They say a diamond is just a piece of charcoal that has learned to handle stress or pressure exceptionally well.
The Churning, Inner Leadership is a book that shows us how we, too, can learn to handle the stresses and pressures of living through a time of change in ways that make us stronger and more valuable.
To achieve this, the book shows us how we can improve our abilities at seven key skills or competencies:
- Remain calm, centred, and grounded, even in a crisis, deeply connected with what matters most to us and who we are at our best
- Make clearer sense of the situations we find ourself in
- Find more options to move forward
- Choose the option that is best for us, even when the situation and the outcome are unclear
- Use our purpose and values not only to maintain our direction but also to inspire us to do more and help us to adapt faster to a changing world
- Describe our chosen way forward in a way that inspires and enthuses not only ourselves but also the people around us
- Maintain that inspiration and enthusiasm as we move forward
For the next 100 days or so, this blog will bring you key extracts from the book, one extract per day: one post 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 the book is about, including many (but not all) of the more than 30 tools it contains.
And if you have read the book, the posts will act as daily reminders that help to support and maintain your practice and so strengthen 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 actually to use those changes to become stronger and more valuable — to become the diamond you most want to become.
Do you want to become better at handling change? Would it be useful to know how to use change to become more inspired, directed, and adaptable to achieving what matters most to you?
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