They say a diamond is just a piece of charcoal that has learned to handle stress exceptionally well.
The Churning, Inner Leadership is a book that shows us how we, too, can learn to handle the stresses of change in ways that make us stronger and more valuable.
To do this we need to improve our abilities at seven essential skills:
- Remaining calm, centred, and grounded, even in a crisis, deeply connected with what is most important to us and who we are at our best
- 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 future is unclear
- Using our purpose and values not only to inspire us to do more but also to maintain our direction over time and adapt as the world changes
- Describing our chosen way forward in a way that inspires and enthuses us and the people around us to long to do what needs to be done
- Maintaining 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 at a time: one post from Chapter 1, one from Chapter 2, one from Chapter 3, and so on.
If you haven’t read the book this will give you a sense of what it contains, including many (but not all) of the more than 30 tools in its toolkit.
If you have read the book, this will act as a reminder to support and maintain your practice and strengthen your abilities.
And the more you master all seven skills, the more you will become antifragile: able not only to survive the changes that are happening but actually to use them 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 focused, enthusiastic, stronger, and more valuable?
Adapted from Inner Leadership: a framework and tools for building inspiration in times of change.
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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