Re-inventing the self and belonging to this world.

My three defining experiences from the Practical Self Management Intensive coursework this week.

Hello, Work horse within.

Going through life without a job for more than a year has meant that the work horse in me has been dormant. I haven’t had to make (or break) commitments to anyone, nor have I had to communicate my inner world to any audience, or try to impact or impress upon anyone — no co-workers, nor managers, nor stakeholders.

So it felt strange to have to ‘work’ (if i may call it that) on the group assignment this week, and to have to be accountable to and with others. To help me cope with this dynamic, I found my work horse — my work identity instinctively making a return.

I was confounded by this work identity — aspiring, serious, perfecting, harmony-seeking are a few of her impulses. I could see how I had to survive (maybe even thrive) in the past, by selectively cultivating these traits, based off what I thought the world needed from me.

Maybe it is due to the beliefs of my new team members, or it is due to my new vacationing self in town, but I found my work horse wasn’t working for me as well as it did in the past. I felt that she distanced me from the team, even distanced me from me. I felt I was over-extending. Instead, I would have loved to go-with-the-flow and reside in imperfectly original.

On this disconnect with the inner coping resource, I find the infinity feedback loop a satisfying explanation. To me, it is a virtuous cycle between the shaping of self and shaping of the external environment. To meet with a world that is not operating from old work paradigm, I need to re-invent my work horse, or maybe, retire it entirely.

A remote belonging.

In working at what was valuable to the group in the shape of a team agreement, I noticed similarities — easily, gently and lovingly surfacing: values of Diversity, Openness, Equality etc.

It was as if we attended the same class at school before arriving here. And perhaps we did: it is the School of Unsatisfying Organised Work, or it is a common sense gaining normalcy.

These common beliefs did not just occur within our Kererū team, but I found the beliefs to be shared with other teams, and as I browse this shared Medium blog, with past cohorts of this Self Management hall.

While I know that differences are bound to arise with time, I do feel fortuitously and contentedly belonged for the moment. Belonged to the common beliefs of a remote tribe, in this confounding time in the world, in this portal of possibility.

Mirroring A-Ha moments

Do be do be do. In our first team meeting, team member Abhi declared that the course lead -Susan’s- call for a no-coffee-mug-statement assignment was quite elegantly, Frank Sinatra’s dobedobedo.

Abhi left his inspiration with us in an open-ended way, and I find now that my experience of the assignment to be indeed echoing his A-ha moment.

For me, each part of our working together was a perch for insight. Insight for what is possible for self management for organisations, insight for what is authentically being an individual in a group, insight into how power is shared, or not. And perhaps much more.

Rather than learning and accepting something, do be do be do is to experience the rule-making as we were making the rules.

The spirit of inclusiveness within a support system, and honest ownership to be core to showing up and being accountable for example, was experienced each time we checked in as a group, as we fashioned the words that would signify the intent, as we left it blank, deliberated, filled it in again.

It is as how I imagine these agreements would ever exist; fluid, as starting points, not definitions.