I meet defensiveness throughout my day. It wears so many different guises and yet serves the same master – the ego. Just last evening, I received a long email in connection with one of my volunteering roles detailing how both a decision-making process and all the people involved in a particular decision were wrong. A careful reading led straight to defensiveness and an inability by the parties in question to accept that they could have acted differently and that their own actions had solely contributed to the problem in question. They were basically saying “we are right” and “everyone else is wrong”.
Why make such an effort and spend countless hours trying to shift blame? What is so precious that needs to be defended?
The question then, for each of us, is what barriers have we set up? Where are we being defensive? And, critically, what are we defending?
Acceptance is therefore key. What if you did make what is called a “mistake”? What of it? Indeed, such acceptance is a step on the journey to transcending our upper limits and reinventing our sense of self.
Questions in the Image:
- How am I being defensive?
- What barriers have I set up?
- How open am I to change?
- How am I right and everyone else wrong?
Want to Read More Around This Topic?
Radical Acceptance: Awakening the Love That Heals Fear and Shame by Tara Brach (link to Amazon.co.uk). This book focuses on the practice of acceptance and compassion, helping readers understand their defensive mechanisms and finding ways to overcome them.
Nurturing Curiosity – Daily Practice: This is part of the Nurturing Curiosity series of tools, insights and questions designed to help nurture curiosity as part of our daily practice. In point of fact, every interaction we have is an opportunity to question what we are observing and how we and others are seeing the world. Also remember that questions come in many forms throughout our day – a creative change requiring a whole set of rework brings up the question of “Why didn’t I think of that earlier?” Self-criticism is natural to some extent and yet can be unreasonable. In truth, we have come to where we are because of the decisions we made. Expanding it out even further, the whole history of the universe has been condensed into this one moment. Everything has been leading up to this. Doesn’t that feel amazing?
About Tom O’Leary
Tom guides bold pioneers through inner transitions towards regenerative futures.
His primary offering – through a process he calls Ecological Coaching – is about working with leaders on the mindset, skillset and structural shifts that will power their organisation’s outer transition.
This means helping leaders thrive while creating ripples of positive change within their organisation and most importantly for the communities they serve and ultimately life on this planet.
It is thus not just about the leader as an “individual” but rather as part of an ecology of relationships. Within this ecology, he helps the leader feel heard, gain clarity, take action, build confidence and thrive all in service of something bigger.
How Might Tom Help?
My first invitation is to take maximum advantage of the free content on this site.
- As you are reading this, you are clearly on a fascinating journey. If you feel you would benefit from us doing some work together on some aspect of your journey, please explore this page: How Can I Serve?
- I also endeavour to answer every email so if you have any queries do reach out.
