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The Conscious Entrepreneur | Leadership, Self-Awareness & Mindset
EP 125: Emotional Self-Regulation for Leaders - Part 3 Honesty With Yourself (Replay)
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- [00:00]
A
What if the bravest thing you could do as an entrepreneur is the radical action of telling yourself the truth? In this episode, which is the third in a series of emotional mastery for entrepreneurs, we're talking about how self honesty helps you get clear on what really matters. It helps you reclaim your energy and lead in a way that is aligned. This is an excellent episode filled with practical tips. Be sure to listen to not just this episode, but episodes one and two in the series. You are listening to the Conscious Entrepreneur and I'm Sarah Lockwood. This is the only podcast completely dedicated to the well being of entrepreneurs. It's where we do the inner work to become the leaders our businesses truly need. A thriving business starts with a thriving you. Let's get into it. Welcome to episode three of our three part series about self mastery and emotional awareness. We're here joined again with Beck and Marina who are talking to us about honesty as a skill and a skill that's very important for leaders, founders, CEOs. And we know that self honesty is a pretty hard thing to accomplish, a tough place to get to. And we're going to talk a little bit today about how to access that more and why it's so important to, to do this, this work as leaders. Could you guys talk a about why it's so powerful when we can grasp this self honesty concept and start putting it to work for ourselves? Why is it so powerful?
- [01:42]
B
I think if we really talk about honesty and honesty that we start with ourselves, right. Am I truly being honest with yourselves? I think we often are in experiences of not being honest with ourselves so often it's actually hard to first step into. I don't know if I'm being honest with myself. Right. So I think the truth of that is when, when we have been living in a world internally, when we're believing our thoughts and we're limiting our capabilities, it is actually hard to agree. Yeah, I think I might not be being honest with myself because we believe that's all that we're capable of. So the first thing is to kind of explore that question, like can we tolerate the fact that and I'm not always honest with myself. I've been doing this work for three decades and I'm here to say I'm grateful that I'm honest with myself more often. But part of our human condition is we forget, we forget our own what I call human dignity. And that's where we start to separate from our ability to have access to being truly honest with ourself. And one of the ways I Describe that is I ask leaders often, what's your relationship with yourself? And I often have leaders that struggle to answer that. And so that in and of itself is not a well developed thought about how honest are you being with yourself? Because that shifts your relationship.
- [03:14]
C
And the more honest we can be with ourselves is directly proportionate to how much we actually see and understand what's happening in our own internal worlds. So it's one thing, you know, we've all, I think we've all been in situations where words like we have to be more transparent, we have to be more direct, we have to be more honest. Right. It's a value hanging on a wall. What does that mean? Transparency. Right. The more we can get to know ourselves and the more that we can actually own all of our traits, our parts, the parts we like about ourselves, the parts we judge about ourselves, the parts that maybe we are tentative to explore. That's how honesty and self honesty becomes more available to us. We, we tend to lead with, yeah, I'll be transparent about the parts I like. Here's. Here are all my good qualities. Here are my solid leadership skills. I can check those off. Oh, but don't look over here. And when we don't look over here, as Beck said, within. Right.
- [04:18]
A
How.
- [04:18]
C
What is my relationship with myself and how can I actually welcome the qualities that may be either unexplored or actually I judge really deeply and I don't want others to see that begins the exploration. And the more honest we can be with ourselves, the more possibility there actually is to grow both within our own being and within the business, because it's where our businesses are a reflection of, of ourselves.
- [04:49]
A
That is amazing. I almost want to just like stop and reflect on what you just said for a minute because I think it's really powerful. I think there's the. As an entrepreneur, so often those, you know, shadow parts of you are met with so much ego and shame and embarrassment. The these qualities that are judgment, you know, hugely judgmental. And it's like the cultural pressure of never being able to say you're not good at something even when you might know you're not, it doesn't feel okay. And I think that's something that what I'm hearing you say is like kind of coming to terms with accepting these things about yourself. And you can either make a decision that you want to work on those things or maybe they are the way they are, whatever these things are for each person. But I think it's especially hard for entrepreneurs because it's a Setup, right? To you're not supposed to be bad at things.
