This is the Too Many Trees newsletter, where I share what I’ve been writing and reading in the realm of leadership and personal development. My coaching practice is centered around the idea that we are more effective in moving towards our goals when we become more conscious and intentional in focusing our time and attention, and learn how our unconscious patterns are holding us back. If you know somebody that could benefit from my perspective, please forward this to them or let them know they can set up a free intro chat with me.
I recently started a course on developing self-care from a coaching perspective, where the teacher, Steve March, writes about the tension inherent in self-care:
“Improving self-care is often a challenge because we begin in a self-defeating way, from self-deficiency and self-rejection. This way of starting immediately creates a strong undertow that sabotages our well-intended efforts. While fighting this undertow, most of us conclude that we lack the necessary self-control, discipline, and perseverance to change ourselves into someone we fully accept. And these struggles only seem to reinforce our sense of self-deficiency and self-rejection.”
Rather than start from the belief that self-care is a set of practices to improve your inherent self deficiency, he envisions deep self-care as a way of being coming from a place of sufficiency where you already have everything you need. He encourages a practice of conscious unfolding, where we uncover the emotional patterns that underlie self-care challenges (aka your Parts), and explore our inherent wholeness and resourcing.
To that end, Steve recommends a commitment practice of conscious intention:
Morning Practice – take no more than 1 minute in your morning to consciously declare your intention for how you will utilize the day toward the fulfillment of your self-care goal. This can include declaring that you will not utilize any of the day for this purpose. This is a practice in starting the day with conscious intentionality instead of unconscious habitual inertia.
Evening Practice – take no more than 1 minute in your evening to review and reflect on your day. How did it go with your intention? Name any impediments – inner or outer – that thwarted the intention you named in your morning practice. Select the biggest impediment and take 1 more minute to decide what you will do differently tomorrow.
This practice reminds me of the advice I received before I got married when I asked a friend how to ensure a long-lasting marriage. They said that you create such a marriage one day at a time: each day you get up and commit to making the relationship work. There is no secret beyond putting in the work every day.
And Steve’s practice makes it clear that the same applies to self-care. I have been finding that spending a couple minutes each day to set a conscious intention in the morning and reflect on how I am getting in my own way in the evening has been very helpful in keeping me committed to self-care. In fact, I have been sharing Steve’s suggested practice with several of my clients, as this practice of conscious intention re-focuses their attention each day on their intended commitment and what is getting in the way of that commitment.
And now I share it with you, the readers of this newsletter. What do you consciously want to commit to in your life? Will you take a minute each morning to set a conscious intention, and a minute each evening to reflect on how your day reflected that intention?
And now for the normal personal development content:
Blog: I wrote the next post in my alignment series about aligning with one’s aspiration. Discovering and refining one’s aspiration can help provide direction and alignment to one’s present actions and choices and commitments. I use Norman Fischer’s description of aspiration as a “very impractical commitment” that you do not expect to achieve, as “you will always have more to do and always be spurred on by the strength of your commitment. … To commit to something you could actually accomplish is such small potatoes for a lofty, sacred human being like yourself.”
LinkedIn: These are ideas or questions that help my clients (or myself), and that I share via LinkedIn to help a wider audience.
Where is your attention? A common mistake for beginners at downhill sports like mountain biking or skiing is to stare at the rock they want to avoid. Unfortunately, they then tend to steer straight into that rock, as our bodies go where our attention goes. It's difficult to learn to overcome that natural tendency to look at what we fear, and instead focus on where we want to go.
Must it be you, and must it be now? I heard a fellow coach ask this question, and immediately stole it because it is so powerful as a way to become more aware of the opportunity cost of agreeing to do work that others can potentially do. Such work distracts you from the activities that only you can do, or where you can add unique and disproportionate value.
“To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.” - Leonard Bernstein Time is a fluid concept - five minutes of meditation can feel like it stretches on for an uncomfortable time, but whole days can vanish in a blur of activity. Bernstein’s quote reminds us that not having “enough” time is not a good excuse for avoiding starting, as the time pressure of not “enough” can spur great things.
Articles and resources I’ve liked recently:
Making Self-Care Tactical is a wonderful interview with @MinaaBe on a more approachable form of self-care. I particularly appreciated her observation that we need self-care along a number of different dimensions (physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual), and her emphasis on boundaries: “Boundaries are an act of generosity. The more you say yes to someone, the more you are taking away their ability to have agency over their life and their choices.”
This was published by First Round Review - I appreciate the interviews and advice they share on building organizations and leaders. I am also currently participating in First Round’s mentorship program as a mentor.
Leadership is its own love language - I look forward to Nilofer Merchant’s weekly @work column, and the following quote particularly stuck with me from her Valentine’s Day edition: "what love looks like at work; not deferring to someone else or not wanting to have conflict, but instead willing to have the hard conversations, to ask for what you need, to show up fully."
How to think about power (especially if you have some) is a thoughtful exploration by Farhad Ebrahimi of the complex interrelationships between political power, economic power and cultural power, and how “each of these forms of power can be leveraged to build the others.”
Thanks for reading. See you in a couple weeks.