What sparks your imagination?

What shuts down your capacity to imagine?

Where does your mind go when the stakes are high, and the pressure feels too great? Do you find yourself mentally preparing for the worst possible outcomes, as if you were rehearsing a play? Do you shut down or numb out to manage your fears and anxieties?

Our brains naturally seek comfort in the known or fill in the unknown with potential disasters. However, it takes conscious effort and practice to build the capacity to imagine positive outcomes when things feel bleak.

But we can counter overwhelm and despair by connecting with imaginative individuals who embody hope, curiosity, and possibility grounded in vision and action.

These visionary leaders remind us that something different is possible and that we can choose to take deliberate action to change the prevailing tides.

In this new series of Unburdened Leader conversations, I’ll be in dialogue with leaders who urge us to envision a future that’s not just a distant dream, but a reality we can actively shape today.

Over the next few months, you will hear conversations that invite you to take meaningful action here and now that does not deplete but heals and energizes.

These visionary conversations will help you connect with your desire to see a way through the noise and do something different.

 

 

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Why this moment feels so vital to share conversations with leaders imagining–and building–a more moral and just world
• A taste of upcoming topics of conversation, from invisible disabilities to reframing resilience as a collective undertaking
• Essential steps for building and protecting your capacity to hope and imagine in trying times

 

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email.

 

Resources:

• EP 02: How Self-Leadership Saves You From The Relentless Drive To Succeed with Dr. Richard Schwartz
• EP 88: Right-Use-of-Power: Navigating Leadership Dynamics with Dr. Cedar Barstow

 

Transcript:

Rebecca Ching: What sparks your imagination? And what shuts down your capacity to imagine? And where does your mind go when the stakes are high and the pressures feel so great? Do you dress rehearse worst-case scenarios or become hyper focused on how to prepare for when bad things happen? Do you shut down, “I’m out,” check out to manage your anxieties and fears of the unknown?

I mean, if that’s the case, I’m not surprised because our brains love the known and feel the unknown with the worst-case scenario. It’s a default for just about all of us and filling in that unknown with those worst-possible options. So it takes effort and a lot of practice to build up the capacity to imagine the possibility of positive outcomes, especially when things feel bleak or hopeless or so unknown.

The burdens we carry from our past greatly impact our capacity to hope and work towards desired possibilities. But one of the many ways that we can counter that is when we connect with individuals with what I see as generative imaginations who embody hope, curiosity, and possibility that’s grounded in actions and visions, so we therefore counter our defaults to fear, scarcity, overwhelm, and despair.

[Inspirational Intro Music]

I’m Rebecca Ching, and you’re listening to The Unburdened Leader, the show that goes deep with humans who navigate life’s challenges and lead in their own ways. Our goal is to learn how they address the burdens they carry, how they learn from them and become better and more impactful leaders of themselves and others.

[Inspirational Intro Music]

2:04

Hello, hello, dear listener! I want to introduce you to a special series that I’m gonna be doing here on the pod and give you a little context and some behind-the-scenes of my thought process as I considered who and what to share with you all this fall on The Unburdened Leader.

Like many of you, I feel the world’s weight, seriousness, and volatility right now. Saying it’s a lot feels like an understatement. Things are changing and happening too fast for us to process, and you’ve got skills, and still it’s pushing the edges. So we tap out, numb out, or just push on through and keep going until we run out of steam and collapse. And I understand all these options, and I also know many of you deeply desire more than just getting through the most recent crisis or demand on your desk or in your inbox. Yes, this time calls us to stretch, for sure, and I know you’ve been stretching for a long, long time.

So I really feel like this time calls us to dream, hope, and wonder instead of just getting through or preparing for the worst, and I know full well that cynicism will say this is childish, you know? “Don’t think about your feelings. Just get stuff done!” But I want to be around people who are imagining possibilities these days. I want to read and listen to the words of someone who’s grounded in reality while imagining a different way of leading and living.

So there’s this phrase that the founder of Internal Family Systems, Dick Schwartz, who’s also a friend of The Unburdened Leader podcast uses when he calls those who practice IFS. He calls us hope merchants as we offer parts within our own system or those we work with, the possibility of a different way of doing life and seeing the world around them.

4:08

So I know this term isn’t perfect, but I appreciate the sentiment that when we show up and offer curiosity, compassion, connection, clarity, all these qualities that Dick Schwartz teaches that embody Self-leadership, that we can lend those qualities to those around us when they’re struggling to find themselves. Not in a Pollyanna kind of way but as a presence that can help move someone from despair to hopelessness.