- [05:53]
B
It's. Yeah. And it's a perfect setup. I mean, think about entrepreneurs, right? They saw an opportunity in the market, they wanted to solve something really big. They had no idea how they were going to do it most of the time. And then they begin. And then we start hiding and avoiding and not telling people when we're scared and when we don't know what to do and when we think the market isn't going to come and how are we going to get the round and you know, if we're self funded, like, you know, the bank account is dwindling and so then we start hiding. We use coping skills. And that's dishonest, right? That's dishonored. We engender an inner relationship with ourself around not saying, hey, what's going on here? Right? In that kind voice where we invite ourselves into a curiosity about what is going on here and what can we do with that, right? So I mean, in my own experience, right, of learning how to know what's going on for me and then having some experiences of being truly honest with myself is what I say, you know, we have lost the ability to have cognitive dissonance. It is true. I have limiting beliefs. It is true. Sometimes I get stuck in them. But if I can notice that as we've been talking about, that creates suffering for me. And if I can realize that and see that and then I can shift out of the amygdala taking me down that road to my prefrontal cortex, I can ask myself what else is true, right? I have these limiting beliefs. I'm never going to be able to completely get rid of them. They're my reminder. And who can I get to help me with this? How do I actually address how to work with what's happening rather than self deprecation and you know, overworking or underworking, whipsawing my team back and forth to we're going to do this now and we never fully implement it and now we're going to do this. All that's fear related and it's dishonest with our dishonesty with ourself that takes our teams down roads that are dead ends. Rather than saying to our team, the thing I fear most is we're going down a wrong road that's really honest. When we're able to practice enough with our inner experience where we can show up and say the thing we would have never dreamed of saying while we were busy living in this, avoiding hiding Limiting lack of possibility. There's so much possibility in going to your team and saying, I'm worried we're going down the wrong road. Let's talk about it.
- [08:40]
A
Powerful. Absolutely powerful. When you think of self honesty in the business context, I think it means saying no to things. I think it means telling the truth about things that aren't working. It may mean saying you're not the right person for the job. It might mean things, you know, some. Something about the business is failing. It's, it's really, really tough stuff. When you're having those conversations and you realize that you're avoiding telling the truth or I think there's that observer in you that also knows a little bit that you are lying. Isn't that an interesting thing about our brains is that we, we don't believe ourselves, but a little part of us knows that we're lying. It's hard to resolve that. But what do you, what is a reflection or a prompt or a tip that you could give somebody to help them build this muscle of observing that something else is possible and that we maybe are going down a path and not being honest? What, what, how do you help somebody break this cycle?
- [10:02]
C
The. One of the first things I want to set context around is when we are set to do anything that feels like it's going to be a challenge, it's really helpful to play it out all the way through. Most people will spin on the part that's going to be hard. They're not going to realize the relief that comes from actual honesty. So if you were ever a kid and you broke a vase or something and you tried to put it together really fast and you were like, nothing's broken here. Nothing has shattered, right? And then you obviously kind of get caught. And then all of a. Yeah, I did it. Right. And just there is actually a sense of relief. And that's an example from a child that, you know, may. It may not exactly translate, but the feeling of relief does translate. There is something on, there is something relieving about saying, hey, we're not a match, right? It's okay. It's okay that we're not a match. I actually want the best for you and I think you want the best for us. There is relief at the end of that conversation. And yeah, there might be sadness and there might be fear and all of those things, but step one is to just extend the timeline long enough to realize that the first action of doing the honest thing can bring some relief. So just play out the timeline as step one. That's something I find very helpful when I'm about to have a hard conversation.
- [11:42]
A
That's a. That's a great piece of advice. So basically walking through the hard thing, through to its completion to try to appreciate where there's some good part of the bad thing. Is that what I'm hearing?
- [11:58]
C
Yeah. Finding the, the. The part that is actually the payoff is one way of thinking about it. Sometimes it's also helpful to play out the connection because your fear is disconnection or when your fear is disconnection. So let's just take the same example. Hey, this might not be right for us. I want the. We want the best for you. You want the best for us. The. Oftentimes there's a fear that that will end a relationship, right? Because we get emotionally involved. And so it does not have to mean a disconnection of the relationship. It might be an end to one form of the relationship. So playing it out and realizing, hey, we're not necessarily going to lose this might shift the form, the way it looks, the shape. So again, different ways of playing out that end state and recognizing, hey, it's going to be okay, it's going to be okay.
