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Have You Met Your True Self?
There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is in me.
—Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”
Ed France still remembers the moment that sparked his passion for the work he does today. He was a young teen, visiting his grandparents who lived in a tiny Mississippi town where the commercial stretch of Main Street was abandoned and insects were louder than traffic noise.
Ed recalls one day when he was tidying up his grandfather’s woodshop, a little shed adjacent to the house. It held tools, scrap wood, hardware—seemingly all anyone would need to fix up a house or rebuild almost anything. His granddad had opened it as a retirement business called Dixie Do-Dads, but it was shuttered because the more he aged, the less he was able to work.
“It was a good old tool shop. I remember thinking about how much of a waste it was; all these tools were just kind of sitting there. While this shop sat locked up, neighbors literally a stone’s throw away lived in dilapidated structures.
“I came to the realization that given his views and mentality, it would not be possible for him to share his tools with other members in the community, because most of that community was black. I realized as a kid what racism was. There was an established social order that was very entrenched. All the black people in town, they would be called by their first name, where any white person would be called Mr. or Mrs. and their last name. And entering the house, well, unless you worked in the house, black people did not go into white people’s houses.
“My realization was really sad. I had this daydream that he would have, in his old age, actually opened up his tool shed for members of the community to come in and borrow tools. The reality was a really sad reality.”
Ed told me he didn’t understand the unspoken code that prevented neighbors from borrowing, something he thought of as a normal thing. “I remember feeling upset that this discriminatory mentality resulted in squandering a resource instead of offering it up. I hoped that I could act differently, to find a way to do just the opposite, to be inclusive and sharing of resources someday.”
Ed’s daydream of his grandfather’s community tool-lending shop stayed with him. Some years later, he was further inspired by libraries in Oakland and Berkeley, California, that loaned not only books but all kinds of tools, from wheelbarrows and ladders to power tools and gardening implements. He began to imagine possibilities.
“I liked the idea from an efficiency standpoint; I liked the idea of a community toolshed. That’s the kind of community I wanted to live in: one that shares resources.”
Ed took to heart his wish for such a community. He began his career working for the city of Santa Barbara on environmental issues, while on weekends he and a group of friends would lead bike rides and show up places around town with their tools to fix bikes for free. The city is a very expensive place to live, and has a large lower-income working class. He’s fully aware of the frequent cultural segregation between Latinos and whites.
“A lot of the folks here don’t have access to good bikes or tools or replacement parts. And a lot of these folks rely on bikes for transportation.”
So Ed started Bici Centro, a community bicycle workshop and thrift store. Two years later, Bici Centro merged with the all-volunteer Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition (SBBIKE), a twenty-year-old advocacy group that promotes biking for safe transportation and recreation. Ed became executive director of the new blended agency. But success didn’t happen overnight and not without traumatic growing pains. Ed nearly burned out in the process.
What made the merger challenging was the resulting organizational cultural clash between a primarily older group who saw their role as one of advocacy at public meetings versus a younger group who wanted to create community programs. The organization weathered those growing pains, but it still wasn’t smooth sailing, and funding was limited. The agency was renting a building that was nearly free but falling apart. That was demoralizing for people, which manifested as a weak volunteer base—tough when you count on volunteers for such labor-intensive services.
“It felt shitty, like the community didn’t care. For the first time, I had gotten to the space of being fully cynical, feeling like ‘The community has shown it doesn’t want this kind of program.’ The last few years have proven that isn’t true, but that’s how I felt, and it was becoming my reality.”
Worn out by his discouragement yet devoted to his work, Ed was committed to being present for everything that happened in the organization—and that made for what you might call a divided life. He was on a nightmarish treadmill of chasing goals, taking evening meetings on weekdays, going to events on weekends, and performing ongoing tasks. For six years, Ed did not take time for personal appointments, anything social, or going to classes.
“Basic self-care just didn’t happen. Obviously that’s not a good thing, because long term you’re only cheating the future. My style of operating was to always be there and always be fully responsible. I don’t know how my wife stayed with me.”
Ed pointed out the social workload on top of all that, wanting to be available to his staff and volunteers. “I didn’t want to just get it done. I couldn’t just clock out and say, ‘All right, you guys, you can close up, I’m out of here.’ Anytime you are engaged with people, you find out about their challenges and their struggles, and you want to do something about it, but that’s over and above what you’re already scheduled to do.
“When you’re passionate about your work, that passion can come through like a lightning storm, not like a consistent steady stream of energy you can forecast and use,” Ed said. “That fire can make people passionate in a way that is violent. And that passion can preclude people from being thoughtful about what they are trying to do. Ultimately it can make people jaded when others don’t share that passion.”
