One of the consequences of the sustained uncertainty for many is that it affects confidence on both a personal and systemic level. I saw a headline in a report calling for business to ‘create confidence’ in the marketplace so that we could all move on. For me, this symbolises the high degree of dependence that we place on outer or external factors for our levels of confidence and therefore well-being.
We have an ingrained practice of unconsciously relying on the material and physical aspects of life to be in a certain shape and order such as transport systems or economic systems and social systems.
And this is of course understandable. They in large part define our experience of the world and our place within it. For many, there is also a deep preference for clear rules and guidelines to enable feelings of safety. We tend to build and sustain our confidence based on what we know in the exterior world rather than within our inner resources, our sense of our beingness or truth, and a deeper awareness.
What if as leaders, we were instead to say that actually everything that is happening now (I don’t of course mean people dying) in economic and marketplace terms is ‘perfect’ as it is. What if we were to see the external factors for what they are, things we have created and can change, create in a different way, or adapt to healthily. What if were instead to do a personal check-in and see that in fact, the real source of sustained confidence comes from within – from our own sense of who we are as people and our ability to engage with life from our heart and from that adapt and change for the better.
A place that philosophically and practically recognises that we, humanity, are not defined by our material possessions or our money but by how we show up and who we are in our heart. That love, kindness, cooperation, and humanness are what build true confidence. That by sharing and circulating our resources, talents and ideas to name but a few, we can and will build a better world where our confidence is coming from a deep sense of ‘I’m OK because you are OK’ and knowing that to be true.
As leaders, if we build our organisations on this inner confidence, on a deeper sense of self and others, we will build businesses where the purpose and activities are a heartfelt expression of the outer communities we inhabit and the inner community we build. Resilience, inner and outer, would then be sustained.
