HYCS #44 – Client Crippled by Anxiety? See Paris First
When the going gets really, really tough, I reach for a poem.
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Reading Time: 2 mins
Assignment Time: 1.5 minutes
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I’m noticing quite a bit of tension in some of my clients lately. Anxiety is a poor substitute for leadership and I become wary when I see it running the show. At times like these, I need to pay attention to two things:
1. Not participating in my client’s anxiety
2. Not letting their anxiety infect me
I have no hope of doing the first one if unless I’ve taken care of the second one. Because anxiety is imagined, and exists only in the future, letting anxiety move my feet is the victim’s approach. Being a victim is the opposite of being a consultant, just as it’s the opposite of being a leader. I use poetry to escape the timidity that infects leaders when they are overwhelmed by anxiety.
Poetry is an anti-anxiety superpower.
There are 3 poems I keep near me at all times. When I need to remind myself of the vast difference between anxiety (an imagined bad event leading to an imagined bad outcome) and fear (a life-threatening event happening to me, right this minute), I read one of these poems. When I’m surrounded by people who have lost touch with their own resourcefulness, I read all 3 of them.
In my experience, I have not found a single imagined bad outcome that hasn’t worked out quite well. I use these poems remind me of that when everyone around me has forgotten.
If you’re not a fan of poetry, you might not know that poems are meant to be spoken. Reading these out loud, or having someone else read them to you, enhances their power.
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Fill your bowl to the brim, and it will spill
Keep sharpening you knife, and it will blunt
Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench
Care about people’s approval, and you will be their prisoner*
Do your work, then step back – the only path to serenity.
(Lao-tzu, Tao Te Ching (5th Century, B.C.)
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“…the sound of the genuine. Each one of us waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in ourselves, and it is the only true guide you’ll ever have. If you cannot hear it, you will all of your lives spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”
(Howard Thurman, theologian)
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Suppose that what you fear
could be trapped,
and held in Paris.
Then you would have
the courage to go
everywhere in the world.
All the directions of the compass
open to you,
except the degrees east or west
of true north
that lead to Paris.
Still, you wouldn’t dare
put your toes
smack dab on the city limit line.
You’re not really willing
to stand on a mountainside
miles away
and watch the Paris lights
come up at night.
Just to be on the safe side
you decide to stay completely
out of France.
But then danger
seems too close
even to those boundaries,
and you feel
the timid part of you
covering the whole globe again.
You need the kind of friend
who learns your secret and says,
“See Paris first.”
(“See Paris First”
Truman Cooper)
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Assignment
1. Read these 3 poems out loud. If you feel a bit foolish, that’s just anxiety and an indication you need to read them again with more conviction.
2. Read them out loud until you no longer feel foolish.
3. Then, be the kind of consultant – the kind of leader – who says “Let’s go see Paris first.”