- [12:53]
B
Well, and just thinking about the difference of what Marina is saying and experiences that we all have had where we were sequencing on fear, right, and we weren't able to see beyond the hard thing, the hard truth, right, that we so wished we could avoid, but we had to do the thing. By the time we get to do the thing and say we've got to do something different and it's about where we're coming from. If we've sequenced on fear and we finally get to the moment where we have to have a conversation or say the product market fit is not working, or I can't be in this situation with this company anymore and we're operating from. We've been like this for so long, you bet we handle it pretty poorly, right? And it's. What I say is we lose our human dignity when we do it with fear. We get up to some really undignified shit and it's embarrassing and we try to avoid it and we get to the point where we just have to do the thing. So. So we just do a mic drop and we move on to the next thing that we'll avoid and hold back and worry ourself to death about and be in anxiety until then, we make another move to remove that from something that's within our sight. So when we start to believe there's more possibility in holding two things at once, again, we're talking about honesty. The honest truth is sometimes our hearts break in business and nobody wants to talk about that. I don't know how many times I've had to do things in business that broke my heart, right? And the more I was able to allow that to be true and let that to show through, not in an emotional leaky way and over sharing, but I was able to take accountability, which we all love to talk about. I've just, you know, the, the more senior the person is, the more they want to talk about accountability. But we don't know how to have accountability accompanied with compassion. So some folks talk about compassionate accountability and they think those two things aren't the same. They are. They are. When we can be really honest with ourself, that when we're going to do a hard thing, if we can start thinking about it through a different lens of honesty, we can get the thing done. We can come to endings with people that are no longer good fits and we can start things and end things of all sorts, but they harm our dignity. They make us believe over and over again that we're unworthy, we're not competent, that we aren't capable. They fracture our confidence even when we keep repeating them over and over, knowing there's gotta be a better way. And I think Marina and I are saying there is a better way. There's a way to be honest, but it takes developing a relationship inside yourself around honesty. Noticing you're in fear, right? Softening that fear, gaining access to curiosity, doing it over and over again, and then seeing the possibilities that arise when you're able to have an inner configuration like that. It's, it's, it's a whole different conversation we're having then.
- [16:15]
A
It sounds. I mean, what you're describing is something that allows you to have a more authentic, kind experience and show up more the way you really mean to show up. The meat the way you want to show up. Make it a more kind, loving, you know, doing the hard thing, but still doing it kindly. For example. I mean, in that example, it's just you might have the chance to do it better than you would have if you just went down that deep groove.
- [16:56]
C
So it, it's, it's so interesting. This whole series we're talking, we are talking about holding two things right? We're talking about the hard thing, the suffering, the fear, the thing that kind of stands in the way. And we're also talking about softening into the possibility of the other thing also being Possible or also being true. A little, little more joy, a little bit more, dare I say, fun. Finding the things that are in our way, right? We can hold both. When we talk about honesty and dignity, or in, in purpose built language, we talk about sovereignty, right? When we show up fully honest, when we are actually okay with this time I didn't do that so well. And this time I did it pretty well, right? When I can be the full expression of the human experience that I am, that we all are, when we can actually own that and get to that place, we stop solving for the same question. We're no longer solving for how good am I? How good, you know, am I not good enough? What did I do wrong? We're not solving for that. When we can own all of our parts, we actually have another option. We start to actually go, okay, so how good can this experience get for me? If I am okay showing up? Sometimes I am really, really good in the way I show up to my team. Sometimes I flop, sometimes I just don't do a great job and I can own it. Hey guys, that wasn't my best. We no longer stop. We are no longer judging ourselves for the way we are showing up. We're just owning the way we're showing up. That opens up a whole other can of worms. Now. How good can my experience be? What can I do from here, right? How do we actually show up together and create the thing that we're going to create? Because we're not worried about judging ourselves, showing up a certain way, pretending parts of us don't exist. We just are the human experience. And from that place, what do we want to create? How good can this actually get? There is, there is something in Integral Dynamics, which is a methodology, Ken Wilber's methodology. He talks about walking up the upward spiral, right? So if we are looping, if we're sequencing on fear, if we're here, we are solving the same question over and over and over again. We have actually started owning our human dignity, our sovereignty, our human experience, the fullness of our human experience. We start to walk up the staircase and now we're asking different questions. How good can this get? What can we create? What do we want to do together? We can still show up and mess up, it's okay. But we're not going to keep solving for that. We want to solve for something better, something bigger.
