Satya Leaders Series Q&A: Creating Your Leadership Vision

This week we are answering some of your leadership questions, especially around creating your leadership vision. Visualization and active imagination are extremely helpful tools to help create the life you want, but they are just tools. This episode uncovers what happens when we rely on tools too much and what we really need to do to effect change in our lives.

In this episode, we explore:
•  How leaders should deal with past trauma
•  What to do when the visualization results aren't showing up for you
•  How to use active imagination to create your vision
•  How to live in the present while creating your future vision

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Transcript

INTRO  00:00

Welcome to CreativeMind Soul Sessions with Debra Berndt Maldonado and Dr. Rob Maldonado, founders of CreativeMind. Explore personal growth with us through Jungian psychology, Eastern spirituality, and social neuroscience in a deep, practical way. Let's begin. 

Debra Maldonado  00:25 

Hello, welcome back to Soul Sessions. I am Debra Maldonado, here with Dr. Rob Maldonado. We have a special episode today where we got some questions from our audience about leadership. I wanted to answer them today. We have three questions we're going to dive into. I do want to make a plug too. We have a free ebook that just came out, it's called The Success Trap: three hidden forces that are keeping you from going to the next level in your business and your life. If you are a high achieving entrepreneur and feel like you have been trapped in your success, find out the psychological reasons why and how to break yourself free. The link to download the ebook is in the show notes. The first question we have, we’ll keep the name anonymous, is someone who says she's in a new leadership position, it's a dream come true but she finds herself thwarted by anxiety attacks, self doubt beliefs, shame and disassociation. She says she's had an experience of trauma in early in life. How do we deal with that as a leader, those leaders who've had that kind of past?

Robert Maldonado  01:31

We want to, first of, all distinguish between small t trauma and big T trauma. What we mean by big T trauma is a trauma that really requires a therapeutic approach. Maybe a year or two, maybe more, of psychotherapy where you’re able to deal with a trauma experience and get the attention you need.

Debra Maldonado  01:57

This isn't something that coach should ever do, if it's that serious.

Robert Maldonado  02:01

But people that have small t trauma, meaning it was difficult, they had difficult situations in their childhood, adolescence, maybe young adulthood, and they haven't processed it completely. It's still there, they can tell, especially when they're in positions of stress or responsibility that those old patterns kick up. They experience self doubt, perhaps, anxiety, depression, those kinds of circumstances.

Debra Maldonado  02:39

Sometimes even panic attacks, with the pressure of leadership.

Robert Maldonado  02:44

But if you still want to stay in your position, of course, and take advantage of these opportunities, then it's a good idea to really work at a deeper level. Then coaching, of course, the deepest level is depth psychology, a Jungian approach, especially with the Eastern philosophy, it gives you a sense of what's the potential in the trauma itself, in the difficulties, instead of thinking of the difficult circumstances of your life as hurting you or causing you only pain. You can look at those experiences and say “What can I learn from this? What was the lesson? Where can I see the strength coming from these experiences?”

Debra Maldonado  03:40

When people say they have a big T or little t, the trauma happened on the ego level. When you have these symptoms or experiences or stress, you're really dealing with your ego. Understand that you're not your ego, it's a pattern, there's more to you than just this thing. When people have tough lives, or even big T traumas, they tend to over identify as their trauma, that's who I am, I'm this person that had this experience. We don't see our real true nature beyond that. That’s really hard. Eastern philosophy tells us that the true self can never be harmed, can never be hurt. On a core level of you, there's never ever been any kind of trauma. It's a beautiful potential that's in you. Knowing that's there immediately can help you, but it takes study, it takes practice, not just a one trick pony, where you could just say “That's my ego, I'm out of there.” It's about processing and really understanding that this ego is telling me something that's not true. You start to open up to a deeper part of yourself.

Robert Maldonado  04:53

It’s three steps. First of all, you accept the circumstances, we're not pushing them away. We're not sugarcoating them. We're seeing them for what they are. But again, we're seeing them from the higher perspective that we’re the observers of our life in our mind, we're not caught up in the drama of the emotions and the experiences we've had. That allows us to use the information that comes from those experiences in a creative and powerful way. That's number one, you have to see it as an opportunity to transform this energy of experience into creativity.

