Mustang Sallies by Fawn Germer
Here are a few of my notes (I didn’t get through the whole book)…
It’s lonely at the top, but, guess what? It’s lonely in the middle and at the bottom, too. It’s lonely when you stand your ground as your true self, but it’s also lonely when you mold yourself into someone who you are not, just to win approval or acceptance.
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Whether you find yourself being challenged to go-alongto-get-along at work, at home, in the community, or in some other place, you will find your center when you remember what it is that made you unique, strong, and passionate in the first place. Tap into that.
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Always go back to your center and your sense of mission. “You have to believe in why you are here,” former Environmental Protection Administration Administrator Christine Todd Whitman told me. “Why are you in this position? Think about it. Why are you doing what you are doing? If you believe in what you are doing, then that’s what it is all about. Keep your focus on that and don’t get thrown off track.”
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You want to know what has become a bigger challenge than getting that seat at the table these days? It’s feeling like we deserve it. It’s holding our own, taking charge, and feeling secure enough to be ourselves. Some of America’s most powerful women executives admit they walked into their offices at the top with a tremendous amount of self-doubt in tow.
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I would rather be off to the side a little. I like to float around and do my own thing, but it sure seems like we keep trying out for the cheerleading squad.”
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Be passionate. This kind of life sure ain’t for sissies. It takes energy, stamina, and commitment. All of that comes from the passion that drives you. You care about what you are doing and who you are. That helps you put up with a lot of grief. It also helps you focus on what matters to you and gives you the creative mind-set to come up with solutions. You live an inspired life.
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Perception is reality, and perception can kill us when other people don’t “get” what we are up to. Our motives may be genuine, but our mission may be so misunderstood or threatening that the only way some people can deal with us is to find a way to distort our objectives or snuff us out.
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“If you are an agent of change, you can’t look to the status quo for validation because you will never get it. That’s why the status quo is the status quo. It doesn’t want to change,” said Alexa Canady,
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A few weeks later, I had the chance to work on a project and pick a partner. I decided to do something daring and pick my rival. When I asked her to work with me, she agreed. Let me tell you something: the two of us working together on a project made us ten times more effective than either of us working alone. We went to an interview together, and the guy we were questioning didn’t have any place to run. When I asked a question, she was thinking of her next one. When she asked one, I was thinking of mine. It was the most gratifying investigative interview experience I have ever had, and it would never have happened if I hadn’t realized that there is real power in turning rivals into partners. The more I have done this, the more I have realized that most of my rivals were other mustangs, and instead of competing against each other, we should have been teaming up.
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Get a group of women friends together and make a point of discussing topics that don’t ordinarily come up. Throw the topic out there, and give each woman up to three minutes to talk about it. Afterward, take a few minutes to synthesize what you learned about yourself and each other. Here are some topics that will get the discussion going on your next outing: During the last 10 years, when have you felt most insecure? What have you done about it? Have your insecurities changed? How much praise do you remember? How much criticism? Do you use your insecurity to make yourself stronger? How? How have your insecurities held you back? When have you been afraid to do something, but charged forward, regardless? How did it feel? How did you rally your strength and keep yourself sane? Who helped you? What did you learn? What motivates you? If it comes down to mission or money, which wins? How have you changed the world already? Is that important to you? Are there ways you can use your skills to have an even greater impact on society? How? For starters, can you commit to giving 30 minutes to an hour a week to further that cause? Name five things you have delayed or sacrificed in the last five years. Was it worth it? Were those sacrifices noticed and appreciated? What did you gain or lose from those sacrifices? Would you make the same decision again?
A’s note: great questions for a woman’s circle.
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Ensler believes the hardest thing women have to overcome is their need for approval. Part of the way you learn it is by being rejected, and surviving—getting bad reviews, having people say terrible things about you, and knowing there are people who don’t like you, and still surviving. Also, check yourself and know why you are doing something. “If you are doing it for approval, you are doomed,” she explained. “If it is for your own soul, politics, and spirit—even if you have to survive the terrible feelings of abandonment by the world—you still have your self intact.”
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Don’t run from the heat, she said. “I have never seen objective criticism as heat. I see it as a gift because it forces you to reexamine something you are doing.
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“First and foremost, you must survive to fight another day.” What good is a mustang who vanishes in her own dust cloud, never to be seen again? This never means selling your soul. It means doing what you’ve got to do so you can get the job done. Change your approach, change your tactics, but don’t change your self.
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“Why are you so worried about being respected by someone you don’t respect?” I asked him. “You know you are smarter. Respect yourself.”
