Playing small.......with big insights

The title of this blog came to me when I was sitting quietly at home. The minute it came into my mind I felt an overwhelming shame because this is exactly what I have been doing. I haven't been writing this blog because I haven't wanted to play big. This has came into sharp focus since I began the management and team leadership programme with Landmark Education. In a number of posts I have spoken about the technology of distinction which the Landmark programmes offer. For me they have given to me the distinction 'human' and how it is designed. As a result I am now aware and have distinguished the decisions I made as a child which made me into the adult I am today. Some of those decisions empowered me and some held me back.

The team management and leadership programme however is different. It is based on becoming a master in communication from a model of communication that is based on integrity, responsibility and generosity. It begins with the assumption that everything is whole complete and perfect so there is no need to fix or change anything. Most communications in my life before I became aware of the new model of communication were all about surviving or else trying to fix or change what I thought should be different. Getting the distinction that there is another way to communicate, a way in which there is no need to force an outcome and as a result communication can be a dance instead of being fraught with anxiety and tension was so liberating. The team management and leadership programme is about becoming a master in the distinctions of the new model of communication. It is a year long programme and the new model is practiced in teams. This means being in teams, creating teams, managing teams and it is so challenging for me.

For most of my life I have told myself 'I'm not loved, I'm alone' all based on one incident when I was a child of 5 where my mother shouted at me. In that minute I said to myself 'I'm not loved, I'm alone'. Seeing it now, it is completely ridiculous because I know without any shadow of a doubt how much my mother loves me. But when I look at how my life has gone after I decided that this was the truth it will show the power of a decision made as a child and its drive in determining the kind of future that is put in place. I can remember trying to run away from home at least once .

When I was 11 I put myself into the Irish catholic boarding school. Because I was this kid with an English accent in with a school of Irish pupils, this point of view of 'I'm not loved, I'm alone' became even more strong as I was bullied and excluded.. Then fast forward to this day up to now. I live alone, my relationships haven't lasted long but the difference now is that I am aware of it and it doesn't have to be this way for one minute longer. Somehow this view when I wasn't aware of it, had the power to create the life I had. The minute I distinguished it by which I mean it came into my consciousness and I became aware of it, it has lost its power. Now it requires a lack of awareness on my part to exercise its power.

The strange thing is that somwhere in my subconscious I was vaguely aware of something odd about how I would always go to a row of empty chairs and sit there when there were people sitting in seats in other rows. This point of view I had meant that I would always find myself sitting alone. Now when I walk into the room I recognise the urge to sit alone as what it is, just a view and I force myself to go against it and sit with other people. Before this realization my degree of isolation was becoming so extreme that I had myself convinced that I was somewhere on the autistic scale.

But this view turned me to the spiritual at a young age. I doubted the love of everyone else towards me yet I never doubted the love of a higher power. It is this love that has grown stronger and more present in me since childhood. I could look back and think, what a tragic waste of a life but I will never say that. That isolation and loneliness created the birth of the spiritual child. Now I find myself in a programme where I have gone from not really bothering too much with anyone to having any one of 60 people call me to request me to be on a team or create a team and it's a real challenge to my view of 'I'm not loved, I'm alone'. Yet I know that if I am going to be a master in the kind of communication that can transform consciousness and bring about a connected and not a fragmented world, that this is my next stage. I only started this programme mid-May and already I can see how I'm not so concerned about how I look to others anymore. This was always a big reason why I didn't play a big game given everything I know and more importantly have experienced. I didn't want to stand out, I just wanted to be a team player, not a leader. This programme is changing that.

I'm not going to promise that I will now be writing this blog every evening but I think that there will be something in the challenges I will face and the breakthroughs I will have that may be inspiring......at least that will be my intention.....