This Is The Mirror

The world is being confronted by the mirror of transformation. Will we be courageous enough to look into it? Or will we turn away?

I know that it is hard to watch what is going on right now - at so many levels. But what I want you to understand is that although it seems like the end. This is not THE end.

What this is - is a reckoning.

An initiation.

A particularly challenging rite of passage.

It is here to stop us in our tracks.

To pause the auto-pilot.

To snap us out of our everyday trance.

The truth is we weren't transforming at the level of depth, scale and speed we needed.

Yes we were opposing, criticising and complaining. But we weren't catalysing, up-rooting and alchemising in the way that was being called for. We weren't transforming, shifting the old and creating the new fast enough.

Meeting In The Shadows

In the transformation world, everyone likes the part where we all get to be right - and look shiny and bright.

Me too by the way (!)

But we don't like so much the part where we have to face our own shadows. The places where despite our best intentions - we are not aligned with what we say we want to create.

So we hide from our own incoherence, inconsistencies and our distortions. Basically the hard stuff.

We keep stuffing our gremlins into an inner dungeon. Hoping that they will never be exposed to water.

The problem is that they are still pulling the strings - just in stealth.

And that is where the rub is. That is where the real transformation lives. That is where we actually need to go next.

Looking In The Mirror

To truly transform ourselves, our organisations and our societies, we have to transform what lurks beneath the surface - in the dungeons of our very own mind.

We have to look straight into the dark side of our organisations and face the underbelly of the status quo of the systems we live by. And that is not comfortable.

And this is where Trump and his crew come in. He is showing us what we don't want to face in ourselves, our organisations and our current system.

He is rallying the troops of the dungeon and bringing them into full light. So that we can all see them - literally we can't miss them. And so that we stop avoiding our own inner saboteurs and take full accountability.

If you look at what he is doing for example, it is not like it is new. It is simply an extreme caricature of the state of leadership and the underpinning values of our current system.

The biggest irony is that people think it will fix things. When what he is squarely showing us is the root cause of the crisis in the first place.

Recognising The Same Old

Let's be honest for one minute. For any of us who have worked in organisations, it's not like this is unknown:

• Extreme efficiency drives where everything and everyone gets randomly cut. Tick.

• Everyone cow towing to the bullying boss because they have the power - even when we know it won't work. Tick.

• Putting corporate profit and our own self-interest above everything else - whilst closing our eyes to the actual consequences of doing that. Tick.

• Using outdated mindsets to solve modern problems. Tick.

• Ignoring inconvenient truths that would mean we would have to have hard conversations or even god forbid change. Tick.

• Everyone gaslighting the truth with a big smile singing from the same hymn sheet - when we know what is really going and deep down that it is not right. Tick.

• Saying that everything is fine on the surface whilst ignoring how violent our standard business practices actually are - on employees, suppliers, nature and society and even on ourselves. Tick.

• Scapegoating everyone in sight that does not agree with the party line - or challenges our status quo. Including attacking and shaming our own internal changemakers. Tick.

• Being too afraid to speak truth to power. And instead trying to please and appease so that we can be part of whatever the in crowd is peddling at this time. Tick.

• Rehashing the same old ways of doing things - just with a different coat of paint. Selling that it is really going to solve everything this time. Tick.

I could go on... That is actually business as usual.

I am not saying all this to make anyone in particular feel bad. Only so that we can put the spotlight onto it. And see it in a new light.

Dig deep enough and we all do this ourselves in some shape or form. I know I do it - even though I really try to catch myself.

Because we like the gloss. But we don't want to face the shadows.

The Tunnel Is The Point

As one of my friends once said to me when I was walking through one of my own initiations: 'The light at the end of the tunnel has only been temporarily switched off.'

What she didn't say was that in the darkness is also where the new seeds come to life.

And that how you choose to walk through that tunnel determines what you get to create on the other side of it. And ultimately how fundamentally your life, work and leadership - and in essence your world - evolve.

As a collective, we are in our own dark tunnel and the light has been switched off.

That is because we are being called to our own incubator - where we have to face our own shadows, retrieve the seeds inside and tend to them in a way that carefully creates the new tomorrow that we want to see next.

The tunnel is the chrysalis. The walk is the revolution. The light at the end is the new beginning.

In the darkness is where we get to decide who we will become next. It is were we get tested and where we do the work. It is where we deepen. It is where we meet and inhabit the version of ourselves that makes our next level of potential, purpose and impact possible - and ultimately real.

The light comes back when we remember our own light - having faced our greatest shadow. The prize is that it is a different quality of light - more real, more true and more us.

Until Next Time,

Louise