And so, when I was thinking about this series, I thought about these folks that I’ve been talking with in a little different way, kind of riffing off hope merchant and seeing these folks as merchants of imagination, right, merchants of possibility. But again, not in a Pollyanna or Camp High kind of manipulative or coercive or selling-something kind of way, but something generative and a contagion for how we feel internally while increasing our capacity to imagine a better world and a plan for it through hard work, intentional practices, a lot of grace and compassion, a lot of rest, and challenging so much of what we’ve been taught about how to get through hard things.

But merchants of imagination didn’t quite cut it. These folks aren’t trading or selling anything to us. Instead I really see these leaders as visionaries who call us to imagine a better and different future that does not feel distant or unattainable but something we can participate in today. For me, and I hope for you, this fuels hope. I believe it supports mental wellbeing, it diffuses polarizations and cultivates connections outside of echo chambers and intellectual bunkers.

I often see the word “visionary” applied to people in ways that maybe feel a little gross at times or hyperbolic, but these visionary conversations do the opposite of fueling doom and gloom and fear and panic, which really never lead to anything generative and take us out of our place of clarity. And so, even when you feel so incredibly exhausted and depleted, I appreciate folks who call us to risk imagining something different.

6:21

So, over the next few months, you’ll hear conversions that remind you, maybe call you into grounded possibility of imagining something different, even when it feels bleak, and remind you to take meaningful action now that does not deplete but heals and energizes. And I do think this is possible and in ways that we can even move through immense pain and discomfort.

I hope these Unburdened Leader visionary conversations help you connect with your desire to do something different right now and see even a little bit of a way through when it’s really, really, noisy. The challenge right now calls us to feel through our fears and vulnerabilities so we can imagine and then choose deliberate actions to go in a different direction.

I’ve found myself these days dancing in and out of going down rabbit holes, analyzing, feeling like I’m getting tossed around like I do by the waves at the beach. And I’m realizing that parts of me have been trying to manage and keep a lot of my emotion at bay, almost not looking at things, instead of metabolizing it, which in turn then builds up a lot of pressure. And that distancing, stuffing, or exiling my emotions just keeps me in my head, and when I keep trying to just think something through, that can actually make me feel more anxious and more overwhelmed and more disconnected.

So, sure, I feel some whiplash from checking in with what I’m feeling and then returning to what is happening around me with my family, community, country, and the world. And I see this with those I work with too and I see how quickly we can move to hopelessness, feeling powerless, often when we try to control too much around us, or at minimum, just freaking try to stay afloat.

8:06

Like so many of you, we’re in this human experience caring deeply about what’s happening in our country, our world, and most importantly with each other.

So when I wrapped 2023, I felt this strong pull to connect intentionally with people, not just those I work with and have the honor to support, but also those in my community, my neighbors, colleagues, acquaintances, folks I’ve desired more time to get to know better and build trust with them, build community with those little day-to-day reps and rhythms of showing up and inviting people to our home regularly or just to connect regularly. And so, my husband and I, we launched Social Saturdays this summer at our home, which has been deeply anchoring. And I also started to look at my exhaustion and the exhaustion of those I work with and see how this frenetic dance between hope and despair leads, again, to that feeling of powerlessness and exhaustion and overwhelm as we disconnect from what previous Unburdened Leader guest and founder of The Right Use of Power Methodology, Cedar Barstow, what she talks about, our own personal power, and how there’s so much invested in us forgetting about or delegating our personal power to those with more role power or status power.

When we disconnect from our personal power and agency, our systems quickly tip into, again, powerlessness, hopelessness, and despair. So we need to be in relationship with these feelings when they come knocking, especially because they show up where grief is present, and gosh, there’s been so much grief and particularly ambiguous grief, this deep sense of loss and sadness without a death but a loss of so much of what is important to us on top of grief and loss of loved ones. It’s been a lot.

10:02

And then I begin to think about conversations I want to share with you this season and the connection with those who claim their personal power and use it to generate imagination and possibility grounded in courage and confidence and how they connect with others through their words and actions. I really don’t want to contribute to cliques and fear and scarcity with this podcast. I want to connect you with people grappling with the enormity of so much of what we’re living through right now while maintaining hope and joy and modeling not just in individualistic, suck-it-up, chin-up, power-over mindset. But instead I think my upcoming guests model deep self-awareness and a commitment to owning what’s happening within themselves at the moment and their story while mindfully turning towards the world around them to create, to connect, to heal, to grow, and to change the world around them.

