Which side of the court you are playing at ?

To be acknowledged by some, and liked by most, is sometimes the very thing that ends up holding us back, when it comes to exercising our true self in the world.

In the first half of my life i have played a lot on the opposing teams home court. Not a good place to be if you want to win in your own life. But why is it that it can be so challenging to stand up for one self in the first place ?

We have a deep and inherited need for belonging. 

It is passed down through our gene pool. Throughout evolution we have been dependent on others to enhance our own chances of survival.

Living alone was not a good survival strategy in the age of the sabre tooth lions. And even though it may have been 100.000 years ago, it still holds true to this day. We are social animals. We want to feel we are part of something. That is part of why we have mirror neurons that helps us regulate our facial and physiological responses to the person we are communicating with. To make sure they don´t misinterpret our intentions. To make sure our response is regulated accordingly. To prevent escalations and hostile encounters. 

So how do we balance the need for acceptance, and the need for acting on behalf of our core values and purpose ? Can the need for acceptance from others and the fear of disagreement and exclusion coexist ? That question perplexed me.

There is a certain discomfort in disagreement. 

If we try too hard to please and satisfy other people, we will have a harder time prioritising our own rights and pursue purposeful alignment. What I found was eventually that the discomfort of disagreement was temporary, but the discomfort of not standing up for my values and beliefs was eternal. That holding my own in encounters could mean 5 minutes of uncomfortable emotional responses, but that it would never last forever.

The next natural step would then be to move it from the internal emotional sphere, and put it in a context of the external environment. To make anything useful we must know the applications. The when, what, and how's.

❓ How do we engage in collaborations and constructions that require compromises. 

❓How do we work with many different stakeholders across diverse teams, and with different backgrounds and values, and still hold our own.

❓How do we know what we are ok with and what we are not. 

❓How do we respond without sacrificing our own purpose and values. 

First and foremost we need references. 

Or in other words, we need to know what are the most important things for us. What are we willing to compromise on, and what is so closely tied to our core values, that we simply wont be able to slack on them. If we unconsciously act without the conscious awareness, it becomes difficult to know how to best respond in alignment with our needs, values, beliefs, and faith.

The ability to know which side of the court we are playing at, are highly dependent on our self awareness skills. Somatic sensory signalling is the foundation from which our awareness will pick up cues.

It takes a balanced nervous system to get clear and precise informations in order to get a precise and predicable output. 

Needless to say, but im saying it anyway, the more stressed out we are, and the less we are aware of it, the more dificult it becomes to sense ourselves. We will act more on instinct and rutines, and less with a full somatic experience. Sometimes with fear of what could happen, as our primary driver for making decisions. We will rely more on past experiences and sympathetic survival skills.

Practice somatic intelligence.

• The better we are at sensing ourselves, the easier it becomes to get access to the informations. 

• If you are not good at feeling if you are hungry, or you don´t know if you are tired or not, its going to be a steeper learning curve.

• We can use different parasympathetic activities, such as breathing, meditation, mindfulness rutines, movement practices etc, to enhance our sensory skills.

Have a conversation with your fear.

• First step is to be aware. Second is to act.

• But it is perfectly ok not to act on everything you sense to begin with. In fact, it can be a good strategy to allow yourself not to act on everything. It will make it less dangerous for your brains resistance to throw yourself into the unknown. 

• Acknowledge that the feeling is present. Have a dialog with the fear of acting. 

• Start small. Or start with less challenging scenarios. Get your wins in this department first, before applying your skills to the board of directors meeting.

Bring the game back to your own court.

We can´t expect other people to act in a certain way to fit in with our view of the world. It is simply just not their responsibility. If we want the world to be in a certain way, and we want the people around us to act in a certain way. We must be prepared to be disappointed. 

Everybody have their own view of the world too. Can we demand that they see it exactly like we do ? Can we expect that they should bend to fit in our mold ?

Communicating our intentions clearly and without attachment to the way people respond is a start. If they disagree ? Fine. They probably will.

Remember. The discomfort will only last for a very short time. But the alternative is far worse. Learn to be ok with disagreement. Practice self awareness. And remember, that what is most important to you, is where you are playing at.