IS: Integrity isn't effort
Upcoming public events:
- Saturday March 29: Relational Practices Meta Fishbowl @Limicon
- Saturday March 29: AI Futures Fishbowl @Limicon
- Monday March 31: Limicon PitchFest @Limicon
- Tuesday April 1: The Second Renaissance Oasis @Limicon
Community Hub calls for Season 17 members have completed. New season starts April 6th. Last Sunday's session was called "Micro-leadership".
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If you're a part of Limicon, you can see above that the remaining schedule is packed!
If you're interested in IS membership, now is the perfect time to apply during our seasonal transition. We kick off again on Sunday April 6th into our 18th season — each one a new adventure, never repeating.
I haven't written a personal-introspection newsletter issue in a while, but look out here it comes:
In two of my calls (among many) this last week, when presenting to a group, I noticed a particular flavor/energy in my internal experience while speaking. I used the word "messy" to describe my speech, or the call, but I'm tracing it back now to my internal coherence. Yes my words came out messy (too many, wandering) but at the root it was my integrity that was not in alignment.... my relationship to self and relationship to the crowd and to what I was trying to accomplish. In both cases others assured me afterwards that everything was fine and normal, but I felt (no, I knew) that something wasn't fully right.
"Is that even surprising?" you might say - isn't public speaking, like, people's number one fear in the whole world? Sure that's a thing, but not for me as such here: speaking to crowds these days usually doesn't give me that feeling. I can be very at-ease and integrous facilitating groups of 30-50 people, and in contrast these messy minutes were with about a dozen. There's something about "presenting" (vs facilitating) that's very relevant here.
I thought, "I had a job to do" — so was I putting pressure/effort/constriction on myself to do a good job? No, that's not quite the thing. What about selling, was I trying to sell or push something to the audience? Mmm, there's something about desire and desired outcomes, but it's not out of integrity to desire... Aha, however I think in both cases I was experiencing a tension between my true desires and the desires I was presenting. A little bit of "reaching over the net" but more so a lack of what the Authentic Relating folks call "owning your experience".
There's something about the quality of being "in tune" with myself that I can feel as attunement to aliveness. I believe this comes through in public speaking: when I'm integrated and feeling alive, I think I can see people perk up and engage and feel connected. When I'm feeling myself unintegrated and drifting, I think I can see people disengaging and checking out — and I think it doesn't have much to do with the subject matter at hand.
I notice that I did make at least one effort today to consciously step back from performing (pretending my desires/values/goal were anything other than my true cares) and re-ground myself with what really felt important, to reconnect with myself and thus also with my listeners' sensitivity to authenticity. I recall that it was partially successful, and that I also have further steps to groove in re staying with meta-level acceptance and welcoming my own noticing (even when that might feel threatening to the value driving my performing, i.e. "I want to appear strong and decisive and knowing-it-all to match my listener's image of leadership") and course-correcting. Now I'm excited to try again!
Mari Budlong would call that realignment-to-integrity "micro-leadership" as she shared with us at our Hub call last Sunday — thanks Mari! What a great name/label for a practicable skill that helps us be who we want to be.
Oh, and now my immediate next chance to practice integrity will be in tomorrow's "IS Strategy Reveal" call. The name is slightly tongue-in-cheek as I don't actually keep secret plans to save the world stashed in my desk drawer... but: what if I did? I'm going to put the oracular-counterfactual frame on my subconscious and let 'er rip.
***** Extra update: Oops, must not have hit the "send" button; this didn't go out on Thursday! Well, in the meantime (it's Friday afternoon that I've discovered this) I spoke at that Strategy call just a few hours ago and... it felt great! No notes, straight from the heart, thirty minutes, and I stayed attuned to that sense of aliveness and integrity the whole time. I think it was experienced as pretty engaging, too — if you're reading this newsletter now, and you were at the call, let me know if you noticed anything!
Cheers,
James