The descending and ascending path of development
When children are mean to my kids, I tell them that it’s likely because the other children feel small. And, when you feel small, you think the way to feel big is to make others feel smaller. And that may seem to work for a moment, but inevitably, after the adrenaline wears off from belittling another, you end up feeling just as small as you did before. Indeed, you often feel smaller.
Similarly in development, my bigness doesn’t come from making the other parts of me small, by rejecting them. It comes from embracing them. The more of me that I can welcome, and hold, and make friends with, and understand, the bigger I become. Growth that is focused on pushing the less complex parts of self away is superficial, unsteady.
My friend Brian Emerson describes the stability and stickiness of growth this way. He says that if you focus only on getting to the top of the mountain and don’t take the time to fill out and reinforce the base, you find yourself on shaky ground. The mountain can easily crumble and your developmental capacities with it. But if you spend some time fortifying each section of the mountain as you climb, you have a much more solid base upon which to stand.
I understand the fortification of development that Brian describes as follows. That at each level of the mountain as you climb your way up, you undertake reconnaissance of the terrain, evaluate what resources there are, what the land might offer, how you might inhabit it most fully. And, then as you do gain a higher standing on the mountain, you bring the gifts with you that you discovered on your way up. Yet, often, particularly as we first give attention to our development, we’re so anxious to get to the apex, we skip the recon, we miss the gifts.
And then there are the times when we lose our footing, or are knocked over by a gust of wind, or are taken down in a mudslide. And these unceremonious tumbles to the base of our mountain—the earlier parts of ourselves in our development—also offer us a chance to learn from the terrain, uncover the gifts, resource ourselves for future expeditions both up and down the mountain. Yet, we are often so scared or ashamed that we have fallen that we find a cave to hide in until the storm passes, and then race back up to the top without surveying the damage—to ourselves, to our surround—without revisiting the vistas and vegetation and toeholds that comprise this territory. We leave it behind, and in so doing we leave a part of ourselves behind, too. We don’t return to the higher elevations bolstered and bigger; we manage to come back up, but we find ourselves a bit bedraggled and depleted. This is what happens when we practice the blame (others) and shame (ourselves) game following our inevitable experiences of fallback.
Indeed, when we think (and talk) about development, we often think (and talk) about #growth. But, over the past decade through my research and practice, I’ve come to realize that development is about not only the ascending, but also the descending path. Development occurs as we traverse, over and over again, the territory of our knowing, sometimes moving forward, sometimes falling back, sometimes just sitting in the being space, learning what new lessons it has to teach us.
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In this beautiful, honest, “surging toward,” eros-filled conversation with my friends and colleagues Dana Carman, Shakiyla Smith, and Joel Monk on the Coaches Rising podcast, we explore what we thought development was and how we are coming to see it and ourselves and others anew as we live into the theory (alone and together) and accompany others in their own living into…forward, back, and in the as.it.is.
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What’s possible when we explore around those lower elevations, take in what they have to offer, learn from that which came before, and assess in what ways it is true and helpful and also still part of us now? This month I had the privilege of exploring the answer to this question and several others about the implications of fallback as we come into relationship with it and when we do not—as individuals, in relationship, and on teams and in organizations—in an expansive conversation with author, coach, and leadership development facilitator Nadjeschda Taranczewski. You can read the Conscious U newsletter featuring highlights from our conversation or watch the full interview.
