I once had an executive say this exact thing to me - "Culture just happens as we add people." And I had the internal reaction depicted in this cartoon. Until we are intentional about our approaches to culture, we won't get the organisational outcomes that we want - because *how* we do things is the context for *what* we do.
This is one of my favourite quotes by Maya Angelou, whose birth day it was yesterday. We all need courage to look at and come to terms with our own history, our own woundedness, if we are to stop living from it. It takes a lot of intentionality to face into ourselves for the purpose of healing, but it is *so* worth it.
Perspective is a precious, slippery thing to hold onto. While we are not our jobs, they can take up so much space in our sense of identity, and, sometimes, in our sense of self-worth. Bertrand Russell is one of my favourite philosophers, and I love this quote of his. If your work is starting to feel “terribly important” today, do the counter-intuitive thing - stop. Breathe. Take off your shoes, bury your feet in the grass, cuddle something furry and friendly, and remember what really matters in the long term.
You know how sometimes you read things and get hit with how true, simple and profound it is, all at once? This is one of those quotes for me. I'm always checking in with how I'm seeing the world, for what it tells me about myself. One of the dominant narratives I've had to combat is my deep-down belief that the universe is not benevolent and is not going to take care of me. Whether or not that belief is 'true' or 'not true', what really matters is whether my beliefs are helpful or not helpful... Will they get me to where I want to go? The belief that life is just waiting to destroy me isn't a helpful one for me to hold, so there's a daily 'catching myself' when that one comes up, and a surrendering it. What are you seeing as true, but which is really just a reflection of you?
You don’t have integrity simply because it is plastered on the wall of your organisation or written across your stationary as a key value of the company. Integrity is a state of being, not a value. It’s where our inner and outer selves are in alignment: when what we say, and what we do, match up.
