BE THE “BOSS” OF YOUR OWN “BROADCASTING COMPANY”

• “Mommy, have you seen my glasses around here by any chance?” – “Aren’t you wearing it right now, sweetie?” – “What…?”

• “Mommy, have you seen my car key/my helmet anywhere? It doesn’t make any sense. I’ve just put it on the table right here.” – “Then what are you holding in your hands?”

……..

There is this strange circumstance in which a colleague in my Truly Inspired team often encounters. We would usually have conversations about trifles in life whenever we got our work organized. Obviously, even though those stories are typical, the main concern is that it happened all too often with her. And I believe, you somehow also occasionally hear and ask these “silly questions”, don’t you?

The amount of time we had conversations as well as through numerous one-on-one coaching sessions with different coachees, I realized that not only my colleague but almost everyone is encountering a similar situation: Not aware of what they were/are doing. Frankly, we might have probably been living with a “lack of awareness” throughout our whole lives.

There is a saying by Zen Master Minh Niem in the course “Meditation and Leadership” (2021) on Youtube about being a Mindful Leader that I really cherish: “We have gone through days when our lives belong to the others, belong to the external environment, and belong to the living pace of the society.”

I personally think most of us are in the state that Master Minh Niem described above. We often fail to control ourselves whenever it comes to dealing with emotions, solving problems in our work, encountering relationship troubles, or even when facing simple daily life issues.

With everyday passing by, we always attempt to lead and dominate different aspects of life such as: demanding others to act as our will, trying to keep everything to stay on plans and intentions, wanting everything to go smoothly, and will be very upset/heartbroken, or having a sense of failure when things don’t go as expected. Meanwhile, when “OURSELVES” is what we need to control the most, we are doing this job the worst.

Life domination can be easily seen in families, especially among the parents – children, spouses, or even lovers.

• How many times have you been and are going through days full of confusion, uncertainties, or days of not knowing how to treat your close and loved ones?
• Do you feel like you don’t have enough time to “notice” the real expressions on your loved ones’ faces, understand what they’re thinking, how they’re feeling, or what difficulties they’re facing even though it looks like you interact with them every day? 
• Do you feel like when dealing with problems, you can’t analyze the rights and wrongs of them, but can only consider the pros and cons in a one-sided way based on your opinions, then soon don’t have enough time to recognize your own afflictions and stress?

You know, the truth is that no matter how much you desire to care about others, it will never be enough to satisfy your own expectations. You need to realize that we don’t need, or to be more precise, cannot master all of these things. The only and most important thing that we need at this moment is the “Awakening” within ourselves.

For the majority, “awakening” is very difficult for them. Nevertheless, if we ask ourselves what would it feel like when we have been awaked, we can see there would be so much potential for us to have better and more promising relationships, successfully improve ourselves, have better support in our work and life, and so many more. Therefore, before leading different individuals, it is essential to become wiser and more conscious in leading our own minds and emotions first.

For me, “Wise Leadership” requires two skills: Leading yourself and leading others. In this article, I will focus on explaining how to “Lead Yourself” with two important parts: “Mind Management” and “Emotions management”.

Mind Leadership

Have you ever been in a scenario like this?

Every day you would spend your time and mental capacity caring for and looking after an important person. Nevertheless, with only one day of you forgetting to do something, even a non-important duty, that person would suddenly become sulky, disgusted, or even upset at you.

Now looking at a specific group of people in our society I would like to call “ungrateful individuals”. The ungrateful individuals would usually receive favors continuously from others, yet it only takes just one time when these people don’t do something that is demanded or finish something without meeting the expectations, the “ungrateful individuals” can forget all of the good deeds, focus on these kind people’s deficiency, and then one-sidedly evaluate their effort based on each individual’s perspective?

This is the behavior of a lack of awareness in our minds. When we are really “awaked”, we will realize that it was just an unintentional mistake, not something they were hoping for. Furthermore, when someone does you favors, taking care of you has never always been a responsibility or duty for them. It is indeed their goodwill, kind-heartedness, and affection. Nevertheless, there are still too many carefree people who think they deserve every favor in this world as it is their partner’s duty, and responsibilities to 100% meet their requirements!

