Many years ago, my mother was diagnosed as having an inoperable brain tumor, and we decided it was time for her to leave her home in southern Florida and to come live with me and my family in Northern California. At the time my children were twelve and eight. I was CEO of Brush Dance publishing company. I felt like not only a tightrope walker but a juggler as well — seeking possible treatments for my mother, coping with someone’s terminal illness, running a business, being a husband and father, and helping my children face death for the first time.
After several months of visiting medical specialists and amassing many opinions, a pulmonary specialist detected that my mother had a severe lung infection, probably caused by the steroids she was taking to treat her tumor, which it turned out may not have actually existed. The doctor described a number of aggressive interventions to counteract this infection. When he finished, I was unsure and distraught. Was it worth the pain and suffering these interventions would cause? I took the doctor aside and asked, “What would you do if it was your mother?” Without hesitation he said he would take her home and help her be comfortable.
I described to my mother what the doctor said, and she replied unexpectedly, but with confidence, “I’ve lived a good and satisfying life. I’m ready to die.” We discussed her options and made the difficult and emotional decision to take her home.
My wife and I set up our bedroom for my mother so that she could have privacy and a calm and quiet space. Yet the day we brought my mother home, she said she wanted to be where the activity was, in our living room, and she lay down on our living room couch. Was this wise? My wife and I weren’t sure, but we agreed, and instantly my mother became the focal point of our household. Both my young son and daughter delighted in being around and helping to take care of their grandmother.
About five days later, late at night, my mother quietly and calmly breathed her last breath. My wife and I were with her, holding her hand, synchronizing our breathing with hers as much as possible. The next morning, I woke up my son, Jason, and told him what had happened. I suggested he stay home from school, and I was surprised and concerned when he insisted that he wanted to attend school. After the previous week, I felt certain the everyday concerns of the classroom were not appropriate for him. But rather than force the issue, I respected his choice. I drove him to middle school, where he was in seventh grade, and I returned home. About an hour later I received a phone call from Jason’s school counselor. She said that Jason had been crying much of the morning and wanted to know if the school administration had permission to allow him to walk home. I said, of course. About thirty minutes later Jason arrived home; he entered slowly, with great presence and sadness. He looked at me and said, “Dad, walking is great in times like this. You should try it.” We looked at each other, tears streaming from our eyes, and hugged for a long time.
Dealing with any terminal illness, any situation involving issues of life and death, puts us into a heightened realm where being confident and questioning everything are intimately entwined. Just taking the next step can seem to require a confidence we don’t feel we possess — we aim to choose wisely and well amid quickly changing circumstances; we must be reliable, reassuring caregivers, pursuing treatments hopefully and with faith. At the same time, we question everything. We question, especially, the medical issues and decisions, the consequences of treatments, the emotional and spiritual issues of life and death, balancing work and family life and questioning how to best take care of ourselves in the midst of this.
In this situation, my wife and I had to question not only how best to care for my mother but the best way to care for our children. For them, would having my mother in our living room be inspiring or traumatizing? Should I have insisted that my son, Jason, stay home the day after his grandmother died? In the moment, I doubted myself, and yet I decided to trust his confidence and intuition, just as we respected my mother’s choice to reside on our living room couch. Of course, in one sense, I was right that Jason didn’t belong at school, which he himself soon realized. But only by leaving home did he find what he truly needed — a meditative activity in which to experience and process his loss and find some measure of peace with the unknowns of death. He returned from school transformed, carrying teachings and compassion for me. When we walk with confidence with our questions, we find blessings and answers we never expected.
This chapter describes a way of being in the world. Every day, in any situation, we can practice these effective ways of moving through our lives and interacting with others.
1. Practice confident speech (page 113). Observe “left-hand column” judgments. Examine and rephrase word choice. Create positive stories.
2. Practice confident listening (page 116). Identify your part in any situation. Apologize for negative impacts. Ask for the opinions of others.
3. Be inspiring (page 118). Find “the juice” in every interaction and moment.
4. Incorporate “walking practice” into your everyday routine (page 122).
5. Practice the art of questioning (page 133): paraphrase, check your perceptions, set aside reactions, ask open-ended questions, and question yourself.
6. Avoid the “impostor syndrome” (page 135): acknowledge anxiety, use attention training, put aside limiting stories, and ask for help.
It’s a paradox, but it takes real confidence to ask open-ended, meaningful questions. It takes confidence to wonder and be curious, confidence to doubt and challenge your own thinking as well as the thinking of others. Acting confidently may appear to demonstrate that we know all we need to know, that we don’t have any questions. But how often is this really the case? For life’s truly difficult questions, we can never know all the answers. Can we be confident enough to move forward anyway, to stay with and admit what we don’t know? It’s possible to ask questions in ways that increase our self-confidence, and it’s possible to act confidently in ways that undermine our effectiveness while also sowing doubt about ourselves. At first glance, the act and practice of asking questions may appear to be the opposite of confidence. Isn’t questioning an expression of doubt? Isn’t confidence an absence of uncertainty? But properly balanced, asking questions increases our knowledge and insight, which feeds our confidence to act decisively but appropriately given the unknowns, forming a “virtuous circle” — a healthy feedback loop of increasing confidence and insightful questioning.
There are many ways to describe confidence, though it sometimes goes by different names. Abraham Maslow described the abiding potential of human beings by coining the term self-actualization. This describes an essential confidence, encompassing a wide range of emotions; it’s a person’s ability to become more fully alive and more fully engaged. Peter Senge, in The Fifth Discipline, describes confidence from the perspective of “personal mastery.” This is “approaching one’s life as a creative work, living life from a creative as opposed to reactive viewpoint.” This involves two essential movements: 1.) clarifying what is important to us, and 2.) seeing current reality more clearly. Senge describes personal mastery as a continual process of learning and growing. In other words, a life devoted to confidently questioning the essentials.
