Re-evolution of the Fragile Ego: A Path to Leadership's Core

by Lorrie James Del Bel

Overview

In the midst of an innocent conversation with his neighbor, author Lorrie Del Bel’s life was forever changed.

His neighbor was unsure about leaving his labor job to become a supervisor. He felt himself incapable of bossing people around and disciplining them for not doing their job. He confessed these feelings as though he was afflicted with a fatal disease or shameful deformity.

But the remarks sent Lorrie on a journey of self-reflection, examining his own life, purpose, the type of leader he was and what drove him to succeed. He began to understand that the essence of leadership was not based upon what is achieved, but rather on the condition of a person’s ego and their intentions as a result.

Join Lorrie on his journey of self-discovery as he explores the poison of pessimism and the underlying root cause. Growing to acknowledge weaknesses and finding strength in doing so.

Follow the course he lays out; the principle cornerstones for the re-evolution of the fragile ego, then the functional cornerstones necessary to lead others successfully.

Lorrie shares his journey for others to use as a guide, in discovering their true self and purpose, and become fulfilled.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781462036240
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	12/02/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	196
File size:	1 MB

Read an Excerpt

Re-evolution of the Fragile Ego

A Path to Leadership's Core

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By Lorrie James Del Bel

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Lorrie James Del Bel
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-3622-6

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Chapter One

De-evolution of the Ego

The Experience of Pessimism

"Living with our eyes wide shut!" What a bizarre statement and conflicting concept. Yet, as I sat poolside (not mine) one sunny summer's day in 2006, no statement could more clearly describe my life at that moment.

Fish-flies (aka: June-bugs or shad-flies) engulfed me like the flakes of a snow globe, attacking my senses and confusing my thoughts and emotions. I was weak and worn down, beaten from the hours I'd spent jousting with employees earlier in the day. Today, however, was in some way different than all the other days. There was something stirring deep within me about this day's events. I was feeling so much anxiety and frustration over the conflicts and challenges I faced, much more than I had ever felt before. I could not help but feel there was a deeper meaning to it all, some major lesson to be learned if I could see past the minutia. And what better place is there to sit and think through the minutia of one's life than in the calm and peaceful setting of a water park at the local camp ground! Yet that is exactly where I would find myself, compelled to sit out in the open air at the peak of the fish-fly season, no less.

I ask Cathy to accompany Brittny into the pool to give me some time to sit with the slim hope of finding a moment of peace in the chaos and settle myself down from the frustrations of the day. Amazingly, I was able to do just that and so much more. Not at first, but over the course of a couple hours, I came to a new understanding and acceptance of our learnt nature as people. I found amazing calm and clarity in this understanding. Thank goodness I fell into it at that time in my life. I wish to share that experience with you now.

As the day's events began to unfold, they first seemed unique and isolated in nature. Without predictability or pattern, repeated challenges and conflicts arose one after the other. They started before I reached the door to my office. Persons approach me without regard. Offering me no greeting and having no patience, they started to spew their problems at me while I was still fumbling for the keys to open my office door. They might as well have been speaking Vulcan, inattentive to what they were saying as I focused on entering my office door without tripping and setting down the books, lunch, and full cup of hot coffee I was carrying. I held my tongue so as not to blurt something out in frustration that would only make matters worse. It was not a good start to my day. As the day continued to unfold, a number of issues, both old and new, arose and turned into arguments. Arguments turned into accusations. Accusations were spun into personal attacks of character and integrity. Through all this posturing, emotions and stress levels climbed and added to the already volatile cocktail of stressors. By every account, the day was routine.

Yet, if the day was routine in nature, why did I find myself sitting at the pool so very unsettled in my thoughts and feeling physically agitated? After all, I had worked in demanding and high stress environments most of my adult life. I should have been used to it and have adapted to it. I believed that I was resilient, because I understood all the dynamics and forces at play. I thought I was tough-skinned, this sort of day-to-day crap unable to penetrate me. So why was I struggling and unwilling to accept what had happened throughout this day as normal? It was not merely another day in the life at work. I could not simply roll over and accept the cliché, habitual, fatalistic views, that such things are as they are, a mindset born out of futility. To proceed down the behavioral path I had so innocently laid over the years of my ignorant life. Same s!*t, different day my ass!

As I reflected on the day, I struggled with thoughts of how and why such struggles even occur. How can the most trivial of issues get so out of hand? Is this the way it is destined to be—opposing forces challenging each other's every word with the narrow-minded focus to strengthen one's own position and get their way? Or is all this jousting truly necessary to draw out the best or strongest solution for the betterment of all? I chuckled as I wrote that last line because it occurred to me I could use this same analogy to describe our parliamentary process.

