Mindset

by Toku on Mindset

Just Getting More Done Isn’t the Point | Accountability Distinctions

Distinctions on Accountability

Having worked with leaders from all walks of life and industries one topic that often brings a mix of desire and fear is accountability. High achievers CRAVE someone holding them accountable and those who lack confidence or fear they won’t stand up to scrutiny want to avoid it at all costs.

The challenge is that our relationship to accountability is linked to a fear of failure, criticism, and the constant feeling that we’re never getting enough done. But accountability isn’t about feeling bad about yourself, it’s about having an honest and powerful relationship with your word. It’s about getting invaluable feedback about what is and isn’t working in your life.

But getting there isn’t easy for most people so here is the first of five distinctions on accountability that can help you be true to your word, be honest about your level of commitment, and improve your integrity with others.

Read part one. Read part two. Read part three.

Part 4: Just Getting More Done Isn’t the Point

Most people admit that accountability works wonders for getting things done, especially the things that are the hardest to do, and yet most people still resist being held accountable. The reason is simple, when we don’t do something we commit to, we look bad, and people don’t like to look bad.

Part of why accountability works is that there’s some mental and social pressure that helps counterbalance the resistance you feel to doing hard work.

The far end of this spectrum is seeing failure to do hard work as a moral failing. Basically confusing “I failed” with “I suck”. Yes you may have failed. You may have even failed because of some laziness or torpor, but thinking you suck helps no one, ever.

Accountability is a measure of performance. That’s it. The car either does or doesn’t go 60 miles an hour in 10 seconds. Morality is not measured that way.

We don’t think a car is evil because it has a bad spark plug. We see that it’s got a problem that we need to address if we want to improve the performance.

Accountability should be the same way. The focus is on how to improve performance. Whether someone is a good or bad person should never be in question. If you get into this as a team you’ve got problems, if you get into this as an individual stop it! Get back to the performance and remember that Mother Teresa could never have beaten Usain Bolt in a race, but that doesn’t make her a worse person.

 
by Toku on Mindset

Don’t Confuse Accountability With Morality or Self-Worth

Distinctions on Accountability

Having worked with leaders from all walks of life and industries one topic that often brings a mix of desire and fear is accountability. High achievers CRAVE someone holding them accountable and those who lack confidence or fear they won’t stand up to scrutiny want to avoid it at all costs.

The challenge is that our relationship to accountability is linked to a fear of failure, criticism, and the constant feeling that we’re never getting enough done. But accountability isn’t about feeling bad about yourself, it’s about having an honest and powerful relationship with your word. It’s about getting invaluable feedback about what is and isn’t working in your life.

But getting there isn’t easy for most people so here is the first of five distinctions on accountability that can help you be true to your word, be honest about your level of commitment, and improve your integrity with others.

Read part one.
Read part two.

Part 3: Don’t Confuse Accountability With Morality or Self-Worth

Most people admit that accountability works wonders for getting things done, especially the things that are the hardest to do, and yet most people still resist being held accountable. The reason is simple, when we don’t do something we commit to, we look bad, and people don’t like to look bad.

Part of why accountability works is that there’s some mental and social pressure that helps counterbalance the resistance you feel to doing hard work.

The far end of this spectrum is seeing failure to do hard work as a moral failing. Basically confusing “I failed” with “I suck”. Yes you may have failed. You may have even failed because of some laziness or torpor, but thinking you suck helps no one, ever.

Accountability is a measure of performance. That’s it. The car either does or doesn’t go 60 miles an hour in 10 seconds. Morality is not measured that way.

We don’t think a car is evil because it has a bad spark plug. We see that it’s got a problem that we need to address if we want to improve the performance.

