SYZERGY - Executive & business coaching, personal evolution

[Emergence]Life as Feedback, March 2006

Have a look at the world around you, what is right in front of you? Your work, your pay cheque, your bank account, the scales, your down time, the house you live in, your relationships. It is all feedback and points to the choices you have made. It is neither right nor wrong. It just is. If you are really up for it, looking at your life’s feedback squarely in the eye will reveal the truth. And once we have witnessed our truth, there is no going back. We can try to avoid it or deny it, but eventually we know we have to face it, and the sooner we do, the sooner life will open up to us again, and bring us more of what we want.

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Life as Feedback

Many people I have worked with fear feedback. Feedback threatens our self identity. Every one of us has a vision of who we are in the world, and how we are perceived. Of course, our own perception is quite often very much off the mark. I remember going shopping one day with a very good friend. She was after a swimsuit. She was looking in the mirror and seeing things I didn’t see. I saw her as I know her and she looked great. She saw all the things she didn’t like about herself…real or not. She saw the ~less than perfect~. I saw her. Whose perception is right? Well, she certainly wasn’t overweight.At the time she was in her late 40’s, so she didn’t look like a starved 17 year old coat hanger model. It was a startling realisation for me, to see that what she saw and what I saw, even though we were looking at exactly the same thing, were two completely different “realities”!. I had a glimpse into the world of the anorexic, who looks into the mirror and sees fat, when they only weigh 38kgs(84llbs).

Unless we have a strong self image and self identity, feedback will rock our world. We tend to take it so personally.

Of course there is also the art of delivering feedback, which is part of what we cover in the Dare to Care program (http://syzergy.biz/downloads/DareToCare.pdf)
Many of us have not got the high level tools and skills to deliver powerful and valuable feedback from the right place of delivery. A delivery from care and service will have a far greater chance of being received well, than a delivery that is tainted with our own personal agenda, judgments and emotion. Easy to say, harder to do.

I need to care about you, and be willing to get past my own need to be right, or liked, or validated, in order to deliver clean feedback.

What I would like to address in this article is Life as Feedback.
Feedback is available to us 24/7. It is everywhere. We only have to look or ask.

Let me give you an example.

Have a look at your bank account balance. This is feedback. It provides incredibly valuable feedback on the choices you have made. Spend or save. Plan or be spontaneous. Instant gratification or strategic discipline!

The scales in your bathroom. Great feedback. You are either in your weight range or not. You have either eaten too much and not exercised, or you have eaten well and stayed slim and trim.

Let’s go a little further, into the metaphysical world, the more difficult to define feedback.

What if your business feels stuck? No action, no sales leads, no incoming work.

I see this as a GREAT opportunity to look at what life is feeding back to you.

Where are you stuck in life? Where is your thinking stinking? Where is your energy? Up, down, low, taken up with non-work related events? Worrying about something else? How much mess is there in your garage? Or closet? What are the things you have been putting off forever, things that still need to be done today?

How about your relationships? Are they fabulous? And if not, what is the feedback telling you? Do you love and nurture them? Do you take the time to invest in your primary relationships? Do you put energy into generating your relationships daily?

I was working with a client recently who was experiencing stuckness in her business. I asked her where she was stuck in her life. Many, many places, she replied. Her primary relationships were especially stuck. We made a list. The order of priority became clear.. The burden of worrying and carrying all the stuckness spilled out in tears on the table as we talked.

Sometimes however, we need to work with the smaller items first. The ones we have the fortitude to deal with. Because the big one, the place where we are most stuck, is usually too big a bite for us to take until we have built some energetic reserves. It matters not. The principle works even when we simply get started. Whether it is getting started cleaning up the smaller ones, or simply the recognition of the stuck and broken places in our lives and the aligned commitment to making the changes, the universe will open up to us again and things will begin to flow. This is most definitely feedback.

And then there are the mysteries. When the feedback we are getting seems to have no rhyme or reason. When we do a body scan and a feedback check and there is nothing that needs to be attended to. Or does it only seem so? In my experience, as we become more and more attuned to listening to the feedback, the messages become subtler and subtler. We have to do a body scan to see if any area is out energetically, physically or emotionally, even to the smallest degree. Then look at the externals. Our relationships, our environment?
99% of the time we will find something that can be attended to.
If we can’t it simply means that there is something else at play here.

For example, I remember in my twenties, having just graduated and spent 4 months travelling around the US, I came home and felt like I was in some kind of holding pattern. It was frustrating and annoying, and yet my deepest sense was to wait. And wait I did. Then one day the phone rang and it was an offer that was fabulous and opened up a whole new world for me… all of the waiting was worth it. Again I could say I had been listening to the feedback, and of course, the feedback was to wait. Do nothing.

If you would like a simple and powerful tool to assess your life as feedback, send an email to Christine@syzergy.biz with ~PI~ in the subject line.

Have a great March!

Events

The Dare to Care launch day in Auckland, New Zealand occurs on March 15th. For more information or an invitation, or to refer a friend, please send an email to Christine@syzergy.biz with ~Auckland Info~ in the subject line.
I am also speaking to the Auckland Chapter of the ICF on Thursday March 16th, as part of International Coaching week. The subject is Spiral Dynamics. Please do come along if you are in town.

On April 17th I will be running the Boston Marathon. For any subscribers in the Boston area, please send me an email so we can meet or go for a run.

April 25th we are running the one day Dare to Care experience in Raleigh, North Carolina. Again, if you would like more information or an invitation, send me an email. Christine@syzergy.biz

We are also hoping to confirm Dare to Care at NYU the weekend of April 22nd.
I will be in the New York area, so would love to meet with or run with anyone in New York.

I will be attending the “Be the Change” conference in the UK May 11 to 13th. (www.bethechange.org.uk) and will then be launching Dare to Care in London on the 15th. Contact me for more information.

Finally, I will be co-presenting at the ICF European conference in Brussels on May 19th. My co-presenter is Malcolm Nance, who is a world expert in Counter Terrorism and Al Qaeda. Our topic is “The Dynamics of Fear - War, Terrorism, Terrorists and Coaching to Reality” (A Conversation about the threat of terrorism and the fear it generates in the life of our clients.)
Please let me know if you will be there, as I would love to meet.

Update on the Sydney launch of Dare to Care February 9th 2006.

We had a great day in Sydney. 22 people attended this launch day and the feedback was excellent. Thank you to all attendees for your participation and support.

"It increased my self awareness and will have an impact on making my life more fulfilled." Louise Chamberlain, Pfizer

"Profound. Very exciting. First course I have ever attended where I received practical tools to move forward and make a difference." Giselle Mills, MBF

"It was a day of great personal transformation for me. I knew I wanted to be here and now I know why." Eimer Boyle, Du Pont.

"A useful session on how to have a more meaningful conversation, which if implemented properly, would enhance working and other relationships." Kate Mulligan, Advance Bank.

Others..

My experience was confronting in a really positive way.

Christine's ability to integrate several models and make them live in real conversations is empowering and inspiring.

Great energy, nice tie in models and context.

Christine you shone, your commitment to the small stuff and valuing the importance of truth is an inspiration and will, and is, contributing to a better world. Sarah McIntyre

Thank you for making your wisdom so accessible. I feel very inspired.

A free audio gift for you.

Last month I did a teleclass session taking one of the modules from Dare to Care and working with a client on how to set the context for a very important and difficult conversation. This session was recorded and is available for download. Please got to http://syzergy.biz/audiovisual/index.html and click on the “Dare to Care” audio file. We would love to hear from you with your feedback.