome doesn’t mean that we should get lazy about the product, or that we shouldn’t work hard to let people know about what we’re doing. But once we’ve worked hard to follow the muse and been diligent in offering the gift to the world, we need to let it go and trust that the people who need to find it will.
I love the principles of Open Space, an Art of Hosting methodology for hosting meaningful conversations.
* Whoever comes are the right people
* Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened.
* When it starts is the right time
* When it’s over it’s over
In other words, the outcome is NOT MY RESPONSIBILITY!
And now it’s your turn… what do you need to let go of?
by Heather Plett | May 11, 2011 | beginnings, dreaming, growth, Leadership, Uncategorized, Wisdom
I’m done with writing goals. Good-bye. Good riddance.
I used to write them faithfully – at least once a year and sometimes in between. A lot of smart people told me that they were good and necessary and vital to my success, and since I have a habit of listening to smart people, I not only wrote them but I told other people to write them too. (After all, I wanted people to think I was smart too!)
But I’m done with goals. I’m kickin’ them to the curb. Because they’re not the most effective tool in my tool kit.
You want to know what works better than goals?
Questions.
Yup. You heard me right – questions work better than goals.
Here’s a short section from How to Lead with your Paint Clothes on that explains why…
To get stuff done, ask good questions.
We have all been taught the value of effective goal-setting, but rarely have we been taught the effectiveness of curiosity. Research has shown, in fact, that curiosity and openness help us get MORE accomplished than determination and goal-setting do.
Three social scientists once conducted a series of experiments to determine which was more effective, “declarative” self-talk (I will fix it!) or “interrogative” self-talk (Can I fix it?). They began by presenting a group of participants with some anagrams to solve (for example, rearranging the letters in “sauce” to spell “cause”.) Before the participants tackled the problem, though, the researchers asked half of them to take a minute to ask themselves whether they would complete the task. The other half of the group was instructed to tell themselves that they would complete the task.
In the end, the self-questioning group solved significantly more anagrams than the self-affirming group.
The researchers – Ibrahim Senay and Dolores Albarracin of the University of Illinois, along with Kenji Noguchi of the University of Southern Mississippi – then enlisted a new group to try a variation with a twist of trickery: “We told participants that we were interested in people’s handwriting practices. With this pretense, participants were given a sheet of paper to write down 20 times one of the following word pairs: Will I, I will, I, or Will. Then they were asked to work on a series of 10 anagrams in the same way participants in Experiment One did.”
This experiment resulted in the same outcome as the first. People primed with “Will I” solved nearly twice as many anagrams as people in the other three groups. In follow-up experiments, the same pattern continued to hold. Those who approach a task with questioning self-talk did better than those who began with affirming self-talk.
My nine-year-old daughter Maddy figured this out before I did. (Or perhaps I had it figured out at nine too, but somewhere along the way I let smart people convince me otherwise.)
Not long ago, she started her first journal. “Mom,” she said, “I’m going to call it ‘A lifetime of questions.'” And then she proceeded to write pages full of all the questions she has about life, leaving blank spaces after each question in case she finds the answer and wants to fill it in. Sometimes she shares her questions with me and sometimes she doesn’t.
The other day, she was waiting in line at six in the morning to audition for The Next Star, a TV talent show that’s like Canadian Idol for kids. After the original giddiness had worn off, she plopped herself down on the ground, pulled out her journal, and started writing her questions. She didn’t show them to me, but there’s a pretty good chance at least one of them was “will I be the Next Star?”
The answer to that question was, unfortunately, “No” (she didn’t make it past the first round of auditions), but if you ask me, she’s a pretty big star just for having the guts to do all the research about how and where to audition, practice her songs relentlessly for weeks on end, get up at 5 a.m. on a Saturday, wait in line for five hours, and then march off alone into an audition room full of strangers (I wasn’t allowed to watch) and compete against kids who were mostly a few years older than her – all at the risk of failure. (One of the first questions she asked me afterwards was “Mom, can I take singing and dance lessons so I’m more prepared next year?”) That little girl is a hero in my books!
So I’m taking the lessons I’ve learned from Maddy and those researchers, and I’m living a lifetime of questions.
Remember that black canvas I painted when I was in the depths of despair over my long surrender? I decided to fill it with a bunch of hopeful questions.
I’ll let you know what the answers are when I find out!
Note: For this and other unconventional wisdom about how to take a more unique and powerful approach to life and leadership, check out How to Lead with your Paint Clothes on. There’s still room in the learning circle (along with the fascinating people who’ve already joined) and we’d love to have you!
by Heather Plett | Apr 9, 2011 | growth, Let go of the ground
I get discouraged by how much our culture values “easy”. We want easy money, fast food, drive-thru spirituality, and ten easy steps to fix any problem.
