Читать книгу CONFESSIONS OF A CORPORATE SHAMAN - Harrison Snow - Страница 21

How you respond to difficult circumstances and challenging personalities is the litmus test for leadership. That said, you don’t have to wait for enlightenment to be an effective leader or facilitator. Overcoming the mind-based defenses against self-awareness enables you to lead others through their denials and blind spots. Brain researchers like Daniel Siegel, professor of clinical psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, are discovering how neuropathways formed in childhood dictate patterns of perception and response that are not based in present time.⁴

The human brain is malleable and, according to Siegel, keeps developing even after childhood. He argues that the mind is not an output of the brain alone; it matters, but so do our social relationships and experiences. “The mind is embodied not just enskulled.”⁵ A mind hardwired to produce a dysfunctional, reactionary pattern can replace that pattern with one that is more functional. Observing your emotions, assumptions, and beliefs and challenging them disrupts those automatic reactions. The hard part is having enough self-witnessing to question the meaning your mind automatically assigns to events. Transcending the neurological and mental grip of the past activates a higher level of cognition. Siegel calls this level of cognition “mindful awareness.” You perceive in the moment without the distortions of judgments and interpretations.

According to Siegel, the state of mindful awareness supports the attributes of curiosity, openness, acceptance, and love. The small mind, with its fearful survival-mode reactions, is replaced by a consciousness that is connected to a more universal intelligence and knowing.⁶

How do you replace the biased interpretations of your reactionary mind with mindful awareness? The explanations the mind excels at will inevitably get in the way. Meditation, mindfulness exercises, journaling, personal coaching, and the practices and methods described in this book are some of the means that develop mindful awareness. Constellations bypass the mind’s defenses and reveal the hidden emotions and beliefs underlying its bias. Observing yourself rewires the neural pathways that support functional behavior. This awareness is like keeping a window open on your personal computer that is not running any applications. You see from that place what is going on without becoming identified with it. That inner space enables more freedom of choice.

Neither the other-focused nor the self-centered person has a healthy sense of self. Both types are compensating in dysfunctional ways for the parts of the self that were traumatized during their formative years. Fortunately, the opportunity for self-renewal comes with the effort to be self-aware.