by tashmcgill | Feb 1, 2015 | Mind, Relationships
If you want to create something new in your life, you must first recognize what of the old you can and must, leave behind.
I firmly believe we need to learn to tell our histories better, so that we can set them free from our future. What I mean to say is, when we begin to carve out new relationships or new ways of being, we have to carve through old habits, old perceptions and old, clogged filters from what we have experienced in the past – in order to experience something new in the future. (more…)
by tashmcgill | Dec 30, 2014 | Bodies, Community, Culture & Ideas, Friendship, Mind, Relationships
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
There is family; whom you cannot choose and there is fraternity – the brothers and sisters you do choose.
Do I value friendship over all other things? Yes. Friendship – true, complete companionship outlasts all. Friendship is the root of love. You depend on your friend, but you are not dependent on him. It is in friendship that we learn to see someone fully as they are, we learn how to live with the differences between us and remain loyal regardless. We learn to see the truth of people rather than our ideal of them. Friendship will outlast romance, marriages, the birth and death of children, the death and decay of lovers, career changes. Friendship is a paradox – to hold another so close in your heart yet not be dependent entirely on them in the same way we need a spouse. Friendship spans continents and endures the years.
We live in a complex culture, hindered by lack of inhibition yet a proliferation of obstacles to true friendship between men and women. But if we are to navigate this complex culture, we must do with the art of friendship high in our priority. Not just friendship between like of our like, but friendship between the genders (and transgender). More than ever, men and women need to understand one another and engage with each other in meaningful ways outside the limitations of potential partnership and sexual liaison. (more…)
by tashmcgill | Dec 28, 2014 | Culture & Ideas, Family, Mind, Strategy
You’re done for another year. You can put away the tree, the tinsel, the decorative napkins and put the furniture back into place. Throw the tents and sleeping bags into the back of the car with a cooler of left-over Christmas ham. You’ll stop at an orchard on your way to whichever beach or river is calling you. You’re in the safe zone – Christmas and Boxing Day done for another year.
Of course, that’s a Southern Hemisphere Christmas. But you get my point – regardless of snow or sun, there’s often a palpable sense of relief in the air once Christmas is done. So here are some strategies to help you have a considerable less stressful, angry, bitter and a more imperfect Christmas next year.
This year, our Christmas was quiet but entirely pleasant. People contributed food and drink, exchanged gifts, quality time was spent with people we love. But in the build up to the day, many of my conversations with friends revolved around the juggling acts of meeting all sorts of expectations and hopes from complex and emotionally weighty family situations.
What we don’t acknowledge regularly enough, are the ever-increasing numbers of people who experience Christmas as an annual anxiety trigger, full of non-consumer related stress and emotional trauma.
Christmas – That Myth Of Perfect.
The trouble with Christmas is not the commercial underpinnings or the trappings of food and wine that see us creeping back to the scales in shame. The trouble with Christmas, is how it perpetuates the myth of perfect. (more…)
by tashmcgill | Dec 21, 2014 | Health, Leadership, Mind, Strategy, Youth Work
In a world driven by being the best, it takes a hell of a lot of resilience to be second. To be second best, but not give up. To be second in command, advising on big decisions but not aim for the top rung. To be the backing vocalist, never sing the lead and still sing, anyway.
The Importance Of Being Second
Business leaders talk often about the power of cohesive and supportive relationship between a Number One and a Number Two. Just the other day, I had this conversation with a Managing Director who talked about the value of his Number Two. Cohesive, supportive and encouraging relationships that are also commercially successful require shared mutual outlook, mutual benefit and a clear understanding of mutual strength and weakness. Both have unique responsibilities required for wise decision-making and management. Very few great leaders exist without one or many Number Twos. We make critical errors if we forget that Number Ones need Number Twos, or that Number Twos are as important as Number Ones.
I’ve had a chance to be a Number Two several times. They have been enriching, rewarding experiences and once, it was harrowing and soul-destroying. It’s not just how you think of yourself, or how a Number One thinks of you – but it’s also how the World perceives the value of the Kingmaker, versus the King. Yet, kingmakers are sought after by the wisest of those in positions of power. These leaders who surround themselves with other talented people empower and enjoy the success of the cohesive whole.
But how do you become a great Second?
I remember being 20 years old and driving home from a band practice with a girlfriend. It had been a particularly rough session where I wasn’t on top of my game. I asked her, being a musician and vocalist I really respected, if she thought I was actually talented at all. She said bravely, ‘Well, I think you’re good at what you do but you’ll never record an album or anything.’
Fifteen years later and I remember it clearly – the crisp smell of a cold Spring night creeping into the car and trying not to let the pain show. If I’d had a dream to record any songs of my own, it was stripped in that moment and took years to return. It’s the same feeling I had when I missed out on creative writing awards at school. Always good, but never the best – therefore unrecognized and out of mind.