Emotions Management

Let’s move on to another example, which I think is also something that many people will encounter.

There is a close friend of mine in Vietnam who has been close buddies with this girl for about three years. She treated my friend so nicely that she would always be the only one to help or to start enjoyable conversations with my friend. If anyone backbites my friend on social networks, this girl would always be ready to stand up and protect her by responding to comments or even texting the opponent, forcing them to confront her. They shared an apartment and usually shared many stories together. Nevertheless, ironically, one day, my friend discovered that it was her bestie who often backbites her with their close or mutual friends. Things get worse when my friend realized how clever her “bestie” is by reading all of these “carefree”, “innocent” and “sinless” messages, none of them have any toxic words, yet every single message would be meant to ruin my friend’s reputation “unintentionally”.

For example, some features of my friend’s job often have to receive guests and ought to stay late at night. For some reasons which only God knows how, through this girl’s narration, their close, mutual friends all think of my friend as a bum, an addict, and a late-nighter. My friend at that moment was genuinely being portrayed as a prostitute.

My friend was very disappointed, and upset. She cried for days because it was so surprising for her that the person she considers the closest, in fact as close as her real sibling, could damage the sincere feelings in her heart with such hurtful words.

Have you been through such painful experiences?

When I first heard about the issue, I sympathized and felt very sorry for my friend. However, I cannot prevent her suffering, nor can I substitute for her to overcome those negative emotions. The only thing I can advise her – or you – who is in a similar situation, is:

If someone makes up a story about us, the most essential thing is to keep ourselves calm and neglect the anger that is rising within us. What you need to do next is to have a clear awareness of your own values while considering if you actually did something wrong to them and whether the rumors about us are true or not. If you didn’t do those terrible things, then trust me, there will always be someone who believes in who you are and understands your true values through years of interactions. For those who choose to believe the rumors, attempting to explain to them is even more redundant. Your values, our values, do not depend on the judgment of others. We must never change ourselves just because of a few negative rumors created by our haters.

 When we know how to control our emotions and contemplate our thoughts, no suffering will last for long, and no one can ever push us into the infinite hole of negativity – unless you allow them to do so.

Going back to the story above, it was fortunate that my friend did not overreact like cursing, shouting, or insulting her “bestie” at that moment. She quietly looked for another house to rent and made up an excuse that she had to move away as it was more convenient for her work. As for the other friends, when they heard the information from my friend’s “bestie”, they didn’t believe it because they knew what kind of person my friend is.

With that being said, my dear friend, if you believe in your own true values, someone will surely believe in you! There is no need to prove anything, everything will work out its own way, and you will be “fairly compensated” if someone intentionally does something wrong to you.

As Master Minh Niem also said:

“We have to be our own bosses. Be the head of your own television station. The owner of a television station is in charge of many channels. He can be on whichever channels he wants to. If we all want to be in a peaceful, relaxing, understanding, and loving channel, just turn to that channel. No one can control our own television channels as we are the ‘bosses’. No matter how much influence people put on us, we will still keep our own channel.”

Once you have mastered your own mind and emotions, you will certainly also be able to master your actions and words in different scenarios. As “Mind Management” and “Emotions Management” take place every day, your body will also begin to know how to “react slowly”. It will start considering the impacts of each of our behaviors on things and the people surrounding us. From there, you will be able to master and handle toxic, or urgent situations in the best possible way which helps reduce the risk of making “dumb” decisions.

My dear friend,

Inside each of us is a precious gem yet sometimes all the chaos throughout our daily lives would make us not alert enough to sharpen that inner gem, making it brighter. Nevertheless, I hope the gem inside you will always be shiny and marvelous, so with each day passing by, you will have the opportunity to live in peace and happiness!

Practicing “Wise Leadership” is not easy at all, especially when you do it alone. On that awakening journey, if you need a companion, a person to practice overcoming yourself with, Truly Inspired will always be here, ready to support and help you!

Much love,
Truly Inspired