We’re living in a culture where MacDonald’s and Wal-Mart thrive because they not only promise to make life easy, they make it cheap. Next to easy, cheap is our second highest good. If you can combine easy AND cheap, you can make a million dollars of that easy money.
I’ve got news for you, though… there is no easy path.
I’ll say that again, just to let it sink in… there is no easy path.
Keep choosing easy and cheap (whether it’s over-processed white bread or overly-simplified spirituality), and you’ll pay for it in the long run. It may not be right away, and the marketers may convince you that easy-street is working for you right now, but you’ll always have to pay. Eventually.
It doesn’t take a rocket-scientist to realize how our earth and our cultural diversity are paying for all of the easy choices we’re making. Climate change, plastic islands floating in our oceans, species going extinct – those are pretty hefty payments for our easy lifestyles. And we all know at least one story of a business that had to close (and a little piece of our diversity, creativity, and culture died with it) when Wal-Mart moved into town. When I was in Kenya, I searched everywhere for funky African fabric but found very little – “well-meaning” North Americans had dumped all their cheap cast-off clothing on the market and killed their fabric industry. Cheap and easy always ends up being destructive.
Similar things are going on in the online world. The proliferation of e-books, e-courses, and e-workshops is both overwhelming and a little discouraging. Once again, it’s easy that sells. Give someone “ten easy steps to zen” or “spirituality simplified” or “your best life NOW (without any effort)” and you’ve got a sure winner on your hands. And THEN, throw ten of those e-courses into one bundle, offer it at drastic discounts, and you’ve got pure gold. Just sit back and watch the money flow.
I can’t help but think, when I see those bundles of e-courses, “how can someone actually process all of that information and make it a meaningful experience?” But perhaps, unlike me, people are more interested in deep discounts than meaningful experiences.
Sadly, people selling creative courses on the internet will soon find no market for them, just like the fabric manufacturers in Kenya.
I can’t help but go back to what I said earlier.
There is no easy path.
You can read all of the e-books or blogs you want, memorize hundreds of “10 easy steps” and you are STILL going to have to do the hard work if you really want to grow. Only YOU can do that work.
You can go to all the right retreats, sign up for all the e-courses you can find, and you STILL have to go through the depths of pain when someone you love dies or betrays you. Not even a guru can make that easy for you.
You can try for cheap and easy all you want, put a bandaid on the pain, avoid the conflicts in your relationships, and all you are doing is delaying the agony. Trust me, you’ll have to pay – eventually.
But let’s be honest, hard doesn’t sell.
Even as I prepare to release my e-course on “Letting go of the ground” about surrender, transformation, and growth, I know that it does not have the makings of a best seller. It’s about “hard”, not about “easy”. It’s about working your way through the pain, hanging onto trust when you’re in the middle of the goo, and surrendering to the Divine. None of that is easy. Or cheap.
And yet I know that I have to release it, because it is my truth. And my gift. And I know that it is desperately needed in this easy-seeking culture.
I know pain, I know surrender, and I know transformation. I never thought that those things would serve as my gift to the world (and I’ve resisted that realization, quite frankly), but life is full of surprises.
I have been to hell and back – more than once. I have suffered the loss of a son. I have been raped. Twice I’ve had to live through the attempted suicide of my beloved. In a three month period, my dad died tragically of a horrible farm accident, my uncle died suddenly of a heart attack, and my grandmother died of natural causes. I have been to more funerals than I can count. (I am not saying those things to suggest my pain has been greater than yours. There is no measure of pain – it just is.)
And yet, despite all of that pain… you want to know something? I am completely in love with life.
Oh sure, when I’m in the mood for a pity party, I can let myself wallow in bitterness with the rest of them, but most of the time, I soak every bit of goodness I can out of life because I know that life is good. And God is good. And people are good. And there is hope.
Yes, my path has led me through a lot of pain, but I can’t imagine living such a rich, full life any other way. Pain has been my greatest teacher. And that’s what I’ve realized as I’ve done all of the interviews in support of “Let go of the Ground“. The people I’ve interviewed are wise people largely for one reason – they have let pain and loss and the gooey-ness of surrender be their teachers. None of them believe in cheap and easy either. They have walked through the surrender and the pain and they have emerged into wisdom and rich beauty. Just like the butterfly.
Here’s one thing I have learned to trust in all of those painful experiences… even in the deepest, darkest pain, God is there.
The God of my understanding doesn’t like cheap and easy. I don’t think we get to have it both ways. Either you take easy street and reject God, or you dive into the messiness and pain of life, and delight in the presence of God in both the pain and the beauty.
Here’s another thing I know… beauty is magnified by darkness. Think of a rose without the shadows between the petals. There would be no depth and beauty if there weren’t dark shadows. Life loses its richness without a mix of both light and dark.
So I’ll stick with this path, release the e-course I feel called to release, and trust that those who have grown as weary as I have with cheap and easy and need something deeper will find their way to it.
