Lionhearted, with Jeanine

I believe that part of the reason that many individuals feel so powerless right now in our society is because they believe that they are…individual. And that flies in the face of our neurobiology as humans. We are made as collaborators through the naturally occurring, higher level synergetic wisdom of nervous system coherence. We are not intended to have all of the resources, all of the power, all of the wisdom, all of the capacity to do big things alone.

Even if you see someone acting seemingly as an individual, their action is being dynamically empowered and informed, informed in real time by the living body of coherence, by the secure attachment network that they are a part of. We were made to find greater purpose, greater belonging, greater protection, greater amplification for our heart’s intentions and visions, greater fulfillment, greater satiety, and greater nourishment through our affiliation with groups, through our belonging. 

And yet, many, many, many groups no longer hold space for the authentic human. Their infrastructure does not support or embody the vulnerability that the authentic human, whether they like it or not, embodies. And so their infrastructure… is not an actuator of human potential.

The actuation of human potential resides within the fullness of authentic human embodiment, which includes the feelings, and the fears, and the hopes, the incredible tenderness, the striking vulnerability, the passionate care, the not knowing, and the making mistakes, and the struggling, and the being unsure.  It involves the process of being human. It involves the fact that growth is terrifying, and growth is hard. And when the organizations that we belong to don’t have space for the parts of us that get hurt, and the parts of us that get jealous, and the parts of us that feel resentment, and the parts of us that feel exhausted, and the parts of us that are grieving, and confused, and furious, and fiercely innovative, then that organization no longer feels life-giving to us. It no longer feels like it’s reflecting the dignity and value of our human experience and of our human soul. It feels alienating. And we feel alone. 

The organization becomes a pestilence: draining us, but not giving us life back. And within that zero-sum game: I win, you lose, or you win, I lose, there’s actually no room for that organization to accomplish the greater goals that it may have.  Because that organization’s success depends on the 80% to 90% of human embodiment that is implicit, instinctive, primal and intuitive, that is emotional and raw and real, that is their authentic and brilliant vulnerability, and that is their soaring generative power, together. You can’t actually successfully separate human vulnerability from human power. So the most successful organizations, I believe, are the ones who humble themselves to build the infrastructure and the culture around showing up in a way that’s truly responsive and collaborative, and around holding space. And not just holding space, but championing space. Stewarding the spaces for humans to be vulnerable together. And the tough sell about that is everything, because vulnerability is excruciating.

And it’s especially excruciating when the bodies involved in the organization hold traumatic memories of times that they have been vulnerable to larger groups before, including their family of origin, and that larger group has cut them down, and rejected them. Times before when that larger group that they loved and relied upon completely did not have the infrastructure and space for the fullness of their authentic human expression. So, to me, organizational healing is family of origin healing. And because of that, it is the most tender of spaces to explore. 

Much easier to be alone. 

But….but what every experience I’ve had in my life has taught me is that I actually am not capable of that.

That I can’t do this alone, not really.

And that being together is always gonna be scary and painful in some measure. 

And that…maybe I’m not better than the people around me or worse than the people around me, and I actually just need the people around me, in order to see the fullness of my humanity, which is to say the fullness of our humanity.  And to actualize the fullness of my potential, which is to say, to actualize the fullness of our potential. 

That I can’t be myself fully, alone.

(2:41) And all of a sudden, we have a culture that is telling us exactly which parts of ourselves (2:48) are allowed to exist and exactly which parts of ourselves were never allowed to exist. (2:59) And because that split isn’t actually possible, we lose ourselves and our power completely. (3:09) So I believe when we start to practice welcoming the feelings, the vulnerabilities, and the (3:23) exiled parts of ourselves back into the room, back into the conversation, when I practice (3:31) saying I’m scared and I’m scared, when I practice saying I’m sad and I’m sad, when I practice (3:38) saying there’s a part of me that feels like a piece of shit by the side of the road right now.

And the lie that I can tell myself, that I’m alone and I don’t need help, that I’m alone and I have the answers, that I’m alone and this is my mission, that lie makes me feel better in some ways, makes me feel safer. 

Because the truth is excruciating. 

Because the truth is that I do need you and I can be hurt by you. Because the truth is that I care about you so deeply. The truth is that I care about this whole experience so deeply that it cracks my heart wide open with every moment I exist here. The truth is I can be moved by you. I can be moved by this experience, and the truth is that I don’t know. The truth at the end of the day is that I don’t know.

