Your Beliefs Shape Your Life So You Better Choose Them Wisely.
A lot of people think that their beliefs are like clothes. They really don’t have much choice in the matter. They just walk up to their closet, pick out what’s there, wear it, and move on to the next set of clothes the next day.
If that is you, your attitude towards your beliefs could be limiting your life. It would come as no surprise that you are not living your life to your fullest potential. Whether this means enjoying the best job, making the most money in your field, enjoying the best relationships, or looking physically fit, beliefs play a major role in your life. No matter how clueless you are about its role, beliefs will continue to remain important in your life.
Where Do Beliefs Draw Their Power?
Beliefs are like glasses. Depending on the grade of your glasses, the world may look crystal clear or it may look very fuzzy and you might even have a nasty headache when using glasses that have the wrong grade.
Beliefs work the same way. When you perceive reality, and I’m talking about the things that you can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell, they have to be filtered by something in your head. This is called your belief system. It’s your lens, through which you look at the world. So many things can change your lens, your past, trauma, culture all influence your beliefs.
When you filter this information, you give it meaning. You give it color. You give it a certain slant or angle. What do you think happens next? Your analysis of the things that you choose to perceive impacts the things you say, the things you do, and the things you feel about yourself and the rest of the world.
In other words, this is important stuff but the problem is a lot of people think that since they think a certain way that this is reality. They confuse objective reality, which everyone could agree with, with their own subjective take on the things that they perceive.
Also, other people excuse their own warped way of perceiving reality by saying that that’s just who they are or it’s part of their personality. How dare people question them!
Beliefs are chosen. Just as you can choose your clothes, you can choose your beliefs. I’m not saying that it’s easy. After all, beliefs do become habitual after a while. You don’t hang onto a belief system because it is just flat-out wrong and harms you. There’s something about the belief system that you have chosen that gives you enough benefits for it to be worth hanging onto.
Limiting Beliefs
It’s like wearing really raggedy shoes. You probably have really old shoes in your home. They look nasty and they could even smell like a rat died in them but, for whatever reason, you like wearing those shoes because they’re comfortable. You know that they don’t look the best; they don’t perform all that well but you prefer their comfort. They do well enough and serve you well enough so you keep them around and you use them day to day.
The same applies to your beliefs. There are many belief systems that have simply outlived their purpose or usefulness. It’s important for us to take a long, hard look at our beliefs and ask ourselves some hard questions. Otherwise, we will be living far below our potential. We would continue to look at reality with tools that really don’t serve us. That’s a tragedy.
When you become aware of your beliefs and are conscious of your lens you are looking at the world through you have a chance to change them. Emotional Intelligence could be a way to change your limiting beliefs that shape your life.
Leadership, mothers and dictators can you recognise them in your workplace?
Life with horses is about self improvement. I was attending a virtual horse expo listening to an incredible horseman recently Tristian Tucker who made a statement about how to create balanced horses. How to make horses that are mentally stable able to think through problems. He made the point that horses don’t want you to be a mother and they don’t want a dictator, they need a calm confident leader. I thought how powerful that statement was when thinking about leadership. When you look at your teams in the workplace can you identify the mother and the dictator?
Mothers
In order to create a horse who is mentally able to cope with strange things we can’t mother it. Making it comfortable and stress free. In horse terms it looks like the best of everything. You have seen the treat bringer, someone who always has a pocket full of the favourite treats so he/she comes to you. If something happens that it doesn’t like then we make sure that it never sees that stimulus again. He doesn’t like rugs so we don’t ever rug him again.
In the workplace mothering looks like the feeder. The person who bakes or brings lollies. Or the person who needs to make sure everyone is happy, they are a nurturer working out how not to have conflict. They would rather ignore the difficult bits, they are no difficult conversation at all just nurturing. We can all be friends and we will take away anything that makes you upset. They will be the person that always brings comfort.
Dictators
In horse terms it means managing everything. Your horse is not allowed to make a mistake and learn. They are often punished but not always rewarded. Every step is managed.
In the workplace dictatorship looks like micromanagement. You are not allowed to think your job is to do and to do in the way the dictator needs it done. Mistakes will not happen and if they do they will be punished. Chances are you will made an example of so no one makes the same mistake.
Fear
Both of these extremes are fear responses and coping mechanisms. Both end up creating a workplace full of anxiety. It doesn’t build innovation and confidence for growth.
I personally have operated in both styles, mothering making everyone my friend, and thought that management meant I needed a dictator style. I can say from experience that neither side is where you should stay. Use the tools when appropriate but to use leadership skills requires you to think differently.
Leadership
Creates confidence and develops people. Allowing people to learn be inquisitive and fail. Experience builds people so your role as a leader is to create opportunities for wins. How are you creating opportunities for your team to becoming a better and more balanced people?
Allowing someone to fail and learn is the hardest skill in the world to master.
