Shining a light on shadow beliefs
The thoughts that really run our lives are often hidden from the conscious mind
The other morning I was making coffee and mulling over a bunch of work issues in my head. As I lit the burner under a tightly packed moka pot and poured soy milk into the steamer, I mentally ran through a parade of scenarios, weighing the cost and benefit of this or that approach. Should we jump into this thing now, or wait and see how this other thing goes? Which person should we bring in to help, and how can we test them in advance to be sure they’re the best fit? If things go sideways, what’s the cost of switching to Plan B sooner versus later? Or should Plan B be our Plan A?
Running a business always requires near-constant mental machinations, toggling between what now and what next, but on this occasion I noticed that there was something else happening. In addition to the hive of activity in my head, I also felt a pit in my stomach.
In the past I probably wouldn’t have paid much attention to it, or considered this embodied sensation as a separate thing from the calculations and projections swarming my mind. This is just how stress feels. But is that true? Or is something else happening here?
Because I’ve been training in Wayfinder life coaching techniques, I’ve learned to get curious about the subtle elements of my experience, so I decided to do some gentle inquiry into the heavy, queasy feeling in my belly. What is it stemming from? What is its purpose, and what does it need?
I discovered something a bit surprising. The pit in my stomach was not about the thoughts in my conscious mind, but a reaction to another thought which was hiding beneath the surface of my awareness. This thought was: I am a bad CEO. These issues are proof that I am failing as a leader, and they wouldn’t be happening if I was more skillful, savvier, and smarter. And underneath that: I’m in over my head and I don’t deserve to have this role.
As soon as I identified this, I felt a surge of relief and was able to question that thought directly. Is it true that “good leaders” don’t experience challenges in their organizations? Of course not. Every human activity, especially a complex one involving lots of people, will include setbacks and unexpected bumps in the road. So the existence of issues in my business says nothing about my ability to handle them skillfully. And it certainly doesn’t mean I’m not worthy of the role I’ve chosen for myself.
Now that I could see what was happening more clearly, it felt easy and natural to show myself some loving compassion. I soothed and validated the part of myself that’s anxious to perform well. I reminded myself that leadership is inherently challenging work, and that I’ve chosen this life because I like challenging work! That I’m doing the best I can, and that I’m mostly doing pretty well. The truth is, I deal with things thoughtfully as they come up, which is exactly what a good leader does. And “good” does not mean perfect. Of course I’ll make missteps along the way; that’s normal too. I am constantly learning and growing. And as I grow and learn, new (bigger!) challenges are bound to arise. All of that is par for the course.
I also noted that I am more likely to make mistakes if I’m reacting to life from an unexamined wound of unworthiness and fear. On the flip side, I’m more likely to make wise decisions and handle conversations with grace, curiosity, and integrity if I am grounded in my values and my inherent worth as a human being, independent of evaluations of my performance. “This is hard and I’m dealing with it” prompts a very different feeling than “This is hard and that must mean I’m an idiot.”
I’m calling this unspoken belief (that my challenges are a comment on my character) a “shadow thought” because it was hiding in the dark of my subconscious. Although I wasn’t consciously thinking this thought, my body certainly was “thinking” and reacting to it, and if left unchecked it could shape my behavior in counterproductive ways, along with just making me miserable. By shining the light of awareness and compassion on it, I was able to separate it from the actual, real-world concerns I was dealing with.
My challenges haven’t magically disappeared. There are risks to weigh and decisions to be made, but it’s so much easier to manage all of it when it’s not freighted with subliminal shame. And if the day comes when I need to replace myself in my role with someone with a different skill set, I can make that decision from a place of clean and clear awareness.
Now I’m on the lookout for other shadow thoughts that might be lurking in the dark. I wonder: Where else in my life am I reacting to shadow thoughts instead of simply responding to the demands of the day? This is work worth doing. I want to be as effective as possible, and I also want to enjoy my journey through life.
Does this resonate with you? I’m curious to know where you are carrying the added burden of a shadow thought, and how that might be coloring your assessments of how “well” you’re doing in your work, in your relationships, or in how you navigate the world.
How would it feel to separate those two things out; your thoughts about the experiences in front of you, and the shadow thoughts that spin lies around those experiences? How can you show yourself more compassion, more grace — not to lower the bar for what you expect of yourself, but to free up stuck energy so that you can perform better while also feeling better?
Accountability is a virtue, but when we try to hold ourselves accountable to unexamined untruths, it will throw us off course and weigh us down emotionally. Doing hard things doesn’t have to mean giving ourselves a hard time.
xo