PART I Getting Ready for the Journey 1
Sometimes the Only Thing Worse Than a Bad Mirror Is a Good One 1 We would rather speak badly of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all. La Rochefoucauld Taking a hard look at ourselves can be hard on our protected notion of ourselves and, because of that, is often a hard thing to do. To be self-transforming begins with you being self-witnessing. The road to greatness requires self-assessment. It requires each of us to leave some part of us on stage and drag some other attentive aspect of ourselves off stage and into the audience. Sitting there in the audience eating popcorn, we can see what we re doing and how we re doing on stage. We can applaud or hiss or cheer, but what we absolutely must do is pay attention. And pass the popcorn to our higher selfawareness. All self-transformation begins with self-witnessing. Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others. Fyodor Dostoyevsky 3
4 Getting Ready for the Journey It is not the same to talk of bulls as to be in the bullring. Spanish proverb The road to greatness is not the road to my idea of greatness, or your parents, or your significant other s: or any other publicly traded notion of success that you have bought into without ever thinking about what you were buying. The really important and entirely relevant question for anyone on the quest to greatness is: What constitutes greatness according to you? The things we re going to talk about in this book will help you achieve your highest notion of self, but you have to determine what that is. Or put another way, you can get anywhere you want in your life, but you re going to have to show up at the starting line bringing with you not necessarily a sensible sack lunch, or sunscreen, but certainly a vision of what greatness looks like and feels like to you or simply that part in you that is great and you would like to be more of you. In life, no one is unemployed. We all have to work on who we are. Make your work a labor of love. Getting to greatness takes great deal of work because it implies a willingness to work on who you are, and because getting to greatness requires you to get real with yourself, and because getting to this work sooner rather than later is a really good idea. Make this effort a labor of love and it transforms not only the results but also you. Achieving greatness is not something you need to do in a rush; it is something that will take time. Taking a long ride by yourself or a slow walk with a friend and thinking about the things you will read is its own wise pace. Traveling the road to greatness may be the most important thing you will ever do because it will influence everything you will ever do, and anything worth doing is also worth thinking about and thinking about again. The more life is a rush, the sooner it is a blur. Sometimes, the best way to get where you want to go is to put your foot on the brake.
Sometimes the Only Thing Worse Than a Bad Mirror Is a Good One 5 If you don t know where you re going, any path with take you there. So take a moment right now in this moment, and for as many moments as you need to identify a particular expression of greatness that matters to you. It may be working to be a more effective team leader, or finetuning communication (or listening) skills, or effecting lasting change on a specific initiative that will positively impact the lives of others. Or it may have nothing to do with doing and have everything to do with being being someone more at ease with the higher, better part in you that you would like to be. After you have taken that moment, take this moment. After all, all we have are moments, right up until the moment we don t. In this moment, I would like you to identify any potential fear or obstacle that might be challenging you in going forward on this journey to greatness. Another way of seeing this may require you to take a look at where you drag your feet, how you put the Hell is being caught in Ego. brakes on yourself, what is your stuckness. Where are you stuck? Have you been Carl Jung stuck? Where do you think you will get stuck? Stick with it for a few minutes, and you will find your stuckness. And by the way, don t get stuck thinking this is something that happens only to you. In some way, on some issue, we all ride the brake. So give yourself a break, cut yourself some slack, think about where you get stuck, and see how unstuck simply witnessing this may get you. Too often, we can t progress on the road to greatness simply because the nature of our stuckness is being too stuck on ourselves. There was a Zen monk who was held in high esteem by many in the community. A local teacher, feeling somewhat threatened, thought to himself, Who is this man to think he is so important when I am a man of great learning? And the teacher decided to debunk the monk. When the teacher arrived, the monk sensed the man s agenda, bowed to him, and began to pour the visitor a cup of tea. When the cup was full, the monk continued to pour until tea was running on the floor. Stop pouring, shouted the teacher. Can t you see what you are doing? Oh, my friend, said the monk, I can see what I am doing. But my question to you is, if you will not empty your cup, how can I fill it? Being full of ourselves doesn t necessarily make us feel full. It does corrupt the understanding of what a full life means and puts off our
6 Getting Ready for the Journey getting started and denigrates our aim, no matter our aims, because we are self-stuck. For some of us, getting started or making progress on the road to greatness never happens because we have ready, aim, aim personalities afraid to make the wrong decision, we make no decision and assure failure out of a fear of making a mistake. Certainly, this is as self-defeating as a ready, fire, aim manner of target shooting. Both attitudes miss the mark, whether we re leading ourselves or others. Still others of us take pride in seeing the best in all sides and are so addicted to the values of every point of view that we are afraid to take a point of view in liking all sides, we can t find our side. A wise old cleric once said, The pantheist is everything but himself. I am everything through myself. Sometimes, agreeing with everyone means only that we have not yet come to agreement with ourselves. Too many of us are stuck because our image of ourselves is of being stuck or because we think it is a sign of character not to abandon who we were. You are not stuck. Your mind is stuck. Don t let the place between your ears be your quicksand. It doesn t matter if others think you are stuck or think you are great. All of us know of some aspect where we are stuck or get stuck. And it doesn t matter why you re stuck, how you got stuck, or how long you ve been stuck now is the time to get unstuck.