Spiritual traditions typically equate confidence with faith: a belief in the essential goodness of the universe and the unlimited potential of human beings, faith in a higher power or in our relationship with God. Like Buddha’s path, this faith is as much a quest as an expression of belief: it is a movement from fear and suffering to enlightenment and awakening by following a combination of ethical and spiritual disciplines. In this understanding, faith is not freedom from doubt but what maintains us in the face of doubt. As in the story of my mother’s dying, faith is trusting that the right thing will happen if we honor and respect our intuitions and best selves, even if we can’t see the road ahead.
In business leadership, confidence and questioning are frequently described together. In his bestselling book Good to Great, Jim Collins describes the attributes of Level 5 leadership, the highest level of leadership, as being a combination of high achievement drive and humility. Achievement drive is having a vision of what you want and the confidence to decisively move toward it despite obstacles and challenges. Humility is the practice of not taking personal credit for success; rather, you give the credit for any success to the team and organization. Personal confidence is “balanced” by the recognition of group effort. Humility is an acknowledgment of our limits, of both understanding and power. It is a way we admit not knowing and keep ourselves asking the right questions, ones that widen our perspective.
In an interview with Charlie Rose, Ray Dalio — CEO of Bridgewater, a multibillion-dollar investment fund — described his business philosophy as seeing all new products and new business initiatives as hypotheses. Once you form a hypothesis, you act with confidence while at the same time questioning what will happen by listening, watching, and learning. He said, “It’s not what I know that is important. It’s worrying about what I don’t know. I think this, but I may be wrong.”
Dalio isn’t satisfied with what he knows, but actively seeks what he doesn’t. Daniel Goleman, in his writings on emotional intelligence, describes confidence in a similarly active way. It is a competence that can be developed, a skill. Within Goleman’s emotional intelligence framework, confidence is having a strong sense of one’s self-worth and capabilities by developing the courage to voice unpopular opinions, make decisions in the midst of uncertainty, and readily admit mistakes and change course as necessary.
Self-awareness is the first step in developing confidence. This includes cultivating strong emotional awareness — developing the ability to see emotions that you might habitually hide, even from yourself. To be able to trust your intuition and act with confidence when you are on the spot and in an uncertain environment, you attempt to recognize your own self-defeating thoughts and emotions and self-protective impulses. We act defensively to cover our weaknesses. So to avoid “defensiveness” (which often demonstrates a lack of confidence) we must explore and know our weaknesses intimately.
Once you do that, you can become willing and able to admit your own strengths and weaknesses honestly, to accept them, own them, reflect on them, and work on them.
The clarity of self-perception leads to self-honesty; that honesty enables accurate self-assessment. This clarity and honesty are what allow for confidence in the face of doubt. Eventually, you reach a point where you know you are not afraid to admit anything about yourself with anyone, even yourself. There is little about yourself you cannot handle. This is confidence.
When I first met Nadine, one of my coaching clients, she was confused and concerned. She had been a rising star in the corporate world and had developed a reputation as a dependable and creative leader as well as a trustworthy and accessible person. During the course of her career, she had assumed roles of greater and greater responsibility, from being a successful salesperson to managing a variety of teams. By the time we met, she was in her third year as vice president of sales in a two-hundred-person media company. Her team of twenty professionals consisted primarily of well-educated, dynamic salespeople.
Nadine expressed to me the same concerns that her company’s CEO had conveyed — she was losing confidence in her ability to lead the team. Several team members had expressed to the CEO that they were not happy. There were differences of opinion regarding strategy, infighting among some key members, and a general lack of confidence in Nadine’s ability to successfully lead this high-powered team. She had never before received less-than-stellar feedback from her boss and from her team. Nadine was beginning to lose trust in herself and was not confident that she could be successful in this role and situation.
Nadine’s lack of trust reduced her ability to work effectively with important questions, some of which I raised during our first meeting. What did success look like in relation to her team? What did success look like in relation to her CEO? How would she know? What could be seen and measured? What limiting stories was she telling herself about her leadership ability? These were just a few questions to open up our conversations regarding confidence, effective questioning, building self-trust, and understanding the importance of how she framed her situation and what was possible.
Over the course of the next several months we worked on developing her ability to trust herself and to be more aware and present; we focused attention on her posture and her language. We worked on skills and competencies around presenting at meetings, communicating a clear vision, and heightening an atmosphere of team learning.
With Nadine, I worked on the following categories of personal and leadership development.
Lack of trust in oneself is the most common issue that I see in businesspeople as well as among nonprofit leaders across all industries. This is true of men and women, young and old. Anyone who is aware and honest has to work with issues of self-trust and self-doubt. Trust and confidence might sound synonymous, but it works well to think of them as a dynamic: trust looks inward and confidence projects outward. Attempting to appear confident without actually trusting yourself is empty. It can be seen through by others (and by you), and it makes you appear arrogant, foolish, or both.
When I worked with Nadine, we explored her habits and patterns around trust. Where did she have it and where did she lack it? One of the first things we did was bring more attention to her inner dialogue and her speech. Out of fear, Nadine had a tendency to overedit herself, so I encouraged her to be more expressive with her emotions and to be more explicit about her expectations of herself and of others.
