choice Magazine
choice Magazine
Episode #63 ~ Vanguard Conversation Series: Control ←→ Agility
Leaders at the vanguard of ideas and change inspire us to loosen our grip on the comfortable status quo, in favor of exploring new possibilities that better align with the altering patterns of our personal and professional lives. As we shape a world where people love their life’s work, this live conversation series showcases global leaders who embody the curiosity and discernment that stimulates a new relationship with change.
Join CEO of inviteCHANGE, Janet M. Harvey, MCC, and her co-host, CEO of Choice Magazine, Garry Schleifer, PCC, with their guest, Eldra Jackson, III, Co-Executive Director of Inside Circle. Explore the idea of being comfortable with the tension that exists between Control and Agility. Build your roadmap for how to have a different kind of conversation with your peers, clients, communities ... and yourself!
Read the article exploring this tension deeper: https://tinyurl.com/bdhjkxpu
Download the Tensions of Presence Reflection Activities and Register for the Series: invitechange.com/vanguard-conversation-series
Access the audio, transcript, and chat: https://tinyurl.com/3r6zehhy
Grab your free issue of choice Magazine here - https://choice-online.com/
Welcome everybody. It is Friday. May it be a wonderful Friday to you all. I'm Janet Harvey, CEO and Director of Education for Invite Change. Please come on camera. You are more than welcome to join us on the wallpaper. We are very proud of you.
Janet Harvey:I'm going to go ahead and mute. I want to feel like we are just hanging out sitting in a living room having a good time. Please feel free to leave your mics open, so there is not a pause. That is totally good. Of course, if the dog barks or the doorbell rings, you can go ahead and mute for a bit. We are all in a common humanity here. We want to encourage your interaction. We have a great time.
Janet Harvey:I'm joined by co-host. Thank you Garry for waving, he is the founder and chief editor of choice magazine, the magazine of professional coaching, and I'm thrilled. This is the second year that we have partnered on the Vanguard Conversation Series and all of this year we have been bringing forward. We have been working with the company for years and years and I'm thrilled to be part of this. I don't think that our research has revealed as common to leaders and organizations. Now, why are we doing this? You know, I think for me personally, I know that we live in an unprecedented time. We've even started to hear the news report that we are living in the history as it's occurring In a way that I don't think our parents did. We've seen that in the past. We've seen that in the past. We've seen that in the past. We've seen that in the past. We've seen that in the past. We've seen that in the past. Zero geography, 24 by seven, eight billion people simultaneously experiencing the world. Gosh, do you think we could get any more disrupted?
Garry Schleifer:Never, never, say never, Janet.
Janet Harvey:Exactly Never say never. But the truth is, as humans it's really hard to take in and what used to see, feel and seem to be fairly simple problems to solve, or not so simple anymore, they're highly complex and no one person can see the whole picture. So this year's series is really examining how do we equip ourselves to be with thorny problems, to be comfortable with discomfort, to stay a little longer in our curiosity, to allow wonder to emerge, the rapt attention and astonishment of something new that's useful and effective for us, and we're going to be able to do that. So each time we've gathered this year, we bring a different visionary global leader forward. We have a very special guest for you today and he will be sharing how he used the reflection process that you're going to have an opportunity to practice and break out rooms To address a thorny problem in his walk of life. And before I introduce him, I want to pass the mic over to Garry.
Garry Schleifer:So a little bit about Vanguard, and I've been learning, with Janet's guidance and all of our leaders, that Vanguard Means being at the forefront of ideas that are emerging, so we can proactively disrupt our thinking. I've loved saying this to people I've been inviting. It's like just drop everything and let's look at this, and I don't even know how to describe how differently, but an easy example, and I used to use this one and I realized it wasn't culturally, globally accepted or understood. But I'll give it a whirl. You know, we have an easy example that most people put pork chops with apple sauce. There's actually a little you know thing about that and we think what is apple sauce If not with pork chops? But, Janet, I came up with another thought that might be a little bit more global, based on the British colonization of the world, milk, milk and tea.