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Who Are You? Leave your title out of this. Come up with 25 facets of the real you, like Marva Collins suggested. Who are you? What defines you beyond your work? Which parts of you do you value most? Which ones would you like to indulge more? Are you living a life that honors the woman you admire in yourself? If not, why aren’t you making changes to bring life to those loves? Instead of losing yourself to the issue of the week, give yourself to the facets of yourself that matter to you. I’m a cyclist, an outdoorswoman, a hell-raising mustang, a friend. I’m a writer and a daughter and I am living the life I want to live. Half the challenge of loving yourself is knowing who you really are.
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Actress Brett Butler, who has had fierce battles with sobriety, addiction, and domestic violence, said she’s gotten to the point where she realizes that all the trials in her life “almost had to happen. All I know is, it cost me all that to be who I am right now. I’d do it again. I pay a lot of attention to feelings like envy or resentment in my own life. I like to pull those out like bad weeds. Sobriety has taught me that, if there is a trait in someone else that I do not like, many times, it is a trait in myself that I have neglected to work on.”
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When you can stop pointing fingers at others and take a long look in the mirror, you’ll find even greater growth. Don’t look for excuses to flog yourself, but make sure you own what you need to own.
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Choosing Battles How do you know when to fight or sit one out? Author Sam Horn said, “If it’s not that big of a deal, I may not say anything. Especially if it is going to go away.” But, she has criteria for choosing battles: Is the matter trivial? 1. 2. Is it a persistent concern? 3. Is the situation innocent or unintentional? 4. What is the background or history of the situation? (Is it your first week on the job, has this been going on ten years?) 5. Can or will it change? 6. Is the timing right? 7. Is it worth the consequences? 8. Will you win the battle and lose the war?
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“The most important thing to remember is to always make an effort to reach out to people and explain why it is you are doing what you are doing, rather than just closing down and feeling they are all after you because you are a woman or this is a dog-eat-dog world. That’s the biggest mistake.”
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I have nothing to gain or lose. Fire me from my job, put me down, do what you want to me. It’s not going to change anything, because if you do or do not like me, fine. I don’t frankly care.
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My self-esteem is so much greater than it was in the past, but not because of the bonus or the movie. It was because of the Hinkley experience that made me appreciate the environment and the gift of health. What made me feel good about myself was being able to be helpful to another person through my work. That made me a better person. You can have all the money you want, but what is truly the mark you leave? It’s the sense of doing something outside of yourself—as a senseless act.
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Here’s Horn’s theory: First, when you don’t know what to say, don’t say anything. Especially, don’t say the “I” word. For example, if someone says, “You are so emotional and defensive,” and you say, “I am not emotional and defensive,” well, suddenly you are. “You can see any denial debate of an accusation will create an argument where we are going back and forth—yes you are, no I’m not, yes you are, no I’m not,” Horn explained. Instead of engaging, reverse the dynamic, asking, “What do you mean?” or, “What makes you say that?” or, “Why do you think that?” Horn said that puts the conversational ball back in their court. If their concerns are legitimate, those questions and subsequent answers will reveal the real issue. You can deal with the issue, instead of the attack. If they are just taunting you, the questions force them to explain themselves.
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Perseverance by Margaret Wheatley, Asante Salaam and Barbara Bash
Here are a few of my notes…
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. Clarissa Pinkola Estes Writer
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No grand actions are required; we just need to begin speaking up about what we care about. We don’t need to spend a lot of time planning or getting senior leaders involved; we don’t have to wait for official support. We just need to get started—for whatever issue or person we care about.
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This is how the world always changes. Everyday people not waiting for someone else to fix things or come to their rescue, but simply stepping forward, working together, figuring out how to make things better.
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The challenge is to refuse to categorize ourselves. We don’t have to take sides or define ourselves as either optimists or pessimists. Much better to dwell in uncertainty, hold the paradoxes, live in the complexities and contradictions without needing them to resolve.
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Fearlessness, too, has love at its core, but it requires a great deal more of us than instant action. If we react too quickly when we feel afraid, we either flee or act aggressively. True fearlessness requires that we take time and exercise discernment. Then we can move with love into right action.
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When we work from this place of urgency, we set ourselves up for failure. We work very hard, push our agenda, get aggressive when we think we need to, and end up more exhausted than effective.
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We could lighten up—we could go for direction, not destination. We could invite in what the world seems to want for us, what it’s offering us right here, right now. We could enjoy what we’ll see and discover when we take off the blinders of non-negotiable destination.
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Steadfastness is a lovely, old-fashioned word that we don’t hear much about these days. It describes how warriors stand their ground, how they find their position and stay there, unshaken and immovable. Steadfast people are firm in their resolve; they are not shaken by events or circumstances. They stand clear in their beliefs, grounded in their cause, faithful to the end.