Leadership, with calm confidence, how can you create the environment to create calm confident teams. You can learn how with leadership workshops.
My experience growing up was children were “to been seen and not heard.” We were taught to respect our elders. Authority was something to be revered and definitely not questioned. When you are bought up in a house where parenting technics consisted of phrases like “because I said so” and “do as I say not as I do”. I understood the wooden spoon was a real threat. You genuinely believe that anyone who has authority is something or someone to fear. Principals and teachers were still allowed to give you the cane. In growing up in this era physical punishment is a legitimate tool and in some cases the only tool. You believe that hierarchical structures are the real authority. Teachers all had Mr or Mrs no one had a first name and friends of the family were Aunts and Uncles. Positions of power demanded respect regardless of their behaviours. So when my title stated that I was a manager I wholeheartedly believed that I needed to be respected because I had a position title. I thought management was something that should be feared. I reflect now on how much times have changed.
Respect for leadership is now earned
We now expect leaders to be questioned about their decisions. Leaders are held to a higher moral standard because they are a leader. Workplaces are now being asked to do more for staff than simply provide a paycheque. It is an environment where employees are asking more about leadership than ever before.
So it’s no wonder that “75% of careers are derailed for reasons related to emotional competencies, including the inability to handle interpersonal problems; unsatisfactory team leadership during times of difficulty or conflict; or inability to adapt to change or elicit trust”. -Center for Creative
As the world continues to go through yet another crisis we need to support people in leadership to develop their emotional competencies. Poor leadership can do more than increase staff turnover or poor productivity. You can have a lasting impact on someone’s life. So as we learn more and know better we need to do better. Invest in your leaders and emerging leaders to understand how to be effective people managers. As leaders develop their own authentic people skills their respect for leadership changes as well. The more you develop your skills in emotional intelligence, it can change your workplace, your culture, but also other important relationships around you.
Emotional intelligence workshops with horses. Sounds like a crazy idea for leadership but it works. Now that emotional intelligence is an essential skill in leadership and the most sought after skill. It is something we all need to learn and master to become effective leaders.
What is emotional intelligence?
Emotional intelligence is simply put the ability to control your emotions and others in the present moment. It sounds simple but has a number of key factors. According to Daniel Goleman,
Self-awareness.
Self-regulation.
Motivation.
Empathy.
Social skills.
Why is it important?
Developing emotional intelligence is the one factor that will make you successful in almost every area of your life. At a professional level is the one factor that sets high performing leaders above others. At a personal level, it means your relationships around you will feel more connected. Allows for improved communication skills and increases your resilience. It turns out it is one of the most important life skills and increases your chances of success in every area of your life.
Can it be learnt?
Emotional intelligence is something you can learn. However, I believe it is something you need to experience it to understand it. Staying curious and responding appropriately to what is happening around you. Emotional intelligence is a skill that is challenging to learn from a book. Yes, you can get an understanding of the theory but until you practice it in real life you don’t know how to use it. It is a bit like trying to be a bodybuilder from a textbook. You can learn the theory but unless you lift the weights and practice you can’t develop those muscles.
Why does it matter to leadership?
Leaders without emotional intelligence can be very costly to any organisation.
All of us at some points in our career have worked for a manager we didn’t like and/or didn’t like us. We may have felt that they were unreasonable, not fair or at the extreme end they were a bully. These are all feelings of no connection or low emotional intelligence.
Leaders and managers with high emotional intelligence generally will have staff that want to come to work. They will have staff that will often feel heard and respected. A team that is motivated with less technical abilities will always outperform a highly skilled team going through the motions. So if this is the case why is emotional intelligence not taught?
We have all read the leadership textbooks talking through different models of leadership. As a leader, your leadership style should move change and respond to what is happening around you. If you only have one style you are still in the manager phase and each skill takes time to learn and develop.
There are many documented styles of leadership;
Autocratic – commander style
Bureaucratic – administrator style
Charismatic – the charmer
Democratic – the motivator
Laissez-Faire – the delegator
Servant –the steward
Transactional – the standardiser
Transformational – the inspirer
A leader who has developed their emotional intelligence will be able to transition through many different types of leadership style. They move and flex with the situation and may actually manage each person in their team with a different technique.
I accidentally found out through training horses that I was strengthening and developing my emotional intelligence in all aspects of my life. I found that incredible horse trainers who were rehabilitating troubled horses all had high levels of emotional intelligence. It was their empathy, self-regulation, and incredible awareness level. It almost felt like a heightened sense. This started my curiosity and openness to explore why it felt better. I felt like I was being genuine with relationships and with my leadership. It was a light bulb moment and realised I can also help others to understand and engage with it.
You don’t need to be a horse person to gain something from the workshops. It is made for people who have little to no experience with horses, and even those who have lots of experience will also gain some personal insights.
If sounds like something you might want to try then get in touch