- [19:56]
A
Incredible. I love it.
- [19:59]
B
Well, and to be. To put that into context too, right Is the reality is entrepreneurs are up against the odds. People that start their own companies, SMB Companies, small, medium sized businesses that they bootstrap, they're up against the odds. The data tells us that. So we internalize that as one truth and then we sequence on that. Right? And so I love what Marina says, how good could it get? Like if I'm going to believe it's, I'm, I'm the one unicorn. I just happened to be a CEO of a company that was a unicorn. And I can tell you it is fun and it is hard. We all want that. But then when we get there, we don't know how hard it's going to get and we sequence how hard it is. But if we think about we're trying to go against the odds, man, we better be able to hold two things at once to be able to be successful. And if you wonder why we get into all sorts of imposter syndrome and all these, we believe in the grind, we grind ourselves down, it's because we bought the one truth that this shit's supposed to be hard and I'm going to be the one that has to muscle up and be the one that makes it. And that's exactly the thing that detracts us from the possibility of what can be when you decide to go against the odds.
- [21:33]
A
I love it. So inspirational. How do we, how do we help our listeners do this? What are, what are some, you know what, what's the assignment for this week to help our listeners put this honesty muscle, start, start building this muscle. Where do you start?
- [21:57]
B
I think you can reflect on a question of how often do you know truly what's going on for you as a leader when you're in the work situations and when you're in the non work situations, are you able to track your experience enough to say truthfully, I know what's going on and then not shame yourself for it? Because awareness has a byproduct of if we don't know how to take a next step, right, it'll turn on us. It'll give us more data for a mind to be like C, right? So can you ask yourself the question, do I really know what's going on for me, truly, in any given moment? And then answering that question of yes or no is then once you know that, can you move into what Marie and I call active choice? Can you make a choice? Can you say yes, I need to get more honest with myself. The truth is I'm scared to death to make this decision in my company and so I'm going to need some support. Right? Scared to death, need support, Right. So can you go looking. Do you have the courage to go looking for the truth and then add something to it that's also true? I think that's the probably the thing from my end that I would suggest. Marina, what do you think?
- [23:22]
C
I think that's great. I think it's very nice tie into all of the three parts of our series. The only thing I would add is Sarah, in those reflective moments with the journal, make a list of the things you don't want other people to see about you as a leader. Just make a list. You know what it is? We all have things and to just start to practice. If I showed up in front of my team and I told them that I doom scroll and that I watched TikTok and I'm wasting my time and I judge, judge myself for it, could I do that? Do I actually know what's going on here? Do I know that I'm judging myself for doom scrolling? As a CEO who just got a series right like that, it's very simple. We all have the things and then go, okay, how do I practice showing up just a little bit more fully 10%.
- [24:28]
A
That's, I mean it's a great exercise. I think that this work is something that, you know, the very first step you take in it will begin to build some momentum that you can see happen and see what's possible when you, when you sort of are truthful with yourself and then continue to grow from there and make this like a, a regular practice in your personal development as a, as a human, you know, but also as a, a leader. So I think this series has been, has met my goal, which is that I want to bring our listeners things that they can practically implement that will help them evolve. And I think we've delivered in this series in a big way. So I think anyone who's listening, I hope if you joined us for honesty that you'll go back and listen to part one and two because this is, this is really, really useful stuff that you could do for yourself. This is great stuff to share with your team. Share with your someone who needs it because I think all of us will, will grow greatly if we can put these things to work in our lives.
- [25:42]
B
Thank you, Sarah.
- [25:43]
C
Thanks so much for having us.
- [25:46]
A
It's been a great series. Thank you very much. Thanks for listening to the Conscious Entrepreneur. Every episode here is meant to sharpen how you lead and how you live. If something landed for you, please share it founder to founder. I'll meet you here next week.