These folks have a powerful YOU-turn return rhythm, well traversed in their nervous systems, which protects their curiosity and their values and their boundaries and capacity for love. And it feels important to bring these conversations with leaders imagining a more moral and just world and showing up what it looks like to create, right now in the spaces we lead and live, something different. Sure, it’s messy and complex and nuanced, but we know that’s how things roll when we come together as humans, right?

So these Unburdened Leader conversations highlight leaders who, like you, choose not to bypass or deny or minimize their pain and the collective pain and trauma we all keep experiencing by doing important work while holding onto their hope and claiming their agency without sacrificing their compassion or their desire for accountability. Conversations about inclusion for those with invisible disabilities, how to connect our awake dreams from the dreams from when we’re asleep, the power of listening deeply to our own desires along with the power of art, how to go deep with a curiosity practice that connects, heals, and builds bridges, and why we need to rethink our general understanding of resilience as an individual practice and move to seeing resilience from a collective lens and listening to people who call us to feel through and witness our pain while we hold tightly to each other and our courage. I really can’t wait for you to listen. I believe every one of these conversations offers you something that will feel like medicine to the soul and fill you up a bit like they did with my own system and soul.

12:28

Now, we can’t give what we don’t have, and we can’t lead from a place of depletion. We need to play the long game and not always just do triage. So the call is to protect our ability to imagine a world and work and relationships that are not weighed down by the burdens of despair, pain, blame, and disconnection, and it doesn’t mean we’re not experiencing those things, but they’re not driving everything all the time. Can we get there? I’d like to think so. And this means making a radical commitment to metabolizing what you feel, not just thinking, as you move through life right now. Instead of stuffing, denying, exiling, or minimizing your feelings, acknowledging them is a data point, not as something to fear but just to witness them.

And as you take a beat and witness those flashes of emotions as soon as you can, notice where you’re holding that in your body and how you feel, not think, towards what’s stirring in you. And if there’s any judgments, notice them because we’re taught to judge our emotions, but they really offer such powerful data that can inform our next choices. Write down what you notice, listen to the fears, and connect from this part of you, and don’t analyze. Just stay curious and witness. Listen to those parts like you would a family member or a good friend. This may sound tedious and like it takes a lot of time, but it actually happens really, really fast. Now, there’s gonna be a lot invested in you not noticing but this is the work.

This kind of self-aware listening allows you to increase your ability to imagine generative ideas and metabolize them quicker, flushing difficult emotions out of your system and your body.

14:02

Now, you may feel the whiplash from doing this a lot because you have so much going on in your life and there’s so much going on in the world. But again, this is the work. And when you commit to being radically honest about what you experience at the moment, even just with yourself and all the feelings, the memories, the physical sensations that get stirred up, you can metabolize all this information and emotion instead of just further burdening your system.

I also believe protecting your ability to imagine and hope as we stay connected with everything happening around us means we must be boundaried around how we take in this information. What’s okay and what’s not okay? You know, stay away from a ton of scrolling. A little bit, I get it. And hearing things on loop, on repeat, that kind of information intake really shuts down generative imagination. Think about connecting with journalists or thought leaders and people you feel supported by that offer nuance and complexity instead of just hot takes that want to exploit your outrange. Think about taking that in in ways that, you know, again, you can metabolize and digest. I know you know this, but I’m just reinforcing it.

I believe another step to protect your capacity to hope and imagine instead of defaulting to doom and overwhelm and staying there, involves digging deep into accessing your personal power, which I just referenced as a term from Cedar Barstow’s Right Use of Power. When we remember that no one can take away our personal power, we protect our connection to agency, we don’t feel trapped because no living creature does well when feeling trapped, stuck, and hopeless. And when I feel like I have agency and I’m connected to my values, that helps me stay in a place of hopeful action. And I’m recognizing those times that I go to feeling powerless is usually when I’m trying to play God, and that’s a big old flag for self-righteousness and thinking I know best.

16:00

I want to swim in the deep end of my personal power and claim that and help my system trust me to handle all that’s in front of me, even as things feel scary and uncertain, and I want that for you too. I think we need that. So I’m always asking myself where I have agency and where that’s aligned with my values and take the next step in the moment.