Garry Schleifer:What's tea without milk? We could just say black, but anyway. Or tea and biscuits right, Exactly. But there we go. There's a simple example. Well, our conversations focus on our experience of life today, rather than a theory and outcome, a process or a promotion to buy anything. We invite you to transform your process of listening to get something, to giving yourself an opportunity to do something that is relevant to your life, and that's a great opportunity to experiment big experiment day and learn through practical application that is relevant to your life.
Janet Harvey:Beautiful. So I had the great pleasure to be introduced to Eldra by my colleague, sarah graves, and this was in 2020, when we hosted the beach use cause conference, where we had a lot of great people discussing this, which is actually which is a great question. But we have seen a lot of transformational work from all over the world, together along with business leaders and philanthropists, to say how do we be more generative about the big social challenges that we're experiencing all over the planet, and elder was one of our keynote speakers for how we create healthy communities. In fact, one of his documentaries is called the Work, and hopefully you've had a chance to watch the YouTube's that sorry, his TEDx talk and the YouTube's that we sent you links for before, but if you didn't, no worries, we'll send them again and you'll have a chance to savor and linger a little bit with Eldra. I wanna read his bio, though for you. I don't generally do this, but he wrote it so poetically. I think it really captures the essence of who he is. So here we go.
Janet Harvey:Eldra Jackson the third is a spiritual warrior who lives a passion of saving lives one circle at a time, after living most of his life devoid of emotions and coming face to face with the reality of dying behind bars, he came to a point of self inquiry, seeking answers as to how his life had spiraled into a mass of destruction set upon self and others. From this point, the space was made to save his life. Today, elder works to bring his spiritual medicine into the world, while simultaneously guiding others to tap their own internal SAV and help identify wounds. Through his intensive awareness work, he is on a mission to show the world what's possible, as each person does their own internal examination, to begin the path towards emotional and psychic health. Welcome, eldra.
Eldra Jackson:Thank you, Janet. It's an honor and a pleasure to be here. How are you today?
Janet Harvey:Really awesome. I couldn't get much better out of my peeps.
:It's awesome, yes ma'am.
Eldra Jackson:So before I start talking about anything, do I have everyone's permission to speak here?
Janet Harvey:I like to ask for permission.
Eldra Jackson:I don't wanna assume anything. So when I was asked to participate with this particular series, we had a meeting to discuss what this might look like and the first thing that came to me, when I was thinking about a real-life situation and agility or, as I like to think about it for myself, becoming water, being able to move around through over or be with a particular situation something very recent came to mind. So in the work that I do with Inside Circle, I serve as co-executive director of a nonprofit called Inside Circle and we're based in California, and Inside Circle began its roots in the California prison system, at a prison called New Folsom Back in 1997 was when the organization was actually born following a massive race riot in 1996. And there was a man named Patrick Nolan, who was serving life at that time, who had begun to do his own interpersonal work, and he got turned on to something called the Men's Movement at the time it was known as the Men's Movement and he got connected to some folks on the outside who came in to support what he was trying to put together, and no one knew what it was he was trying to put together at that time, but what it turned into is something that folks today refer to as healing circles. And at First Circle had 13 individuals sitting in it and these 13 individuals were representatives of the different coalitions that existed on the prison yard. So you had blood, you had cribs, you had Noether Familia, Mexican Mafia. You had every entity. Somebody from each entity was represented in that circle, and what we learned to do in those circles was stop killing each other, and I say we because I was one of those individuals that was in the California prison system at that time. I was serving life, was out in the community, running roughshod across my community and eventually, at the age of 19, was sentenced to a life plus 17 years. At that time, I wound up serving 24 years and today I'm the co-executive director of the organization.