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Every day I have to make a choice not to give up. Non-profit CEO
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Perseverance is a choice. It’s not a simple, one-time choice, it’s a daily one. There’s never a final decision.
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We walk around wrapped in our stories, and it only takes a small poke from the outside world to unleash a flood of them in all their velocity. Over time, we become packages of predictable responses. We forget there’s any other way to respond. The good news is that at any moment we can refuse to be triggered in the old, familiar ways. This takes practice, and a lot of discipline, but the next time you find yourself gripped by any strong emotion, see if you can just observe the feeling. Don’t deny it or judge it. Don’t start telling yourself why you’re angry or sad. Just observe that you are. If you can avoid, even for a moment, getting dragged under by your usual storyline, that’s real progress. You’ve succeeded in bringing in just a tiny bit of air, a momentary breath—and in that small opening lies the possibility of freedom. We illuminate the road to freedom each time we make a conscious choice to stay out of our stories. The road gets easier to see in the light of each pause.
A: use in Managing Self.
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Or can we filter criticism and keep it focused as perhaps valuable but bounded information? Can we look for the kernels of truth there that might help us improve? Can we not instantly push criticism away, yet not accept it totally? And can we treat praise the same way, not instantly basking in our glory? Praise and blame are two sides of the same coin. If we are eager to accept praise, then we are equally vulnerable to feel the sting of blame. In both cases, we need to listen with caution and discernment. There are truths in what people say about us, good and bad, but let’s not ever believe that their words define us.
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We can stay where we are and bravely investigate our fear. We can move toward it, curious about it. We can even interview it. What does it feel like? What color is it? Does it have a texture, size, personality? What’s important is to question the fear itself. We’re not asking ourselves why we feel afraid, which is our usual inquiry. We just want to know more about this seemingly frightful creature that showed up in us. Our investigation moves us closer and closer, and then the fear begins to change. Paradoxically, the more we engage directly with it, the less fearful it becomes. It is our curiosity that transforms fear. Most often, it dissolves into energy that we can work with.
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After the first rush of romance in discovering meaningful work, there’s the actual work to be done. The work will, at times, be boring, repetitive, uninteresting, senseless. This is why discipline is so important. If you have a daily regimen— exercise, meditation, prayer, sports, music, writing—you’ve learned to do the same thing day after day. You don’t abandon it when it gets boring. You don’t avoid the repetition. You learn to just do it, because you know that the repetition and boredom eventually serve your goal.
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Propelled by passion rather than by discipline, we end up spent, exhausted, unhappy. And we lose the capacity to persevere.
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Patience is the only remedy for this situation. And compassion. Let’s not judge them as stupid or difficult or obstinate. Let’s redefine our task and challenge ourselves to become gentle guides to the world as we see it, not fierce advocates for our view of reality.
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Being in not-knowing, open and aware, is how we discover right action—the appropriate means for what needs to happen. Right action usually doesn’t match our plans, conceived as they were from outside. But now that we’re inside the situation, curious and uncertain, we’re able to notice what’s here. We begin to see dynamics, people, patterns and information we can work with. We become realistic about what’s available. Now we can focus on working with what’s here, rather than what we thought we needed.
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If we take this approach, in every situation, we discover that the resources we need are already here. We have more than enough to work with. It’s our task to notice this abundance, and then figure out how to work with it appropriately. What’s possible now, given all these new resources we’ve discovered?
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Life is just one big experiment and so are all our efforts and great intentions to impact our world for good. If the solutions to problems—personal and global— were known, they wouldn’t be problems now. Even though this logic seems rather obvious, it’s strange how so many people keep applying old methods and old thinking to these issues, even as they keep failing. It seems we’d rather keep exhausting ourselves with failure than change our minds and admit that new ideas are needed.
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What would it feel like to surrender to the rhythms and dynamics of life? What would it feel like to realize that we don’t really have a choice here—we can either participate with life, or resist it and drive ourselves to exhaustion and failure. Instead of working so hard to actively construct our lives, we could relax with the opportunities that life provides, both the good and the bad ones. People who have this type of relationship with life truly are more relaxed. The seeming loss of control doesn’t create anxiety or feelings of distress. It does the reverse, it creates feelings of ease and clarity—and the capacity to stay.
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When we recognize that our personal struggle is fundamental to being human, that everyone struggles and suffers, we begin to feel less personally victimized. We become more accepting of difficulty, less battered by bad moments.
