Hello Friends,

Well no matter where you are in North America you must be experiencing the signs that Autumn is upon us and the end of the year will be here before you know it. We have also just past the 2nd year milestone of the devastating attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I always feel the need to hold my daughter, Chelsea, a little tighter and be grateful that she is healthy and safe.

We just completed the September Women Leading Change in Santa Clara and will be taking WLC and PLC on the road to Ottawa in October. As you may remember from a previous letter we are fortunate to be partnering with a key group of leaders across Canada to transform the Canadian Public Service. Conducting the WLC and PLC as open enrollment programs where leaders from both the public and private sectors of Canada and the U.S. will provide a great opportunity to really turbo-charge their groundbreaking projects. Please pass the word along about the October Ottawa programs to anyone who may be interested particularly on the East Coast.

This month I'd like to share some personal reflections with you. I come from a long line of martyrs and truly good-hearted women who always gave more than they received, in community service, in relationships and always for the sake of trying to leave the world better than they found it. I’ve been blessed with that DNA and used it to ‘do good’ in the world. I take great pride in what has happened ‘on my shift.’ I know I will continue to use my life to ‘do good and fight evil.’ I now realize that I don't have to pay the price that I have paid up until now. I can clearly see that if I don¹t take care of myself then no amount of support of encouragement from others will prevent me from burning out this brightly lit candle.

The committee that convenes between my ears each day has some very powerful characters. Like everyone else, I ‘inherited’ my committee and the conclusions that they banter about every day. Some of them even have my Mother’s voice and my grandmother’s mannerisms. No I’m not psychotic or delusional! I¹m as normal as you, it¹s just that my mind thinks in metaphors so ‘the committee’ is the best way I can relate to all of the conversations that I have with myself about who I should or shouldn’t be, what I can and cannot do, or where I will or won’t go. It appears that the primary job of our committee is to voice our conclusions (especially the inherited ones) which then produces the corresponding action (e.g. when my committee member has concluded that I¹m going to get hurt if I slide into 3rd base, I run into the base standing up even though decades of conditioning as a world-class softball player makes my body want to execute the hook slide to the inside of the base path and avoid the tag).

Conversely, a few years back I saw that when my committee member who had concluded that I should not raise my hand during an important client meeting because I¹d be taking the risk that my question would reveal how uneducated I was about their business, I sat in silence and pretended to know what was being discussed.

As I've come to discover not all conclusions are equal. Some conclusions can give us hope and freedom and brilliant actions while others can have devastating effects and produce undesirable and unintended outcomes. A defining moment occurred for me in late July as I saw deeply and profoundly that I had inherited some conclusions from my mother, my father (and their parents) that working ‘nose to the grindstone’ is the only pathway to abundance. In fact that conclusion was probably responsible for a large degree of my success throughout my career it’s just not the only conclusion that I am stuck with.

My defining moment came as I examined which inherited conclusions produced negative consequences (such as overweight, compulsive nail biting, intermittent fits of temper and chronic, low grade exhaustion) and decided to ‘trade up.’ That is to say, given the power of free will and an awareness of the subconscious grip of my inherited conclusion I decided to ‘trade up’ for a more empowering conclusion. My new conclusion became, ‘it always turns out with grace and ease.’ Not just a little positive thinking or spin control on the old theme but an honest to goodness invented context for proceeding with my life.

The first few days I could barely remember the words to my new conclusion. Everything I did was steering me back to the old comfortable conclusion, ‘nose to the grindstone’ is the only pathway to abundance. I would have to literally interrupt myself in the middle of operating at warp speed, take a few breaths, chuckle to myself and glide back into the project at hand with grace and ease. I watched as the sales target sheet remained blank and I fought my committees assertions that we weren¹t going to hit our quarterly sales goals because I wasn’t working hard enough. But thanks to the brilliant coaching of my coaches Staci and Ellen and the support of my office mates I kept coming back to the context, ‘it always turns out with grace and ease.’ It's been two months now and I have to say I am amazed at how much I have integrated ‘grace and ease’ into my day-to-day psyche. I keep finding evidence and building a case for ‘it always turns out with grace and ease.’

I invite you to think about any inherited contexts that aren't serving you and ‘trade up.’. If there is any truth to the adage, ‘context is everything’ then it'll be well worth your while to give some attention to this. I'd love to hear what you discover and I'd also appreciate your ongoing support of my new grace and ease context. As always, we are here to support your success and welcome your calls or emails.

In our end of the year newsletter I'll be announcing some personnel changes and our exciting new plans for 2004. If you get a chance to attend the Linkage Women in Leadership Summit in Boston, Nov.3,4 and 5 please find me and let's catch up.

Thank you for the work you are doing in the community and your organizations. Your leadership is setting a new standard for what is possible.

Take care and love,

Rayona

Rayona Sharpnack
President
Institute for Women’s Leadership