Confidence can be reflected in how we speak. Confident speech is clear and sincere. It’s more than just what we say, more than the information in our message. It’s reflected in our word choice (how we frame our message) and our tone or timbre (how we feel about our message). When all these elements aren’t aligned, it betrays a lack of trust or confidence in ourselves or in what we ‘re saying.
To develop confident speech, explore bringing more attention to your voice and your language. Make every word count. Our speech is often on a kind of automatic pilot. We speak to fill space, without much thinking or consideration. Making every word count is a way of giving our words the weight that they deserve. Explore this as a practice. First, just notice the words you use and the way you speak. How do you talk and what words do you use in different situations? If a room grows silent, do you speak merely to fill up space? Do you speak tentatively in some situations and boldly in others? Do you “think out loud,” figuring out what you mean to say as you say it? Begin to be more attentive to word choice, whether to express yourself, make a clear point, or skillfully ask a question. Make a conscious choice — every word counts.
Once she’d increased her awareness, I worked with Nadine on how she spoke to herself. We can display self-doubt, and erode trust, with the language that we use when we talk to or about ourselves. Here is a list of rephrasings I practiced with Nadine.
BUILDS SELF-TRUST |
|
What if I fail? |
What can I learn? |
I don’t know how. |
What resources are required? |
What if [a negative outcome] occurs? |
Let’s see what happens when. . . |
I know what failure looks like. |
What does success look like? |
These actions appear ineffective. |
What shifts need to happen to increase effectiveness? |
I don’t have enough power. |
How do I tap into my power? |
The words we use to describe ourselves are also clues to the stories that we tell about ourselves — especially judgments and fears. Nadine and I looked closely at her word choice to expose her hidden judgments; negative language tends to reveal negative stories. Sometimes this is called observing the “left-hand column,” the thoughts that come up for us that we don’t see but that influence our thinking, attitudes, and actions.
As we discussed in the preceding chapter, humans can’t escape story. We create stories about ourselves and the world whether we want to or not. So let’s bring awareness to our stories, positive and negative. Let’s understand which ones lead us where we want to go and which inhibit, mislead, and betray us. Since we have a choice, let’s create positive stories. Simply by paying attention to the words we use and the way we speak, we can rewrite our story into one that supports us, that reflects the present, responsive, resilient, and effective person we want to be. Like so many insights, it’s a paradox: ultimately, our “stories” are not inherently real, but the way we tell them can help us to lead authentic, effective lives.
In practical terms, the more aware we are, the more decisive our actions become. But we only know what we choose to learn. To ease self-doubt and increase self-confidence, we need to ask: Where is my attention? Am I present? Am I listening well and asking the right questions? (For more on questions, see later in this chapter.)
With Nadine, I had her develop a mindfulness practice and a daily meditation practice. We practiced slowing down the busyness in her mind so she could more openly hear and listen to herself. This provided more calm, composure, and freedom, not only in her thinking but in her body. Our physical presence communicates the state of our inner lives even when we are silent.
We worked with her posture and physical presence, the way in which she carried herself, particularly when she was expressing her vision, as well as how she responded to difficulty and conflict. I helped her explore becoming more aware of how she used her hands, her head, and her entire body as she spoke. Her natural habit was to hold back, to keep herself from being completely visible and present. Just by relaxing and opening her shoulders and bringing awareness to holding her head up as she spoke and as she listened, she became both more relaxed and more confident. Awareness of her posture also made a difference in working with her team when there was conflict. Whereas her body language had previously been defensive or shrinking back, she was now more aware of both softening and staying present and engaged.
When it came to specific problems, I encouraged Nadine to ask herself, “What is my contribution to this situation?” This is almost always a useful question. It acknowledges your power, your influence and impact, as well as your limits. We are never merely observers, or innocent “victims,” but neither are we fully in control. Defining our role is one way to ask the right question. It is not blaming yourself to acknowledge your part, whether positive or negative, in any situation. In fact, this is essential for seeing more widely and clearly, for finding the right solution and achieving the outcome that you want.
Then, when necessary, readily admit mistakes and failures. We demonstrate true confidence when we learn the fine art of apologizing, honestly and forthrightly. Especially when we unintentionally cause harm, sincerely saying “I apologize” shows we recognize our impact and hear the problems we’ve caused others. Similarly, being able to freely say, “I failed,” or “I made a mistake,” or “I didn’t do what I said,” displays resilient attention. That is, when it’s followed with the important question: “What can I, and we, learn from this failure? How can I become more aware? What can I do better?”
These questions and acknowledgments display a true openness that is the heart of real listening and communication. They are the beginnings of conversations, not the end. Indeed, another important attribute is to develop the ability to have real and difficult conversations. When we become defensive (rather than confident), we tend to hold grudges, concretize judgments, and become cynical. Practice perseverance in the face of resistance, your own or others’, and encourage honesty in others by being honest with yourself.
Most of all, mindfulness, presence, attention, and confidence are exhibited in how well we pay attention to others. Make a practice of inquiring about what others think and how they feel before assuming you know; before drawing conclusions, dismissing the opinions of others, or even dismissing your own opinions. It’s a simple truth easily forgotten: effective leaders listen first and speak last. Then, you also demonstrate the quality of your listening, and your own self-confidence, by what you notice. Be humble and make a point to recognize the skills, strengths, successes, and good intentions of others. Build and honor these qualities among all those on your team, and problems will begin to solve themselves.
Nadine and I also worked on distinguishing between managing and leading. Managing is making sure everything gets done; leadership is deciding what gets done. Two key components of leadership are forming and expressing a vision and getting a group, whether that’s a family or a board of directors, to express and agree on a collective vision. For Nadine, becoming a more confident leader meant stepping outside of and delegating some of her management activities, allowing her to spend more time strategizing, planning, and inquiring about the visions of others.