Eldra Jackson:Many of us who were inside and never thought that we would come home are now out and the reins of the organization were handed to us, and now we do this work inside of prisons and across the globe, supporting folks, not just in prison, but supporting people and going inside and navigating those dark, murky places that can be fearful to look at and go into and find where motivations and things were born. And so I said all of that to give a bit of context on where I'm going. So we have these things called intensives that we hold inside of the prisons and they go on for the course of three or four days. Janet mentioned the documentary, the work. If you ever get the opportunity to check that out, it shows somewhat what we're doing. That work and the group as it is held inside of the prisons is one in which folks who are engaged in the work, people who participate in the program, sponsor other people into the program. This is not a program that you just raise your hand and say I want in and you walk through the door. The best way that I can describe some of the activities that happen in that space is almost like a confessional. If you can imagine a confessional. It's that deep and personal, the sort of things that come up. And for 25, 26 years the group has not only survived but thrive. We have six agreements in that group and the very first agreement is anonymity. What happens in that space remains in that space and for over a quarter of a century, to my knowledge, nothing that has ever been shared in that space has ever come outside of that space without someone giving express permission. So that's very key To maintaining the efficacy of the program In 2021.
Eldra Jackson:We applied for a grant with the California Department of Corrections and we were granted a grant to serve programming in three prisons California State Prison, Solano, California Medical Facility and New Folsom Prison, which we have been going into New Folsom. Folks have been going to New Folsom on a volunteer basis since 1997. And so what that meant was we were gonna get about $100,000 per site over the course of three years, and I don't know how much you all know about nonprofits, but $100,000 is a lot of money for a particular site. A funding is the lifeblood of nonprofit organizations. Folks who work in nonprofits are not in that to get rich. The money just keeps the lights on. It gives us the ability, it gives me the ability to go to places that I go and do the things that I do. So having those funds to be able to support volunteers and train folks and to cover stipends and transportation is huge.
Eldra Jackson:When the person who is in charge of programming at New Folsom got the memo that we would be getting funding to now come in and provide this programming, this individual took it upon herself to try and take over the program. And when I say try and take over the program, what I mean is her understanding of what the grant meant. Meant that the program was now under her power, meant that she now had the say so over who gets into the program, how long it runs, all of those sorts of things that would have dramatically, drastically changed the nature in the 10 or other program. That would have put the program in a position where anybody could have been able to do that. That would have put the program in a position where anybody who wanted to could just raise their hand and say that they want into the program so that they could begin to get what they call get credit-earning a status and in prison, if you're eligible for it, you can get time off for engaging in programs. That's not something we offer for this program. People don't go to our program to get out of prison. People go to our prison to get out of the prison of self. They don't attend our program to get out of physical prison. They are.
Eldra Jackson:When I got into that program it was because I was sick and tired of being my own worst enemy. It was because when I woke up in the morning and looked in the mirror. I didn't want to be disgusted by who was looking back at me. That's why people participate in our program. So for a couple of months the program was shut down because the men refused to participate under those conditions and we figured that this would be the straw that broke the camel's back and there would no longer be inside circle programming in New Folsom and we would just be at the other places across the state and across the country in which we provide services. So now everybody's looking at me. What are we gonna do? How are we gonna handle this? Nobody knows what to do. I didn't know what to do.
Eldra Jackson:This was unprecedented and there were a lot of feelings on my side. There were a lot of judgments, there were a lot of negative thoughts, negative self-talk, all sorts of righteous indignation. And I was sitting and I was thinking one day and I said how do we, how do I fix this? And maybe there's not a fix. There's not a fix for everything, but I got to try something.
Eldra Jackson:So what I did was I reached out to the prison administrator and we set up a Zoom call and I explained to her the standpoint of not just myself but the organization and how important this is for the men inside and my desire for the folks inside to continue to get access to what I had access to and I offered. I asked her. I said what if I go to Sacramento and tell them we don't want the funding? What if I go to Sacramento and pull out of the grant, pull out of the contract, because nothing has been signed yet, nothing is official, and we just continue to show up on a volunteer basis so that we can remain true to the effectiveness of the program and what this is all about? I said now I'm going to write up a memo to Sacramento explaining to them that this is not a good fit for us right now.
