Since I moved to London six years ago, I’ve appreciated living there so much. In fact, I have often described the decision to move there as the best I ever made. And, yet, even though I have loved London so much, I’ve always been aware of the price I’ve had to pay for living there. There’s a ridiculous price premium one has to pay for living in the centre of London, for example (whenever I travel to other parts of Britain, and look in estate agents’ windows, I’m always sobered by what I could buy for the price of my very modest London flat). There is also the noise and crowds, the traffic, the lack of easy access to real nature, and the lack of horizon. Despite all of that, I haven’t been able to imagine living anywhere else, however sharp the pangs of longing I get when I visit the English country-side.

I still can’t imagine not living there.

But, a few weeks ago, I was teaching in Sussex, staying in a beautiful place in the forest, with nature right on my doorstep. I remembered again what it’s like to go to bed to the sound of silence, rather than the endless sounds of all-night buses under my window, sirens going off through the night, and drunk people talking too loudly on their way home. I also remembered the pleasure of being able to go for a walk in the dead of night, absorbing the sound of the trees and owls, or just the deep silence of nature.

More sharp pangs of longing, but still I couldn’t imagine not living in London.

And now, this week, I am on a kind of retreat, staying at the summer residence of the Catholic English College just outside Rome. And, it’s beautiful – in fact, I’m typing this sitting out in the evening sun, on the grass, listening to birds singing, and anticipating a good supper, followed by a glass or two of Italian brandy in front of an open fire which I will build myself. I spent most of the afternoon walking in the woods, captivated by the silence, by the light falling on to the trees. It was a bitter-sweet experience in some ways, because it reminds me that, much as I love London, there is a big part of me that is fed by what is almost “the opposite of London”. As soon as I settle in to being in nature, I remember just how it feels to be here. I notice the general sense of slowing down, the more natural rhythm, the stillness, and the letting go of the tension that is always present in being in the city, a tension that I often call “excitement” because of all the things that I love about London. It brings to the surface some difficult questions; questions which don’t really have any easy answers.

When I work with people, one of the topics we explore is the question of what we long for. One of the exercises we do begins with people thinking about what they most care about, what really matters to them, and then looking at what it costs them to not follow their longing. It’s often a very emotional time of reflection, engaging with such questions, and seeing that there are things that we really care about but which, for whatever reason, we have stopped listening to.

One of the problems, I think, is that often being in touch with what we long for makes us reflect on how hard it might be to move towards that. Forget the “you can have it all” promise of some books and courses. We often yearn for things that conflict very strongly with the life we currently live, or remind us of all the commitments we have. Sometimes, too, we need to face the possibility that we might never be able to achieve a particular dream or goal, because of the commitments we are already involved in – to our clients or employers, to our partners, to our children, or our elderly parents, from; commitments that we can’t just give up in pursuit of our dreams, however compelling they are. It could even be that we long for something that is actually impossible: a friend of mine talks about the pain of having two young children in different continents, and how sad he is that he can’t be with both his kids as they grow up.

Sometimes, we are faced with a longing that brings many conflicting thoughts. For example, if I did leave London, I know I’d miss it desperately – I’d miss the easy connections to people and culture, the regular Turkish Baths, the great choice of bars and restaurants, the river, the markets, the open all hours culture, the multi-racial aspects, the not needing to have a car. Even writing this makes me think again that I just couldn’t not live in London. I could put it differently – it’s as if my head and part of my heart would love to stay in London, but my body and soul crave to be back in the countryside. There’s no easy way to reconcile that.

What, then, are we to do?

It’s easy to see why we might give up on pursuing what we care about, but as Joseph Campbell has written we can’t simply go on ignoring the “call”. For me, I think part of the answer to this has to do with building the capacity to live in the question, to be willing to not know, and to resist the temptation to look for quick ways to “solve” our dilemmas. Can we live with the uncertainty, the disruption to our equilibrium that comes when we are in touch with that kind of gap in our lives, and the risk of the pain of not being able to achieve what we care about.

I have no way of knowing what will happen – whether I’ll end up leaving London or staying, or whether I’ll find some compromise, or win the lottery (unlikely as I never buy tickets) and be able to buy a quiet London house with a garden. But, as I reflected on this question during my walk, I did think that I might know the answer in ten or fifteen years time, and that maybe I could enjoy the finding out. It doesn’t necessarily make it easier, but it does open up a mood of curiosity and wonder to accompany the uncertainty and disruption.

