“You sound off center,” my best friend said to me through the phone.
No, actually. I felt good, fine, great, thank you very much.
She gently, but directly, asked a few questions.
And there it was, rising up from within.
I was dislocated from my center to a place of reacting, rather than tethered to what I know to be true.
And it had happened so gradually that I hadn’t known it. Like a swimmer floating in the ocean who suddenly looks up to find that the shoreline has receded, her questions asked me to lift my head and look around. And when I did, I realized that currents had taken me farther from myself than I’d realized.
But she knew it, because she knows me.
We all find ourselves, at times, tossed about in the ocean of life.
The question is: can we find our way back to shore?
Do we have the skills, practice, and people in our lives to guide us?
Brad Wilson, CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, talks about just this during our interview for The Making Magnificence Project®, about how he knows when he’s drifted and how he finds his way back, particularly when the pressure is on and the stakes are high.
And, yesterday, when I was at Blue Cross delivering a keynote, an audience member asked about one of the key factors of Magnificent Leadership™. They wanted to know whether having someone to hold the vision of our potential is more than merely the positive. Is it also about helping someone to see when they’re not doing well? And my answer was a resounding yes. Clients know that I will tell them when they’re getting in their own way, because in addition to helping them aspire to their greatness, part of my job is also telling them when they’re impeding its fruition. We need others to reflect our possibility, to guide us to its zenith, to raise our sights. And to tell us, with compassion and not an ounce of contempt, when we’ve drifted off course.
Just like my best friend did last week.
If you’re interested in accelerating your progress and aspiring to your zenith, I’ll have openings next month for working with me directly. To have a mutually exploratory conversation, you can reach me at: sarah@sarah-levitt.com
And if you’re an executive in the financial world and want to soak up some sun while expanding your mind, come join me in Palm Beach at The Breakers where I’ll be delivering the opening keynote on Magnificent Leadership™ for the New Jersey Bankers Annual Conference. Go here for more information.