To make your way closer to your Ikigai, sometimes you have to change your orientation towards your North Star. To act on this desire to shift direction, you also have to declare your intention: both to yourself and to those around you. When you utter it out loud, your frontal lobe of the brain (cortex) gets the message that you have created an intention, and the reward center lights up. The reward is not only possible, it is now probable. The motivation circuitry is awakened and a positive feedback loop is generated. “A positive feedback loop in a natural system amplifies the effects of a minor change, which become self-reinforcing and the system responds.”
A senior manager was facing a challenge at work. She felt constrained in her position due to her supervisor’s micro-managing style of leadership. She believed with crisp clarity that she was capable of critical work deliverables. Yet, her supervisor intervened and made decisions for the team that the client was perfectly capable of making in her position.
Whether it was the supervisor’s short-sightedness, or a desire to act swiftly, either way, it undermined this manager’s authority. Her discontent was loud and clear. She was unable to bring her whole self to work. She recognized the disservice she was doing to herself by continuing to toe the line. She had been unable to voice her frustration, despite her sense of being stifled, as she held her leader in high esteem, respected her and had learned a lot from her. She felt beholden to her supervisor. She thought she owed it to her to follow her ‘authority’.
She began to realize that by doing so without question, put her in the untenable position of being in the ‘victim’ role. It was time to untether herself from this perceived stronghold. The power differential between supervisor and supervisee was obvious. However, her strengths of kindness and gratitude were being overused that she had to learn to temper first. Then she had to develop her strengths of open communication, transparency and authenticity. She had to ask for more space and latitude to make decisions on bigger issues. She wanted to be trusted.
Very often it is the gray areas that trip us up. We know we have the right to speak our mind, but we ask ourselves, is it the right time, the right situation, or the right person? Self-doubts hound us and get in the way. When you act as if you have no choice, you feel stuck. By being pro-active you take a different approach than you have thus far. “Empowerment comes from mastering the middle ground,” says Marion Franklin, author of The Heart of Laser-Focused Coaching. You neither ‘submit to’ nor ‘reject’ the spoken or unspoken rules automatically. You look at each instance as a new opportunity to either comply, or assert yourself, or find a compromise (third alternative). You get to choose.
As Victor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning wrote:
- “Between stimulus and response there is a space.
(Stimulus being a thing or event that causes a reaction). - In that space is our power to choose our response.
- In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
When there is an event (such as supervisor supersedes you) you have an emotional reaction. It could be disbelief, disappointment, or irritability. Acting on the emotional reaction with an angry confrontation makes you reactive. If you suppress the negative emotion and wish it away, it makes you passive and unhappy.
If you pay attention to it and recognize it for what it is: an awareness that your boundary has been crossed, you are able to pause, take stock, and decide how to respond. That makes you responsive. That space to choose a response is priceless. You can mindfully choose to walk away as you did before, or speak up in a calm, firm manner and voice your preference.
Instead of feeling like a victim, you now feel like a person taking a stand with just, rightful action, as an enactor. You cultivate assertiveness skills and practice using them. You have a sense of self agency. You find your voice to express your confidence and competence with clarity. In the above example, the manager was moving her dimension of Profession (skills and talents / what she is good at) closer to her Ikigai. By finding your voice, you do the same, shift closer to your Ikigai, your life worth living with purpose.
Take a moment to stop and ask yourself where do you feel the need to be heard? In what situation might you want to find your voice? Speak up.