How to Know If You’re a Great Leader
One skill most leaders don’t have…
Death Taught Me A Big Lesson About Leadership
I have a neighbor whose daughter is the same age as my son.
Their birthdays are two days apart and they’d play outside with each other often.
And not too long after her 5th birthday, her mother passed away after a multi-year battle with cancer.
That night, me and my three kids were goofing around at home giggling. But across the street, there was a family mourning.
And then it hit me.
There are two realities happening at the same time.
The one with me and my family. And the one with my neighbor’s daughter who just became a single-parent family.
Many Realities Exist at The Same Time
People who have trouble accepting and respecting this fact turn out to be poor leaders.
They tend to speak more than they listen.
But the greatest leaders know how to do this one thing.
They’re able to feel the discomfort of holding opposing realities at the same time in the mind.
Without reaction. Without fear.
This discomfort is cognitive dissonance.
Why Embracing Cognitive Dissonance is The Secret Weapon
The feeling of cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable. It tends to trigger the brain to get into a reactive state where it can’t think.
That’s when you experience a lot of overwhelm, frustration and anxiety because of it.
And research shows that emotional pain can be as painful as physical pain.
This is why the brain reacts to these feelings as if it was life threatening. As if there was a criminal in front of you with a gun pointed to your face.
And moreover, when our brains are afraid, it needs to enter into a black and white type of mentality.
Fear is most useful only for life threatening situations. And when you’re in one, you need black and white answers because if you don’t have that clarity, you might die.
If you examine a lot of suffering in the world, it’s because of two opposing parties thinking in black and white. When doing this, we are in a state of fear towards the other.
And when we are afraid, the brain is incapable of empathy. So instead we fight with each other, which means someone’s going to get hurt.
Or we enter into a flight mode and avoid each other to create our own bubble without finding a resolution.
When we run into challenges that need addressing, we often react without thinking. We make decisions that we regret.
You then see the mistake got made because important information got overlooked.
Why does that happen?
Your Brain Develops Tunnel Vision When Stressed
If a hungry tiger walks into your room, will you look anywhere else except where the tiger is?
When we are afraid, our brain develops tunnel vision to only focus on the threat.
Stress tends to have the exact same effect on the brain.
And this is why we end up focusing only on the problem, which doesn’t mean the brain is focusing on finding the solution.
Tunnel vision blinds the brain from seeing what you need to - the ideas, opportunities and solutions.
To operate at your best, you need to develop the muscle to get yourself out of tunnel vision. Especially when it matters most.
There’s one key way to be able to develop the muscle.
Increase Your Tolerance to Discomfort Rather Than Reacting to it.
Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one
- Bruce Lee
I once went on a silent meditation retreat where I meditated for over 100 hours over ten days.
One of my eye opening moments was to experience how capable we are of overcoming discomfort.
Sitting cross legged on the floor for 10+ hours a day caused a lot of aches in my body, but over time, I felt great.
I had moments where I was able to be still in both mind and body for over an hour without moving a muscle.
But here’s the plot twist.
The discomfort was always around.
The aches, the pains.
It’s hard to describe, but I found myself not bothered by it anymore. Not by ignoring it, but being okay with it. Then bringing my attention to where I wanted to bring it.
The best way to describe it was as if my discomfort was the driver of my proverbial car. I then took the discomfort out of the driver’s seat and put it into the passenger seat and I took the wheel. It’s there with me, but I started to dictate where I wanted to bring the car and stayed focused on that. Even though the discomfort was there.
Great leaders are able to sit with many opposing ideas in their brains WITHOUT reacting to them.
No fear, no concern, no resistance.
Only curiosity.
This is why they often seem so calm despite how volatile the situation may get.
This is not about trying to bring other people into what you feel reality is because it’s the “right” reality.
But it’s to first accept the fact that in the current moment there are many realities being lived at the same time.
If you don’t react and stay in curiosity, then you learn to ask more important questions. When you do this, you find the important context needed to resolve the issue.
So the next time you become aware of your own cognitive dissonance, pause.
Be with it.
Don’t fight to get rid of it. Don’t avoid it in flight by distracting. Don’t freeze by numbing yourself from it.
Be with it.
Even if it’s just for five minutes.
Your brain begins opening up out of its tunnel vision. Then you will see all the ideas, solutions and opportunities that were always there.
And that’s when your big a-ha moment occurs and find clarity.
Then you can make better decisions, create deeper trust, and produce the best results.
How to Activate Your Brain’s Hidden Powers Using Neuroscience
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