The truth is that I don’t know what it’s gonna look like, and I don’t know what…horrors it’s gonna touch on, what nightmares it’s gonna bring up. I don’t know what pain it will cost me.  I don’t know what understandings of self it will cost me. I don’t know if I’ll be recognizable as me at the other end, or if you’ll be recognizable as you. I don’t know if I’ll be alive at the other end, and I don’t know if you will, and I don’t know what’s gonna happen. But I do know that the power in that…is that I can choose to open my heart and hold out my hand to you, and be here now, and do the best I can. I can believe that I have some wisdom, and some resource, and some capacity, and some goodness. And I can believe that you have some wisdom, and some resource, and some capacity, and some goodness.

Those are things that I do know.  And I know, too, that even in the hugeness of the unknowing, and the overwhelm of that unknowing, and the fear of that unknowing, and the despair that we will face…and the tears we will cry and the self hate and the fury and the heartbreak and the doubts that will keep us awake at night….that we’re here.  And I–I choose this, willingly. And I know that we can choose to look at this as an adventure that we get to go on together. And that we can choose to celebrate this as a courageous journey of the heart. We can choose to stand within this as the greatest task that we could ever undertake, together. To intentionally stand right smack-dab in the middle of the not knowing, and to have the courage and the audacity, and a little bit of a twinkle in the eye to say, “Yep, we’re doing this. Me. You. Human ol’ me. Human ol’ you. And I’m calling this enough.

I’m calling this good enough. I’m calling this, my being human, good enough. I’m calling this, holding out a shaking hand to you, good enough. I’m calling this, exploring the unknown with you, a privilege and a gift. I’m calling just us being human, being vulnerable, working hard, loving hard, listening hard, struggling hard, I’m calling this perfect. I’m calling this perfect. How radical to say I’m not calling the numbers perfect. I’m not calling the success rate perfect. I’m not calling the conversion factor perfect. I’m not calling … the meetings that I can conduct without faltering, without flaw, with a confident air of inspired enthusiasm that ticks all the boxes, but never lets you really touch me or me really touch you…

I’m not calling those things perfect anymore.  How audacious is it to say, “The numbers we achieve are no longer my primary measures of success.” I’m investing instead in the fertility of the soil.  I’m investing instead in the human heart. And letting the growth speak for itself. The measure of my success now is: How well did I love? How well did I listen? How humbly, how courageously did I open up spaces for hard conversations, when I was scared? Conversations that have no answers, conversations that leave me feeling like a failure sometimes. And if they did, if they left me feeling like a failure, how courageously, how humbly did I meet those feelings within myself?  How courageously, how humbly did I express those feelings to you? How courageously did I ask for what I needed? How compassionately did I hold my own human needs? How humbly did I weep, how deeply did I forgive, and how courageously did I allow you to hold me within it?

Because all those things are a part of my being human. Of us being human. And when we share our humanity with each other…whatever intangible thing happens in that moment, whatever thing that Antoine de Saint-Exupéry would say is, “essential, but invisible to the eye”…that’s my new measure of success. And that goes way beyond right and wrong, and good and bad, and won and failed.  And for the first time…in many people’s lives…the metric of success is being human. The metric of success indicates that they belong. 

That we all do, and no one is outside of that. 

And as a facilitator of relational medicine spaces where this terrifyingly non-normative, grace- filled, life-giving understanding of success is the culture …as a great and fallible lover of the human heart and as a steward of the micro-cultures where the presence of true heart is the best predictor of success, I believe that the way to grow the miraculous solutions that we need as a global village to thrive is through the slow, incredibly challenging, and I would say, spiritual path of walking into spaces that, in their infrastructure, have forgotten the value of human vulnerability…and embodying it.

And not just embodying it but teaching it, facilitating it, reminding those spaces of their own inherent humanity, and reminding those spaces, those corporations, businesses, and collective identities, so many of whom have forgotten that human vulnerability is a superpower and is beautiful, reminding them of their hearts. By wearing ours, on our sleeves.

Reminding a leader, reminding a manager, reminding an administrative figure that when they feel the most like they don’t know and when they feel the most off-center and off-kilter, when they feel the most scared, when they feel the most challenged…. That that’s a beautiful space. And they are beautiful, within it. 

A masterclass in the strength of the human soul. 

And it feels like a whole lot of pressure as a manager, as a leader.  It feels like a whole lot of pressure when you’ve got a team who is working for you, who is working for your vision, who you feel responsible for.  It’s a whole lot of pressure to feel like you have to know.  Because if you don’t know, are you really worthy of their investment? If you don’t know, are you really worthy of their love? If you don’t know, how will you protect them, how will you do well enough, by them? Just like a parent and a child, it is so hard to look at a child and say, “I don’t have that answer. I don’t have the answer. I don’t know.” The heart breaks, to have to say “I don’t know how to make this okay. I don’t know why there are bullies in the world. I don’t know if we’re going to be able to afford this thing that you want. I don’t know if your grandpa will live.” And in that moment, you feel like an utter failure because your whole heart is for that child.

