So 2015 is underway…

and I’d like to connect with you all and wish you a prosperous New Year, encouraging you to embark on your endeavor(s), whatever they maybe, with a new vigor and trusting energy.
I know, I spend a lot of time each year saying there is no ‘I’ in team and of course that is true. Yet, I’ve spent a lot of time in the last year reflecting on what makes us authentic as people in every context and of course it is the ‘I’ turning up and performing at our best in the moment. There is an IT acronym ‘WYSIWYG’  – What You See Is What You Get, this resonates for me and makes me wonder what small adjustments I can make to perform at my best throughout 2015?…
Without a shadow of doubt, my most challenging read in 2014 was by Dr Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. Brené writes that “‘being’ rather than ‘knowing’ requires showing up and letting ourselves be seen. It requires us to dare greatly, to be vulnerable‘. To be vulnerable one needs the courage to surface and voice vulnerability’. Brown goes on to talk about wholehearted living cultivating vulnerability. She suggests there are many tenets to wholeheartedness, but at its very core is vulnerability and worthiness, facing uncertainty, exposure, and emotional risks, and knowing that “I am enough”.  Hence WYSIWYG!
Brown suggests ten ways wholeheartedness may be achieved. I wonder how often any of us reflect this deeply?
1. Authenticity: Letting go of what people think
2. Self-Compassion: Letting go of perfectionism
3. A resilient spirit: Letting go of numbing and powerlessness
4. Gratitude and joy: Letting go of scarcity and fear of the dark
5. Intuition and trusting faith: Letting go of the need for certainty
6. Creativity: Letting go of comparison
7. Play and rest: Letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self worth
8. Calm and stillness: Letting go of anxiety as a life style
9. Meaningful work: Letting go of self doubt and supposed to
10 Laughter, song and dance: Letting go of being cool and always in control
I’d love to hear what vulnerability shows up for you and what you might dare to let go of in 2015?
You’ll notice I’ve upheld my tradition of not sending Christmas cards in the run up to Christmas, instead I’ve made a charitable donation to Spinal Research. These people show amazing courage and vulnerability on a daily basis by simply doing some of the many things we take for granted. As ever, I hope you support my judgement in this choice.
I’m really looking forward to connecting with you during 2015.
All the very best.
Lesley