The thing is, I didn’t want to be better than anybody else, I just wanted to be myself. But we see people and ourselves through the lens of talent competitions that determine talent and ability in ever decreasing circles, competing against one another instead of ourselves.
It takes a lot of resilience to live as second, without being to feel ‘not good enough’. To live as Second is not Second-Best. Second is a role, second is a position that has it’s own unique requirements. It’s not a judgement. The self-awareness required to understand yourself and your ability to be confident in your own talent is typically not nurtured early in our development, rather left to emerge as a result of character-building experiences. Those experiences might teach you your place in the natural order of things, but they don’t always result in a stronger sense of your own voice.
It takes a lot of courage to accept that success is not a pre-determined set of factors. In the same way we must do the work of establishing our unique voice, we must also define success in ways that are meaningful to us.
The challenge of our schooling structures is a substantial focus on identifying what students are best at by means of defining possible vocational choices. Rather than honing and developing ways for young people to establish expressions of their own talent and voice, we throw them into ranking examinations, grading and fierce competition often before we’ve helped them do the work of identity formation.
The more competitive your work environment, the harder it will be to do the work required to establish strong, healthy identity. People love stars, as long as they are delivering big wins. To be good at anything requires a consistent effort in a series of habits that are grounded in your unique talents. You might call this finding your voice.
Why is it so hard?
Because our culture does not understand what talent really is. It confuses talent with being the best of many versus being the best of one. On who can beat out the competition. Embracing your talent and your unique identity is embracing the strength to be second to some or even many but to be entirely yourself.
To know your voice and speak out loud, clearly. Philosophers have expressed this as ‘Know Thyself’. But we need to find spaces to do this work without a cultural demand for competition and a hierarchy of winners overtaking.
So become resiliant. Become sure of your voice, become sure of yourself and what you are capable of achieving from any position.
Second Is Not For Always.
There are some who thrive as Second, forming unique partnerships that deliver success in an ongoing way. But Second is not for always – as with so many things, position is a strategic choice. A healthy Number One/Number Two relationship might thrive and provide deep satisfaction commercially and in life but there may be times where you choose to take on a different kind of role. The resilience to be Number Two, alongside a constructive awareness of the different requirements gives you ample fuel to adapt and achieve in a variety of different roles.
Practical Advice:
- Get to grips with your unique abilities and strengths. Be sure of what you are really competent in.
- Practice working in teams and learn how you do that best.
- Find a great partner or Number One. Someone you have great chemistry with, trust and who increases your capability and influence. Someone who has different strengths than you.
- Define your strategy and goals – both achieving professional success by working together and supplementing the abilities of the other. Identify a goal you want to achieve.
- Work hard on a variety of projects and challenges, even side projects to flex your ability to support, encourage and enhance the capability of your twosome team.
- Check your ego on a regular basis – critical self-assessment, let your teammate observe and give constructive feedback and vice versa. Analyse and look for ways to improve your team communciation and outputs.
- Read and gather insights on personal development, leadership and strategy. Discuss with your teammate regularly. I’d suggest subscribing here for regular short bursts on the subject.
As someone who works with people in a leadership role, I am convinced that our job should be refinement of talent, not establishing talent. Those who encourage and lead others should give significant portions of their time and effort to helping people find their voice and unique expression. Our investment in people’s voice should be a commitment to fostering identity formation and growth. In giving people the resilience, confidence and self-awareness to be Second.
by tashmcgill | Dec 8, 2014 | Leadership, Mind, Strategy
There are three stumbling blocks that prevent me hitting the publish button or sometimes even picking up the pen, metaphorical or otherwise.
They are three questions.
Can I do this well enough and will it be good enough?
Can I make it and let it go out into the world?
Can I show this much of myself to the world, will anybody care?
These are questions designed to help me avoid risk. Which is stupid, because if I want to be in the business of ‘making’, then I want to be in the business of risking myself in vulnerable ways. I know that it’s stupid, so I thought I’d share my strategy for avoiding the trap.
There will always have to be bad writers, for they answer to the taste of the immature, undeveloped age-group; these have their requirements as well as do the mature. —-Nietzche
I hate the idea of not being good at what I do. Regardless of what I’m doing. My pride does cartwheels in the tension of doing something new without knowing whether it will be good. Logically, I understand that in order to be good, I must risk being other-than-good; but every time I open the page to write or try a new recipe, the process begins again.
Why is it sometimes hard to write? Because the risk is so great that it won’t be any good. That it will be too honest, too vulnerable. That people won’t engage or respond or understand me. So the questions run through my mind and my desire to avoid risk stops me in my tracks.
The better way to answer these questions is in editing, refining, fine tuning and optimizing. In my business, it’s called the process of iteration. We make something, we learn, we craft, we make it better. We make it again.