Accountability should be the same way. The focus is on how to improve performance. Whether someone is a good or bad person should never be in question. If you get into this as a team you’ve got problems, if you get into this as an individual stop it! Get back to the performance and remember that Mother Teresa could never have beaten Usain Bolt in a race, but that doesn’t make her a worse person.

 
by Toku on Mindset

We Choose The Wrong Things To Be Accountable For

Distinctions on Accountability

Having worked with leaders from all walks of life and industries one topic that often brings a mix of desire and fear is accountability. High achievers CRAVE someone holding them accountable and those who lack confidence or fear they won’t stand up to scrutiny want to avoid it at all costs.

The challenge is that our relationship to accountability is linked to a fear of failure, criticism, and the constant feeling that we’re never getting enough done. But accountability isn’t about feeling bad about yourself, it’s about having an honest and powerful relationship with your word. It’s about getting invaluable feedback about what is and isn’t working in your life.

But getting there isn’t easy for most people so here is the first of five distinctions on accountability that can help you be true to your word, be honest about your level of commitment, and improve your integrity with others.

Read part one.

Part 2: We Usually Choose the Wrong Things To Be Accountable For

There are two tricks most people employ at accountability meetings. They commit to things that they already know they’ll get done. They commit to several things that are all ‘important’

But the most important things to create accountability around are those things that are truly vital for success and are for which some resistance or obvious challenge exists.

Sometimes these aren’t the same things. Sometimes the most vital things are the things you would do anyway, in which case being accountable to them is still valuable.

But if you want to get the most out of accountability the key is to find the places where there are weak spots or places where you’re unsure or blind about the process.

When you bring these things into an accountability conversation that’s when you start to get real traction from this type of work, because it brings your attention to the gaps where your best work goes to die.

In addition, don’t pile on LOTS of things to be accountable to. The process of choosing what’s truly important is JUST as important as getting done what’s most important. I limit most of my groups to ONE item that will move their business forward. When they bring two I ask them which one matters more.

When I lead teams I limit them to 3 priorities a quarter. Yes technically I could fit four on the PowerPoint slide, but after doing strategy with various teams over the years few of them complete 3 major initiatives each quarter. Usually, when they commit to four they get one of them done really well.

It can be hard to choose what matters, and of course you can always get more done, the POINT of practicing accountability is to get more vital things done. Things that have an impact. So the more clear you can get on what really matters the more you’ll get out of accountability.

 
by Toku on Mindset

Accountability Is Different From Responsibility

Distinctions on Accountability

Having worked with leaders from all walks of life and industries one topic that often brings a mix of desire and fear is accountability. High achievers CRAVE someone holding them accountable and those who lack confidence or fear they won’t stand up to scrutiny want to avoid it at all costs.

The challenge is that our relationship to accountability is linked to a fear of failure, criticism, and the constant feeling that we’re never getting enough done. But accountability isn’t about feeling bad about yourself, it’s about having an honest and powerful relationship with your word. It’s about getting invaluable feedback about what is and isn’t working in your life.

But getting there isn’t easy for most people so here is the first of five distinctions on accountability that can help you be true to your word, be honest about your level of commitment, and improve your integrity with others.

Part 1: Accountability Is Different From Responsibility

The purpose of being accountable is to account for the state of something. An accountant doesn’t make money for a business, it simply tracks that money and offers insight into the performance. While some accountants advise, their #1 job is to report on the state of the money.

The same is true inside teams and even inside your life. Being accountable means simply being honest about the state of the things you say you will do. Good accounting reveals hidden patterns, places where energy and time is wasted, and where your real interests and commitments lie.

To be responsible for something means to play some part in the creation of something. To stand for it to exist and to work towards some goal or metric. If you are going to have a baby, both parents are responsible for that baby, but really the mother is more responsible because how she cares for her own body has a direct impact on the health of the fetus.

In truth though, the most accountable person before a baby is born is the OBGYN, because they are the ones with the vital knowledge and information to understand if the baby is developing in the way it needs to in order to have the best chance of surviving to term.

If you’re going to practice accountability it’s important to understand that your #1 job is to be honest about the state of things. The person or people responsible may hope you will let them get away with poor performance (esp. if that person is you) but your job is to be honest even if it’s hard so that those responsible can take whatever actions they need to keep moving towards the goal.

