They say a diamond is just a piece of charcoal that has learned to handle pressure exceptionally well.
This time of change is putting us all under pressure. And The Churning, Inner Leadership is a book that shows us how we, too, can learn to handle that pressure in ways that make us stronger and more valuable.
It does this by showing us how to improve our abilities at seven key skills or competencies:
- Remaining calm, centred, and grounded, even in a crisis, deeply connected with who we are at our best and what matters most to us
- Making clearer sense of the situations we find ourself in
- Finding more options to move forward
- Choosing the option that is best for us, even when the situation is unclear and the outcome uncertain
- Using our purpose and values to maintain our direction, inspire us to do more, and adapt faster to a changing world
- Describing our chosen way forward in a way that inspires us, and the people around us, to long to make it happen
- Growing and building that enthusiasm and inspiration as we move forward
For the next 100 days or so, this blog will bring you one key extract from the book each day: one from the Introduction, one from Chapter 1, one from Chapter 2, and so on.
If you haven’t read the book, this will give you a sense of what it is about, including many (but not all) of the more than 30 tools it contains.
And if you have read the book, these posts will act as daily reminders that help to support and maintain your practice, to develop and deepen your abilities.
The more you master these seven skills, the more antifragile you will become: able not only to survive the changes that are happening but to use these changes to become a stronger and more valuable version of yourself — to become the diamond you most want to become.
Do you want to learn to use this time of change to get clearer about who you are, what matters most to you, and become more able to achieve that? Have you signed up to receive the daily posts?
Adapted from Inner Leadership: a framework and tools for building inspiration in times of change.
You can sign up to daily posts here.
You can buy the book here and the workbook here.
(And remember: you can’t learn to swim just by reading about swimming, you also need to do the practice.)
Photo By Steve Jurvetson via StockPholio.net