This week I share about my process around digging through some not so attractive ego stuff. I am always grateful to sift through the darkness, but it is a vulnerable experience nonetheless. I know many of you are on similar adventures of the psyche. Thank you for sharing your stories with me. I'm listening. Like I say, it's crowded down here in the hole. Thank goodness. Good to be with you down here.
……………………………………………………………………………………….
When I was in high school if you cut class but didn’t necessarily want the risk of walking down the hill or sneaking off in your car to leave campus, you would meet your friends by what was known as the Red Doors. The Red Doors were a set of metal fire doors located at the far end of a dark hallway, that of course was by the art room. Behind the Red Doors sat a small set of concrete stairs with well worn metal handrails facing the surrounding woods. Older kids would meet there to smoke, do shots between classes and get into all kinds of good high school kid trouble. I only really went a couple times, usually to grab my friend Chris for art class. Truth be told, I got away with a lot in high school because I was a good student, good athlete, and did my work. While that formula bored me, I understood it. Following that formula made me the last person adults looked to when something went wrong. And this provided me with a tremendous amount of freedom. I flew under the radar.
This trust, warranted or not allowed me to leave campus pretty much whenever I wanted without much debate. Mostly, I snuck off campus via the Red Doors to grab a meatball hero sandwich or swim in my friend’s pool in the middle of the day.
Meatball subs and swimming aside, I rarely cut class, skipped out on a test or refused to complete an assignment. I actually never blew anything off academically. Even in college and graduate school I always finished and finished well. I always powered through.
So when it came to disinterest in a class I’m currently enrolled in I immediately tried to convince myself to do what I had always done, power through.
Here's what this logic looked like.
*I paid for this class and it’s a waste of money if I don’t follow through.
*Make the most of it. Education is a privilege.
*It doesn’t matter if you are not interested anymore, you made a commitment.
*You’ll miss out on networking opportunities that you need to succeed.
None of these reasons seem outlandish to me. If I do not take this class, it is possible that all of these things are true. But there is only one real piece of data in here. Can you spot it?
*Education is a privilege.
That piece is true and pretty irrefutable. But the others have more to do with how I see myself and concern about how others might see me. The more time I spent playing in this space, the more I realized that actually forcing myself to take a class I am no longer interested in was more about what others might think of me than what I think of myself. Ooof. An honest to goodness psychological trap.
Most of this came down to my ego or really superego (that’s really what we are talking about when popular psychology refers to the ego) and proving my worth. My ego was so enamored with proving myself that when thinking about cutting out on the class I considered how it would feel to not earn a certificate at the end. The pretty one that I get to share on LinkedIn to show anyone who happens to fit into the algorithm for that brief moment in time that I completed a certificate course at IDEO.
And why did that matter?
I had to think about this for a while. And kind of surrender to the discomfort of what the possibilities could be. This self-worth stuff is hard. At least for me. I had a good friend yell at me through the phone a few years ago, “when the fuck are you going to stop needing to prove yourself Lisa?” It hurt, but he was right.
The possibilities that surfaced were kind of interesting and led me to a surprising place. I had many questions.
First, why am I taking classes on working with organizations? Is that what I want to do, help solve problems for groups? And if so, why?
And the answer is, no.
I discovered through JOY IS NOW that I prefer working with people one on one. This discovery is crystal clear to me and not really something I need to spend a lot of time questioning. It’s like data at this point. And to be honest, after all my group facilitation and psychoanalytic study of groups through the years I still think the most effective and sustainable way to shift a system is one person at a time. And that is not possible in many instances, but I get to choose how I want to work. Organizational systems are thorny with many layers of complexity and often enough organizations do not really want to change. They want the illusion of change. And I’m not interested in pushing that boulder. Am I qualified to do so? Yes. Does that mean I have to? No.
Second, if all of this resonates with me, where was the pull to enter into the organizational world?
Well, it’s familiar. Like I said, I spent many years facilitating and studying groups and group behavior. And it is nothing short of fascinating. But being fascinated is different from waiting to live it. I find mycology fascinating, but I am not interested in spending a ton of time in the damp woods looking for mushrooms. I’d rather read about it. See the difference? Fascination just didn't seem to be the driving force. I thought more and then discovered what was at the center. And yuck. It did not make me feel great.
If you do not live in the Bay Area, you might not be familiar with the massive number of tech giants here. It’s impressive really. The Bay Area is an exciting place for innovation. We are early adopters and open to new ways of doing things and this attitude is definitely in part fostered by all the money and advancement in innovation that happens here. If you are a contractor or freelancer, it is known that the big contracts are with Google, Meta, Apple, etc. This list could go on and on. But there is a brass ring that consultants look to grab. Get a contract at one of these giants and the money is really fucking good. While I hate to admit it, this brass ring turned out to be the driving force behind me wanting to work with organizations. And I am not really sure it was even the money. More of just to say that I had landed the thing that so many other people are interested in landing. Even if it is not really what I want to do. Yuck, that feels so gross, but also hooray - good to have figured out!
And don’t get me wrong, I would love to go to Google, Meta, Apple and talk - just not about psychological safety, corporate culture, team building, group work, and solving complex communication problems. If anyone there wants me to come give a talk about how skateboarding informs stellar leadership and sets the stage for effective feedback, I’m game. That sounds fun to me, but the rest of it? Not my jam anymore.
I was getting somewhere.
But that still wasn’t the whole thing. The next layer had to do with how I spend my time.
What surprised me here is that my first instinct if I were to drop the course and someone were to ask me about it would be to say that I just didn’t have time. Like I had too many clients or professional projects and it just interfered with my work. Because that seemed acceptable and also made me sound really fucking important. But let’s be real. I’m not a firefighter. I’m not that important.
What I found interesting here is that the only acceptable place my mind went in terms of an allowable excuse was that I didn’t have time due to achievement. First, this was not the case. If I was really interested in the course, I would make time. I see clients three days a week and purposely carve out flexible time the other two days to allow for such things. And I’ve made time this whole year for my Human Design training course and continuing education. The time is there if I choose. The actuality is that the IDEO course did cut into my time, just not my work time. It cut into skateboarding. And I did not see this as a warranted use of my time if it meant I couldn't take the class.
And I call bullshit. On my own bullshit.
The fact that I do not have time is true. But for different reasons. If I was going to take this class it meant that there would be a morning and/or an afternoon where I couldn’t go skateboarding because I would be doing the work or I would be going to a class meeting. And I wondered about why this time did not count? Why was it not valuable?
I am spending my time on something valuable. Something that lights me the fuck up. And the thought of this course doesn't even come close to matching that. But this seemed ridiculous to say.
I don’t have time because of skateboarding.
What does skateboarding do for me?
It doesn’t bring me work opportunities. It doesn’t further my education. I don’t get a certificate to share on Linkedin.
But it does so much more. And this is where my work with Human Design really helped change my perspective. Human Design teaches that our energy is all in the same vessel. Whether we put our energy and enjoyment toward something at work or something in other parts of our life, it has the same impact on us in totality. Feeding one area improves our life across all areas. So while I cannot track the data of how skateboarding brings me work opportunities or helps further my education, the joy and satisfaction and play I feel while I am skateboarding feeds all areas of my life. It does improve my work, relationships and opportunities by holding me in a place of receivership and enjoyment.
So if we are looking at the choice between a course that makes me feel shut down everytime I try to re-engage and one that right now feels like a tremendous amount of energy to get through and getting on my skateboard and feeling completely expanded, energetic and alive, then the choice is easy.
I’m grabbing my skateboard. I’ll see you at The Red Doors.
xxx
LAS