Stay tuned for next week’s blog: Part 2: We usually choose the wrong things to be accountable for.

 
by Toku on Mindset

Opening Up and Allowing Fear To Flow Through Me

It’s human nature to seek comfort from difficulty. It’s what we learned to do as children. We needed comfort to keep the courage to face a scary world, so we found safety in people, in habits, in places, and in items like stuffed animals, blankets, and clothing.

Even now picking up and considering these objects brings us a sense of peace and comfort. Even though that comfort may be an illusion.

Sex is like this for many of us. We go back to moments of early love, of discovering our bodies, of losing ourselves in pleasure and passion. But sex also comes with something else. Our early insecurities, fears, and very possibly pain, shame, and trauma.

Leadership also brings up feelings of power and comfort for many people. It can give this illusion of control, a sense of dominance, and the comfort of rightness. But it also pokes at our deepest insecurities and doubts about our own abilities.

The deepest practice in life is not to hide or close in the face of fear and pain, but to remain open and soft as it flows through us. This is perhaps the hardest to do during sex, or when your heart is breaking, or when some old fear or pain shows up.

In these moments it’s natural to close. It’s a natural response to pain to move away and in many cases it’s the wisest course, but if we get stuck in this retreat, this movement away from the pain and challenge, before long we find ourselves pinned into a corner.

The deepest practice is to find a way to open, or to gesture towards opening. Not to close in anger. Or retreat into a meditative cocoon. Or a set of beliefs that shields us from the world.

As we deepen our shields and weapons become more sophisticated and our only barometer is our openness. Can we be soft? Can we be relaxed? Even in passion, even in pain.

This is the way of a leader with a wide heart and open mind.

 
by Toku on Mindset

In Defense of A Boring Life

Everywhere you look there’s an invitation to a more exciting life.

Commercials and advertising seem to promise a life of more fulfillment, excitement, and joy. Apps and services promise to remove the boredom of data entry and tracking your email. Even people seem to talk about themselves so that you can see how entertaining and entertained they are all the time.

We do this because we don’t want to be boring. I think the reason people don’t want to be boring is

1) They’re afraid it’s a form of stagnation
2) They’re afraid they’re missing out of life
3) They’re afraid if they’re boring their lives won’t matter

But this isn’t what being boring is at all.

But excitement isn’t really all that it’s cracked up to be.

Here’s what I notice about excitement:

1) It’s hard to maintain –
When something is exciting it has to shift or keep getting bigger in order for my excitement to grow or even last longer than a few minutes.

2) It’s often coupled with stress and/or drama –
The most ‘exciting’ relationships I’ve had are the ones that were also the most painful and stressful. When my business is really ‘exciting’ I’m also often on edge and pushing myself pretty hard.

3) It rarely creates long term satisfaction –
Moments of excitement are often followed by either a longing for more excitement or a feeling of being let down or simply down about life in general.

But if you’re not going to be ‘exciting’ then what are you going to be?

Well boring. And boring has gotten a bad rap I think.

Boring is actually pretty amazing.

Here’s what I notice about boring:

1) My life feels even and stable
When things are boring things are usually going pretty well. There are few/no active crises in my life.

2) I tend to be in a pattern of stabilized behavior
I have a routine, I mostly follow that routine, there aren’t a TON of disruptions.

3) It invites a deep reflection
When things are boring the stuff in the background the stuff I tend to ‘avoid’ dealing with begins to surface. This background work is hard work that isn’t glamorous. It’s the work of healing, of self-love, and of slow human growth. This stuff isn’t always sexy and exciting but it’s pretty vital to lead a healthy life.

So what will you choose, exciting or boring?

 
by Toku on Mindset

Life Is All About Being in a State of Constant Failure.

If you’re living well, if you have a purpose that challenges you, if you have a partner you find sexy, wild, and alluring, you will be constantly failing. Not because you aren’t good enough, smart enough, or likable enough.

You will be failing because you will be continuously pushed by your life, your purpose, and your partner to grow, evolve, change, and become more of who you are at your core.