And, as I look back over the last year, I have been reflecting especially on how, in the last twelve months, I have been to two places that, as a young man, I never thought I would visit, two places that have been through unimagined transformation, Berlin and South Africa.
I grew up with the facts of the Cold War, and of Apartheid, and although I hoped both would change (and, indeed, did some campaigning against the Apartheid regime), I never expected either reality to change in my life-time.

And, yet, within a couple of years, the Berlin Wall came down and the Apartheid regime began to dissolve starting with the release from prison of Nelson Mandela.

I remember spending Rosh Hashanah in Berlin last year, and stepping across the Brandenburg gate, crossing a line that 20 years ago would have been impossible to cross, and which many East Berliners died trying to cross. And, yet, here I was freely able to go from East to West as easily as putting one foot in front of the other.

And, then, in August this year, I was in South Africa, teaching in Newfield’s first ever South African programme. The day before the programme started, I went to the Apartheid Museum, a profoundly moving experience. One of the video installations included a performance of The Specials’ song Free Nelson Mandela – a song I remember buying nearly thirty years ago, and which I used to play when I was a DJ, at fund-raising discos for the ANC. And now, I was at a museum with a whole building dedicated to Mandela, celebrating his role as the initiator of the new South Africa, and architect of the transition from Apartheid to a non-racial society.

One of the other things, however, that struck me about being in South Africa was the security – to get into our hotel, we had to go through two guarded barriers. In all the residential areas we drove through, there were high walls, topped with barbed wire, and people spoke about having panic buttons by their beds, armed response units, etc. One of the things South Africa is having to deal with now is a huge rise in crime, and how to keep the country secure.

I even heard people saying that, even though they were very glad that Apartheid had come to an end, there were things about the “old days” that were better, and I heard both blacks and whites saying that. Similarly, Germany had to go through a lot of difficulties as it struggled with the question of re-unification, despite being jubilant at the collapse of the Berlin Wall. And, I’ve heard Russians talking about how things were better under the old Soviet system than they are today.

In his work on mythology, Joseph Campbell would talk about the hero’s journey, which would begin with a “call” – the realisation that things could not go on any longer the way they were. I think this is true on an individual, as well as on a collective, level.

Sometimes we ignore that call, but often it eventually gets so loud that we can no longer avoid it, and we have to heed it, and begin the journey. That journey of change is often a long, and challenging adventure into the terrain of what is called the belly of the whale. In those times, we might look back at what we have left behind, however much we knew we had to leave it, with a sense of regret – maybe it wasn’t so bad, maybe we could have stayed, made it work, or we might ask ourselves why we ever left.

Certainly this has been true in my own life.

There have been a few times when I have just “known” that I couldn’t go on with things the way they were. There have been a few times when I have left the security of a relationship, or a job, or simply upped sticks and moved to an entirely new town.

And, after the initial decision to leave, and the enthusiasm of starting anew, there have been many nights when I’ve lain awake wondering why I ever left, when I’ve worried that I might never land on my feet again.

And, yet, if I look back on my life, I am filled with gratitude for the places I have been and where I have arrived to now, knowing that I couldn’t have got there without that sense of the ordeal, without having passed through the belly of the whale – the long dark night of the soul, if you will, where nothing made sense and I would long for the familiarity of the old.

I am sure that I have yet more such ordeals ahead – more times when I will leave behind the security of something that I know to set out on another voyage of discovery, and I imagine looking back in ten or twenty years and being amazed at where I have been with, I hope, as much gratitude as I do now.

And, to return to where I started this piece, I imagine that in thirty years or more, we might look back at the journey South Africa has been through, and be amazed and delighted at what that country has achieved, despite all of the hardship and confusion it had to go through to get there.

But it was not to be. I arrived at Denver airport and got no further than immigration. What followed was a very strange and surreal two days, heightened by jetlag and very little sleep, and culminating in my returning home after being deported.

After a long flight I landed in Denver at what was already 2am London time and entered immigration, only to begin a lengthy interview process; my papers were deemed not to be in order. I was told that I would be put on the next ‘plane home. I was shocked and disappointed by this, as you might expect, but it was to get worse.

There was a long wait while they processed my paper-work, nearly four hours of waiting in fact – more questions, more waiting. All the while I kept blaming myself for being stupid enough to have got into this situation (something my friends were only too quick to tell me when I told them what had happened!) – maybe I had answered the questions wrongly, maybe I should have done something different, etc, etc.