Debra Maldonado  05:39

It's almost like these things are coming up so you can deal with them. A lot of the approaches that I've experienced through the personal development is squashing the symptoms. We're not overcoming it. It's like managing symptoms, where what we want to do is transcend it altogether. Not getting rid of it, but putting it in its right place and seeing it as not as powerful as our ego thinks it is.

Robert Maldonado  06:05

Number two, you have to work with the emotions. What are the emotions associated with those experiences? You mentioned shame, you mentioned probably anger, self doubt, anxiety. All those emotions, you have to invite them in instead of trying to sue them, trying to fix them, trying to get rid of them. This approach allows you to use that energy because it's psychological, emotional energy that is yours. If you push it away, you're blocking it or are pushing it into the shadow, into the unconscious.  Allowing it to arise and to experience it in a friendly, open, non-judgmental way, allows that energy to be transformed into creative power.

Debra Maldonado  06:56

I do want to add a caveat here that we don't want to jump in, marinate in it. If you think about a river and the water rushing with the rocks, that's that emotion going back. You're not in the river, swimming with the emotion, you're on the bank of the river, being the witness, watching it unfold, taking a step back. Not disassociating, that's very different, that’s a defensive mechanism. When you're taking a step back, you're still feeling the feels, with disassociation you cut yourself off from the feeling, you move out of your body because it's too intense. You're in it, you're with it. A lot of people feel like the emotion is going to hurt them in some way if they keep going toward it. It's going to set them back or damage them in some way. What would you say to that?

Robert Maldonado  07:45

That's a misunderstanding of the nature of emotions. All emotions are there for a purpose, we have anger, we have shame, all these things to give us a sense of the meaning of life's circumstances. Whatever we're experiencing, those emotions tell us what this means. We need those very subtle emotions like shame, fear, anxiety. All these things are very useful to us. When we push them away, when we suppress them, we don't have access to them anymore. Then they're working unconsciously and sabotaging our work, like in your circumstances.

Debra Maldonado  08:28

It’s the opposite. You think “If I go toward the emotion, it's going to hurt me”, but actually disassociating or pushing it away, or trying to overcome it is actually hurting you more because as you push it into the unconscious, it's doing more — I don't want to say damage — but causing more problems for you than actually solving them.

Robert Maldonado  08:50

Thirdly, first you see it as an opportunity and approach it from this higher perspective, you work with the emotions, then you get to integration. Integration means you own it. These are no longer elements that you’re working with, or pushing away, or see as alien to your life and your goals in life. They’re a part of it, they’re integrated, you're conscious of them. When you're conscious of them, they can’t hurt you because you decide what to do with them.

Debra Maldonado  09:29

Also the feeling of anxiety is more of pushing it away, it causes more discomfort than if you actually let it be there. At first it might feel overwhelming, but then after a while it gets lighter. When we're feeling anxious, we’re resisting something and get afraid of how we feel. We never want to do that, we never want to be afraid to not feel because feeling through life makes it beautiful. The feel of joy and pain, all those emotions, it's to honor them and know that they can't override you and take you over. They can actually be a part of a very rich, deep, meaningful life.

Robert Maldonado  10:14

You're in a great position, you just need to do the work, of course, work with a coach, a CreativeMind coach, because they’ll help you reach this level of integration. Then you can be the great leader you know you can be.

Debra Maldonado  10:30

If you treat the small t trauma, what you're actually doing in most cases is you're suppressing it, you're getting rid of the symptoms of this experience versus really getting to the root. The question is why did I feel this way in the first place? It’s because I thought I was an ego, at the time where events happened, I thought I was powerless, I'm not powerless. It really is a return to power than actually succumbing to an emotion. You're actually being more powerful than the emotion.

INTERMISSION  11:09 

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Debra Maldonado  12:26 

Next question is “I've been visualizing, wanting something to happen.’ We've all done this. We have goals, we've been visualizing and very vigilant with it. “The thing I want isn't showing up. Is it just a fantasy or am I really visualizing? How do I know if I’m fantasizing one day I'm going to be successful? How do I know the difference?”

Robert Maldonado  12:51

You're the expert on visualization. Start us off.