Eldra Jackson:Basically, it's not you, it's us letter, and this is not blaming or shaming anybody. I'm not going to be trying to throw you under the bus or anything like that, because I want to have a good relationship with you and the institution as well, and we're here not just to serve the folks that are housed here, but we're here to be of service to the folks who are in charge of custody here, because I understand, we understand the stress that you all are under as well, so perhaps we can find this middle ground here. She was like that's awesome, if you don't fall under this program then I have nothing to say about it and you can continue along the way that you have been. So I wrote up the email, cc'd her on the email, sent it off the headquarters. They looked at it. They got back at me within like 35 minutes.
Eldra Jackson:I don't think that there's a government entity that I'm familiar with that has ever offered someone money or agreed to give someone money and then had them turn it down, especially not a nonprofit, and you know they agreed and appreciated the stance of virtue to the program and the compassion for the folks who were receiving the service. And we are now continuing under the same level of program delivery that we have been for the last 25, 26 years. Tomorrow I'll be back out there for full day of programming and everyone is happy. So that is an instant, instance for myself that that comes up when I think about control and I think about agility and I think about moving through the spaces and phases of being presented with an issue, being presented with a problem, and finding a unique way to not just move through it or tear it down but be with it and adapt and overcome. And, as cliche as it sounds, find a win-win situation that feels good all the way around the board, because sometimes win-win situations don't feel too good, but this one felt good for everybody involved.
Janet Harvey:Eldra, I have a clarifying question. So in the second step of the reflection process and you all have the document handy so I want to call your attention to habit, preference, assumption and bias. It seems to me that the administrator had the habit of control, one way of thinking about the way grants would get administered and what was effective and efficient, and maybe a preference to control. I don't know from how you've said the story, and I wonder what did you guys identify as the bias you were operating under until you had the breakthrough idea of wait a minute, we don't have to take the money Like it's like. That's a simple answer right in front of us, but we can get caught up. So I'm curious what did you see as your bias that might have been operating?
Eldra Jackson:Certainly, the bias that I was operating under was this is the way that it always has been, so this is the way that it always will be, no matter what. We've earned this. We deserve this. So there was a bias of entitlement, most definitely, and there was a bias not knowing where she could have been coming from or what she could have been dealing with coming from, the bias of oh, here we go again. Once again, they're trying to kill off the program. They're trying to take over what it is we do. Governments and administrations are always screwing something up, and as soon as they see something that works and it is effective, they want to take it over and put their stamp on it and screw that up as well. So, yeah, there were plenty of biases that I was sitting on.
Janet Harvey:And so, then, what brought in the compassion, meaning to be with the passion of another that I might not see eye to eye with? How did you open up the space for yourself to be able to have a creative answer?
Eldra Jackson:What would help open the space up for me is kind of something that I said in the beginning of this, when I started, was this is not prison work, this is human work. And getting to a place where I could look at and I'm going to use this word and then I'm going to explain why I use it Look at the administration as the human beings that they are, because they're not administration. Administration is a job. Prison official is a job. It's a title. It's not who they are, it's not who the person is. There's always something underneath that. If I'm open to seeing the human being, if I'm open to connecting with the human being and being willing to ask and hear what their position is, what they're going through, what it is they're thinking and what it is that they're feeling because I can make up all sorts of stuff in my head and 99% of the times, none of that is true.
Janet Harvey:Gosh, darn it as much as we'd like it to be right. So you were able to disrupt your own preferences and begin to see something else emerge.
Eldra Jackson:I was able to disrupt not only my own purposes and preferences, but I was open to hearing and seeing the quote, unquote other side and willing to drop my biases and drop my walls and be with that and put myself in their position, put myself in their position and, from that place, understanding that that's a tough job.
Eldra Jackson:That's a tough job, the position that she's in. You're the front-facing person for the entire institution. Everybody who's contacting this person wants something. Everybody who's in contact with this person feels like they need something and feels like they have something coming. So if I imagine myself in that position, I can only get an inkling of the onslaught of emotions and energy that could become in my way. And not all of it is nice, not all of it is supportive, and it's very easy for me to demonize someone in that position and other that person if I'm not getting what it is that I want, and not even take into consideration the human being, the soul, the spirit that the human or title has been thrust upon as if that is who they are.