However, vision is more than developing an action plan. It’s a way of seeing that brings each moment alive — each conversation, each meeting. In any situation, acting with a sense of vision means noticing your feelings and energy and moving toward aliveness — whatever that means. Conveying to others that sense of aliveness is how we inspire them to bring enthusiasm to all those boring but necessary everyday tasks. Conversely, we can learn to treat feeling less than fully alive as a red flag; it’s a warning that inspiration is lacking and we need to pay closer attention.
There is a seventh-century Zen story I like to tell to illustrate this. A Zen teacher and his student went to a funeral to offer their condolences. They arrived early and no one was around. The student walked up to the coffin and hit it with his hand, then turned to his teacher and asked, “Alive or dead?”
The teacher responded, “I won’t say alive. I won’t say dead.”
The teacher replied, “I won’t say. I won’t say.”
Years later, after the teacher passed away, the student went to another Zen teacher and told him this story. The teacher said, “I’m not saying alive. I’m not saying dead.”
The student asked, “Why not?”
The teacher said, “I won’t say. I won’t say.”
At these words, the student had a significant insight.
Yes, it takes a spirit of serious playfulness to engage these Zen stories, which are frequently strange and perplexing. Are we meant to take this seriously? Imagine doing this: going to a funeral, rapping on the coffin, and questioning, alive or dead? What is the student referring to? Why hit the coffin? The action and the question are both upsetting and unnerving. And naturally, the Zen teacher will not say.
Whose funeral is it, anyway? My impression is that it is our own, and the teacher and student are standing over us, wondering: Are we alive to mystery, wonder, awe? Or are we dead to it? Are we open, aware, passionate, and daring, or are we closed, wooden, stiff, afraid? Are we willing to risk rapping the coffin and questioning the obvious? Can we see past surface appearances? This work, this relationship, this moment — alive or dead?
A question I like to ask, of both myself and those around me, is “Where is the juice?” Where is the energy, the risk, the edginess in any given moment? This is not about acting wild, or adding anything, but about uncovering what’s already there, always. Have you developed habits and strategies that get in the way of feeling this spark, of seeing it in others? How do you breathe life into both important and mundane situations?
I won’t say!
We want the world to make sense. We yearn for predictability. We resist and often despise what doesn’t fit into our worldview, and we very much dislike change. I do. I sometimes joke that I’d like to form a support group called “Buddhists Against Change.” Sure, acknowledging and embracing change is a foundational principle of Buddhist philosophy, but that doesn’t make it fun or easy. As we develop our skills and experience, the last thing we want is to question our own hard-won knowledge, and yet we must. Life changes constantly. Attention training, mindfulness practice, and meditation are all methods of ensuring that not knowing informs our habitual approach to life, so that we don’t succumb to the hubris of our assumptions. These practices help keep us from the trap of overconfidence, which is often a defense against the unpredictability of life.
In a 2011 New York Times story, Daniel Kahneman describes how wanting our ideas about the world to align with reality can lead to false assumptions. This issue came up when he was doing leadership assessment as part of his national service for the Israeli Army. His situation matches that of many executives I have worked with.
After watching the candidates go through several such tests, we had to summarize our impressions of the soldiers’ leadership abilities with a grade and determine who would be eligible for officer training. . . .We were completely confident in our evaluations and believed that what we saw pointed directly to the future.
Because our impressions of how well each soldier performed were generally coherent and clear, our formal predictions were just as definite. We felt no need to question our forecasts, moderate them or equivocate. . . . As it turned out, despite our certainty about the potential of individual candidates, our forecasts were largely useless. The evidence was overwhelming.. . .Our forecasts were better than blind guesses, but not by much.
I thought that what was happening to us was remarkable. The statistical evidence of our failure should have shaken our confidence in our judgments of particular candidates, but it did not. It should also have caused us to moderate our predictions, but it did not. . . .We continued to feel and act as if each particular prediction was valid.
We are prone to think that the world is more regular and predictable than it really is, because our memory automatically and continuously maintains a story about what is going on, and because the rules of memory tend to make that story as coherent as possible and to suppress alternatives.
I coined the term “illusion of validity” because the confidence we had in judgments about individual soldiers was not affected by a statistical fact we knew to be true. The confidence you will experience in your future judgments will not be diminished by what you just read, even if you believe every word.
This is a wonderful example of how our desire for clarity can sometimes undermine our effectiveness — when we insist on order and clarity in the midst of complexity, the result is sometimes limited thinking and faulty conclusions about ourselves and the world. It’s a negative example of how real clarity and confidence are often actually reached through embracing paradox, which can sometimes be more accurate and more clear than what we ordinarily think of as clarity.
My son, Jason, was right: walking is an excellent mindfulness practice. Done with attention and deliberation, it makes a very simple and accessible way to know and unknow, to undo and redo. Of course, we take walking completely for granted. I sometimes look at humans — who are generally five to six feet tall but who stand and move on two feet less than twelve inches long — and think how walking seems to defy the laws of physics. It is how the paradox of balance and imbalance becomes motion.
