Do you have a little voice in your ear?
One that plants a little seed of doubt in everything you do?
Tells you, “You’re not good enough!” “You don’t deserve that!” “You can’t do it!”
If we’re honest we’ve all experienced this at some point. I like to think of this voice as a bird, perched, ready and waiting to chirp the next little piece of negativity that will send its owner into a spin.
Your bird is the voice of your ego. Until you can detach and eventually rid yourself of the bird, your emotions, your unconscious patterns and beliefs, are all in control. Not you. The bird isn’t necessarily always telling you bad things, but overall, it is generally sharing ideas that are neither rooted in truth nor substance. You are better off without it.
We all have our own bird. Whether it thrives or not, like with any animal in your care, is determined by whether you pay attention to it and feed it. Detaching from its toxic rhetoric will cut off its food supply and eventually it will waste away. Ultimately, self mastery will kill the bird, freeing you completely.
Where is your bird?
If it’s on your shoulder, at least some of the time, how much control are you allowing it?
The more control it has, the more it can derail you. Listening to voice of the bird reduces your perspective, your ability to make rational decisions, and ultimately it compromises your capability as a leader.
The bird can share stories and untruths with you that sow the seeds of doubt. Over time it might have sowed a whole field, now starting to grow into a tangle of weeds you will struggle to see over or move past. It can pull you into gossip, judgment and destructive opinions of others that again are not factual.
Silencing the bird will allow you the ability to stabilise your thoughts and emotions. You will remain calm in decision making and your vibrational energy will be high, which will be mirrored back at you by those around you.
Find your bird. Acknowledge it. Then work at replacing its chirping with a conscious affirmation to keep your thoughts on track. Stay present and don’t get pulled into those stories. Soon after you will see this transformation of your inner world reflected positively in your outer world.
You can control the bird.
There are other creatures I’ve identified that can create stress or hold you back as a leader.
Leadership involves developing the strengths of those in your team, helping them elevate in their careers and working with them towards the vision for your organisation. You select people for your team based on their complementary strengths and on their desire to achieve a common goal. Leaders guide expectations around behaviour, it’s also part of the job, but sometimes displayed behaviour can become repetitive and destructive, despite your best efforts, negatively impacting the wider group and your ability to succeed.
I see this type of negative egoic behaviour as scorpion. It emerges when the monkey mind is not tamed and controlled and when there are stories feeding into behaviours that cause the person to sting others.
Do you know any scorpions?
If repeated destructive behaviour from an individual is impacting your team, this is generally that person’s truth, and they will struggle to detach from the scorpion as it has become part of their mode of operation. Their ego has the reigns, and it is not relinquishing control.
We likely don’t understand the stories that have brought them to this point, and it is not for us to weigh in on that. But if these behaviours can’t be managed, then the sooner you accept this the sooner you can decide to move forward. We are not casting judgment here, we are acknowledging their truth and if it is not something that aligns with the values of your team then it’s ok to respectfully ask them to move on.
You can’t control the scorpions.
Ultimately, we must control what we can and accept what we can’t.
The only thing we can truly control is ourselves. Our inner world and in turn our outer world as a result. I share teachings and experience in self mastery, but the journey is very personal and one that only the individual can control.
We can all learn to manage the bird if we dedicate ourselves to making the changes, but the scorpions will be scorpions until they decide themselves it’s time to do the work.
Learn more by reading Stone Heart Light Heart – The Intelligence of Self Mastery
