The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership is our 3rd Nectar & Bloom Book Club selection, and it is a broad, expansive, and empowering favorite of mine both for it’s incredibly effective guidance for business as well as its vast applicability in relationships and life in general. In this post, I share with you some of my favorite aspects and insights from the book to pique your interest and to share with you my take on the book’s most inspiring contents.
Nectar & Bloom Book Club, by the way, is always open for you to read along with the book selections and/or join in our live sessions at any time. It exists as a channel through which I can share with you more empowering resources and tools for your creative journey. The books I select will always be favorites of mine that have given me nourishing food for thought and transformative tools for entrepreneurship, health and wellbeing, and life as an artist.
Despite the long and somewhat clunky title, this resource-rich little book offers some really powerful perspectives that in my opinion need to be allowed out of the corporate workplace and given space to bloom in other fields. In other words, the concepts inside this book are vastly applicable, including to the realms of floristry, creative entrepreneurship, and just life.
FAVORITE TOOL 1 — ABOVE OR BELOW THE LINE
The main tool in the book has to do with discovering the power of becoming conscious at any given moment of the place from which you are operating — are you “above the line” or “below the line”? “Above the line” means you are feeling open, curious, and willing to learn. “Below the line” means you are feeling closed, defensive, and needing to be right.
The great thing is that more than anything, the tool is just becoming conscious of your own frame of mind and feelings at any given moment. Although it seems obvious that we’d all do better to be “above the line” at all times, that’s just not always sustainable or available. The real power is in being able to notice, becoming aware, of where you are at any given moment. If you are feeling closed, defensive, and needing to be right, and therefore “below the line,” simply noticing this gives you the option and opportunity to shift.
Imagine any situation that would make you feel closed, defensive, and needing to be right. Just about any situation that seems to challenge or threaten you in some way would do that. In that moment, if you noticed yourself feeling closed and defensive, you could reframe how you were looking at things and ask yourself how you might shift to feeling curious, open, and willing to learn. In the “above the line” position, you feel safe, expansive, and also humble. It’s an incredible shift, and all it takes is the practice of noticing.
- Notice where you are.
- Consider how you can shift.
The coolest thing about becoming conscious of where you are with regards to “the line” is that as soon as you are aware, if you want to shift from below to above, all you have to do is invite yourself to get curious. In fact, just simply developing the awareness muscle of noticing where you are in any given moment is exactly what allows you to realize you have the option to shift.
FAVORITE TOOL 2 — REFRAMING YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO WHAT’S HAPPENING
In a second part of the book, a framework for how to look at what you are experiencing in life at any given moment is introduced. According to this model, which the authors call “The Four Ways of Being Model,” there are four ways you can choose from for how to look at your life experience.
In the first, we believe that life is happing “to me,” which makes us feel like the victim of our circumstances. Awful really, but just becoming aware of this mentality again allows us to have the ability shift.
In the second, we believe that life is happening “by me,” which is a fun and empowering perspective, as we start to feel like the creators of our reality and like we have agency to build our own dreams and experiences. This gets a little tricky though when things we don’t want happen or when we put too much pressure on ourselves to achieve or accomplish something that perhaps was unrealistic or interrupted or delayed by things beyond our control. In this model, we ourselves are to blame as much as we are to credit for our experiences.
The third belief is that life is happening “through me,” which starts to invite us into a bigger picture view of how things happen and our role within them. This perspective may feel a bit uncomfortable at first in how it asks us to relinquish the belief that we alone create our own reality, but it also acknowledges that we do play a part in it. In this perspective, we are more of a conduit for universal consciousness, which invites a more spiritual viewpoint through considering the idea that “it’s not all up to me,” and the possibility that a universal consciousness expressing itself through us.
The fourth perspective offers us the belief that life is happening “as me,” which is perhaps the trippiest and, in my humble opinion, most difficult to accept, although it’s the most expansive and in some ways reassuring to consider. In this belief, there is no separation between you and me, or between anyone and anything — we are all one, and everything that happens is “me” and is simultaneously “all.” This zen belief poses that in truth nothing needs to be fixed or solved; all is whole and exactly as it is meant to be. While this feels both distant and also aspirational to me at this stage in my life, it also feels broad and inspiring to consider.
