Inspirational Presence. Jeff Evans

she has to commit her energy, thoughts, and efforts to the meeting process. It is only through actively recognizing her previous commitment to bad meetings that she can shift her own power to an aligned commitment and begin releasing her personal power.

      At the most basic level, you can begin by acknowledging that you are absolutely committed to everything in your life, exactly as it is right now. The question is, do you want to be? If you are not getting what you want in life and are, instead, getting things you don’t want, you must look at how your are committing yourself—through your energy, thoughts, words, and actions—to creating your life precisely as it is. Some people find this daunting or even overwhelming, but the great positive is that if you believe this, it absolutely follows that you can create something else, simply by committing to that new set of ideals and releasing the conflicting commitments.

      THE POWER OF SAYING YES

      We need to send very clear messages to ourselves and to the universe surrounding us as to what we really want and deserve. It is a clear and simple act to say yes to these things in life. This means getting very clear about what yes truly means. While we may have the moment in life where we received the outcome we most desired and we say a resounding yes, there is also the moment in life when we get something that we truly do not want. We simply accept it as part of the world. That, too, is saying yes to a condition. Remember, our subconscious really cannot tell the difference. Whatever we say yes to in life, we get more of it. Living in an abusive relationship is saying yes to that pattern in your life. Living with a job that you do not like enough is saying yes to those conditions and emotions.

      Part of the art of leadership is beginning to understand the things to which you are saying yes and how you are saying it. Obviously, we first need to clarify those things that we most want and desire; we need to begin to find examples of where they exist in our world and clearly and firmly affirm them in powerful yes messages.

      THE POWER OF SAYING NO

      Often, when people begin describing their intentions, they talk a lot about what they don’t want and how they are going to get rid of it. That is very important and is, in fact, a prerequisite to be able to attain anything. As we know from studying the systems theory of the interaction of any organism in its environment, there are always things that the organism wants (goals) and things that the organism wants to avoid (noxiants). People are the same way. We want to get as much of the good stuff in life as we can while avoiding as much of the bad stuff (however we each define those).

      Nonetheless, it is not very powerful to write a goal statement from a place of avoidance, as in “I don’t want to overreact,” or “I don’t want to overeat,” or “I don’t want to lose money in the stock market,” or “I don’t want to scare my employees.” This actually focuses your attention on the negative condition and increases the likelihood that you will get more of it. We talk about this, in simple terms, as writing a goal in toward language rather than away from.

      At a deeper level, though, we humans have a continuous energetic exchange with the universe, in which we are constantly training our subconscious as to what we really want in life. The Law of Attraction does not understand away from, only toward. As with all laws, there is no judgment or evaluation attached to the objects of our attention. In fact, the entire concept of goals and noxiants is a human concept, outside of what exists in nature. The Law of Attraction is much simpler than that. Anything that occupies our mental energy is expanded and brought into our life in greater quantities.

      With that, it becomes vitally important that we learn to say no to the things that do not fit our particular vision of how we want to exist in this life. A good friend of mine once said, “Until I hear and understand your no, your yes means nothing.” Take that to an energetic level and begin to understand that you are constantly telling your subconscious where to focus energy. By saying no to the things in life that do not fit your path, you allow extra mindshare to dedicate to your heartfelt yes.

      By saying no to what does not fit, you do yourself—and everyone else—a great service. If something in your life does not work, begin saying no to it. At the same time, find those parts of your life that most fit your highest purpose and align with your path, and practice actively saying yes to those things. The power of no is in defining boundaries. This, in turn, provides clarity and power to every yes that follows.

      THE POWER OF SAYING AND

      Prioritize. Make tough choices. Be selective. These are some things that leaders often are called upon to do. This approach, however, can create a tendency at times for leaders to get locked into a pattern of exclusion. When most people think of priorities, they think of this or that. They think about which choice they will make, and as a result, what will go undone. Prioritization is often associated with making sacrifices and only being able to do some of the really good things we would like to do.

      While this is a great practice and requires the skill of discernment, it can become, like anything else, an overused approach to leadership. Real leadership always considers how thoughts engage other people and how we create a consciousness for success among groups of people.

      The other way to think of these things is in an “and” world. How do I create more market share and drive down costs? This is at one level, but I think that all of us need to consider some far more important and questions.

      I once worked with the CEO of an environmental science group. He made this statement: “We would like to be able to make all the power we want and have healthy fish populations.” That really stuck with me. I think about that often. How do we have plenty of energy and a clean planet for future generations? How do we create solid, healthy communities and create global awareness? How do we create lives that enjoy the abundance of this earth and preserve it for future generations?

      Each of us, in all of our individual endeavors, needs to consider the important ands of our businesses. As our global connectivity increases, there is no more hiding in one corner of the world. We are an interconnected globe, and we all need to learn to act as such. The ability to understand, identify, and relate to multiple stakeholder groups and maintain these multiple perspectives is one of the most important ands we can have for our world.

      THE POWER OF EMPATHY

      Empathy is the basic capacity of humans to relate to others through the emotional information we sense by tuning into others’ experiences. The absence of empathy creates the psychopath. Empathy guides us and allows us to join into groups with some feeling of safety or to steer away from situations that seem unsafe. It provides us with the opportunity for deep personal connections. It creates emotional bonds in groups. Expanded empathy leads to heightened intuition. Empathy is an absolute requirement for effective leadership.

      Empathy is a complex set of behaviors and processes that we learn over time. To understand it, we must realize that it comes into play through an interaction between the frontal lobes of our brain and our amygdula, the most primitive part of our brain, where our fight-or-flight responses live. When we are born, our amygdula is nearly fully developed, whereas it takes our frontal lobes until we are in our twenties to develop fully. During that time, we learn about what our experiences mean and determine the useful information for us in life. Through these interactions, we create a set of beliefs that forms the basis for internal conversations between the frontal lobes and the amygdula about what actually occurs around us.

      Our amygdula is the first part of our brain to perceive information from our feelings about others. We look at another person, and our feelings respond first. The amygdula is the fastest processor in the brain, although it takes in less information than other areas. It is high speed and low resolution. The amygdula processes simultaneously with the frontal lobe, which is low speed and high resolution. Because of the dynamic between the two parts of our brain, most events that we encounter that have an