And the more fierce-hearted a leader, the more intense that feeling of failure is when you can’t fix it for them, when you can’t make it okay, and you can’t pretend to give them the solid ground that they may need, in that moment. 

But what if those moments hold not a condemnation of failure and limitation, but instead, an invitation into deeper grace and into a more stunning, convicting, utterly devastating and utterly redemptive understanding of what it is to be human together, and what it is to do life, together, what it is to belong, together and what it is to be made of love? What if those moments hold a potential for a widening of an aperture, and a cracking open of a human heart, and a broadening of a channel of connection, and a deepening of felt-belonging … because those moments actually have enough room, enough space, for there to be a choice. If you tell me that you love me, and that you’re going to stand beside me, and you’re going to walk beside me through hard things, but you don’t have a choice, I’m not gonna trust you.

If you are condemned to stand beside me, and walk beside me, and love me, then there’s no real investment. No awareness. No sovereignty.  No ownership. What makes our lives so valuable, what makes being human so valuable, what makes human relationships so valuable, and what makes human organization and collaboration so valuable, is not that it’s easy, it’s that within it there is enough space for each being to put their whole heart forward, in a sovereign choice, and in so doing, to see what a human heart is. If you have no choice, and you say, “I love you, and I’m going to walk beside you,” that will feel very differently in my body than if you say, “I had other options, options that were beautiful, and I chose you.” I chose you. Freely.  From my inner authority.  That feels like a type of ownership of self, ownership of other, and revelation of human cohesion and of human power that we at a cultural and social level haven’t seen in a very long time.

And that feels like ownership as soul path, that feels like ownership as evolutionary path, that feels like ownership as spiritual practice to say, “I’m taking your humanity as my own.” I’m taking collaborative responsibility for your feelings. I care. I’m not here in a transactional fashion. There might be a transaction, but when I say I’m taking you on, I mean I’m taking you on. Human to human. Heart to heart. This ownership, this responsibility-taking, this intentionality and vulnerability and willingness to widen the aperture that I believe that business is being called into to survive, that humans are being called into to survive, this widening of the aperture of …your humanity exists at home. Your achievement exists impersonally at work. There’s no vitality in that.

If you split a human, if you take the soul out of their work, their work will go insane, because the soul is their compass. The soul is their generative power. And the soul is their organizing principle, their true collaborative principle. The soul is the organic genius that guides human co-creativity. So my question is, how do we give the leaders what they need? How do we give the leaders what they need, to come out of survival mode, and to come into their hearts, and into their souls, and into their true generative power, and into their true capacity for expression of vulnerability? ‘Cause I’ve seen and felt and experienced firsthand how the quality of the inner relationships, the inner constellation and coherence of the leader seamlessly and quite easily dictates the quality of the organization’s relationships. The leader sets the culture. And the leader’s capacity, the size of the leader’s container, which is to say, the capacity the leader’s nervous system has, for experiences of not knowing, for experiences of crushing vulnerability, for experiences of being wrong, for experiences of discomfort, for experiences of tenderness, the leader’s tolerance for ambiguity, the leader’s tolerance for rejection. The leader’s self-esteem, effectively. The leader’s self-esteem is what creates the culture. So how do we give the leaders what they need so that the culture gets what it needs?

We surround leaders with genuine, open-hearted, achingly tender, soaringly lovely, not- impressive-on-paper, humaning hard…kinship. We painstakingly and heart achingly build a culture of authenticity through relational practice. We shake in our boots and we look at our friends and we say “I need help.” We say “would you be open t practicing this relational skill with me?” We say “I want to practice making genuine asks, it’s something that really scares me. Would you want to be my practice buddy?” We say “is there anything you need right now, to feel like I understand you?” We learn that the best way to meet someone’s needs is to ask, and the best way to have our needs met is to ask, and even though it’s terrifying and edgy, we get bold about living into that. We meet the orphaned and alienated little ones inside our own hearts, who fear rejection and dismissal and cruelty and shame so much that they’re locking up our ability to speak our truth to the people who probably want desperately to hear it. 

And we hold this grand experiment in love with all the compassion and all of the true self-esteem and all of the patience-with-self that we can muster, because to practice opening the heart to love again in the face of what’s come before is a daunting and noble pursuit, and not one to be dishonored. 

This is the path of a lifetime, a legacy of warriorship and radical, audacious leadership to innovate like fire and like healing water, and to dance together in the astonished delight that it turns out that our suffering isn’t here to be eradicated, it’s just here to make us choose something. It’s folly to think that suffering is happenimg to us, although it’s understandable to feel that way. The point is that we can choose how we meet that feeling. Do i fully merge with this, and buy it? Or will i recognize that in this instant i have access to self- realization? By way of a choice point, I’ve just gained access to the code. 

We need to feel that we belong to each other, in order to thrive. That’s the neurobiology.