For a long time, I was just waiting and wasn’t allowed to use my mobile ‘phone, although I did manage to text my colleague, Dan, who had come to the airport to collect me. The sense of being incommunicado in the no-man’s-land of immigration added to the sense of disorientation and surreality, which were stronger than any sense of upset.

Despite all this I was able to remain relatively calm and in good humour – even trying some banter with the immigration officials (only to be told I had “way too much energy” for them – must have been the time disorientation kicking in!), and reflecting on how my practices of meditation and exercise had built up my resilience to cope with adversity. I often struggle to remain calm at airports because I regularly get singled out for “random” checks at immigration and security – I put this down to my appearance and ethnic origins – so it felt like a real achievement to remain calm even in such an adverse situation.

I knew from the beginning that “the next ‘plane home” would mean an overnight stay, and I was looking forward to being in a hotel, and to getting re-connected with the world via e-mail but slowly it was dawning on me that this wasn’t going to happen. The immigration officials already had my main suitcase, and now they were asking for my cabin bag, and then my ‘phone, and now the contents of my pockets. When I asked about tooth-paste, etc, I was told that these would be provided in the “facility”.

This didn’t sound good, but it was to get more difficult and my sense of calm was to desert me. At around midnight local time (and 7am by my body clock), they were finally ready to take me to the facility. It was only when they produced a set of handcuffs that I finally lost it. I started crying and swearing at the same time – the final indignation, I think. They responded calmly, telling me that they had to handcuff me for their own safety while I was in transit from the airport to the detention centre. Eventually I gave up fighting and told them that I hated what they were doing but that I could understand it, and held my arms up for them to put the cuffs on.

I was then surprised by their gentleness – they kept asking if the cuffs were too tight, and loosened them for me. They also thanked me for calming down so quickly, and one of the young men told me that this was the worst part of his job – having to put hand-cuffs on people he believed to be decent human beings who had simply made a mistake with their paper-work. They put me in the van and gave me a bottle of water for the journey. They also, and I was very grateful for this, allowed me to take a sleeping tablet with me – another kindness. I managed three hours sleep in my dormitory at the detention centre before being woken for breakfast at 5 am.

The atmosphere in the centre surprised me, too. There were around thirty guys, mostly Guatemalans and Mexicans, all of whom had been there for weeks waiting for their appeals against deportation to be processed. They couldn’t believe that an Englishman was there – “You must have done something really bad to be here – did you harm someone? Were you driving drunk?”. They were friendly enough, but my Spanish was as weak as their English so we couldn’t communicate much. However, they were gentle and caring to each other, and towards me, and again I was surprised.

I was picked up again around lunchtime by the same crew who had brought me there, and, man, was I pleased to see them. I didn’t even demur when they put the handcuffs back on. Again, they took care that the cuffs weren’t too tight, and even apologised after driving a bit too fast over a bump. I spent the next few hours in the airport waiting for the evening flight home.

Again, I was surprised by their care. They allowed me a few favours, some time with my ‘phone, access to my toiletries, even offering to go into the airport to buy me some food, which, after the gruel in the detention centre, tasted delicious. While they waited for the international flight to come in they were chatting and joking with each other, and with me, and they allowed their stern masks to drop, talking about their hopes for their children and about their lives. This was even more surreal – the same stone-faced men who had greeted me the previous evening were now open and relaxed and friendly.

Just before the London flight came in, one of them looked at me, smiled, and said “OK, time to put our stern faces back on”, and they all did just that.

Finally, at about 7pm local time, I was escorted to the ‘plane by the guy I’d had most contact with. He shook my hand and wished me good luck, and I thanked him for his care. I was greeted on the ‘plane by the same flight crew who had flown me out, which only added to the strangeness of the whole experience. One more sleeping tablet, and I was back in London less than 48 hours after I had left, having spent about twenty hours in the air, and twenty-four hours at Denver Airport and in a detention centre.

Obviously, the experience had some impact on me, and still does in terms of the implications for future travel to the US (big hassles).

What I was most left with, however, was appreciation for the care and kindness of the US immigration team. This certainly wasn’t the reaction I expected to have, but my experiences left me with an experience of having seen the humans behind the stern official mask, and made me realise again the importance and power of emotions. Some of the treatment I received was unpleasant; being handcuffed, being held incommunicado and being held in a detention centre, but the care of the officials meant that it was never unbearable, and left me with an appreciation of them and the difficult job they had to do.