Debra Maldonado  12:55

Fantasy is when you visualize something in the future but on a deep level, you really don't believe it's gonna come true. It's like you're doing it to suppress a current suffering you have. My life isn't great now, so I'm going to escape and visualize that one day everything's going to work out for me. That's a fantasy. Then on a deep level, you don't believe it's actually true. How do we get away from fantastical thinking into vision? It’s higher knowledge. Like we talk about in our podcasts all the time, understand the nature of who we are and how we create. If you don’t understand that, if you think that I am here, I have to visualize, then something out there is going to come in, it's separate from me, it's chance or it's luck that I'm going to have it, it's going to be a fantasy. But if you understand that I am consciousness, everything I think, feel, and imagine is I'm creating, I'm weaving this world. For me it’s understanding 100% the responsibility for what you're creating right now. Not in blame, but responsibility that on some level I'm conditioned to have this experience. I want to investigate how I'm conditioned to have this experience, so that I can create the experience I consciously want. Just visualizing and hoping this current situation goes away isn’t going to solve the problem. It's the easy way, I am gonna visualize. When The Secret came out 20 years ago, everyone was like “This is so easy. I don't have to work hard, I'm just gonna visualize it, and it's gonna happen.” But if you do it from ego, you do it from fear, you do it from “I'll be better when”, and not understanding that you're part of the equation, it will be a fantasy. To truly envision is understanding that you're consciousness, understanding how reality works, that it's a reflective reality, not a directive reality out there. It’s not telling you what’s possible, you're deciding. If it isn’t showing up on some level, you're deciding either you don't want it or you don't believe you can have it. That's where you can examine it more. You say I'm the queen of visualizations, we constantly hear “Do you have a visualization for that?” You can't just visualize yourself into change, you have to do the shadow work. You have to understand the in-depth psychology. In our coaching model, we go deeper into what is really happening and why we're not doing it. Do you have anything to add to that?

Robert Maldonado  15:45

That's a pretty good explanation of it. Magical thinking is fantasy. What we're doing in this kind of work is we're being very practical and very real about where we're at. We're not pushing away anything, we are accepting the situation. But we also understand that this situation we created from our thoughts, the current situation, we’re the creators of this situation, which means if we accept responsibility, we can also change it.

Debra Maldonado  16:27

Here's a really good part of this question. “Do we hold the vision even if it seems we're getting nowhere or do we just accept that maybe we're not cut out for big dreams like the life we want?” That’s exactly why the vision isn't working, you even wrote it out. Here's something I think everyone can do. If you're a visualizer — I love visualization, there's nothing wrong with it, but you have to do the inner work. You can't just visualize just using the technique alone, techniques won’t get you anywhere, you have to have that underlying philosophy. Write down your current situation you're frustrated with, write down why you think this is happening to you. Then you'll be really surprised. You can read it back, you’ll see exactly the thought process and the assumptions you're making. This is not deep step psychology, this is just preconscious stuff, belief systems. But it's a good first step to even listen to your narrative. The next step is why do I think that way versus what am I thinking? But the next step, which most people do not do, they just change their thinking, try to change their thinking. But you have to ask yourself “Why do I think that way? Why do I assume I'm not meant for good dreams, big dreams? Why am I doubting myself?” Those are the bigger questions. That's what you need to answer. The last question is another visualization question. But I'll let you answer this one, Rob. We can both answer this one, we could share it. How do you use active imagination, which is a deeper, more advanced form of visualization, we'll explain what that is, to create our vision. Do you want to explain what active imagination is? Then I will give a little tip on how to use it.

Robert Maldonado  18:15

She mentioned dream work. You can use it for dream work. Active imagination is a powerful tool that Jung developed himself in order to work with the symbols that arise from the unconscious mind. He noticed that a lot of these symbols he wasn't familiar with and didn't have enough content to interpret them, to understand them. He developed a technique of active imagination where he’d close his eyes, relax, and visualize that symbol. Let's say he saw an eagle in his vision, his imagination, he’d visualize the eagle and hold it steady as much as possible, really concentrate on it until it started to move, then just follow it without trying to direct it, change it, interpret it at that time, but simply observe what other elements he could find to fill in understanding of the symbol from his active imagination work.