Janet Harvey:Right Gosh. So all of you that are working with individuals who are in leadership roles, whether you're doing it inside the organization or outside, and they're working with you personally. This is the journey Can I come to face? Can I come and face the thing that it's not comfortable? I don't really like it. It doesn't fit with my paradigm. Maybe there's something there because there's a human there. It's not a process or an entity that's unembodied. There's always an embodied heart. Yeah, I told you guys he's remarkable.
Garry Schleifer:It's the work.
Janet Harvey:It's the work, but it requires the agency of the human to do it and to me, this is why I'm a coach and the opportunity to help people come back home and remember their humanity, even in the face of really difficult challenges, and to say no to the money. I am very curious have you noticed that money from a different source or resource of a different source has emerged because you could make a clear no?
Eldra Jackson:I have, not for necessarily the prison work, but in other areas, Because in my experience people are looking for something. So I know I'm looking for something solid. I'm always looking for something solid. I'm always looking to be in relationship with solid people, solid organizations, a sense of grounded foundation within myself. And so again, and we're a small nonprofit, so to turn down that amount of money over the course of that time. People looked at that Initially we're like, oh, you got to be crazy. And then they could begin to see and respect what it is that we do, why it is that we do it, and where it's coming from. A no is not always for me, a no. In this instance, for me, a no was a yes.
Eldra Jackson:Saying no to the money was saying yes to people having the opportunity to put themselves in a position to be in a true relationship with themselves, and that was not going to happen with a yes to the money. That was just not going to happen.
Janet Harvey:Wow, drop the mic Right, holding the attention to mission and service as primary, and the rest of it is simply just a process. It's not what's important, fascinating. Ok, go ahead, Suley, and then we're going to go into breakout rooms and give you guys a chance to play with your own thorny problems. What's your question?
Eldra Jackson:Yeah, I had a question. I'm curious because we also have a very small nonprofit and it always seems that whoever writes the grant is the one that writes and not the writer, but whoever receives the grant is the one that has the control on the program that they applied for to be achieved. So that person in that prison did not write the program or did not write the grant did not receive the approval you did. So I find it fascinating the thought process that you didn't go further. So it's a curious question Was that divine intervention? Was that God saying, ok, make the choice here. Is it the money or is it the purpose, the mission and the vision? So I work with companies and a coach and spirituality is a great part of what I do. So I'm curious.
Janet Harvey:So I'm going to ask Eldra to hold that question and also the one that's in May, your question in the chat. Take this into your breakout room and use the method to give you an opportunity to reflect on it and see what answer arises, and when we come back, Eldra can pick this up and answer. I think you framed the tension beautifully, great. All right, so everybody is there, anybody who does not have the handout handy? So let me see by a show of hands. I don't see anyone. All right, go for it. How much time do they have, Paige?
Eldra Jackson:How much time would you like to give today? We're a little overrun early.
Janet Harvey:So why don't you go ahead and take 10 minutes, five minutes each, to talk your way through the thorny problem and listener when it's your turn asking questions, being curious on behalf of your partner, and then watch the clock for five minutes and switch, and then we'll see you in 10. And welcome back everybody. It's always too short. Orts.
Janet Harvey:But our hope is that it catalyzed some fresh thinking for you, and please go ahead and use the handrails. It'll just help us process and make sure everybody that wants to have a voice can have one. So are there questions top of mind? Sarah, go ahead.
:Hi. Thank you so much, Mr Jackson, for your presentation. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what you tried in terms of changing the administrator's decision before you chose to withdraw your request for funding.
Eldra Jackson:Yeah, thank you for the question, and so what we tried was we had a series of meetings to explain how what was being proposed would basically kill the program. And you know we spoke to the history and how not just effective it had been for the folks who actively participate in the program, but how it had been of service to the entire population as well. This is not a program that everybody attends. You know, you have a yard of I think 980 people and at the height when I was in there, we had maybe 60 people on that yard that were involved. But the folks that are involved usually are individuals that have some sort of sway, that have some sort of voice in their communities, and so that alters the entire dynamic of the yard.