Many jobs include a certain amount of having to do unpleasant things to other people, whether that be denying them entry to a country, making them redundant or evicting them from their homes, to give just a few examples, but I do wonder what difference would be made if those jobs were done with the same amount of care and understanding as that I was shown in Denver last month.

It’s never been especially easy for me to quickly sum up just what it is that I do, but explaining coaching to someone whose English wasn’t fluent, and who couldn’t remember anything anyway, was especially trying.

Occasionally, however, she would get it.

And then, she would look at me with a slightly astonished expression on her face, and say “They pay you? To talk to them? Are they mad?”

It’s a story I often tell, and it points to something at the heart of why I do what I do.

We live in an increasingly rational culture, one that believes, in its rationalist way, that there is a solution to every problem. This has penetrated our culture in ways I couldn’t have imagined as a child. Go to any bookshop, and you’ll find rows of shelves devoted to “self-help” books; look on the internet and you’ll find advice on how to deal with any problem you can imagine, and some you can’t.

And yet, despite the mass availability of good advice, of information on how to deal with our problems, of workshops on how to make money, find or maintain relationships, live powerfully, etc, we are still seeking something.

Something else that I often say is that “if self-help books worked, how come we need more than one?”. It’s not that the information out there is bad, or that the courses offered aren’t any good, but it seems there is something missing. Something that people will, despite my mother’s protestations, pay for and which they value.

That something, I think, is listening. Sounds simple, but it’s almost as if the more solutions there are out there, the harder it is to simply be listened to. When we talk to our friends about our challenges, or to our colleagues, then what we often get is advice – “read this book”, “do this course”. Or, worse, we sometimes get told that we should “just deal with it”, or “get over it”.

In other words, we don’t really get listened to – we get “fixed”, or “told what to do”, but we don’t get listened to in the sense of being legitimised in our own experience – we don’t get seen, we don’t get witnessed, we don’t get that connection. We get information and advice instead.

Those of you who have dogs will know that, if you throw a stick for a dog when you are out walking with it, the dog will run after the stick, and then bring it back to you and drop it at your feet for you to throw it again. The dog doesn’t simply want the stick, it wants the connection, the relationship. Information and advice are a bit like the stick.

It’s not that we don’t need advice, or solutions to our problems – of course we do, but often in addition to, and sometimes even instead of, advice or solutions what’s needed is simple listening. In fact, I’d say that’s something that’s so vital and so rare. Sometimes we miss the obviousness of simply giving someone the gift of listening.

I know, from my own experience as a coach, and also from the experiences of the coaches I have trained and worked with, that often the coachee will say that, in coaching (and also in counselling), they have been able to speak of things they have never spoken about before, and that the simple act of being able to speak those things was sufficient.

In the excellent book, A General Theory of Love , the writers Amini, Lewis and Lannon, argue that one of the main benefits of counselling (for which you could also read coaching) is the connection between the counsellor and the client – the limbic connection between them is the healing, not the content.

In summary, I think we can say that the human soul longs, perhaps more than anything else to express itself and be heard or seen. It doesn’t need to be fixed, or told what to do next, or given a solution. It simply longs to be witnessed.

This need has been around since ancient times – Joseph Campbell used to talk about “sacred space” – a space where people would gather to speak of their important matters, and where the act of speaking would in itself be transformative.

I think it’s that space that people are seeking – the space where they can hear themselves, and be witnessed. And, for that, no, I don’t think they are mad to pay.

If we move away from the idea of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ moods, we can instead see some moods as more helpful than others in specific contexts. For example, we can see that in some situations, fear is useful – alerting us to danger, and making us careful. At the same time, fear can be unhelpful if it stops us taking actions that would serve us. On the other hand, we can see that a mood of ambition will help us to create new projects and ventures, but, also, at the same time, it might blind us to the dangers or pit-falls in that project.

All moods have their benefits, or lessons, for us, and there’s no one-size-fits-all mood that is helpful in all situations. However, I have been exploring one mood that I think is especially dangerous, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to call it ‘bad’, or ‘wrong’, I do think we need to take a good look at this mood – cynicism – and the damage it can do.