Do you remember learning to walk? Probably not. It happens when we are so young we don’t have proper, adult memories. First you crawled, then little by little, you stood, wobbled, tested one step, fell, got up, and kept trying, over and over again. Gradually, with perhaps a few bruises along the way, you put it all together. You learned to really move and get somewhere, faster than you ever had before. Now walking requires no thought at all, like putting on your clothes. I remember taking an improv class in which we were asked to act out exactly how we get dressed in the morning. You get out of bed, and then what? Which leg do you lift first? What are your hands doing? Suddenly, by paying attention to it, the easiest thing became impossible: How did I get dressed? I couldn’t remember. As I attempted to act this out in class, I had to admit that I seemed to know very little about how I put my clothes on! I was surprised at how asleep and unconscious I was to this simple daily activity. My body knows what to do, but my mind doesn’t. My wife could show you better than I could, since she’s watched me countless times. Walking and getting dressed, we shift into automatic pilot. Getting out of automatic pilot is exactly what mindfulness practice is all about, so what better way to do so than to unlearn and relearn how to walk?
I recently taught a group of forty employees at a major hightech company the art and practice of walking meditation. This was in the context of an all-day mindfulness and emotional intelligence class. I demonstrated three different styles of walking meditation: In the first, a traditional slow-walking meditation, you take a half-step forward as you exhale, then shift your weight forward as you inhale. Then, you take a half-step forward with your other foot during the next exhale. With each single step, you complete a full breath. The second style is simply to walk at a slower-than-normal pace for about twenty or thirty steps, then turn around; as you do, you pay attention to your body and breath. The third style is to walk at a more normal pace and to deliberately shift your awareness: first focus on your breath and body, and then bring your awareness to your surroundings, and so on, back and forth, wherever you are. This third style can be done anywhere, and it is particularly useful during short breaks at work or in between activities.
After explaining the walking meditations, I mentioned a poem about walking by Nagarjuna, a first-century Indian philosopher. Nagarjuna wrote the poem intending to prove that walking, as we know it or think of it, does not exist. His aim was to deconstruct our assumptions, to get us off of automatic pilot, not only about walking but about any concepts about ourselves or our lives that we take for granted. We free ourselves when we dismantle our views. Where does walking happen? Nagarjuna sees even walking, like so many of our cherished assumptions and views of self, as a limiting, partial story.
Here are a few verses from the poem.
I do not walk between
The step already taken
And the one I’m yet to take,
Which both are motionless.
Is walking not the motion
Between one step and the next?
What moves between them?
Could I not move as I walk?
If I move when I walk,
There would be two motions:
One moving me and one my feet —
Two of us stroll by. . .
Walking does not start
In steps taken or to come
Or in the act itself.
Where does it begin?
After they practiced walking meditation for twenty minutes, I asked everyone in the workshop to return and share their experiences. Several people reported that, as a result of the poem and their self-aware attention, they initially felt awkward, as though they had nearly forgotten how to walk! Yet they completely threw themselves into the exercise, as though walking for the first time. I responded with great enthusiasm. Excellent! This was the idea. When we let go of our ideas, we may feel awkward at first, but this increased awareness offers us new possibilities. We walk more skillfully, shedding unconscious assumptions that limit our effectiveness. If we would balance along this particular tightrope of confident questioning, we must learn how to walk all over again, loosening and letting go of those constricting habits that presume we live on solid ground.
Here is another walking exercise that I occasionally bring into my leadership workshops (which I modified from an improv class). It is called “Walking with Confidence.” Take a plastic water bottle, or any object about that size. Put it on the floor or ground. Move about twenty or twenty-five feet away from the bottle. (Yes, you need a fairly large and open, uncluttered space to do this exercise.) Stand for a moment, looking at the bottle on the other side of the room. Regard it carefully; visualize it internally. Now close your eyes. See it, still. Now, walk confidently, energetically across the room toward the bottle, eyes closed. Then — without slowing down — reach down to where you believe the bottle is and pick it up with one hand as you pass. If you are successful and pick up the bottle, everyone in the room should be asked to applaud you wildly. If you don’t pick up the bottle, everyone in the room should be asked to applaud you wildly. In this exercise, the result does not matter. You are practicing visualizing, as well as walking with confidence. You are practicing confidence without knowing what will happen. This is the spirit and attitude you want to bring onstage if you are performing, and it is a great spirit to bring to any “performance” in your work and personal lives. However, please note: In this exercise, I always have a person standing on the far side of the bottle to act as a safety net, just in case the confident walker overshoots the target. There is much wisdom in the old expression “trust completely and always tie your camel.”
In all these ways, experiment with paying special attention to how you walk. Try walking more slowly. What does it feel like to lift one foot off the ground, then to place your foot back on the ground? Where is the transition between balance and imbalance, movement and stillness, rising and falling, inhale and exhale, confidence and doubt? Practice not knowing how to walk, and practice walking with confidence.
In this ancient Zen story, one teacher is walking along the road and comes across another Zen teacher. The first teacher asks, “Where are you going?”
The second teacher responds, “I’m going on a pilgrimage.”
The first teacher asks, “What is the purpose of pilgrimage?”
The other responds, “I don’t know.”
The first teacher concurs, “Not knowing is most intimate.”
“Not knowing is most intimate” is one of the greatest teaching stories in all of Zen. Some teachers utilize this one phrase as the core of their teaching, repeating it over and over. It is surprising and puzzling and feels true, all at the same time.
Try this yourself. Take the phrase “Not knowing is most intimate,” or just “not knowing,” and repeat it while going for a walk or during your meditation practice. At any time throughout your day, say this phrase to yourself, letting go of the words themselves. Don’t think too much about the phrase itself. Don’t work it like a Rubik’s Cube, puzzling out how to “solve” it. Simply keep chewing on it. Let the phrase merge with your breath, a reminder to bring your awareness to this moment, to open or widen your usual understandings. The phrase is like a flashlight showing us where to look, illuminating our unquestioned assumptions with “not knowing.”
