Imagine that you’re walking down the road, and 200 meters in front, you see someone who you don’t really want to meet. It could be someone you had a bad disagreement with or simply can’t relate to. So, as you are on your walk you spot this person.
What are the physical changes you notice immediately?
You feel your shoulders going forward, like drooping down, and you have a sinking feeling in your stomach. What is happening is that your body is reacting immediately to your thoughts and emotions in your mind.
Imagine the opposite. You're walking down the road and you see someone who you haven’t seen for a while and who is your best friend.
What happens to the energy in your body?
It goes up significantly because you feel excited and energised.
What this shows is how you can use your body to check if what the mind is thinking is true or not.
Our minds, often, try to steer us in a direction of self-deception or makes us lie to ourselves.
How do we even begin to recognise this?
Let me illustrate with a personal example:
Every morning my partner and I are out for our morning walk. There is a bus driver who greets my partner but not I. Initially I was thinking it doesn't matter he doesn't greet me. That way I don't have to greet him either. At that moment the mind created a reaction of "Oh it doesn't really matter".
But then I realised that I’m lying to myself! The fact that I don’t get greeted and I don’t greet the bus driver back and I am okay with that is a lie that I’m telling myself.
The fact is it does matter to me that he doesn't greet me! And the reaction is the lie I am telling myself. That's where you lie to yourself!
What my mind did was to try and cover it up and make an excuse for it. This happens to us all so often.
When you take this scenario into a leadership context it amounts to stealing your own authenticity.
A lot of leaders are affected by outside influences. By what they think they should be doing rather than what they really want to do themselves internally. This is the point that ends up creating political games.
This is where the authenticity comes in. Being true to self, keeps you balanced and not in need to play any political games. Authenticity helps you lead your team the way you feel they should be lead. This creates a balance within and results in one being more healthy because of the alignment between what you feel, what you think and what you say.
There is harmony between mind, body, and soul. By connecting internally to yourself you connect with your soul and do what is needed to be done.
By not connecting internally you create a situation where you allow yourself to be influenced by the lies the mind creates. This makes it harder for other people to trust you because the body language shows and others pick it up.
Our physical bodies have an energy field. When we are near each other the energy fields intermingle and through this, our subconscious picks up opposite person’s energy and the resultant lack of trust comes about.
There are people in leadership roles who are designated leaders but who don’t want to be there. And it takes a lot of coaching to be able to get the person to realise that all he is doing is lying to himself and making himself unhappy.
When you realise this it’s a great feeling!
"This feeling within yourself, that recognition of your own truth and finally saying it and expressing it is such a great feeling! It helps you to have the courage to be true to yourself."