So what was the purpose of all the challenges and resulting battles? While sitting there at pool side reflecting on these questions, I kept fighting back the persistent negative and sarcastic thoughts that were oozing out of me like sweat. I thought of the person who acted so immaturely, who I wished would just grow up or go away. I thought about some who I believed were simply ignorant or prejudicial and others who I believed were greedy and clearly only out for themselves, regardless of the hardship and cost to others. There were thoughts of those who were cantankerous, hateful, and possibly even borderline vengeful! I reflected on my frustration dealing with various union leaders. Those who simply read from the script provided to them by their leadership. A role carefully polished over the many years which may speak of teamwork at one level, while publically chastising nearly every act of leadership at another. They are skillful to hide the slightest inference of agreement or teamwork, for such would be seen as weakness by the membership. Then there was the contingency of persons who were simply going along for the ride, following the lead of others, being disruptive and antagonistic, because they could not stand on their own. Now add to all these pessimistic thoughts, the equally as many skirmishes that were faced on the management side of the house. Those sparked by near sighted leaders only out to better or hide their departments performance, at the expense of another's. At this point in all my thinking I found myself to be sweating profusely. I smelled terrible and was making myself sick.

I struggled there at poolside among the locust (fish-flies). No setting was more appropriate, the thought of locust feasting on my spirit more representative of the struggle raging within me. All these raw, angry emotions were working to devour me as I glanced over at Brittny happily at play in the pool, Cathy at her side. I have never felt more defeated than I did at that moment. I believed I was doomed to the life I was living—more accurately, the person that I had become—if I could not break free from the impulsive surge of negative, angry and destructive thoughts, and find the hidden meaning to it all. I felt pain in my being and a near compulsion to vomit as I flipped from happy thoughts of my wife and daughter to the frustrating thoughts of the day's events playing over and over in my head. And then there was the painful realization that tomorrow promised to be no better. The battle raging within me was deeper than anything I had felt before. It was the struggle of the person I wanted to be trying to break away from the person I had been for a lifetime. One would win, and the other would be silenced. Boy did I hope I would win.

Thankfully, while sitting there at poolside, I experienced a paradigm shift in how I viewed the day's struggles. I suddenly found myself thinking less about what persons were asking for and arguing about, less about their dislikes of work, workmates, representatives, management, and even dislikes of me if you can believe that. I somehow found my thoughts shifting to how each person behaved as they spoke and specifically as they became more and more aggressive. I also started to think less of the actual words spoken, even those that were hateful, hurtful, and often personal in their use as an attack. I became more focused on the logic from which the problem was deduced, the tones in which words were spoken, and the emotions buried deep within the message. Through this shift in focus, a faint pattern emerged from the many varied and broken thoughts that previously had angered me.

Among this calamity of different events that I had conditioned myself to view each singularly, a glimpse of something more cohesive started to form. As I reflected back over more events of the day, I started to see similarities between the various conflicts that arose—similarities in the emotional being of the persons involved. There were but a few distinct patterns emerging, as though all the persons were reading off the same script. On and on my analysis continued through the long list of the day's many challenges until suddenly the once celestial scattering of problems became a singular, organized, and articulated thought in my head. It was merely another day dominated by our pessimism.

At this moment and out of nowhere, the phrase "same s!*t, different day" jumped out at me. Like a slap across my face, I was awakened to an entirely new understanding of our human condition and the enormity of the problem we face. This once innocent, satirical term now illustrating in such absolute simplicity and clarity that pessimism holds us captive at home, in the workplace, at play, and in the community. This condition was destroying not only me but each and every one of us like a slow poison. I moved beyond the trivial thoughts of the day and the petty issues that just hours ago dominated my thoughts. The fish-flies all but disappeared from my conscience, as did the sounds of the campground and children at play in the pool just behind me. These once distracting forces were now muted by the single focus of my thoughts. I was overwhelmed by the power of that moment and the emotion that rose up from within. That day and the many seemingly unique and isolated thoughts and events that it was comprised of, in fact, were no different than those of any other day. The events were as predictable as one's own breath. All these struggles were the mere reflection of my own pessimism (the s!*t), rooted deep within me (why it is the same), and reflected outward in my day-to-day thoughts and actions (why it repeats itself daily).

But where did all this s!*t come from, and why was there so much of it? It does not appear to be a factor of age, because I see it in the young and old alike. To be honest, I would state that pessimism is more openly expressed by the younger generations. That may be why they are viewed as less respectful and appreciative. The older generations having the same core pessimism but harbor it within, and it comes out in other, less obvious ways. So what phenomena or aspect of our society is at work here? Is it a factor of demographics—where a person lives or the family experience in which they were raised? Certainly these factors play some role in what a person may be pessimistic about, but it is not the source of the pessimism itself. This is clear because the condition of pervasive pessimism is too wide spread. It is common across all demographics and transcends income brackets and education levels. It certainly transcends professions and is not defined by race, religion, or social group.