What does this story mean, and how might it influence your life? Like many Zen parables, the question “Where are you going?” is not meant to be taken literally. It asks, Where are you really going? Where are any of us going? Who are you? The response about going on a pilgrimage may or may not be understood literally. Whether the original story’s teacher was on a pilgrimage is irrelevant. From a wider perspective, we are always on a pilgrimage — of birth and death, of living our lives, of deepening our practice by reducing suffering and confusion and increasing freedom and clarity, of knowing ourselves and forgetting ourselves.
The Zen teacher says, with apparent confidence, “I don’t know,” and the first teacher agrees. Thus, by its dialogue, rhythm, and nature, this story demonstrates confident not knowing. On a surface level of this story, the teachers appear ridiculous, but the point of the story is to look beneath or beyond everyday understandings, language, and ideas. What are we searching for? Why do we want what we want? What do we want to be and achieve? As when I’m asked, “How are you doing?” I often feel the real answer is either “How much time do you have?” or “I don’t know.”
In Zen, the word for “intimacy,” as used here, may be a synonym for the words awakening and enlightenment. Intimacy is a word that is both more useful and perhaps more accurate to what the story is conveying. Awakening and enlightenment imply some special state of mind or spirit, some kind of transformative mystical knowledge or experience that somehow will bring us beyond life’s day-to-day problems to a more spiritual plane. On the other hand, the word intimacy implies that we are becoming closer, less separate, deepening our relationship — with ourselves, with others, with the world. We are able to become more loving and trusting of ourselves and others.
This response “I don’t know” pokes holes in our usual understanding and assumptions about knowing and not knowing. In conventional terms, to admit not knowing implies that there is something to know and you don’t know it (and even further, that someone else does). That you don’t know implies a criticism: you must be either stupid, or inexperienced, or mistaken, or lacking education. Further, by admitting this fault of ignorance, you must now learn what you don’t know to feel good about yourself. Could valuing and embracing this dilemma of not knowing itself be the true purpose of pilgrimage — and an essential part of all transitions and an important part of life? This is difficult to admit to ourselves and to allow ourselves to fully enter and practice. Yet paradoxically, this is how we open, grow, and develop a deep and reliable trust.
The practice implied in this story is to embrace doubt and not knowing as universal, inescapable conditions, and acknowledge this freely. Instead of seeing not knowing as a fault, as representing some understanding we personally lack, we recognize that not knowing is at least one thing that we all share. None of us knows what will happen next. Since it is pervasive and universal, not knowing can be a source of connection and support in our lives.
Instead, our tendency is to show up to work or to our relationships as if we know. In a work context I sometimes refer to this attitude as putting on your game face — playing a role of confident assurance, knowing what to do and how to do it. In this way we defend our roles, our viewpoints and identities, at the expense of real confidence, real knowing. Everyday knowing is limited and can fool us. We think we know and see all, but like the board-carrying fellow, we see only part of the world. Our past experience points us in a certain direction, leads us toward a certain way of seeing ourselves and others. But who is this other person right in front of us — this student, this patient, this child, this spouse? How do we deal with this illness, this gift? Waking up, who do we see in the mirror? A child grown old? An adult who still is the child?
When I think about my most intimate relationships — with my wife, my children, my closest friends — they are alive not only because of what I love and admire about these people but also through this sense of how much I don’t know. When I am paying close attention, I don’t know what they will say or what they will do. I also don’t quite know what I will say or do myself. Together, we create something that is alive, electric, and intimate. Some deeper mystery enlivens these relationships I “know” so well.
Can you let yourself be open? Can you allow yourself to be surprised by each new experience? Are you free enough to meet experience on its own terms? Can you feel safe and confident enough not to know? When I know, I can impose my experience and my viewpoint. When I don’t know, I can learn from and be changed by each experience.
In the fall of 1989, I launched Brush Dance, which grew into a multimillion-dollar publishing company. From the outset, I was incredibly confident, and I had no idea what would happen. This dance of confidence and questioning accompanied every single important business decision I made.
I remember my initial inspiration: I wanted to make recycled paper, and products made from recycled paper, more accessible. I vividly remember the first time I gave voice to the idea. I was talking on the telephone to my good friend Steve Weintraub one evening, just after dinner. Simply describing this idea felt like a bold and vulnerable step. There was power in giving voice to the idea. Once I spoke it, I felt compelled to move forward, to take steps toward moving from an idea to creating products and connecting with customers.
But what did I know? I’d never run a business. I’d never manufactured paper. And there was no identified market for what I envisioned. As of 1989, no recycled-products industry yet existed. Availability and awareness of recycled paper were just coming onto the horizon. All I had was a passion for the mail-order business, having studied the industry in business school, and a belief that there might be a growing interest in recycled paper and environmentally friendly products.
And yet, only months later, I launched the company by sending out five thousand small catalogs (one page, folded in thirds) to a list of individuals. Brush Dance offered a collection of recycled-paper greeting cards and wrapping paper, most of which were graced with beautiful images painted and designed by my friend Mayumi Oda, an internationally known artist and a sincere Zen student whom I knew from my residency at Green Gulch Farm. I wrote a business plan describing our products, strategy, and financial projections for three years. I borrowed money from friends and family.
When orders for greeting cards and wrapping paper began to arrive in my mailbox, I thought, Amazing! People loved our products. We weren’t profitable at this level of sales (first-year sales were less than nine thousand dollars), but I was encouraged. The next year we sent out ten thousand larger catalogs (an eight-page, six-by-eight-inch catalog) to individuals. This time we added more cards and wrapping paper and some environmental games we had discovered. Again, orders flowed in. One day I answered the phone, and it was a buyer for Smith and Hawken, a garden-supply catalog and retail-store chain. They wanted to purchase approximately fifty thousand dollars’ worth of our recycled wrapping paper. “No problem,” I told the buyer. When I hung up the phone I nearly collapsed. “This is great! How will we do this? Who can produce this quantity of wrapping paper to meet their deadlines, and where will we get the funds?”