Ed’s low point coincided with being invited to a local Courage & Renewal program called Courage to Lead for Nonprofit Leaders. Ed admitted it was tough to make time for his own self-care and renewal. “The choice to stop and invest in reflecting is not logical when you’re in the middle of the intensity of doing all these things. But reflection time is extremely valuable in every way. It creates a space for emotional intelligence.”
Disengaging from work was like literally depressing the clutch, Ed told me. “Suddenly you are liberated for a short time from all those activities you are constantly trying to accomplish. At which point you can reflect not only on those activities but back to your first experiences as a kid or adolescent, or whatever, to ask yourself ‘What was the first step that took you in this direction?’” That’s how Ed recalled his grandfather’s toolshed and his wish that those tools could be shared with the community. Connecting to his daydream about his grand-father’s toolshed at the Courage retreat series shifted how Ed brought himself to his leadership. Fueled by that recollected wish, Ed found clarity during the retreat and his vision today is in the spirit of self-determination and social justice.
“I used to joke that I was the head custodian, because that’s my style. Now I really see my role as being the person to hold the vision. Before in the exact same situation, the main complaint I had was that people were not coming together around the vision. Now people are coming together a whole lot more around the vision, because I’m allowing myself the space interpersonally, within myself, to be a keeper of the vision. Vision is not a mission statement. Vision is you leading out of your own spirit.”
Ed described what that vision looks like at SBBIKE: “We have a shared sense that this is good to be doing, an enjoyable thing. There is a sense of community, there’s a sense of purpose. In a concrete sense, we are refurbishing bicycles. That’s great. There’s recycling, there’s bicycling, there’s those classic all cliché environmental do-good things.
“For me, I mean, I love bicycling, I love riding my bike. I do it every day. But the vision is self-determination—in community. Basically it’s like, ‘Yes we can,’ but it’s more of a ‘Yes we are.’ Together we are creating this.
“It’s how I hold myself, what I express, what I show that expresses the vision. I think that’s how the world really works. How we live is the vision.”
But seldom, if ever, do we ask the “who” question. Who is the self that engages in leadership? How does this self impact the practice of leadership, for good and for bad? How is the self continually honored and renewed as we lead?
—Parker J. Palmer
Knowing the Self Who Leads
The underlying premise of the Courage Way is that we all have a trustworthy source of inner wisdom that informs our lives and leadership. It is our identity and integrity, the sum of our shadows and light, our true self. Without knowing our true self, we cannot be an authentic leader.
Just as Ed came to recognize, leaders must find clarity about what they value, what unique gifts they have to offer, what contribution they wish to make. Strength and resilience as a leader come from knowing the ground on which you stand, the convictions you will act on with courage. But that’s not all. Resilience comes from being aware of and accepting your limits and what problems your shadows are causing. That is whole-ness—and that comes from knowing your true self.
Otto Scharmer, author of Theory U, acknowledges this inner life: “We observe what leaders do. We can observe how they do it, what strategies and processes they deploy. But we can’t see the inner place, the source from which people act when, for example, they operate at the highest possible level, or alternatively, when they act without engagement or commitment.”1
This inner place Scharmer speaks of is more than intellect, ego, emotions, and will. In the inner work of leadership, it is a light behind the eyes, the energy that animates us, or, as Howard Thurman puts it, “the sound of the genuine in you.” Instead of true self or soul, you could say inner wisdom, essential self, or even trusting your gut. Poets, musicians, and mystics have given words to the essence of who we are—our human spirits—when we take off the trappings of our resumes. John O’Donohue calls it the dignity somewhere in us “that is more gracious than the smallness / that fuels us with fear and force.”2 William Stafford appeals to “a voice, to something shadowy / a remote important region in all who talk.”3
Although Parker Palmer often refers to his inner teacher, he often says that what you call this core of our humanity doesn’t matter, “but that we name it matters a great deal. It’s important to recognize it: If we don’t name it anything, we start to lose the being in human being. We start to treat each other like empty vessels or objects to be marketed. When we say ‘soul,’ or ‘identity and integrity,’ there is something to make a deep bow to. There is a word for it in every wisdom tradition.”
Beyond being the sum of your life experiences, the true self is a mystery that simply is. How do you get to that underlying mystery of knowing people deep down? Intimacy is not necessarily the goal of every relationship in community, especially in the workplace. But respecting that each person has an essential core self, an undeniable dignity and humanity—now that is worthwhile.
I mean the soul simply as shorthand for the seismic core of personhood from which our beliefs, our values, and our actions radiate.
