Who is the Leader Behind the Curtain?

I’ve had the honor of being invited behind the curtain with a number of leaders to hear about their oft hidden vulnerabilities. Sometimes the leader behind the curtain reveals that he or she is usually worried or anxious. “There is always another problem to solve. My mind moves from one to the next. I rarely unwind.”

I think:

• He leads with good intentions
• He leads because he can
• He leads because his ideas are sound, and people want to follow
• He also leads because he fears what he cannot control, so he puts himself in control, or in the illusion of being in control… of everything…all the time.

What do do?

A Recommended Read for the Leader Behind the Curtain

The Untethered Soul

It’s a lovely title and contains deeply satisfying gourmet food for thought.

I recommend it to the leader behind the curtain who is driven by a need to maintain the illusion that she is in control. It is for the human being inside the leader behind the curtain. My notes to self and to those leaders are included. Feel free to add yours in the comments section, because we need to learn from and with each other.

The constant continuous dialogue that I hear inside my own mind is not “me”.

I am the one who hears the chatter.

When we learn this, we stop trying to figure out who we are or what we should do by listening to what the voice is saying,

(Read that last sentence 3 times. It’s important)

The voice in our head takes on various sides and arguments.

It doesn’t care much which side it takes, so long as it keeps talking. (Read twice)

When the voice argues, and one side wins, who’s winning?

Spend time observing this internal voice and the first thing you notice is that it never shuts up.

If you’re willing to be truly objective and just watch the thoughts the voice produces, you will realize most of them have no relevance and little value, because your thoughts don’t really change much about the world around you. Regardless of what you think, the sun is coming up tomorrow. It will or it won’t rain. Life, people, what does or does not happen is not the problem.

The problem is the commotion our mind makes about life. (Read 3 times)

So, if the voice has so little value, why does it exist?

It allows us to blow off steam, like a teakettle.

We humans can build up nervous energy (<- you?) fearful energy (<- definitely you) or energy based in desires. These activate the voice.

Recall a time when you were angry with someone and the voice had words with them over and over and over.

This is the energy of “wanting to do something about what happened”.

The voice also narrates our life, but do we really need the voice to say “Oh there’s a tree. It’s a cherry tree.” We saw the tree. We already knew it was there. Our seeing informed the voice, so the voice isn’t reporting anything new.

The narration makes us feel more comfortable with the world around us. It gives us the illusion of control. (Emphasis on illusion). Our thoughts allow us to create a world inside our mind. We choose what’s important enough to narrate, and our narration makes that thing the focus or our attention. But there are many other things going on in our immediate surround.

In our mind, we can manipulate thoughts, and it gives us the illusion that we are manipulating (controlling) the world. But guess what? We’re not. The sun comes up tomorrow, regardless of what we think, whether we think, or even whether was exist.

WE USE OUR MIND (THE VOICE INSIDE OUR HEAD) TO BUFFER OURSELVES FROM THE WORLD.

The voice is our attempt to hold ourselves together in a world over which we have no control. (You could read that 10 times. It’s thick and rich and meaningful. It is the crux of our overly-busy-mind problem. It is the spring that feeds the never ending series of problems we MUST solve.)The world that is unfolding before us has little to do with our thoughts. It was here long before we arrived and will continue to unfold long after we are gone.

True personal growth comes from transcending the part of you that does not feel okay about all this, the part that seeks protection.This is done by constantly stepping back from the voice and remembering that you are the one that notices the voice is talking. This part of you is silent. (Read that again.) The voice is actually a source of constant worry, anxiety, and distraction. (Why use your energy to name the sunset when you can behold its beauty?)

The voice in your head will never be content. It will always find another problem to solve. (Read that again and again and again.) Before you had the problem(s) you are trying to solve now, you had other problems, and you will have different ones next week. When was the last time you were without a problem to solve?

Next time you find a problem to solve, don’t ask “What should I do about this?” Instead ask, what part of me finds this disturbing?” Consider the possibility that there might not be a problem that needs to be dealt with. (Shocking idea.) It is possible that you will be okay on the inside without changing things on the outside, and this is important, because on the outside, or at least how we see the outside, there is always another problem to solve, before we can rest and feel okay. But this is insane, because this way of thinking, in itself, prevents us from ever being okay.

(THIS NEXT PART IS VERY IMPORTANT) To be truly free and at peace you have to watch the problems instead of getting lost in them. So the first problem you have to deal with is you and how anxious or excited or distracted you are by all the perceived problems. Anxiety does not help you solve problems.

WHEN YOU START TO WATCH THE PROBLEMS YOU WILL BECOME CLEAR THAT THERE IS SOMETHING INSIDE OF YOU THAT CAN HAVE A PROBLEM WITH ALMOST ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING. The solution is not to change things on the outside. The real solution is to go inside and let go of the part of you that seems to want to change reality, because reality is all too real. (Yes, the bold font is intentional. Listen up! You are at the core of what you have to change.)

Questions for the Leader Behind the Curtain

What seems too real for you at this moment?

What seems so real that you can’t tolerate it and are focused instead on changing it?

You have carved out an impossible world for yourself, by paying too much attention to worry and anxiety. You are trying to create a world in which you and those you love are never hurt. You are trying to create a world in which no one you love gets sick or dies.  This is the world you are trying to control so you won’t feel anxious. These are the things you are trying to avoid. But you are not in charge. People die. People get sick. People feel hurt. This IS the way of the world. Give yourself over to it. Because no matter how hard you try, these things will not change, and you will always have another problem to solve. And when you have given yourself over, when you are no longer trying to control everything to avoid anything, you are in the process of becoming a human be-ing and a true leader.