This pull from life to draw you out is never ending. It shifts shapes. It changes directions. It is a Rubik’s cube that rearranges its own colors.

The mistake most of us make is that we think that success is the goal. It isn’t.
Success is a momentary illusory escape from life. It doesn’t last. Nothing does.

Instead, the goal of life is to be fully at rest and sufficient in the midst of constant failure. To know you are good enough, worthy, incredible, unlike any being that has ever lived, and you are failing.

When you find the sufficiency of failure, you will also find the path to peace.

 
by Toku on Mindset

3 Reasons Why You Don’t Believe In Your Husband/Boyfriend’s Crazy Idea

Why You Don’t Believe In Your Husband/Boyfriend’s Crazy Idea

“He’s got this incredible vision for the future, but the problem is that I just don’t believe in it. It feels like a pipe dream and I feel like I can’t tell him that.”

Her face was so earnest and I could tell how much she loved her Fiance. He was a good man and she wanted kids. Because she was pushing 40 she was reluctant to find too much fault or take the risk of trying to start over with someone else.

She wanted to believe in him, but the vision he created (while inspiring) just felt unreal.

She told me about how he was struggling to get clients for his practice, how he’d sit on the couch for hours, how she had paid for coaching programs and consultants but despite her support he was floundering.

Of course she was already successful in their shared field which made his stuckness even harder to bear.

This wasn’t the first time I’ve seen this. A powerful, confident woman who loves a man who disappoints her and yet with all of her heart she wants to love or believe in him.

Why does this happen? Here’s what I’ve noticed . . .

1. Men Are Encouraged To Dream Big Before They’ve Really Grown Up

The heroes in the world of men are big thinkers. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Tim Ferris to name a few. They have these iconoclastic playboy images that makes them the poster children for freedom and power. But they also embody a perpetual adolescence that can seem incredibly appealing.

For all of it’s problems, earlier times celebrated the stability and reliability of the common man. The man that provides for his family, works a stable job, coaches baseball, and fixes cars. Yes this image of men was also sexist, racist, and privileged, but in our desire to modernize masculinity we have also infantilized it.

Today, what gets left out is the need for men to be mature adults in their relationships. While it’s a good thing that men have been dethroned as the dominant providing force in their families, men have managed to toss off the need to be mature and capable adult partners in many cases staying as perpetual man children for an indeterminate amount of time.

And the ‘men’ that most men hold as heroes only perpetuate this problem. Men tend to focus on Big Dreams goals and ambitions or reject the idea of responsibility altogether, and the result is the same: they avoid this simple, mundane, and powerful practice of creating and/or co-creating a life of integrity, depth, and partnership.

2. MEN HAVE CONVINCED THEIR PARTNERS THAT THEY ARE FRAGILE

Part of this rests on the reality that masculinity is actually a pretty fragile construct. While our society has expanded to accept femininity as being expressed in many forms (from Britney Spears to Sheryl Sandberg) masculine status is easier to lose. Men are brutal on one another in the realm of using threats of lost masculine status as a tool to bully and control other men and many women are no different.

With all the progress we’ve made with women in the workforce, men who stay home with their kids are still looked at sideways. Of course this doesn’t equal in any way shape or form the disadvantages women have to face, but men are very present to the fragility of masculinity. Combine this with the BIG THINKING obsession many men hold and you get men who feel pressure to be iconoclasts while at the same time being secretly terrified of being castrated.

Then, they bring this whole rats nest of BS home to their partners by asking them to treat them as fragile little boys for whom the slightest criticism will cause them to collapse. They will revert into boys playing video games and getting stoned. The resultant numbing that shows up becoming the punishment for their partners expressing exasperation at how immature and unrealistic they were being.

Anyone in partnership with this kind of man will find themselves in a bind. Do I go along with their pie in the sky idea that I know is doomed to failure? Or do I criticize them and risk having to clean up the pieces of their delicate egos?