There are many seeds of pessimism and certainly far too many to account for but a tiny fraction of them in this text. What is most important, though, is to point people in the right direction and allow them to seek and find the sources of pessimism in their own lives. Once they start, they will not believe the many places from which it sprouts. Through this process, each person can begin to live with their eyes wide open. Then, they may have a hard time seeing anything but the pessimism. In my own life, this is where I say things got much worse before they got better. That, however, was a necessary part of the process. Where pessimism is found to be everywhere and engulfing all things like a thick blanket of fog, obscuring perceptions and interfering with one's own judgment. I started the search by replaying the pessimistic scripts I created out of my own life experiences. The most obvious ones like low-hanging fruit—easy to articulate and relate to. I am the disgruntled worker, the tired and worn-out parent, the unappreciated and/or abused husband, the disgruntled citizen and tax payer, violated as a consumer and neither appreciated nor respected as a leader, let alone as a person.

Yet this was but a scratch to the surface. To see how deep the rabbit hole really went, I had to look closely at all my many varied experiences and critique them to understand fully what they meant to me and how I was really affected by them. Like the unraveling of a crumpled up piece of paper, this detailed analysis helped me unscramble my emotions to reveal how I truly felt, where those feeling came from, and, more accurately, what they were a reflection of inside me. First though, I had to be honest with myself and willing to express exactly how I felt about so many things in my life.

For example, I never realized how beautiful piano music was. I always enjoyed the sound of the piano but I never took the time to really listen and absorb it. To this day the sound of piano music deeply moves me every time I hear it. This experience has forever changed me in this respect. I also did not realize how annoyed I was when persons, whose floor you could eat off of, continuously apologize for the condition of their home despite your assurance it looks great. This moves me also but in a different kind of way. I once simply reacted without thought to all of this stuff and so much more out of my conditioning and without thought. There were so many things I accepted without emotion. Or had the true emotion of these things slowly died inside of me over time?

I knew from the start of this line of questioning that continuing on this path would bring me joy but not before it brought hardship and pain. It would be a difficult journey and likely strain many relationships, especially my relationship with Cathy, because it would be part of a life changing journey. I would need to be committed to this else forgo this path of honesty and self-realization. So onward I went down the road less traveled. This is going to hurt, but in a good way I hoped—eventually.

Though still young—at least at heart and despite having only a few whiskers to boast of and even fewer hairs on my head—through this discovery process, I quickly came to realize something. We are all so very much alike in how we experience, absorb, and reflect pessimism. Despite the infinite number of topics and scenarios that may be played out, the root of pessimism is constant throughout. It is so prevalent that I truly believe we are only conscious of a microscopic fraction of these influences. If we were aware of more, we would be in a chronic state of anger or depression.

As I quietly scroll back over numerous experiences in my own mind, my emotions swing from anger and frustration to laughter and often embarrassment, sadness, and despair. All these volatile emotions erupt from unknown places deep within me as I methodically dissect my experiences and start seeing my life through a different lens. All the sarcasm, negativity, and insults that I was bombarded with but did not consciously recognize or perhaps had denied as a result of some fear, were now coming back to bite me. I felt like I'd walked onto a paintball range. Every moment of reflection felt like the sting of a paint pellet exploding against my sensitive skin. It was me verse the world. Of course, I'd shown up in my T-shirt and shorts!

Life at work an easy one to start the analysis with because—well, let's face-it—the majority of people are not happy in their place of work. From the bottom to the top and at every layer in between, there is disgruntlement. The goals set for each level conflict with the needs of the people upon whom the expectation to achieve those goals are heaped. This crisis repeats itself at every level of the organization. It does not affect persons differently based on the color of their collar or the title they are assigned. Do we really believe those sitting at the top of the pyramid are fully satisfied? Do those privileged few experience contentment and peace within themselves that we could never dream of experiencing at the base? If so we are saying there is no pessimism and discontent in the upper echelon of the corporation! The air up there being so crisp and clean it cannot sustain pessimistic thoughts. No one is that lucky. For one of the key sources of the pessimism and antagonism prolific throughout the work environment everywhere, the false belief others put their pants on differently than our selves. This not being the case, for no person is immune from the root of pessimism in these places.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Re-evolution of the Fragile Ego by Lorrie James Del Bel Copyright © 2011 by Lorrie James Del Bel. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments....................xiii
My Humbled Self....................xv
Introduction....................xix
Clarity of Purpose....................xxiii
The Experience of Pessimism....................1
From Pessimism to Poison....................15
De-evolution and the Fragile Ego....................29
Business Leadership in Crisis....................43
Trying to Fill the Hole Within....................59
The Crossroads of Leadership: Principle Cornerstones of Self-leadership....................75
Re-evolution: Building Strength out of Weakness....................85
The Functional Cornerstones of Leadership....................105
A Symbol of Self-leadership....................137
Discovery of the Self....................145
The Gift of Self-leadership....................153