I wrote a few months ago about the new coalition in the UK , and mentioned the cynicism which accompanied the new Government’s ambitions to create a ‘new kind of politics’. And, since then, the British press and the commentators on “have your say” columns have seized plenty of opportunities to talk about how “it won’t last”.

Cynicism is exactly that – the belief that something new can’t work, a belief that kills off any sense of possibility.

This is not an argument for blind optimism; indeed, a certain skepticism, or questioning of new ideas/ventures etc, is necessary to prevent falling into pit-falls, and to provide a certain groundedness in moving forward – making any new initiative or project into a success is not simply a case of “building it and they will come”. But, when we are in a mood of cynicism, then it’s as if we are saying “Don’t even bother to build it”, “don’t try to do anything new, different, because it will fail” (often, accompanied by the unspoken suffix “it will fail as anything new has done”). A mood of cynicism is often the result of having tried in the past, having believed in something, and then having been disappointed or let down.

In the introduction to his fascinating book, “The Politics of Meaning”, Rabbi Michael Lerner writes:

“There is a profound difference between cynicism and a methodological scepticism which rightly asks for some reason to believe that the world can be different. Much of this book is a response to the sceptic. But it will never satisfy the cynic, who holds with religious intensity the view that nothing fundamental can be changed. Pointing to the terrible crimes that have been committed in the name of social change, and relying on the disappointments most of us have felt when we gave ourselves to social movements or religious or spiritual traditions that promised transformation but actually reproduced some of the distortions of the past, the cynical wisdom of our age insists that to be sophisticated is to know in advance that no attempts to change the world could possibly work, and that anyone who thinks otherwise is necessarily a fool, or dangerous.

Yet, I insist on the possibility of possibility.”

I think that last sentence is an exquisite declaration, an insistence that, despite maybe several disappointments, several failures, it’s still worth trying to make something better.

A life that admits no possibility of possibility is the bleakest, most hopeless, kind of life, one I’ve certainly known in my own life from time to time.

However, it is one thing for me to be hopeless about the possibility for change in my own life – that creates plenty of misery for sure, but quite another thing to be cynical about the possibility of change for others, or in the world, that truly is the worst kind of mood because it has the potential to kill off any hope in anyone that things could actually be better.

One of the things that strikes me the most, however, is not about Israel per se, but about how we talk about Israel.

For example, I recently joined The Economist group on Facebook, and, every time The (famously dry and even-tempered) Economist posts a link to any article about Israel, it takes about ten minutes for its Facebook page to fill up with comments, most of which are attacking the views of others, denouncing opposing views as ‘stupid’, ‘naïve’ ‘supporting terrorism (or state terrorism)’, or worse. You can see such polarised views on Twitter (do a quick search of hash-tags “Gaza” or “flotilla”), or on the “have your say” columns of any online news site.

And, the other night, I was at a debate in a synagogue in London. Even while the speakers were presenting their views, people from the floor were shouting “rubbish!”, “you’re wrong!”, etc. One man even had a home-made sign saying “Incorrect!” which he would hold up from time to time. There was a comedy element to this, and, indeed, there was plenty of laughter, mixed in with irritation, amongst the audience, but, ultimately, it was just very sad that there couldn’t even be a debate about the topic, with respect accorded to speakers whose views might be different than those of some of the audience. At one stage, a rabbi in the audience shared that for her, some of the views expressed were very uncomfortable, but what was more uncomfortable for her was the mood of hostility towards those expressing alternative views: “If we can’t respectfully listen to views very different from our own, then what hope is there for peace in the world?”

Despite all of this heat, there is almost no discussion about how we talk about Israel. In fact, we rarely talk about how we talk about anything, but what strikes me about talking about Israel is how quickly any discussion turns into a heated conversation, often turning very ugly very quickly.

And it has reached an even uglier place, where Arab Israeli members of the Knesset have received death threats for having a ‘poisonous stance against Zionism and Israel’. In other words, “if you disagree with how I see it, not only are you wrong, but you deserve to die”.

How can this be? How can we become so heated about an issue that we lose sight of the human being, and merely see whether or not they agree with us as being the key issue? And, how can we be so sure we are right, even without the hostility and the heat?

I think the key to what’s at play here lies in the confusion between our interpretation of reality, our beliefs about life, and reality itself. In other words, we don’t say “these events happened, and this is how I interpret them”, or “this is how I see the world”, we say “this is the way the world is”.