The result of all this is that many women and men relate to their masculine partners as fragile making it hard to criticize or talk about their dreams and purpose in any meaningful way.

3. FAKING BELIEVING IN BIG DREAMS CAUSES PARTNERS TO NOT REALLY TRUST THEIR PARTNERS

Faced with these shitty options many partners choose to pretend or fake belief in their partner’s bad ideas for a while until their belief reserves are totally depleted. What ends up happening is that their belief in their partners also falls apart.

Now not only are you humoring your partners crazy ideas but you start to humor them as well and usually start looking for the door.

BUT IT CAN ALL BE PREVENTED or at least stopped if you make a small shift.

STOP BELIEVING IN YOUR PARTNER’S STUPID IDEAS

Women and other partners of these kinds of men, it’s not your job to believe in their stupid or even great but unworkable ideas. Your partners aren’t really that fragile and they do have greatness within them.

What they really need is someone who believes in them. Who stands for the greatness, maturity, warriorship, and leadership within them. Not at the expense of practicality and equality but in alignment with it.

The trick is to simply focus your belief on them, their capability to vision and create a life for themselves. Encourage that, speak to that, and if you’re lucky they’ll start to step into that.

The alternative: lying to them until you’re exhausted and disappointed beyond repair OR coddling them by taking control of their lives like some weird co-dependent mother figure helps no one. Men don’t have to go back to being weird, dominant, sexist, jerks to be powerful.

They are (despite the evidence) capable of being both powerful, sexy, leaders and also conscious, deep, woke leaders.

It’s not your fault you don’t believe in their stupid idea. It’s also not totally their fault they’re concocted one. You’re both playing a game invented by unconscious men who managed to create some success.

 
by Toku on Mindset

Your Desire For Control Is Super Normal and Totally Absurd

I get it, we all want things to go a particular way. We get this image in our heads about how things might go, we dream, or we imagine. Part of what makes us so incredible is our ability to imagine, plan, and execute.

Just look at the pyramids, the Suez canal, the vast and complex organization of vaccine distribution. Sure it’s problematic but it’s incredible all the same.

So your desire for control is totally normal. Nothing could be more human than a desire to have things go a certain way.

And of course, it’s also totally absurd. Life with all of its wildness, its complexity, its variability laughs in the futile attempts to control it. And even if you make an exception for the wildness of nature, people are just as challenging.

We can hardly get our partners to load the dishwasher the way we want or even agree on the right way to put flowers into a vase. Much less get people to love us the way we want or listen to our well-reasoned arguments about how stupid they’re being.

At the foundation our desire to control is a desire to feel safe. If it goes this way and if it looks the way we want, we will feel good and we will feel safe.

We long for this because being in control gives us the taste of what we imagine God or the gods might feel. A sense of sovereignty and domain.

The irony is that we then go wonder at nature, which has been placed in a way we never could have imagined. A miasma of rock worn down by rivers, trees growing from seeds thrown about by the wind. We love nature for its wildness, but struggle when that wildness enters our lives.

Wildness in society is called instability, insanity, and it is crazy making.

Perhaps we’d all be better off if we could relax. Let the flowers be placed in the vase a different way, allow the ants to crawl on our balcony with awe, accept that some people in their wildness don’t need to change, though we may need to spend less time with them.

Perhaps we can understand that our desire for control is normal and not make ourselves wrong for our urges to have things be a certain way, and at the same time, perhaps we can relax just a bit and let go of things needing to be a certain way.

There is a freedom in sitting in this tension that embraces our human desire and laughs at the comedy of it all. This is a freedom brought to us by equal parts, faith, surrender, and humor.

It’s a freedom that is the punchline to the joke that we were created with a deep desire to control in a world that mocks even our most basic attempts to control anything at all.

 
by Toku on Mindset

You Decide What Happens To You In Life

For most of my twenties stuff just happened to me.

I got fired from my sweet touring job because the drummer was an asshole. My girlfriend broke up with me because some guy snaked her out from under me. My car broke down because some asshole wanted me to drive on a bumpy road with their girlfriend to see some stupid rocks.

