“Keep striving until you find yourself.”
Run like crazy when you hear this saying or any other bullshit saying like it. The future you is not hiding under some rock out there waiting to be discovered.
To better engage complexity, to develop relational depth, to lead with more competence: these all require you to create yourself.
Creating yourself involves the willingness to go down into the uncomfortable places and the courage to confront the ways your sense-making makes little sense. Developing your capable self requires the willingness to face your own shadow, as the Jungians would say.
We see staggering amounts of time and energy being wasted in organizations and leadership teams as they focus almost entirely on technical development and neglect the Adaptive Development needs of their people.
Developing the complexity of your people requires psychological and emotional development. Not just technical.
Carl Jung said, “We should not pretend to understand the world only by intellect. The judgement of the intellect is only part of the truth.”
Creation of one’s leadership self often requires objectifying old thought constructs and replacing them with new more productive ones.
We often make sense of the world using psychological constructs created when we were young to navigate or circumnavigate difficult circumstances. This is beyond normal, almost universal. But the psychological and emotional constructs that served you in the past won’t necessarily serve you in the future. They’ll often work against you.
James Hillman said, “Anytime you’re gonna grow, you’re gonna lose something. You’re losing what you’re hanging onto to keep safe. You’re losing habits that you’re comfortable with, you’re losing familiarity.”
To lead or simply engage complexity, one must develop oneself emotionally and psychologically.
We call that Adaptive Development.
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Fern EPC is the Adaptive Development fast track for physicians, executives, and entrepreneurs.
