“However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”

I had planned to write about something else today, but had a great conversation with a client this morning, and I scrapped the topic saving it for another day. We had been focusing our conversation on the missing feeling of connectedness with their team, and this person attaching some work delivery misses that their team made, to that lack of connectedness. We explored what “connectedness” meant to them, and what an ideal would look/feel like, and how they could spot glimpses of it when it happened.

Like many coaching conversations, we moved on to something deeper. Missing connectedness was rooted in this person feeling a personal negative heaviness – not much positivity for them to anchor on personally or professionally. So we decided to talk about something that we’re looking forward to, and they described a music festival coming up that they’re looking forward to – big smiles, lots of descriptive detail, I felt the light bursting through Zoom.

Towards the end of our time together, they talked about a Phish song they love, and they wanted me to hear it. I love love love music, but admittedly don’t know anything about Phish. It was called “Tweezer (Reprise)”, and it was like a 4-minute ball of energy, they played a live performance of it on YouTube and we watched it together. You could see them light up, I felt good, and it changed both of our mornings. They decided that this was a practice they were going to use every day as part of a mid-day reset – to unload mental/physical/emotional weight from the morning at work, and get themselves back into a positive state.

I love that idea. Put those “light” reps in for yourself. I’m going to do the same.

Here are a few resources I’ve liked and have been sharing recently:

• A leader is anyone who owns their influence on others. That’s it. And that responsibility as a leader is tough – *we are* the asset that people need, so we need to take time for “me” time, like this HBR article brings out. (5 min read)

• Perfectionist tendencies can be a real drag on staying “light” – for ourselves, and relationships around us. This talks about “Perfectionism vs. Healthy Striving”, along with a set of myths and realities about perfectionism. (5 min read).

• More to That writes about “The Omnipresence of Work”, and how because our brains don’t have an “off” switch, we tend to think about work even when not actually working because our physical environment doesn’t remind us to shift (i.e. working at home vs. the office). Meaning, work feels like it’s all around us, all the time. He gives us some advice on how to navigate this at the end of the post – by taking time away. (10 min read)

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