Eldra Jackson:I was on that yard for 10 years and it was a level four Mac and still is a level four maximum security yard and there were no incidents during that entire decade across racial lines. That's something that benefits everybody. There were no guards getting knocked out, there were no police being stepped on. That's something that benefits everybody. So you know, we pointed out and spoke to all of those things in that track record and it felt like it was falling on deaf ears. So you know, we definitely attempted to show and demonstrate how leaving the program as is would would would be beneficial to everyone, and you know it. Just, it just didn't seem like it was a good fit. You know from where she said it was a different motive.
Janet Harvey:Do you think that's what it was?
Eldra Jackson:You know I could surmise about a lot of things, but you know, when it came down to it it was, it was obvious, you know, to me and others that you know she was going to do what it is, that she was set on, and I don't know if it was a feeling of this is how it needs to be, or because I've said this, you know I can't turn back because it may look like I am, you know, conceding to convict. I don't know what it was. It could have been a host of things, you know, and it could have been somebody behind her really pushing the buttons, and it was just the figurehead and opposition. I don't know. I just know that, you know I felt like something had to happen to make certain we could continue in the way that we have been and maintain a non-oppositional relationship with the administration, because then that's a whole different, you know, and of hornets.
Janet Harvey:So that ratio between control and agility, you found the balance much more on the agility side than on the control side and she misses out on the agility completely. Yeah. And so caught in the extreme.
Eldra Jackson:We are, and by we I mean, you know, folks that they're participating in these programs are used to adapting and finding ways to become agile and I recognize that you know great big institutions' and so-called systems can be a bit stiff and it can take a while for them to shift their paradigm and way of doing business and I don't have time to really wait on that shift when people's lives are at stake.
Janet Harvey:Exactly, exactly. Go ahead, chris. I see your hands.
:First of all, Eldra, you're such a beautiful man. Thank you. Thank you for creating what you're creating. I watched your videos and I wrote one thing down, as you said, you said my deviant character was a product of my own design. And then, later on, you said now I'm moving into my natural self. Building on that, what reality are you creating today for yourself, and how does that enable you to navigate the tension of control and agility as you lead your organization?
Eldra Jackson:What am I creating for myself that helps me navigate and lead the organization? Well, I am a product of the organization. I don't just lead the organization, I'm a product of the organization, and I'll give you a brief story, as much as I can. A couple of weeks ago, we went camping in the Nevada desert and me and my family, my wife, left the campsite.
Eldra Jackson:she took a vehicle and left the campsite to go about 10 miles into the town to pick up some lunch. She came back about 40 minutes later and there was a vehicle behind her, she didn't say anything. She drove past the campsite, made a big you turn loop around the campsite and left and went back towards the entrance. And about five minutes later I got a telephone call from her and she said come down to the river bed, there's some guy in a car following me. So I hopped on my ATV, grabbed a can of bear spray that we carry because we live in the woods, and and and and you know, a sped like speed racer down into the river bed. He was in a Jeep, so she was trying to, you know, go some places for a while driving, try to lose this guy. And he was in a car and he was, you know, right there. So when I came around the corner she said, you know, right there behind me he was coming around the corner, and I jumped off the bike shaking up the can of bear spray and walked up to his vehicle. You know there was some choice, choice words that were passed from me to him and, long story short, he's still alive today.
Eldra Jackson:Everyone left that situation the same way that they came into the situation, other than him understanding that that was not a good choice on his behalf. And we made, you know, some reports to the authorities, as good citizens are supposed to do, and learn some different things about his history. And for me, that is what this work that I do is all about, because I lived my life in such a way for so long. There are things that just naturally, instinctually, come to me, that just show up and in that moment I have an opportunity to make a choice. And that comes down for choice. And in this work that we do is always trying to, you know, assist people in tapping into their ability to make the best choices for themselves, not provide them the answers, but to tap into their own innate wisdom. And that was a very, you know, real high tense situation for me to tap into that innate wisdom at the moment and walk away safely. And there were all sorts of things again that were going on in my head that could have been justified and all sorts of stuff, especially after we learn, you know, more about his history from law enforcement.