We also began to receive calls from stores wanting to sell our products, and representatives who were interested in selling our products to stores around the country began to contact us. I didn’t know anything about the wholesale business. In fact, at the time, I didn’t know what a representative was.
I also began to learn that people were purchasing our products not because they were made from recycled paper but because they liked the designs — mostly watercolor images with inspirational quotes.
Before the end of the second year of business, Brush Dance was evolving. Success was arriving faster than expected, in ways and for reasons I hadn’t anticipated. We were transitioning from a mail-order environmental-products company to a wholesale company that made inspirational products. We remained committed to making environmentally friendly products, but that wasn’t our selling point. Looking back, I see that this taught me the importance of having a clear vision while remaining extremely flexible and responsive. I moved forward with confidence, despite all the unknowns, and I embraced not knowing with a clear sense of curiosity, openness, and willingness to learn and change.
Brush Dance went on to become a leader in the cutting-edge inspirational and environmental-products industry, with worldwide distribution. Licenses included work by the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Rumi, Yogi Berra, Santana, and Jerry Garcia. Yet every stage of growth included humbling, encouraging lessons in confident doubt, flexibility, and surprise.
I remember how confident I felt when I negotiated for the license to produce a journal to accompany the bestselling book Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore. This was several years after the book had been number one on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list and had sold an enormous number of copies. I was convinced that we would sell a minimum of fifty thousand journals, perhaps many more. Fortunately, I respected not knowing and ordered what I considered an extremely cautious first print run of five thousand copies. The product was a complete failure. We sold less than three thousand copies in the first year, and we sold the remainder at a loss to a discount firm. Had I given in to my confidence, we could have lost much more. By remaining balanced, I stayed on the wire despite my stumble.
On the other hand, when we received permission to create a Thich Nhat Hanh journal, my hopes and projections were extremely limited. Yet this went on to become one of our best-selling products, year after year. Who could know?
I love business, and every successful business owner I know has stories like these. This is why I see business as such rich and fertile ground for personal and spiritual growth. How do we get stuff done in the midst of change — changing customers, changing competition, a changing environment? It takes tremendous, almost foolish confidence, along with a fool’s ability to question everything.
Most of us never received much education or training in the art of asking good questions. I didn’t. In my executive coaching practice, skillful questioning is an important competence that I find I’m constantly developing, in myself and others. This skill is equally useful, and these same questions are equally applicable, in all aspects of our professional and personal lives.
The most important ability in the art of questioning is sincere caring and curiosity. This refers back to the previous insight, “know yourself, forget yourself.” Asking questions that make a difference requires a level of presence. We deliberately, consciously put our own views aside and openly inquire and explore what others think and know. No amount of technique can take the place of sincerity and openness. Thus, it matters less how you phrase things than how you ask questions.
Then again, the types of questions you ask make a difference. Here are four different types of inquiry for others, and one for yourself. Become familiar with them, and practice using them. They are tools for understanding.
Paraphrasing is simply restating what you have heard, being clear that you have gotten the key points of what has been said. This is similar to the practice of “looping,” which I describe in Less: you repeat or loop back what you have heard someone say. As in, “If I understand you correctly, what I think you are saying is. . .”
Check to see if your perception is accurate. Rather than telling people what you know, ask if they agree with what you perceive. “It looked to me as if you were uncomfortable at the meeting. Was my perception accurate?”
When you notice that you have an emotional reaction to something someone says, you momentarily set aside this reaction and feeling, the best that you can. You are not suppressing it; you notice it and choose not to react in that moment. Rather than getting caught up in your perspective, you remain curious about the other’s thoughts and feelings.
As an example, it may appear to you that someone is not being honest or forthright about an issue. For some reason, he or she seems to be hiding something, perhaps true intentions or feelings. In yourself, you notice your own frustrations, hurt, and judgment arise over this. You put these aside for now and inquire, “I’d like to clarify something. I thought I heard you say x, and I’m curious as to why you said that.” If you can sincerely put aside your own judgments and show genuine curiosity about the other, you can often create a safe environment for honesty.
Open-ended questions are those free of preconceptions and bias. These are usually clear and direct questions with the intention of increasing understanding, both your understanding and that of the person you are speaking with. For example, “What happened during your meeting? What did you learn from doing that presentation? How was your conversation with Bob?”
Learning to ask yourself questions and to work with questions can be a way to build self-confidence. Each of the five truths presented in this book can be formulated as a question for self-reflection. For example, What does “know yourself” mean to you, and how might you work with it during your day? What does “forget yourself” mean to you, and how might you work with it?
Some questions I often suggest that people work with in quiet spaces during the day are: What am I feeling? What is this life? What do I want? What is important to me? Am I doing anything extra?
Finally, here are two questions that are powerful in a work context but apply to any area of your life. The first is directed at yourself: “What does success look like — in my work, relationships, and other interests?” The second you pose to others: “What can I do to be more effective in my work, as part of our team, community, or family?” The more personal version of this question, which Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh suggests for partners, children, and family members, is, “Please tell me, how can I love you better?”
