One of my favorite movies, The Shawshank Redemption, is a story about a man, Andy, being wrongly accused of murdering and was given two life sentences. Yet, he didn’t resign to his fate and managed to change his destiny through ingenuity.
Inside this inspiring story is an anecdote about another elderly prisoner named Brooks who had spent 50 years in prison. Before his release, he was fearful of facing the unknown world outside and thought about committing another crime to earn his privilege to stay inside of his “comfort zone”.
When he finally stepped outside of the Shawshank prison and began self-managing an independent life in the real world, he couldn’t cope. After being institutionalized for years, following rules and conforming to authorities, the natural way of living felt anything but natural.
Andy and Brooks’ stories beautifully illustrated the two types of prisons exist – visible (physical) and invisible (mental and emotional). Andy was physically incarcerated but enjoyed mental freedom, while Brooks was out of the Shawshank prison yet carried the invisible prison with him.
Brooks’ challenge is what many of us often face when transitioning from hierarchy to self-management, from corporate jobs to entrepreneurship, and from a “me too” copy of “successful” people to a “one of its kind” extraordinaire that all of us are meant to become, by design of nature.
These challenges almost always come from mental and emotional barriers within us, regardless of the circumstance. Each of us generates, on average, 60.000 thoughts a day. When we are unconscious of our thoughts from moment to moment, we often swim in a sea of unproductive thoughts in the form of limiting beliefs, criticism, and internalized social noise. These thoughts create negative emotions that prevent us from taking the right actions.
There is another type of emotions NOT generated by thought at the moment but experiences or memories from the past, such as fear (e.g. water, because of swimming accident) or anger towards certain people or situations. Accumulated over time, such memories or negative emotions get stored like toxins in our bodies, metaphorically and literally, and turn into diseases. With the except of injuries (internal and external), genetic problems or aging, most of our physical diseases are caused by negative emotions.
Whether the negative emotions are generated in the moment or from past memories, they distract us from thinking clearly and making the right decisions. The more challenging the situations we are in, the more such negative emotions surface and the higher the intensity. Without these invisible barriers, we can effortlessly accomplish anything we want.
Leadership or personal development, contrary to popular beliefs, first and foremost is NOT about doing more with new skills and know-how (addition). It is about letting go what no longer serves us (reduction) in order to shift perspectives and to clear the path to inner resources. So we can access the creativity and the wisdom already within us, which is enough to last us many lifetimes.
Human resource management in conventional organizations often misses the point. This is why a Teal organization that honors the whole person and takes care of people’s emotional needs is in a position to unleash individual’s potential, subsequently, the organization’s potential.