—Maria Popova, literary and cultural critic
How Do You Access True Self?
True self is not defined by your resume, although that may hold some clues. How do you access Popova’s “seismic core of personhood”? For some people, the idea of true self (however named) is already part of their lexicon or religious tradition. That wasn’t the case for Ed. When he learned to reflect on his leadership path and carve out more time to clear his head, he didn’t describe it as caring for true self or soul, but that he did so was vital to his leadership. He describes the experience as “inner space exploration.”
“There’s so much depth within us. Our brains are like a whole space system, a galaxy in and of themselves. Not just the neural connections and the complexity. There is so much to explore just within ourselves, but we generally don’t do that, and [self-realization] is almost just a happy by-product. That inner exploration is very useful for leading.”
Other leaders agree. One said, “Understanding that every person has an inner teacher radically changed my life. It was powerful to begin viewing each person and myself as creative, resourceful, and whole, and learning to trust and believe in that first.” She sees leadership as helping people find that inner source of power and empowerment.
An education leader explained that she recognizes true self by rereading the journals she’s kept since she was eighteen, where she can see common threads running through her life: “The themes are the same, the dreams are the same, the core of who I am is the same. I may be of a different age, be in a different job, or live in a different place, but my inner teacher is always there with me reminding me (sometimes less gently than others) of who I am, what I stand for, and whether or not I am being true to my essence.”
Some leaders say they can recognize when true self shows up by the way they feel in their body. One woman told me, “It’s like connecting to some source. There’s an energy and a power to it. And peace. Even if it’s scary, it’s so certain. It feels like ‘This is right.’ And it usually happens in public (though sometimes it’s happened in my writing) when there’s some risk involved. That full alignment doesn’t happen all that often. That’s why it’s so amazing when it does. I might feel 75 percent aligned most of the time, but not completely.”
It’s notable that this leader says that true self appears when risk is involved. That is where true self and courage connect. What if courage is the life force that animates you in moments of decision and action? As this book unfolds, keep an eye out for moments of courage and see if you notice how true self is there, too.
A good leader is intensely aware of the interplay of inner shadow and light, lest the act of leadership do more harm than good.
—Parker J. Palmer
The Shadow Side of True Self
It’s one thing to focus on the “better angels of our nature,” but authentic leadership requires that we acknowledge the whole picture. It’s pure physics that we can’t have light without shadows.
Marie-Louise von Franz, Carl Jung’s closest colleague, says that Jung was once frustrated at people getting caught up in the negative connotation of shadow as the dark, unlit, repressed side of ego, and in exasperation he said, “This is all nonsense! The shadow is simply the whole unconscious.” She goes on to explain that the shadow is a “mythological” name for all that is within us that we do not know about.4
An excerpt from “An Away-Day with the Shadow” by poet William Ayot helps us see that sometimes shadows are not evil, but may be good intentions gone awry:
Who’d have thought that ill could thrive here and yet it does—in every one of us.
That kind and supportive manager over there is eating her young team: gnawing their bones, sucking out the marrow, destroying their chances with her relentless care and devouring nurture.
That brilliant enthusiast, jumping up and down, with fifteen solutions and a redesign for breakfast is sending his colleagues into spirals of despair, firing off ideas like a Catherine wheel, never allowing any one thing the time it needs to settle or grow.
The mean-lipped man, sitting in the corner, who’s been there, done that, seen it fail a thousand times, is poisoning the company he professes to love with his cynical bile and his fear of change.5
Ayot’s characters are unaware that some internal, unexamined pressure is causing harm to others around them: (1) the supportive manager not trusting someone else’s inner resourcefulness; (2) the enthusiast not allowing space for ideas to take life; (3) the mean-lipped cynic not recognizing that change can happen without diminishing one’s original contributions.
In addition to the individual shadow, there is the collective shadow, which von Franz points out can be seen in families, organizations, towns, and nations. Shadow is seen in racism, fascism, nationalism, militarism, extremism, and so many “-isms” that reveal the deepest chasms of our collective experience in society. It can be seen in the scapegoat or the black sheep who is forced to carry the shadow of the others. It can be seen in the unhelpful, unhealthy habits and blind spots in organizations, and in areas where transparency is lacking, and such shadows impede progress.
Yet shadows are part of being human, so there must be room in our hearts to see them and reclaim them. If we stay stuck in denial, hate, shame, and blame for our shadows, we cannot heal and grow. We cannot lead in an authentic way.
