Seeing Past Yourself to the Larger Whole

Your highest and greatest contribution as a change agent rests on being able to transcend yourself.  To see the bigger system around you--to "see the matrix."  And not just to see it for yourself, but also to help others see the larger systems of which we are  all a part.   Being able to see the world around you in all its complexity, with a critical, yet appreciative eye is vital to "getting real" about how change actually plays out in the world.  Doing all that you can to see past your own blindspots and biases is also  critical to perceiving your own role in  the systems you seek to change. This is why Expanded Perspective is the 7th and final pillar of personal development for change agents.

Three Tools For Expanding Your Perspective

The video and the accompanying worksheet offer 3 paths to help you expand your perspective.

1. Tuning into your state of mind

The graphic below lays out a...

An extraordinary life is a stack of extraordinary moments, built up, one on top of another.  Recognizing those extraordinary moments and rising to meet them takes persistent courage.  That's why Persistent Courage is the 6th Pillar of Personal Development for Change Agents.  

Persistent courage is about finding a way to lean into life, show up as your full self and take action, even in the face of your fears.  A life of extraordinary joy and impact takes courage—and one of the biggest challenges to your courage are the defenses you create in your own mind to protect yourself from dangers—real and imagined. Here's the good news: you can cultivate your courage, and one of the most powerful ways to do this involves taking a frank inventory of your fears.  This session walks you through a process for overcoming your fear-based circuit breaker, inspired by Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey’s book Immunity to Change.

1. Re-setting Your Survival...

For many of us the single biggest factor in our sense of joy and fulfillment in life has to do with the quality of our relationships and interactions with other people.  Elevating the quality of your own positive presence is the single biggest thing you can to do transform the quality of your relationships with others.  That's why positive presence is the 5th pillar of personal development in this series. 

Positive Presence= Attentive + Empathetic + Resourceful

 Positive presence is about being in a state of mind in which you can be attentive, empathetic and resourceful, all at the same time. This kind of positive presence with others and with ourselves is an essential pillar of personal development for all of us who feel a calling to make the world a better place. 

Three Key Tools for Elevating Your Positive Presence

The video and the accompanying worksheet lay out three key tools for elevating your presence and transforming the quality of your...

  The more strongly you feel called to serve something larger than yourself, the more strongly you’ll feel out of alignment when you feel unproductive. Getting the right things done is key to living a life of joy and impact. This is why Productivity is Pillar #4 among the 7 Pillars of Personal Development for Change Agents. 

Each of these pillars of personal development builds on the others 

Purpose (Pillar #1), Priority (Pillar #2) and plenty of energy from your personal Powerplant (Pillar #3) are all prerequisites for your Productivity, but  they are not a guarantee.  We live in a world that is full of more  distractions than ever. Many of us haven't done enough to build a system that helps us focus powerfully on what's important now and crank out productive output whenever and wherever we need to. This video and the accompanying worksheet will help you on the HOW of getting more of the right things done.  It will...

When it comes to your personal energy, metaphors matter! 

Do you treat yourself like a battery, or a powerplant? 

When you think of yourself like a battery, chances are you're just trying to make it through the day before you run your charge down to zero.  But as Brendon Burchard points out in his book High Performance Habits, when you think about yourself like a powerplant, you have a lot more options for engineering your energy output to sustain your joy and your impact throughout the day.  

This is a fundamental shift in thinking that has dramatic implications for how you approach this vital arena of your life: your personal energy level.  This is what we're going to explore with Pillar #3 in this series on the 7 Pillars of Personal Development for Change Agents.  The video and the worksheet are all about engineering your personal powerplant to maximize the energy you bring to your journey of joyful impact.  

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We all have certain feelings that are fundamental to our joy and our impact as change agents.  And we also have certain feelings that are like kryptonite when it comes to undermining our joy and our impact...  

In Session 12 of this Understanding and Evolving Your Psychology curriculum, we are going to work on distilling everything you've been learning over these past 11 sessions into a single page, personalized map for showing up more consistently as your best self. 

This video and the accompanying worksheet will guide you through a process for summarizing your insights about the feelings you value most and least in your pursuit of joy and impact across all the areas of your life.  This is the heart of understanding and evolving your own psychology as a change agent with a calling to make the world a better place. 

What we’re going for in this last exercise in this series is a one-page list with two sections.

The Feelings that Form the Foundation...

Having clear priorities in the actions you take is how you translate your purpose into progress each day—and that feeling of progress is absolutely vital to your sense of well being.

 If having a clear sense of purpose in your life is the first pillar of personal development for change agents, the second pillar is knowing what is truly most important to focus your energy and action on, from one moment to the next.   The more deeply you feel called to make the world a better place, the more keenly you will feel out of alignment if you’re not making progress towards your purpose. 

 This video and the accompanying worksheet will guide you through the process of dialing in on your priorities, both as an instrument of impact in service of your mission in the world, and as a vessel of joy with your family, friends and all those whose lives you touch. 

First, Ask Yourself: What’s Getting in the Way of Dialing In On Your Priorities?

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If you are looking for true fulfillment in life, stop chasing happiness and start cultivating joy.

Happiness is driven by happenstance--if things go your way, you feel happy, if they don't go your way, you feel unhappy.  Joy is something you cultivate deep inside yourself, that you can carry with you, even in the face of unhappiness, even in the face of tragedy, you can still bring your joy in a deeper sense.

 When it comes to understanding and evolving your psychology as a change agent, it's all about figuring out how you can bring your best self to bear more consistently and more powerfully in service of your vision of a better world.  In the first 8 sessions of this Understanding and Evolving Your Psychology series, we've covered some fundamentals for stepping into your best self, from understanding how you meet your innate human needs to identifying and re-writing your most important rules and beliefs.  Now, in the final sessions of this series it’s...

If you want to set yourself up for maximum fulfillment and impact, personally and professionally, you need to start with clarity about your purpose in life.

Here’s why: we achieve fulfillment and impact in life by consistently acting in alignment with our highest selves. Without having clarity about who we aspire to be and the positive impact we are called to bring to the world, we can’t be fully conscious of what it takes to act in alignment with that highest and best version of ourselves.  Similarly, without knowing our purpose, we lose our sense of progress—and that feeling of forward movement is vital for our sense of well-being in life!

The Seven Pillars of Personal Development  for Change Agents

This post is the first in a series of seven.  In this series we're going to walk through each of these seven fundamentals one by one, giving you key frameworks and practical action steps to maximize your joy and your impact as someone with a calling to...

 A life of extraordinary impact is really a set of extraordinarily impactful moments, stacked one on top of another.  And these moments aren't just the product of happenstance--the common thread that connects them all is your mindset.  

In the first 8 sessions of this Understanding and Evolving Your Psychology series, we've covered some fundamentals for stepping into your best self, from understanding how you meet your innate human needs to identifying and re-writing your most important rules and beliefs.  Now it's time to get  practical and tactical--the final sessions of this series are all about dialing in the mindsets that constitute your best self in the three most important areas to live out your highest calling as a change agent: your energy, your impact and your joy.

This session's video and  worksheet is focused on dialing in your mindset for maximum impact so that you can show up as your best self in pursuit of your calling to make...