Debra Maldonado  19:25

It’d be the opposite of guided meditation, it’s unguided, you're not guiding it at all. You're allowing it to show up when we want to create a vision. Of course, our conscious mind wants to create a vision. What we want to do is, say, you have a vision of something you want. Imagine that scene of the future playing out. Focus on that scene as if it's stuck in time, like you're looking at a slide of a film. Let it be there for a minute, then drop your agenda and just watch what unfolds. Allow yourself to see, maybe things you wouldn't consciously visualize for your future, other things will start to emerge randomly, just let them unfold. I did this 20 years ago, before I became a hypnotherapist and coach, before I met you, Rob. I did active imagination, where we were allowed to visualize ourselves 10 years into the future. All these things started to emerge. What’s really interesting is that I saw you there, but I didn’t know you at the time, I saw the business we're creating, and I was in the corporate world. All the things that I didn't think of for my vision started showing up. I love personal growth, I wanted to do something around that realm. Then this whole vision showed up, it was so beautiful, then I got to live it. I am living it. That's a great way to do it. You want to be open because our ego has an agenda, “This is what I really want.” But the soul has another agenda. You want to do active imagination to let your soul speak to you and show you maybe things that your ego doesn't want to do, maybe afraid of, that pushes you forward. Sometimes it shows up, like you said, in dreams. You have a dream of being on stage. Maybe you never thought of yourself that way. But it shows up. Your soul’s like “Maybe consider this in your future.”

Robert Maldonado  21:28

It's a very powerful tool you can use both for dreams and for creating a vision of who you want to be, what things you want to create in your life. Because if you think of this world, everything you see around you, someone had to imagine it, someone had to conceive of it, it came from the mind. Everything we see, everything we have, comes from the imagination. We forget that principle. It's very powerful. If you can imagine something and believe you can create it, that becomes your reality. It’s to the extent that you're able to hold that vision of yourself in this creative way, it will become your life.

Debra Maldonado  22:17

I have one more question. It's actually a second question about visualization. I thought I'd ask this too. How can we accept and live in the present, while stepping into the experience of our vision at the same time, without our mind focused on the future, so we aren't just chasing what we want? A very simple idea is that what we really want aren't things out there, what we really want aren't conditions in the world. On a deep level, what we’re really looking for is the feeling and the personal experience of having those things or having created those things. I’d start by the internal experience, you have to have it first before the external shows up. If you have this vision of you being a great leader one day but your internal experience is “I'm not a leader, I don't know if I can have it, it's going to be a lot of work,” that's what you're going to create versus this vision that's more like a fantasy. But if you embody that this is who I really am, how would that be right now today? How would I act as a leader? I might not have all the things out there yet but who am I being? It’s embodying. It's not just building up an ego. It’s transcending the ego and doing the inner work to align with your soul who's already that person, who's already able to express the beautiful, powerful leadership skills, energies, and expressions, to embody it now. Even if you have zero clients, if you have zero customers, zero revenue, you're being that now. It will sip into it. But the beingness comes first. Do like that answer? Do you have anything else to add?

Robert Maldonado  24:17

That's wonderful. That's what it's about.

Debra Maldonado  24:20

We get caught up in the objects and the circumstances. We think those things are going to make us happy, when I have these things lined up for myself, whether it's a partner, whether it's a nice house, whether it's a steady income or money in the bank, thousands raving fans, as they always say, is the target. But who's the person who has that? That’s you have to become today. That's inner work. That's when we talk about satya leadership, living in truth. Because the truth of who you are, you're not the ego, you’re not your past, you’re not the culmination of everything that happened to you. You’re pure potential. How can we step into that? That's what satya leadership is all about. This was a juicy conversation, Rob. How did you enjoy that? Thank you for getting these questions. We're always open. If you have more questions, don't forget to post them in the comments below. In the show notes, we do have a wonderful gift for all of you who are aspiring leaders, already leaders, successful and feeling overwhelmed. We have a free ebook that we wrote together. It's called The Success Trap: three hidden forces that are keeping you from going to the next level in your business and your life. It's all the inner work that a leader needs to be truly successful, not just outer success, but the feeling they're really connected to their soul and doing their life's purpose in a deep, meaningful way. They don't have to sacrifice anything to have that. We’ll see you next week. Take care, everyone.

Robert Maldonado  25:54

Thanks for the great questions. See you next time.

Debra Maldonado  25:56

Bye bye. 

OUTRO  25:59 

Thank you for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe to CreativeMind Soul Sessions. Join us next week as we explore another deep topic where you can consciously create your life with CreativeMind Soul Sessions. See you next time.