We think that what we see, and know, are “the truth”, but actually we are shaped towards seeing the world in a particular way, by the stories we grow up with, by the conversations we are immersed in, by the cultures in which we live, and then we claim that the way we see the world is the way the world is. And then, of course, because we are “right”, anyone who sees differently must be wrong (and, often, therefore, somehow less human).

In the introduction to “Presence”, by Peter Senge is a beautiful story from a leadership workshop which Peter Senge was running in South Africa, in 1990, when the apartheid system was in its last days.

During the workshop, which was for both blacks and whites, the participants were shown a video of Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech, which had never been seen in South Africa before.
After the video was shown, one of the participants, an Afrikaans business-man turned to one of the black community leaders, Anne Loetsebe, and said to her: “I want you to know that I was raised to think you were an animal.” And then he started crying. Anne just held him in her gaze and nodded.

Clearly, the man’s views are shaped in a particular direction by growing up, and living in, the cultural discourses of South Africa at that time. This point is made several times in the exquisitely good “Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation”” by John Carlin, about Nelson Mandela, and about his role in the Springboks victory in the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa.

As the author points out several times, there is no “truth”, there are only ways of seeing the world, and the beauty of Mandela was that he understood that, and then sought to meet people where they were, understanding and legitimising their world-view, and seeking to allay their fears and concerns, even to the extent of learning to speak the language of his “enemy”. The culmination of his years of “meeting the enemy”, always treating him with courtesy and respect, is a very moving piece where he turns up on the pitch for the final game, in front of thousands of white Afrikaaners, wearing the green Springboks shirt (which was hated by black South Africans as a symbol of apartheid), and is greeted by shouts of “Nel-son! Nel-son!” by the mostly white crowd. It’s an astonishing moment of reconciliation that moved me to tears as I was reading it.

So, it is possible to have a very different kind of conversation, even about the issues we disagree on most. But it starts, I think, with one fundamental thing – the capacity to care for the other, and to legitimise that they might see the world very differently from us. I’ve been lucky enough to have had some very good conversations with some of my family and friends about Israel, where we disagree, but where our care about the relationship is more important than being right. When that happens, the conversation is wide open, and there’s nothing to prove – just the capacity to understand why someone sees differently than I do.

Quote

“A good conversation means lend me your eyes.” – Julio Olalla

And then, quite by chance, I found myself on a train back from a coaching course with a fellow student. We started talking and found an initial connection with his wife being the daughter of my father’s tailor. We then moved on to discuss Judaism, my new companion’s faith.

What he said then has stayed with me ever since, and has been one of the most important things I’d heard in a long time. “Judaism,” he said, “is, for me, not about the religion itself, but a series of practices that help create a sense of community”.

Although I have identified as an atheist for years, I do have a love of ritual, and believe strongly in the importance of ritual as a way to give both structure and meaning to life. But this was something stronger than that. Here was a part of my heritage that I had never integrated, nor even explored, suddenly making immediate sense to me.

The next months were a period of fascinating and very rich exploration – I went to synagogue a few times with a friend, began reading a few books on Judaism and its rituals, and went to Limmud (a Jewish philosophy retreat, which was amazing despite the fact that it involved camping in the rain!). I found much to love. And, the fact that Judaism has space for atheism has helped to make it attractive to me.

But, more important to me than that, has been the practice of observing some, but by no means all, of the rituals. And especially the weekly ritual of Shabbat – the seventh day.

In one of the books I read, there was a lovely explanation of the whole ritual of Shabbat – of preparing for the day of rest by making sure that all chores were done before the lighting of the candles on Friday night, so that one could enter the day of rest with everything done, and enjoy and celebrate the day of disengagement from one’s working routines.

And, each week, unless I am teaching a course, I now spend part of Friday making sure that my home is clean and tidy, and that all my shopping is done (I am not a fastidious observer of Shabbat, so I will cook and wash up etc), and that all my work is complete, so that I can be ready to relax into the evening ritual of lighting candles and switching off.

I am very lucky, too, in that I live next door to the oldest Victorian Turkish Baths in London, so that every Saturday morning I go for a session at the Baths – a weekly ritual that has become very important to me, and very much a part of my day of rest. I love the simplicity of the place – men from all walks of life come there to switch off from the week, to unwind and relax, to sit in companionable silence, or to argue about football, computers and politics. There are men who have been going there every week for fifty or more years, which definitely speaks to the importance of the ritual as a cornerstone of a full life.