It’s one thing for people to know their shadow, but it’s another to express it or integrate it into their lives. Von Franz tells us with compassion, “To have the courage to accept a quality which one does not like in oneself, and which one has chosen to repress for many years, is an act of great courage. But if one does not accept the quality, then it functions behind one’s back. . . This requires great care and reflection if it is not to have a disturbing effect.”6
As leaders, we must become aware of how inner dynamics—our shadows—affect the default behaviors that often sabotage our lives. It’s usually not until a crisis forces us to take stock, as Ed’s burnout did, that we begin to see what’s causing the lack of alignment. Once we have met and acknowledged our shadows, we can get back to a place of wholeness—and help others do the same.
The Shadow of Functional Atheism
In Let Your Life Speak, Parker writes about five shadow-casting monsters that plague leaders: (1) self-doubt about identity and worth; (2) fear of losing the fight with a hostile, competitive universe; (3) “functional atheism,” the belief that ultimate responsibility for everything rests with us; (4) fear of messiness, chaos, dissent, innovation, challenge, and change; and (5) denial of “death,” such as when we allow projects and programs to continue that should have been unplugged or when we fear failure rather than reframe failures as learning.7
In Ed’s case, his working style was like that of many leaders with functional atheism—the unconscious, unexamined conviction that if anything decent is going to happen, we are the ones who must make it happen. It can lead to problems with control, frustration, stress, burnout, and overwork.
“My dad used to say, ‘Find something you really enjoy doing and work half days.’ Of course, the joke was that a half day is twelve hours, not four. At least he could laugh at his overworking.”
When leaders start out as entrepreneurs, for example—the sole person in charge of a project or business—their capacity to “do it all” can create a belief that they must do it all, and do it well, by yesterday. Add to that a sense of truly caring about their project as their “baby” and it’s hard for them to know where to cut back or let go.
“Understanding what your leadership attributes are, what your inner drive is, allows you to modulate and regulate your passion to achieve what you think you can achieve,” Ed said. “That’s a really nuanced and deeply centered way of being. I learned that holding the vision doesn’t mean I have to schedule out every minute of the day. Overall I’ve allowed myself the space to work in a way that’s vastly better than the work I was doing two years ago. Not that I was working badly; I was working hard.”
True Self Offers Empowerment
Because of his own inner work, Ed is now more conscious of how the people he works with bring all of their past and their views into day-to-day happenings. When people question the way things are done, he hears them out, listening deeply without feeling a need to always give advice. He sees this listening as creating both buy-in and empowerment.
“I now trust that it’s going to work out. I trust my staff, and if there’s a problem, we’ll deal with it, debrief about it, and learn about it for the next time, whereas in the past I was not really capable of that in my leadership. Now it’s going to work out because we’re set up for everyone to be empowered.
“Anybody who engages with us is trying not just to hear the vision or understand the vision; they are trying to make their own stake in the vision.”
By sharing his vision more visibly, by embodying his vision, Ed has inspired more engagement from volunteers, board, and donors. As a result, the organization is having an impact in the community.
Within six months of completing the Courage to Lead series, Ed led a successful capital campaign to raise money to buy the building the organization had been renting. He continues to make time for “clearing his head space” to think of new projects, which are as much about his internal passion for social justice and self-determination as about his external goals for bicycling safety and advocacy.
I had a chance to talk to a woman who has worked with Ed for seven years, his education director, Christine Bourgeois. She has witnessed his transformation from the bicyclist with a big idea to the exhausted start-up entrepreneur to the self-assured executive director. When I asked if she knew about his grand-father’s toolshed back in Mississippi, she replied, “Ed is a good friend, but I don’t know everything about him.”
When we reconnect who we are with what we do, it doesn’t mean that people around us need to know our whole story. The result of our inner work simply shows up in the courage to lead. Inner work becomes visible in the way we bring ourselves to our outer work, the ways we demonstrate caring for the larger community. Integrity shows.
By choosing integrity, I become more whole, but wholeness does not mean perfection. It means becoming more real by acknowledging the whole of who I am.
—Parker J. Palmer
Trust Your Wholeness
If you don’t relate to the idea of true self right now, that’s all right. You don’t have to believe in the soul, per se. Start with the idea that in leadership it helps to recognize and access your inner resources. Self-awareness starts with understanding that self is more than your outer image, your job title, your identity in relation to others (mother, father, sister, brother, friend, spouse, colleague). True self is fundamentally good, even with its shadows, because it is already whole. True self is your hidden wholeness—it’s not always in plain sight but it’s there.
Beyond a surface understanding of self is the true self, where you can access your reliable, trustworthy inner guidance. By learning to trust in true self, you grow in self-awareness and create space for others to do so as well.