Another part of this practice involves embracing and befriending grief. I just want to bring this up again because so many of my coaching sessions these days involves acknowledging the presence of grief within and around the spaces that people live and work in. And I still hear people say, “Grieving feels indulgent.” Grief, I mean, as exquisitely painful as it is, it also brings in some incredibly powerful clarity, you know? And as we grieve the loss of innocence, the loss of dignity, anticipated loss, when we don’t metabolize it, it can shut down our creativity and imagination and hope so quickly. We’ve got to quickly and respectfully and intentionally acknowledge our losses instead of judging or minimizing them, and I think this is another crucial practice to protecting your ability to imagine.

And lastly, we just need to be judicious about those connections and the voices we listen to, the ones I’ve internalized in my life and the ones in the real world that I give my attention to. I really think we need to commit to doing our best to release relationships and expectations around relationships that are not invested in vulnerability or taking risks on a personal level or really respecting and humanizing people. I don’t want to give too much attention to those who just want to sit on the sidelines and offer criticism and insults but not try to make meaningful or generative changes to heal, grow, and be better people and be better in relationships.

18:00

That doesn’t mean I don’t respect or care about them. But what is getting my attention? Who is getting my attention? Who am I inviting to speak into my life? Where’s the reciprocity? Where are the boundaries being respected? Where’s the delight? Even when it’s hard, it can still have that peace and that sense of alignment. So that always [Sigh] can be a little messy. But it’s, I think, really essential right now.

I think figuring out who we give our power to and how we need to reorganize our internal life in the spaces we work and lead, kind of is going to be an ongoing work in progress. I love helping leaders understand the impact of those voices within and around them who don’t care whether you succeed or fail. Sometimes we hold onto the hope that they’ll change, but I think this is the time to just kind of be really clear on those things and not in a ruthless, mean, dramatic way, but one of just a lot of compassion and empathy. I want us to build communities that help us imagine possibility even when everything feels like it’s on the brink, and this will help us stay in a place of gratitude and be able to offer more and pour out for others while taking care of ourselves.

So those are all my pipe dreams for this. [Laughs] And I really am excited to share these conversations, and I hope you enjoy this series! Thank you for listening and for showing up. I’m really grateful that you’re continuing to come here and listen to these conversations. And on a personal note, for me, I’m exploring some different ways to get involved as a citizen in civic ways, and this may not be the case for many of you who you’re like, “I’m at my limit. I barely have time to breathe.” But if you have that space or, as a leader, I want you to be thinking about how can you create opportunities for folks to have a little bit more bandwidth to get engaged civically in small, little ways and, most importantly, to make sure that folks have time to vote.

20:01

For me, I’m looking at becoming a poll worker this fall. I think it’s a really important time regarding community, so again, I encourage you to engage as a citizen any way that makes sense to you, and I think that’s really a powerful way of finding community, which is an important way of taking action and using our agency and also our personal power and rubbing shoulders with folks who maybe are different but who care, and then all fuel a sense of hope, imagination, and joy. I mean, that’s a contagion that we all need right now. Y’all, this is the work of an Unburdened Leader.

[Inspirational Music]

Rebecca Ching: Leading is hard. Leading is also often controversial as you navigate staying aligned and connected to your values, your mission, and your boundaries. Navigating the inevitable controversy can challenge your confidence, clarity, calm, and ability to dream and imagine. I know you don’t mind making hard decisions but sometimes when the stakes seem so high, it can bring echoes of old doubts up and insecurities during times when you need to feel rock solid on your plan and your action and have some space to think differently and to dream a little.

Finding a coach who gets the nuances of your business and leading in our complex and polarized world can help you identify the blocks that keep you playing it safe and small. Now, leading today is not a fancy title or fluffy bragging rights. It’s brave and bold work to stay the course when the future is so unknown and the doubts and pains from the past keep showing up to shake things up. Internal emotional practices and systemic strategies are needed to keep the protector of cynicism at bay and foster a hope that is actionable and aligned.

So when the stakes are high and you don’t want to lose focus, when you want to navigate inevitable conflict between your ears and with those you lead, when time is of the essence and you want to make hard decisions with confidence and clarity, then Unburdened Leader Coaching is for you where you deepen the capacity to tolerate the vulnerability of change, innovation, and doing things differently than the status quo.

22:12

To start your Unburdened Leader Coaching process with me go to www.rebeccaching.com and book a free connection call. I can’t wait to hear from you!

[Inspirational Music]

Hey! Thank you so much for joining this little intro episode to our fall 2024 series here on The Unburdened Leader. You can find this episode, show notes, and free Unburdened Leader resources, along with ways to work with me at www.rebeccaching.com. And this episode was produced by the incredible team at Yellow House Media!

[Inspirational Music]