UPDATE: December 7, 2023:
In times of uncertainty and great change, people naturally feel a lot of fear. Leaders too. Yet it is precisely at these times that leaders would be wise to recognise their fear and choose love and wisdom.
Are you consciously choosing love and wisdom, or defaulting to fear?
Are your decisions, choices and actions rooted in fear or inspired by love, purpose, possibility and potential?
This topic has come up with a few clients over the last few months and has been a useful reflection for me as well. (Funny how that happens! 
) Here's how it played out for me recently.
A client called me on my fear of creating dependency in my clients. Creating dependency is something I never want to do. It is not healthy or productive. I view it as a sign of failure because I believe I should be building capacity and capability in my clients, developing them to be truer and more effective versions of themselves with greater agency, self-responsibility, and self-sovereignty. So I have designed my work to minimise the likelihood of dependency.
Sounds good right. So what's the problem?
On being challenged, I examined my behaviours and the underlying drivers. Not wanting to create dependency is a good thing. However, it is fear-based. I was acting from fear - the fear of creating dependency or being seen to do so.
As a result, the higher principle was getting lost.
What is the higher principle? For me, it is the developmental principle. My ultimate aim is to be developmental. The exact what, how and destination of the work is not mine to choose. It depends on each client, though of course, my clients tend to come to me for similar reasons. While I am developmental in my work and approach, having this as the primary driver (a love/wisdom-based driver) is much more powerful than feeling constrained by the fear of creating dependency.
It may seem like a subtle shift in this case, but the effects and potentialities powerfully shift with this more subtle shift in orientation. Suddenly, my thinking and being are freed. The possibilities for my clients and for my work open up. And with it, the potential for my own growth, development and impact as well as that of my clients.
"If you catch yourself in the track of fear, just by having that awareness, you can shift your attention into the track of love.
Just by seeing where you are, just by changing your attention, everything around you will change."
~ don Miguel Ruiz with Janet Mills
An exercise that may be helpful
Reflect on the following questions.
- Where are you acting from fear, even if it is inadvertent? (Hint: fear contracts. Pay attention to when and where you feel contracted physically and emotionally. Notice when your shoulders hunch, your head bows, as if to protect the heart and the core organs. This is protective survival mode.)
- What are the higher principles that you want to inform what you do and how you do it? (Hint: if you are not sure, look to the fears for clues. What are they obscuring?)
- What would love and wisdom suggest is the best way forward, and why? (Hint: love opens up, expands. Feel into it. Use your body to help you. Straighten up. Look up and out. Open up your chest and heart. Move your awareness to your heart. Look and listen from that place.)
- When and how will you put what you learned into practice in your life and work?
- Notice what shifts in and around you as you shift from fear to love and wisdom?
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
As for me, it has become clear that it is time to evolve my one-on-one coaching practice. From 2024 I will be working with fewer one-on-one clients over a longer term and in a more in depth way. I can do this without creating dependency while supporting my clients in realising more profound inner and outer transformation. It also allows me to bring to bear a fuller range of my coaching expertise, strategy experience, and more in service to the client, their higher purpose and the people and organisations engaged in realising that purpose. It is exciting and scary, but this is the good kind of fear - the kind that tells me I'm on to something powerful and purposeful.
What about you? If you do the exercise, reply and let me know what shifts for you and how you see your work evolving in the new year as you choose love and wisdom over fear. I'd love to hear.
With curiosity, love and wisdom,
Rashmir.
Purpose is one of those incredibly tricky things to get clear. Many people make the mistake of equating purpose with mission. This is not wrong, but it is limited. Mission is one component of [purpose] mission, one of the doing elements. It does not include the being component of purpose, which is essential.
In this video, I outline the 4 components of purpose using the True Purpose framework developed by Tim Kelley of the True Purpose Institute. It's a powerful framework and one that is valuable to understand whether you are looking for your purpose or that of your organisation, team or group.
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Hello, it's rashmir here. In this video, I'm going to talk about the four components of your true purpose. So by way of introduction, let me say that most people think about purpose in terms of mission, right? What is that thing I'm here to do in the world? What is my mission? What is that grand objective or that change I'm supposed to create in the world.
And that's not a bad way of thinking about purpose. But it is just an aspect of purpose. Because with mission, you know, mission, sometimes it's so big and potentially quite scary that it can actually if we only focus on mission can stop us from learning our purpose.
And the framework that I use has four components of purpose, very quickly, they are essence, blessing, mission and message that's essence, blessing, mission, and message. And so you can see, mission is just one of four components of purpose. Now this framework isn't isn't mine, was developed by Tim Kelley, of the True Purpose Institute.
And I love it so much, that I have essentially been trained and licensed to use it with my clients as well. And it's an incredibly powerful framework, because what it does is it brings being components of purpose together with the doing components, to essence, in particular, is who are you? What is your essence? You know, what
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is that aspect of you, that is always you, that never changes no matter what, and we use the analogy of a light, if you imagine that every one of us had a light on our heads. And that light was this very slightly different shade for every one of us. And the minute you come into a room, that room goes a little bit your shade, because you cannot not be your essence of essence is at its core, being components for purposes beautiful, because when we understand our essence, there's a way in which we can relax knowing that no matter what we are always in some level, our purpose, right we are being our purpose, no matter what at least that component of it, the essence of blessing then in this framework is a little bit different. So blessing is to an effect it to an extent, it's the effect of your of your essence, it's the action of your essence, the process, the thing that you do, that you probably don't even realize you you do, because you've been doing it your entire life.
It's the kind of thing that people come to you for when they need, that gift that you have that aspects of you that is uniquely new, that will make a difference to them in that way to learning our blessing is very powerful. Because when we know this, we can make much more conscious choices about which circumstances and people to put ourselves in front of right, where are we called? Where is our blessing needed. That's an incredibly powerful component. Now we get its mission. So mission is as you would imagine that grand thing that you're here to do in the world, and it may be big, it may be small, right? There's no judgment based on size, everyone's mission might be different. And if you realize your mission, you might be given another mission and another level of mission, which is why there's also a possibility for evolution in our purpose, if we choose to find our purpose and to step into living it and that is a choice, knowing our purpose doesn't force us to live into our purpose.
Although of course, as I mentioned, with essence and blessing, there are aspects of your purpose that you are going to do, regardless of whether you choose to or not, because you can't not do them. You can't not be who you are, and bring some of your innate capacities and gifts to the world. The final component briefly is message. And in this framework, not everyone seems to have a message but many people do. And if you know what your unique message is, the beauty is you can incorporate that more and more in circumstances in situations where that's important to not have some kind of message that the world needs to hear, or people need to hear, but also need to hear it through you.
So you will have some particular aspect or some uniqueness that no doubt comes through in your message. So that's the four components of your true purpose, essence, blessing, mission, and message. If that sounds valuable to you to learn if you would like to learn more about these components, and discover the four components of your true purpose, then check out the link that I'm going to put below this video.
So this link will basically take you to the true purpose program that I offer that particularly as it is set out for groups because there's something really beautiful about doing this kind of work in conjunction with others and supporting others in their process and receiving the support not just me, but others in their process or in your process rather of finding your true purpose. So do if you feel cool to. If this feels relevant and useful for you, check out the true purpose program. And let me know if you have any questions or comments. Thanks very much.