And then, after the Bath, the day is mine to do what I like with – no more spending Saturdays catching up on e-mails, or planning a coaching programme, or feeling obligated in some way. The day is now one of withdrawal from the world of engagement. The more I practice this ritual the more important it becomes, and the more I travel and do the work I do, the more I realise how much I need this part of my life.

In an increasingly busy and full life, I think we have a greater need for some way to find peace in the busyness, to acknowledge the cycles and rhythms of life, to find ways to disengage from the everyday world, and take time to restore and feed the soul.

Reflections

How do you replenish your soul?

How might you build a practice to acknowledge the rhythms of life, to provide a “ground” for you to come back to yourself after the engagements and busyness of the week?

Quotation:

“Rest is not just a psychological convenience; it is a spiritual and biological necessity. Perhaps that is why, in most spiritual traditions, “Remember the Sabbath” is more than simply a lifestyle suggestion. It is a commandment…” – Wayne Muller

I’ve just been reading the Jewish philosophy magazine, Tikkun, and come across this piece on “Wanting Fully Without Attachment“, which contains the following excellent couple of paragraphs, which resonated with what I was trying to get across:

“If you are an activist or in some other way engaged with working to transform external reality, you may wonder whether this path would ultimately lead to apathy or lack of engagement with the world. What about children’s need for food or safety, for example? How can we not insist that these needs be met? Yet, even in this acute example, we can still see the difference between giving up and letting go of attachment. It is not about giving up on the hope for all the children in the world to be safe and have sufficient food. Nor is it about giving up on working to eliminate hunger and violence. Rather, it is about being able to tolerate internally the possibility — which is also the current reality! — that it just may not happen that all the children in the world will be safe and have sufficient food. If we cannot tolerate the possibility, then how can we have space inside to interact with life as it is? If our approach is based on what should happen, without this capacity to accept life, what would keep us from trying to force a solution? We have all seen so many historical examples of revolutions that turned into a new regime of horror. How will we ensure that we can sustain our vision and openness if we cannot tolerate what is happening and those who are supporting what is happening? To protect ourselves, we often turn away from the dual horror we need to experience to keep our hearts open. We protect ourselves from the horror of knowing that one child under five years old dies every six seconds, or almost 18,000 daily, from malnutrition and related causes (not to mention the effects of wars of all kinds). And we protect ourselves from the fear of succumbing to the anger and desperation that lead to re-creating domination and horror. Without the tools to keep our hearts open, many of us do, indeed, shut down and tune out the plight of the children so that we can even manage to continue with our own personal lives.

If, however, we remain open to the possibility that no solution will arise and at the same time continue to bring our heart and attention and action to working toward a solution, our work takes on an entirely different flavor. We work toward our dreams, we embrace the vision and our needs in full, and we remain open in the face of what is happening. In doing so, whether or not we have external success (and so far as I know, none of us knows how to move the world from here to where we want it to be), our work itself becomes a modeling of what the world could be.”

I wish I’d managed to put it so well!

But there’s also something much more personal that we are doing all the time, without even thinking about it, and that is creating a public identity. We literally build an identity with others by our actions, and by what we say. You can also think of your public identity as the “listening” other people have for you.

For example, I used to have a few of my friends complaining that I didn’t answer my mobile ‘phone (usually because I forget to take it off silent mode). I then found myself being described as someone who “never answers his ‘phone.” A public identity of me as a man who doesn’t answer his ‘phone had been built very quickly by a few simple occurrences.

This works both ways. For instance, I also am someone who generally responds very quickly to e-mails, and so in that domain, my public identity could be said to be that of someone who is reliable.

Or, if you consistently say no to offers, you may find that people start to see you as someone who doesn’t say yes. I had a friend years ago, and whenever we had a party and invited her, she would always decline – she always had some “good reason” not to attend, but she always declined. And, eventually, people stopped asking her to parties.

The thing about this is that other people base their relationships with us, and their future actions on that identity.

The old cliché of, “If you want something done, ask a busy person,” is a good example of this in everyday life. How long would you continue to call someone who “never answers his ‘phone”? How many times would you continue to invite someone to a social event if they always declined? Whom would you rather trust to get a quick answer from by email—someone who responds quickly, or someone who doesn’t? Whom would you be more likely to do business with?

Now this may or may not be “fair”—you might argue that these things are superficial, or that we shouldn’t make such assessments of people, but the thing is that we do. We are always making assessments, sometimes usefully (as in the case of an interview where I need to assess your capacity to do a specific job), and sometimes less usefully.