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Presence is the only way to walk the edge of chaos. We have to be as nimble and awake as a high-wire artist, sensitive to the slightest shift of wind, circumstances, emotions. We may find this high-wire exhausting at first, but there comes a time when we rejoice in our skillfulness. We learn to know this edge, to keep our balance, and even dance a bit at incalculable heights.
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A life of discipline and awareness, where we’ve exercised choice, served others as best we could, learned as much as we could bear—such a life yields a very rich harvest. The fruits of our labors are not to be found in the world, however. They’re inside us, in how we feel about self, the world, life, others. If we rummage around inside ourselves, we might notice that there’s less fear, more curiosity. We might notice that there’s more space, that there’s room for choice, that we now contain a larger repertoire of behaviors.
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Aspiration - You are willing to serve any worthy cause that helps the rest of the world.
The Way of Council by Jack Zimmerman and Virginia Coyle
Here are a few of my notes…
Turning into the skid…
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The spiral… four to eight places are set in the centre of the larger circle. When the person who speaks after you has finished, you leave the inner circle and return to your place on the outer one. Then another person from the outer circle takes the empty seat. The talking piece in the inner circle passes in the sun direction.
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Practice non-anticipation diligently. Wait until you have the talking piece to look as deeply as you can at the interactive field.
When the interactive field is well defined and expanding, enter more lightly and express yourself fin a way that illumiates the field for others in the circle.
When the interactive field is undefined or dim, enter more vigourously to give the circle additional energy with which to work.
Take the risk of speaking more personally and passionately when others in the circle lack inspiration to speak from the heart.
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Don’t forget that every organization has shadow aspects. Be alert to such patterns as: unacknowledged animosity between two executives, hidden inconsistencies in the treatment of male and female employees, and denial that a company’s products or services are no longer in demand. Otherwise these shadow patterns may arise spontaneously and dominate the agenda.
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Image that we are going to close down the Ojai Foundation, disburse our assets, and bring all our projects to a close. Is there anything you haven’t done or would regret not doing? What do you need to accomplish to feel complete? This is not merely a hypothetical exercise. Shutting down is a real possibility….. the next morning we held a “visionary council” from which the foundation’s purpose and direction emerged more clearly than ever before.
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Every leader has a sacred side and a shadow side. The sacred side governs as a “steward of the realm”, devoted to the well-being and empowerment of the entire community. The sacred leader is willing to face any personal obstacle in fulfilling that intention. On the other hand, the shadow leader is interested in personal power. We may thing we’re devoted to empowering others, but the shadow-leader-part-of-us is out to strengthen its authority and bask in the glow of admiration.
Storycatcher: Making Sense of Our Lives Through the Power and Practice of Story by Christina Baldwin
Here are a few of my notes…
Perhaps we’re at a party and someone starts to speak about what at first seems like an ordinary anecdote but soon grows into something more important. A Storycatcher notices and says, “Come, let’s sit down on the sofa. I want to really hear you.”
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They established basic ground rules for an ongoing conversation: no opinions, just story; no attempts to change minds, just listening. The group met for three years. No one changed her mind about the issue, but everyone changed his mind about the people involved in the other side of the issue.
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Storycatchers know story has the power to open the heart, even if the mind does not change.
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What would you put in the earth as a treasure for the future to find? Let’s start there. Tell me that story.
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Questions for exploring the spiritual journey:
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How are you doing with all the tension? I ask… I mean the unrelenting tension that won’t go away, that cannot be solved by ruling party elections, or by switching jobs, or partners, or financial planners, or churches – that tension.
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More and more often, I find myself thinking that the people with whom I most deeply belong are those who are willing to carry the ambiguity of the age, those who are learning how to manage tension in a heartfelt, spiritually imbued manner. I call us the Tribe of the Ambiguous.
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Storycatching is at its root an act of refuge, a place to turn, an offering that we will be listened to while we hold our hearts like a talking piece in our hands; and then, we pay it forward – we become the listening ear for the next person, and the next. In this way, the skills of eliciting story, and skills of receiving story, grow among us. Story makes community: communities make story.
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Toke: When I am invited into an organization, someone calls me because they want to amplify something – to make something stronger. The first thing I ask myself is whether or not I want to contribute to what they want amplified. I make choices. I’m not for sale. I work with human beings, not institutions, and I work through story because story is the human part of the organization.
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Invitational Questions to the Art of Hosting:
What if the solutions for our future are hiding in our collective intelligence and wisdom?
What if hosting conversations is the kind of leadership that allows learning to take place?
What comes into the world when we talk about what matters and act on what inspires us?
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Wow, I say, you must have a lot of stories. Tell us about a moment when things looked really bad but turned out well… tell us about a time when somebody made a good decision under pressure…
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