Recently, I was preparing to co-lead an emotional intelligence workshop for new employees at a major Silicon Valley tech company. My co-leader was Karen, a company human resources and leadership employee. We had never taught together before. As we were practicing, I could see that Karen seemed quite nervous and awkward. I asked her what was happening. She shared with me that she was terrified and feeling a tremendous lack of self-confidence. She often experienced tremendous anxiety speaking in front of groups, and here she was, not only speaking in front of a group, but teaching emotional intelligence. She wondered, fearfully, if a part of her was a charlatan. She wasn’t sure she could go through with the training.
I looked at her and said, “We are doing this together. You are smart and an excellent trainer. I feel nervous, too, when I’m leading these workshops. I often fear they will not be successful or people will be disappointed because I haven’t delivered on all their expectations. It is almost unavoidable to not have these fears beforehand. But since you will be teaching with me, I’m much more relaxed than if I were doing it alone. I know that you have my back. And you can relax because I’m co-leading with you. I have your back. If you forget something, I will jump in. I may not be the greatest trainer myself, but I’m skilled at making you look good. So relax. Let’s have fun, enjoy ourselves, and teach important skills and materials. We are in this together.”
In the middle of the workshop we began receiving great questions from the participants. They were clearly learning and engaged. While we were making the transition from Karen’s presenting to my presenting, she and I made eye contact, smiled, remembered to each take a few deep breaths, and we relaxed and enjoyed our co-leading.
Every time I lead a workshop, it’s a valuable opportunity to practice confidence and questioning in the midst of a challenging and meaningful situation. I’ve been in other situations where the outcome was not as pretty as this one. And yet, whatever the outcome, I’m nearly always surprised: what succeeds and what fails, what other people bring to the process and expect of me, rarely matches what I have anticipated.
This openness, this curious questioning of expectations and experience, is difficult to cultivate and quite different from the self-doubts Karen voiced, which everyone experiences. Having an inner critic seems to be a human condition, and rather than opening us to surprise and learning, it shuts us down. As opposed to the imbalance of overconfidence, this is questioning taken too far. Caution in unfamiliar circumstances is one thing, as is performance anxiety; fight-or-flight fears serve a positive role of keeping us out of immediate, life-threatening danger. Karen was not experiencing these things. She was caught up in a negative, critical view of herself, and for many of us, these negative views are reflexive limiting habits, a constant running stream of negative energy that limits and constricts presence, effectiveness, and joy. We are not taking an open-ended, questioning approach to life; we are questioning ourselves in ways that directly undermine our confidence right then.
It’s strange. I’ve noticed in my own life how easily I tell the story of failure — all the things I’ve wanted to accomplish that I have not, listing all my weaknesses and limitations, cataloging my regrets. This seems to come more naturally than the opposite, though there’s no reason I can’t just as easily tell stories of great success and satisfaction — all that I have accomplished in my family, relationships, and work. When it’s time for you to perform, which type of stories run through your mind?
Karen experienced what I call the impostor syndrome. People suffer this when they have not internalized their accomplishments, and they carry fear about being discovered as not deserving of their role or position. Secretly, they believe they are frauds. This condition flares up particularly in those moments when others turn to us for help and for the benefits of our experience.
In my coaching practice, and in my personal experience, it appears that most, if not all, people experience these feelings in some form; few are immune. Paradoxically, evidence suggests that this syndrome bears an inverse relationship to actual accomplishment. The more successful many people in business become, the more they harbor these feelings of being found out as impostors. It’s as if they are hiding their “true self” behind a mask of effectiveness, power, and expertise, and it’s only a matter of time before they are discovered as charlatans.
How do you escape this pain, this faulty questioning? The antidote isn’t to ignore it, to keep acting a confidence you don’t feel. Instead, become aware of it and recognize it as a limiting story you are telling yourself, a story of failure. Label this story, and know that there is another possibility called success, and more possibilities with names you don’t know yet. Stories are just stories; they change and can be revised. Limiting stories of pain and failure can become stories of possibility — of learning and success and achievement. Which will you embody? What will happen? Wait, watch, listen, and find out. Don’t dictate the habitual story you’ve rehearsed; be open to what comes.
In other words, to find balance when the impostor syndrome strikes, don’t take your story too seriously or get too attached to it. Don’t ignore this story; just put it aside. Focus instead on your body and breath. Practice attention training, breathe deeply and steadily, and bring your awareness into the present moment and what is actually happening. Then, shift your concerns from yourself and your role to your audience and their needs. What can you do to help them? Ask if you’re unsure. Then focus on the task at hand, rather than your qualifications or skills, and simply do your best. Finally, don’t be afraid to ask for help. This is ultimately what saved the day for Karen and me. Let others see that you’re nervous, imperfect, and don’t have all the answers. We can get trapped when we think we need to appear like the expert — perfect, without any doubts or questions.
One of my favorite Dalai Lama stories concerns an address he gave to an audience of more than three thousand people in Washington, DC. The Dalai Lama walked onto the stage, sat down, and settled himself in his chair. Instead of speaking, however, he began looking to his assistants, first to his right and then to his left. They all leapt from their chairs and ran off the stage. The Dalai Lama waited, looked around, sat silently. Then one of his assistants returned, stood in front of His Holiness, and slowly handed something to him. The Dalai Lama held up his eyeglasses for all to notice, looked at the audience, and said, “Anxiety.”
In front of thousands of people, the Dalai Lama couldn’t find his glasses, and this caused him to experience anxiety. He didn’t panic, but he needed his glasses in order to read his notes. So he asked for and received the help he needed. Should he have pretended he didn’t care, that he was above anxiety? He is the Dalai Lama, after all. No, instead, by sharing his anxiety with the audience, he used the situation to demonstrate a lesson in the universality of doubt, forgetfulness, and confident vulnerability.