Public identity is closely connected with trust – we literally shape the reputation we have with others, and that builds, or diminishes, their trust in us. In their excellent book “Building Trust“, Fernando Flores and Robert Solomon identify three separate elements we consider when assessing whether or not to trust someone:

1) Sincerity – do I assess that you mean what you say?
2) Competence – do I assess that you can do what you say?
3) Reliability – given our history, do I assess you as reliable? Have you done what you will say do in our past transactions?

Public identity is based on reliability, or lack there of, in any given domain – if you always say ‘no’ to invitations, then I will eventually make the assessment that you cannot be relied upon to respond to invitations, and will stop asking you. Or, if you never return my calls, I will assess you as unreliable in communication, and that will weaken my trust in you (and therefore, for example, my willingness to do business with you).

Clearly, it is helpful to be aware that, to some extent, we create how others experience us, and that maybe we shouldn’t be surprised if opportunities don’t come our way if we keep saying no!

And of course, we can change our public identities—we are not “doomed” by them, they are not set in stone.

There are a number of ways to change this public identity—one is simply to develop new habits. For example, I can pay more attention to whether my ‘phone is in silent mode when it doesn’t need to be. I had to put up with some teasing from my friends when I first started answering it right away, but now the identity of me as “someone who never answers his ‘phone” is diminishing.

Another might be to make a public declaration of a new identity (maybe as someone who is available to go to parties, etc., to go back to the example of my friend above). Of course, you will need to follow up the declaration with actions to build a different identity and it might take time and application.

Or, you might need to do some work on yourself to change a way of being that you assess doesn’t bring you the identity you wish to create. In my case, I also have had a history of being seen as “difficult” (not without good reason unfortunately), and that required some work on myself, including some coaching and workshops. It’s starting to pay off, too—some of the people who’ve known me a long time have told me that I am a lot less “difficult” than I used to be.

Reflections:

• What public identity do you think you create in different domains of life?
• How are you seen by others?
• How does that impact on your success?
• On your effectiveness?
• On your connection to others?
• What aspects might you wish to change?
• What practices might you adopt to support building a different identity?

Coaching can help you build the public identity you want. To find out more, contact me.

In other words, as a leader, it is your capacity to engage with others in such a way that they are willing to follow you that marks you as a leader.

For all of us who work as leaders, or who take on a leadership role in life, or work with leaders, that capacity for engagement is an on-going process of learning.

At this level, we are talking about the ontology of a leader—what is it in our being that we can work on and develop to make us more available as a leader?

This goes beyond mere technical ability or capacity – leadership is very much an emotional and somatic competence – an inspiring leader brings people with her or him. During the Democratic nomination process, Hilary Clinton would speak about Obama’s ‘lack of experience’, but there was something Obama had that she lacked (or, at least, didn’t have sufficiently) – an inspiring presence that made people want to follow him and listen to his message.

One of the questions I ask leaders with whom I work is “How are you unavailable as a leader?”

In other words, what aspects of yourself stand in your way of being someone people will want to follow? For example, it might be that you find it hard to say ‘no’. Or it might be that you need to be liked, or that you are very results-focused, and don’t take time to really connect with others. Or you might find it hard to ask for help, or be uncomfortable with not knowing all the answers.

All of these are aspects of our being that require our attention in our own leadership development. Until we identify those areas where we are unavailable, then we can only produce more of the same, limited by our own ignorance of our learning edges. Once we have identified areas for learning, then we can begin to develop new practices to help strengthen us in those areas.

For example, someone who finds it hard to say ‘no’ might do some assertiveness training, or take on a physical training like Aikido to help build the body of someone who can set boundaries. Similarly, someone who is very task-focused might take on a sitting practice in order to develop the capacity for slowing down and reflection.

Reflections:

- In a spirit of curiosity, identify what are the aspects of yourself that tend to make you unavailable to leadership. You might ask for input from your colleagues, direct reports, or work with a leadership coach.

- Having identified a learning edge, what practices might help you develop and learn here? Who might help you? Often we have someone in our life who has those very qualities we seek to learn, and they can act as a great, if informal, teacher or coach for us.

- Remember that learning is a life-long process, so be patient. If you do discover a practice for yourself, then you have the rest of your life to integrate that practice and build your new capacity.

And, keep practising.