Eldra Jackson:What position with that? It put my family in position with that. It placed me in. How do I then wake up every morning, you know, with the knowledge of whatever it is that I may have done? Is that who I want to be? These are questions that I asked myself every day when I wake up. I asked myself every morning when I wake up who do I want to be today? Because tomorrow's gone. Because, excuse my French, here, if I go apeshit crazy and do something today, that's all they're going to remember. They're not going to remember yesterday. We just going to be talking about today. If that answers your question.
:Beautiful, thank you.
Janet Harvey:So pick up Sully and May's curiosity here about the influence of money seen through the eyes of the one who's giving it.
Eldra Jackson:That is still one that I'm working through myself because I don't have money to give. That's always an area for me where there is where there can be tension and that I'm working with, especially, you know, having the responsibility to go out and procure funding, you know, for the mission and to keep the lights on. I never really know what someone else's intention is. I know what our intention is and our intention is to be able to provide a service, to be able to support other human beings, and you know when we're talking about money.
Eldra Jackson:In this specific case of you know, a grant with CDC to serve that particular prison, what that would have covered was staff time that is dedicated towards providing services to reimburse, and volunteers for gas, for airline tickets because we have people come in from all over the country to support the program lodging, you know folks standing hotels, that's what they cook. That's like a break even thing. That's like what are the costs that we put out and then receiving back through invoice compensation for what we put out there. There's no profit margin there for us. We don't. We don't make money, we just get back what we spend.
Janet Harvey:And I think this is the issue in any thorny problem. Both sides of the thorny problem have needs and requirements. They don't receive their way of relating to the situation, often quite differently, so that definition of control or agility for each side of that equation can be completely different. But if we don't ask right, if we don't invite people to say, help me see the world the way you see it, both sides are going to make the wrong decision, wrong as inadequate to what the shared purpose is. That thorny problem is risen, and this is the value of the reflection exercise.
Janet Harvey:Pause gives way more time than it takes and you obviously, when you were in the river bed, had that moments when you paused right, you add your choice words and then pause and let your parasympathetic system use the breath to relax and go. Do I want to be here tomorrow in the reality of that? Of course, and your wife of course, but I think this is. We all face these challenges in this control, agility, tension every single day. This is, this is one of the tensions of presence. That's true in our everyday life as much as it is for leaders inside of organizations.
Eldra Jackson:And without a doubt those are. You know I gave some extreme examples and I think that that helps with, you know, putting the practice together and walking through things, and for me the practice is is those little bitty moments and building on each little bitty moments. So when those extreme opportunities pop up, I built up the muscle memory to be able to engage from that place. If I'm just trying to engage in that place, you know when, when World War 19 jumps off, I probably not going to have the wherewithal to handle it in a good way, but if I'm practicing it each and every day, each and every moment, and bringing it to my consciousness and awareness I don't want to use the word easy I grow more comfortable with, with making those decisions and making those choices in the moment.
Janet Harvey:You've also spoken quite a lot about intention, and Gary, just jump in here if I'm just so excited about what we're talking about.
Garry Schleifer:I know you're on a roll.
Janet Harvey:You know this notion of intention. I think that we we can get so busy that we are on autopilot. And I caught myself the other day. I noticed all of a sudden that I was carrying a bias that I just don't know enough to be able to take action and I finally went well, that's just BS. I'm not sure I ever need to know enough.
Janet Harvey:And the shift then, but once I became aware of that bias, was to be motivated by recognizing I have all kinds of resource outside of my knowledge and if I value teaming and partnering, then the action for me is to start asking for support in something that I'm feeling uncertain about. And I just had our most amazing conversation with a person I met the instant we said hello on the phone. Who's going to do something for me. In my wildest dreams I couldn't have imagined, but all of that happened because I noticed the bias and I allowed myself to say okay, that's not the whole story, I have a choice, right. So and the agility that came came because I reflected on the bias and I stayed present to notice what it was. And these all seem very simple to say out loud, but our autopilot in our neurophysiology keeps us from seeing it, these are deliberate acts of practice that all of us must abide, and if we want to do this with your clients, you got to do it with yourself first.