This is how life went for me. Things would go poorly and I would blame someone else.

Then when I was 28 I moved into a monastery. I thought I was just going to be there for a few months. It would be a good story to tell to women I met on other adventures.

But the first time I had tea with a Zen master something shifted.

We were talking about the challenges I felt I had in life, the woes that had befallen me, the people who had done me wrong. At one point I said, “I have a hard time connecting with people, because I’m so much smarter than most of them. I just don’t know how to do it sometimes”

🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️

I cringe every time I think back on that moment. But the Zen Master didn’t flinch.

He said to me, “Consider Shizen (the other Zen Master at the monastery), she’s one of the smartest people I know. She’s a doctor, she’s written several books, but she connects with everybody.”

The words stopped me in my tracks. I had a few objections, but slowly I let it sink in. I was making this shit up. I was being a victim to myself, my life, and to everything that happens to me.

Slowly I began to change how I felt about my life and I began to see that I can decide what happens to me. And here’s you you can too: ​

REALIZE THAT YOU DON’T HAVE CONTROL

The illusion of control is the ego’s greatest lie.

One of the things I started to see when I meditated for hours a day was that I largely don’t have control over what happens in my life especially when it comes to what other people do, think, or say about me. I can certainly change my response, my relationships, and my choices going forward but I found that I didn’t actually have control over most of it.

Life happens, people change, sometimes you find love, other times you find loneliness. Your choices still matter but it doesn’t change the simple truth that much of life occurs outside of our ability to influence it.

As I began to accept them, I was able to relax. Instead of life being this personal drama where everything was a vast plot point in my own story, I began to see so many events like gravity. They were things that were just happening vs things that were happening to me. ​

GET PRESENT TO YOUR IMPACT

You affect people and your life more than you realize.

As I spent time mindfully watching myself with other people I started to notice that the way I listened to people made a difference. When I looked at them with a subtle judgment about the way they told a story, they felt it. They would share less, they would be more cautious.

But when I tried to listen more deeply, and be more present without objections or inner dialogue people opened up to me. They shared more of themselves. They actually became more interesting to listen to… And I started to want to listen to them.

When you start to notice how what you do affects others, you may start to notice that there are certain things you want to do differently. You want to be more interested in what your boyfriend is saying. You want to be more patient with other drivers. You want to be a bit different because you can see how what you’re doing has an effect.

I found this kind of desire so natural and powerful. It wasn’t a need to change myself to please someone else, it was a desire to be different with life so that people and life would be different with me.

​

MOVE FROM BLAME TO RESPONSIBILITY

Not everything is somebody’s fault, but anything can be your responsibility.

For most of my twenties, I looked for people to blame and I usually found someone.

But as I sat in silence in the monastery trying to practice compassion, I made a simple mistake. If it wasn’t their fault, if it was unkind to blame others, then maybe the solution was to blame myself.

I can distinctly remember hours of weeping in the midst of self-woe at how I had screwed up my life. It was my fault my girlfriend had cheated, my fault I had lost that job, my fault that my friends had treated me poorly.

My love of drama hadn’t changed; it had simply turned back in on itself. It took me a while to see that the drama wasn’t helping. I was still playing the same blame game I always had. So I let it go.

I began to see that for most things I had a part to play in how they went, but so did the people around me. Yes, I had treated my girlfriend’s love for me lightly and yes she had decided to start seeing someone else. Yes, I didn’t communicate clearly with my friends and yes they made assumptions because it was easier that way.

The more I let go of blame the more at ease I felt. But I didn’t stop there.

I also began to see that I could choose to be responsible for things. If I wanted to have a better relationship with my mother I could make sure we talked, even if she wasn’t the one who was going to call me. If I wanted to be safe when I drove, I could give other drivers more space.

While there was no ONE person to blame for anything, I could make myself the ONE person who was going to try for things to go differently this time.

And once I made myself that ONE person, I was able to create what I wanted.