Everything is your teacher
Musings on Heart Powered Human Leadership
“Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.” — Helen Keller
Today I was struck how quick we can be to judge when something isn’t working as we think it should. Especially ourselves. When we are repeating a pattern, or up against a familiar problem or challenge that isn’t changing anytime soon. It made me wonder — maybe it is as simple as this —
maybe we just haven’t made enough space and time for reflection and learning.
We are always so quick to keep moving forward. To be focused on the next thing. To tick off our checklist. Next. Onwards. There can be a certain joy and hit of adrenalin in checking things off — in just getting a task done, this is actually a thing and it’s called completion bias :
The phenomenon called “completion bias.” appears to be rooted in neurobiological mechanisms of the brain, with the experience of task completion leading to a release of the pleasurable chemical dopamine. — Psychology Today Eva M. Krockow Ph.D.
Our bodies love a little dopamine — but does it really help us to learn and grow? I am currently working with a team who are a bit frustrated at the moment — it seems they are so focussed on doing the do — they rarely take the time to pause and consider what can be learned and improved?
How can they reflect on the lessons learned so they can do better going forward.
I get it — sometimes life can feel like an urgent race that we need to survive and just get to the finish line — and taking time to reflect on lessons learned and then acting differently — well there’s no time for that! But have you noticed — like the washing basket and the inbox — maybe twice a year you get there (to empty) but the rest of the time the illusory finish line is always at some point in the future.
Maybe urgency itself is also an illusion — created by our own minds.
My original background in IBM was in Total Quality Management (TQM) and Process Improvement — it’s called LEAN now. We were trained in the secrets for how to do better, faster, more efficiently.
We learned that you had to slow down to speed up.
Every meeting we had to reflect on what you had done or achieved and ask:
- What went well?
- What could we do better?
- What did we learn?
These basic questions were sacrosanct and instilled in us a sense that everything is an opportunity for learning. When things are not going your way or to your expectations or you get a knock-back and also when they are going your way — the best questions are:
What can you learn? What is useful about this? How can this thing be your teacher?
It is my philosophy that everything is your teacher.
This can be extrapolated to life itself. This is ultimately a made-up idea — a story I create (after all everything is made up) but it seems to me to be an empowering story with a LOT of evidence behind it. I can see retrospectively and in hindsight, when I reflect back on my disappointments and things that didn’t go well — there is always a teaching in it.
On a good day, I aim to get ahead of it and assume that to be the case — even if I can’t see what the teaching is yet. When I come across people or situations that I find troublesome or wounding, I often refer to them as my greatest teacher —I create them to be showing me where my own work lies — where there is still more for me to see. On a bad day, I sit it out and wait for the storm to pass knowing that clarity and insight will eventually arrive.
What if your challenges were all designed and perfectly placed to raise your awareness — anything that is raising your awareness has to be the perfect thing if you are interested in growth and learning.
A good direction to focus our awareness is the workings of our own ego — which is always on a mission to get maximum security, control and approval — prove its lovability. Awareness of when we are held hostage to this — whilst often confronting will always lead to our growth. These lessons can come in challenging packages such as when we feel insecure, out of control and not approved of; unlovable.
As Deepak Chopra says:
“The Ego, however, is not who you really are. The ego is your self-image; it is your social mask; it is the role you are playing. Your social mask thrives on approval. It wants control and security, and it is sustained by power, because it lives in fear.”
― Deepak Chopra, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success
Good to know —even if a little uncomfortable to witness.
A phenomena I have also noticed is that when we decide to tackle or change something in our lives; in ourselves or a situation, the first thing that can happen is suddenly that pattern looks worse than ever — like when you decide to spring clean the house — suddenly the house seems dirtier than its ever been. I put this down to our new level of awareness — an arresting teacher.
It also seems to be the case in my experience, that when we have been working with awareness on changing something in ourselves — a habit of thought or pattern of behaviour that we thought we’d successfully changed, it can then come up once again in a kind of Swansong — leaving its final lesson in its wake. A salutory teacher.
I am not saying this is the Truth with a capital T, however…
what makes complete sense to me in the game of life is — that we will keep receiving a lesson until we learn it. (1)
When I am learning lessons and remember everything is designed to be your teacher — I can remember to go easy with myself, like I would with a 4 year old.
Maybe our inner four old needs to be given that kind of patience from ourselves —just like a good teacher would.
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(1) The author, behavioural Scientist and #1 NY Times & Amazon Bestselling author Dr. Chérie Carter-Scott, MCC
These are her Ten rules for life — they seem about right to me…
