The Naked Consultant
I haven’t posted here on Medium in quite some time. However, for the next few weeks I am re-committing to posting short pieces here on Medium as well as on my Facebook page. My hope is that this process will allow me to, once again, become comfortable with writing regularly for public viewing.
My hope is based on an assumption that by posting regularly I will activate a degree of creative momentum which in turn will support me in getting more comfortable with the process. Eventually I would like this whole thing to bring meaning and value to others.
As I mentioned in a video last week, I have repeatedly struggled with perfectionism and the writer’s block it fuels. Recently this deadly cycle had gotten so bad that I had even stopped writing for myself in the form of private journaling.
Luckily things have started to open up and I recently began private journaling. Every morning now I wake between 3am and 4am, do a short meditation and then write for about 45 minutes. Eventually this process led to me posting video stories on my Instagram account. For those on Instagram, I continue to do this several times a week.
While this process has not been without struggles, so far the overall experience has been positive. The creative process has definitely been flowing more than it was a short time ago. This has given me confidence to press forward and try this, a practice the business and writing teacher George Kao refers to as “Public Journaling.”
But why am I doing this? Is there something more here that merely a public airing of one writer’s struggles? I would say most surely.
I can attest that there is indeed a larger purpose at play, one intimately tied to helping people who go to work every day in companies large and small the freedom to be their authentic selves at work. The liberation that allows them to to feel that being at work feeds their humanity and allows them to pursue their own need for meaning.
In order that this may be possible, it’s critical that our organizations have the courage to embrace greater truth, courage, and vulnerability. This is something many organizations are either afraid to do or unaware of how to go about.
So that is one reason.
Another reason is that I am a writer and organizational consultant who feels quite comfortable telling others they need to go that unguarded space, but am reticent to do so myself.
I will assume you can see the irony of my own disconnect, a disconnect that I know prevents me from learning and expressing the core message that lives deep within me.
For all these reasons I have come to realize that the only choice I have is to do the thing that scares me the most. That is to begin writing and writing honestly, with a sense of authenticity about where I’m at, what I think, and what I am envisioning for our shared future.
Oh, and that also means doing all this publicly. Where others can see and, if they choose, respond in kind. In other word, doing all this in one of the scariest places I can imagine.
In closing, my hope is that by following through with this process of public journaling, my self-consciousness will ease and, somehow, a door will open in my mind and heart that helps me release what I most need to say at this time.
Of course, my hope is that whatever comes forth is also something others want and need to hear.
More soon. Promise. ❤️