Personally I find myself most often between “by me” and “through me,” which I feels like is a workable place for where I am in life right now, but I wonder what I’ll find most resonant in another few decades.
The important thing here is that, again, just expanding our awareness and becoming more conscious of the beliefs and perspectives that color and also create our experiences gives us the power to shift and see and experience things differently.
With consciousness, and conscious frameworks like this, we can shift our mindsets and our experiences in life, which is pretty powerful. Instead of asking “Why is this happening to me?” when we’re suffering, we can consider “How have I also played a part in creating this experience?” and also “Could this be happening through me as part of something greater, a bigger picture that I cannot control or see just yet?” and the like.
FAVORITE TOOL 3 — A SELECTION OF THE “COMMITMENTS”
After introducing these initial frameworks, the book dives into the “15 Commitments” themselves, which I just love. I earmarked every single one of them and have flipped back through the book frequently to revisit them. Each is a clear-headed, balanced, empowering, and situationally helpful shift or suggestion that is both accessible and beneficial to everyone involved. These commitments will improve relationships of all kinds, collaborations and partnerships, all professional and business interactions, personal interactions, and the values by which we conduct ourselves in our brands, the brand experiences we offer our clients, and the work we create and share.
Here is a list of the commitments with a little note from me about their essential meaning and benefits:
- Taking Radical Responsibility
- You are 100% responsible for your part in any situation. This frees you of blame and also of taking the blame, because this applies to everyone.
- Learning Through Curiosity
- By being curious, you are always open and “above the line.” In literally any situation, if you can get curious, everything starts to open up.
- Feeling All Feelings
- Emotional health is everything. Notice, feel, express, release.
- Speaking Candidly
- Speak your truth, and be someone to whom others can speak their truth too. It is so reassuring and helpful to be honest, and it’s equally so to be a person two whom someone else knows they are safe to speak their truth too.
- Eliminating Gossip
- Filter: Is it True? Is it Helpful? If it’s not both of those things, then it doesn’t need to be said aloud. This is a lot like the Buddhist guidelines for right speech: it should be true, beneficial, kind, endearing or accessible, and timely. What an improvement practicing this kind of mindfulness can make both for how we feel and how we relate to others!
- Practicing Integrity
- Keep your agreements, take responsibility for your part and your mistakes, and always repair bridges.
- Generating Appreciation
- Being appreciative creates a culture of appreciation, which encourages more appreciation.
- Excelling in Your Zone of Genius
- If you haven’t read The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks yet, you must. This concept is pulled from that book, and it’s a life-changer! Your Zone of Genius is where you are doing the kind of work that you are very good at and that you love and could do all day. It feels effortless, and therefore in this zone you are able to do your best work, serve at your highest potential, and also feel the most fulfilled. To get here, we often have to let go of work that we’re good at or that others want us to do but we don’t find fulfilling.
- Living a Life of Play and Rest
- Play and rest are essential to a healthy, happy, and meaningful life. They are not optional, and they are not rewards. They are actually integral parts of success and fulfillment!
- Exploring the Opposite
- Consider how the opposite of what you hold to be true could also be true. This is hugely inspiring and humbling, and it helps with behaving in a just and compassionate way with others.
- Sourcing Approval, Control, and Security
- We are most powerful and at ease when we realize that we can be our own source of approval, control, and security. Shifting our attention from sourcing these outwardly to inwardly is immensely rewarding.
- Having Enough of Everything
- This belief is how you really shift into the energy of abundance!
- Experiencing the World as an Ally
- Everyone and everything that comes your way or happens in your life is helping you grow and move toward your desired outcomes. Everything is an ally, which is a mental shift that will transform your experiences as you trust the process and look for the good.
- Creating Win for All Solutions
- It’s not just about getting what you want or about giving what someone else wants at your expense. Instead, we can come up with options and solutions that make us all win. This is huge in business.
- Being the Resolution
- When there is a problem, and you notice it, allow your response and behavior to contribute to and become that which is needed.
I loved this book so much I wanted to become a facilitator on these concepts. I do tend to get quite passionate about empowering and insightful tools and resources from which we can all benefit, so for now I’ll be content to share them with you here. Happy reading!
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