Eldra Jackson:If I can ask you a question, Janet there were a lot of words there. What did it feel like, what was the emotion when you asked for what it was that you wanted or needed, and then that was met. Oh, elation.
Janet Harvey:It was. It was complete confirmation that the risk I took to ask was painless and it was totally rewarded. And yeah, so I have written it down. It's now on my whiteboard. So the next time I feel that bias of I don't know what the hell I'm doing, I'm like I have a habit to build right. It's not going to happen overnight. I have to be practicing, not have to be a choose right. I have the, I have the privilege of being able to practice this and I'm sure I will come back to this. I don't know enough over and over and over again until I don't. So that's the other thing I think is perseverance to the commitment.
Garry Schleifer:Hold the vision, stephanie.
:Hi, I know we're getting close to time, but I've been chewing on how to ask this question. So I was looking at the website and I saw that your recidivism rate is just incredible like 0% in the three years and I'm prior law enforcement. That means a lot to me. We're seeing those numbers. But my question for you, Eldra, is what you can share about maybe your experience, or what you're teaching the participants about relationship to past choices and patterns that don't align with the person they want to step into being in the future, and kind of what is that tension and what tools or practices you teacher have experienced in that arena.
Eldra Jackson:So a lot of the we use a lot of different technologies. We pull from a lot of different like native traditions, cpt, all sorts of things, but the main thing that we do is most folks are dealing with some sort of trauma, hurt people, hurt people and oftentimes when individuals are doing stuff, acting out or showing up in a particular way, it's more reactive than it is responsive. So we oftentimes create spaces where folks have the opportunity to go back and experience not not experience the trauma again, but develop a new relationship with the trauma. Because there were things that happened to me, you know, oh so long ago, and in that moment I developed a mechanism to deal with that, basically so I wouldn't go crazy, and as a child I didn't have the capacity to then put that off to the side and put it down. It became a part of who I was and then that part continued to show up throughout my life when it identified anything that had any sort of semblance to that trauma, then things became habitual for me. So if I can go back and establish a new relationship, a healthy relationship with that trauma, if the 40 year old me can go back and be there with the seven year old me and hold him through that space and then bring that seven year old back up here into a safe place.
Eldra Jackson:In this Now I can start to see where the triggers are and how they come up, and when those things come up, you know, I can be gifted with practices so that, as my body starts to feel certain things and I can start to recognize when this happens, this happens, when this is going on, this is how I show up. Is that how I want to show up? And if the answer is yes, if that works for you to knock your lights out. If it's not, then how can we support you developing something new? Oftentimes people don't have that answer, so they continue to sit in group and sit in this process and learn different things that work for them, because I don't have those answers for you, only you do. But I will sit with you while you go inside and discover what works for you.
Eldra Jackson:Yeah.
Janet Harvey:Thank you. That's S tephanie. That's the key right there, and that's why coaches. Everything is different than some of the other modalities, all of which are valuable, but at the moment, you want to foster autonomy. It's about allowing the space, however long it takes, for each person to find their own answer and choose it.
Garry Schleifer:Thanks so much everyone for being here. Eldra, Awesome, Amazing Thanks, Janet, for co-creating this with me. And remember our next one is one page October, I guess 18th.
:It's October 6th there we go, let's do comrades.
Janet Harvey:Yeah, competition and collaboration. Oh my God, is this like so palpable inside of organizations right now? All right, everybody.
Garry Schleifer:Thanks for coming.
Janet Harvey:A great rest of summer. We'll see you in fall right. Because we will cross the equinox. All right, Take care everyone. Thank you.
Garry Schleifer:Thanks, Eldra. Thank you, everyone Take care, thank you.