What We Focus On Grows
During a session with my counselor to recover from PTSD from the abusive toxic people I had been around during my entire life up until that point, I had uncovered that abuse is also perceived as being bullied. And oftentimes, people who bully others were also bullied at some point. At that moment, I was smacked in the face with the truth that I,myself, had also become a bully as a reaction to being hurt. And then I heard the phrase hurt people hurt people because they’re hurting. Wow, was my mind blown!
After the ah-ha moment of how I didn’t cause the way people had treated me, I started to peel away the onion that I am (that we all are) and heal. During this time, I thought about how as victims of a circumstance, we might fall into blaming and shaming ourselves as well as the other person. And yet there is a lesson in almost everything. Instead of asking why me, finding the lesson is asking “what can I learn from this?” I was so focused on my own pain, I couldn’t see how I was showing up to others as a leader and I couldn't see that I did have other choices. I had the choice to respond by walking away from abusive people. If I only focused on how much I was hurting, I couldn’t see how much I had grown and healed and how I might be hurting others without even realizing it. If I was hurting and not being the best version of myself, then maybe I wasn’t encouraging and empowering my team to develop a better version of themselves either. When I focused on the why, all the reasons of how I was a bad person, not good enough, etc, kept showing up. When I uncovered what I learned, I started to see the lessons in everything, especially the bad things.
Complaining vs. Gratitude
All of this got me thinking if hurt people hurt people then is the opposite also true? Do empowered people empower people? My mentor, friend, and coach Rhonda Britten, founder of The Fearless Institute, says that the antidote to complaining is gratitude. She even has her clients write five gratitudes everyday. She says, “gratitudes reframe the negative to a positive. They change the way we listen and the way we see the world.” Years ago, I started a blog called 365 Days of Thankfulness because I realized that I had been complaining and seeing all of the things that made me feel unhappy or depressed or sorry for myself because these things were going wrong, so then the opposite must also be true. What if I started to notice all the amazing things that were going right? Instead of feeling sorry about my circumstance, what if I found the bright side? It was at that point that I started to write a thank you letter in a journal everyday of all the things that I was thankful for. The journal started out with the little things like the sun shining, the opportunity of a new day, that I had food, water, clothing and shelter. Over time, I started to be grateful for every single thing, even the things that I had once perceived as a negative. It was during these journal entries that I began to realize that when circumstances happen to us, it is happening for us. As I did this every day as a practice, I started to focus on something good rather than the things to complain about. Then there were more things to be grateful for. What I was grateful for grew.
During this process, I found my attitude shifting from victim to victor, from just surviving to thriving and naturally my brain started to notice all the many amazing things in life. My confidence grew. And then people started to notice and give me positive feedback on my leadership skills. I felt as if I finally had more confidence as a leader.
To answer the above question, do empowered people empower people, is yes, empowered people do naturally empower other people by focusing on what will grow us instead of what shrinks us and keeps us small. When people are empowered to grow, they want to continue to grow. They are motivated to continue to do good work and be responsible.
To be a confident leader, remember this, what we focus on grows. We cannot change people or circumstances, we do have the choice to change how we think about people and circumstances. If someone on your team is acting out, you have a choice to ask what’s really going on with them and listen from a place of understanding that they might be hurting rather than immediately jumping to the discipline for them. Just by taking a few extra minutes might be the thing that this person needed most. And when we don’t take that time to listen, we might reinforce their inner negative critic. Then you can have the opportunity to ask, what can they be grateful for about the challenge that they just shared with you. By asking that simple question to find one thing they can be grateful for, you are empowering them to see that the challenge happened for them to grow.
Do you want to be remembered as a leader who hurts people by keeping them stagnant or empowers people to their fullest potential? Because what your team focuses on also grows.