Most of us arrive at a sense of self and vocation only after a long journey through alien lands. But this journey bears no resemblance to the trouble-free “travel packages” sold by the tourism industry. It is more akin to the ancient tradition of pilgrimage – “a transformative journey to a sacred centre” full of hardships, darkness, and peril.
- Parker Palmer, Let your Life Speak
by Heather Plett | Feb 8, 2011 | growth
Some days (like today) I am not very productive. I get one or two things done, but more often than not, I wander around the house (or the internet) rather aimlessly without any real focus. Often those days come right after I’ve had a particularly productive day (like yesterday).
Today, the whole concept of productivity is annoying me. Why do we focus so much of our attention on productivity? Why does it seem to be the be-all and end-all of success?
I just received an email about a workshop on innovation that had this opening line: “Increase your odds of success with tools that generate new product ideas using systematic processes. Build your world-class framework, blah, blah, blah.” For one thing – UGH. Gobbledy gook. For another thing, do our “tools of success” have to be wrapped up in “generating new product ideas” and “systematic processes?” I tend to be more in the organic school of creativity, so that language doesn’t really work for me.
Sure productivity is a valuable thing, but some days it’s okay NOT to be productive. Some days we’re much better off in contemplation mode rather than productivity mode. Some days, just wandering around the house is accomplishing exactly what we need at that time.
Recently I read an intriguing fact about Chinese bamboo plants. When you plant a Chinese bamboo, you have to be very patient. At first, nothing happens. There are no green shoots or any outward signs of growth at all for the first, second, third, or fourth year. The fifth year, a shoot pushes out of the ground, and suddenly it grows at astonishing rates – up to 40 feet in a year! (Credit to an article by Jean Shinoda Bolen for that tidbit.) Though nothing seemed to be happening at first, the bamboo plant was developing its root system and preparing itself for its year of productivity.
The same can be said for all of us. Sometimes we need to let the seed germinate. Sometimes we just need to be content with the process of putting down roots – for years if it takes that long. Through it all, we just have to trust that the day will come when we will sprout and remarkable growth will happen.
If you haven’t been productive today, don’t worry about it. Perhaps wandering around the house is just your way of making sure you’re well rooted and ready to blossom.
(Photo credit: Mike Lowe, Flickr)
by Heather Plett | May 20, 2010 | Beauty, beginnings, birthday, body, fearless, growth, journey
Yes, it’s my birthday. It is with great relief that I say good-bye to last year and usher in a new one. Last year seemed to be the year of “refining” and in my experience, refining is rarely fun. I’m ready to move on!
The beauty of turning 44 is that you’ve reached an age where you care less and less about how silly you might look. Some day I’ll probably wear a purple dress with a red hat! 🙂 Or a Mardi Gras mask to work. (Darn – I wish I’d thought of that today!)
As a way of ushering in a new year, I want to make a new commitment to myself, and I’d like you to join me! Please raise your right and repeat with me the pledge of the Sisterhood of the Burning Bra:
As an esteemed member of the Sisterhood of the Burning Bra, I hereby commit to doing my best to do the following:
- commit to the fire the old stories that serve no other purpose but to shackle me
- listen more carefully to the wisdom of my body and honour it when it sends me signals related to hunger, fullness, rest, and movement
- not listen quite as carefully to the negative voices in my head that are usually lying to me
- giggle with glee when I feel like it
- make a confession when I have wronged someone and then believe that I am forgiven
- lean on my sisters around the circle and trust that they will offer compassion, wisdom, and courage
- let myself be guided into the place of power that the Creator makes available to me
- stand up more boldly and say “NO!” when people try to shovel unnecessary guilt on my shoulders
- wiggle my toes in the sand and be moved by the sense of touch
- honour the other sisters in the circle and offer them my giftedness
- dream really crazy big dreams
- not allow fear to hold a larger space in my life than it deserves
- wear Mardi Gras masks (or silly hats or mismatched socks) once in awhile, just for fun
- gently forgive myself for the times when I fail to live up to these commitments
- hold occasional rituals where I burn symbols of the things I want to let go of
Thank you for being in my circle! (And by the way, I welcome all brothers into the circle too! Some of you are my best allies and I don’t want to leave you out!)
For a couple of related posts, check out my guest posts at Square Peg Reflections and at Blisschick. I’m delighted to have been welcomed into their spaces on this special day!
There were two moments in the workshop that Sherri lead us in simply watching the horses in the arena, reflecting on how they impacted us and what we learned from them. In both of those times, one horse stood perfectly still and stared directly into my eyes. He did not back down and in his eyes was encouragement for me not to back down either. “We are connected,” he seemed to say. “Your courage is reflected in my eyes.” He was regal, calm, dignified, and fully confident in the way he interacted with other horses in the herd. You could say he “took his seat and he meant it.”