Will it be good enough? becomes How can it be better?
The other questions are not about the creation but about the creator. Ouch. Even in talking about vulnerability I have to be vulnerable.
I find myself wondering how those flawed and tuneless auditions for TV singing competitions make it to air – with all that bravado and self-confidence. It appears that there is no pride or ego to filter the risky and non-risky behaviours.
I’m learning that if I want to be truly vulnerable (and I do, because it seems to matter and connect more with people), I have to de-tune my ego too. I have to put away my pride and concern.
The easiest way I have learned to do this is by facing the consequences of risking something big. Really, in being more vulnerable than I want to be, I’ve learned that it is really not so bad. There’s not a single moment that I truly regret. A few painful bumps, for sure, but that’s to be expected as the rough edges are smoothed away.
It might sound a little mad, but truly – in being a little braver, in saying a little more, in choosing not to edit away the thought, the moment, the possibility.. I’ve learned that it’s rarely as bad as I thought. Mostly, I’m afraid of feeling hurt, feeling bad or feeling ashamed or embarrassed when my ego starts talking.
These ego-driven, risk-averse questions stop me from starting. Starting is the step that produces raw product that can be shaped, redrawn, remade, improved until it’s ready for the world. I can only be a writer, a maker, a speaker or a creator if I begin.
Here’s the strategy to overcome the questions:
Accept that the risk does not exist.
Until you make something, there is nothing that risk can be attached to. Once something is made and re-made, it is no longer dependant on you. It may carry the reflection of the maker, but it is a separate entity. So the risk (to your ego) does not exist.
So just make something, damn it. The risk is the art itself, the risk is the proof that you are creating something unique and authentic.
Read more about Makers here.
by tashmcgill | Nov 29, 2014 | Church, Mind, Spirituality
I recently celebrated my birthday with a backyard bash for friends and family. And because I think it’s always important to add moments of emotion and poignancy to an event – I asked a few dear friends to share a few words.
They captured almost every facet of who I am with their words and memories; it was sweet and it made me glad. Without weddings, funerals and birthday parties we would rarely have the opportunity to review the world’s opinion of us.
There was one phrase that stood out in particular: “What I love about Tash is that she manages to be a person of deep faith without being a weirdo”, or words to that effect.
Confession: the words made me nervous for a moment. It was a diverse crowd filled with work colleagues, old friends, friends from the bar and clients. And while I don’t try to hide my spirituality any more than I try to thrust it upon people; there were a lot of people there I’d never ‘fessed up to my faith in front of.
Unwittingly I’ve stumbled on one of my greatest insecurities. I’m afraid of being alienated from people I genuinely care about because my spirituality is misunderstood or inaccessible to people.
One of the most poignant reminders was a conversation at my local bar. I couldn’t tell a lie so I had to ‘fess up to being a person of faith with a couple of regulars as the topic of conversation turned to all things spiritual. I watched the walls of defense slide into place as the conversation turned and the casual easiness of our camaraderie fell away. It wasn’t anything I’d said or done, but the risk it posed. Sometimes our history has done too good a job of shaping the myth.
My fear is that when people have experienced personally or witnessed from afar, a singular or communal failure on the behalf of traditional or even modern Christianity, it creates unnecessary distance and wariness between us. Mistrust and unease are the by-product of those experiences, often rightly so. I don’t really care so much about evangelism (that’s an inside word). I don’t care about converting you or anyone to faith. I really don’t. I care about people having the freedom to engage with their own spirituality, discover meaningful truth and communities of expression that support that. A steady, life-long, flexible engagement with spirituality. None of that is about conversion, yet so often that seems to be the greatest fear people have, thus my greatest fear is that people will assume that’s what my goal is.
My goal is simple: he tangata, he tangata, he tangata.
“Ask me, what is the most important thing and I will tell you, it is people, it is people, it is people.”
My fear is that I will be robbed of relationship with you because of other people’s bad history.
Still – this is not a story about my sense of loss or alienation. This is a story about coming out spiritual, defining what I mean when I say it. I’m not religious; if religious means living by prescribed belief and without ongoing engagement of my intellect. It does mean the applied force of my humanity and intentional engagement with the earth, the air and the heavens. It means engaging with other human beings and listening, looking to the universe in all her signs and wonders. Yes, I believe in God. I am open to how that is expressed.
A non-Traditional Spirituality
I spend a lot of time with people and in places that ‘good Christians’ aren’t expected to be found. I don’t regularly behave in a way that people might expect or demand. I’ve regularly got myself in trouble with organised faith communities for not holding to the party line. The trouble is – when you don’t fit easily into the Church’s idea of faith and you don’t fit easily into the world’s perception either… well, that can be a difficult path to walk.
I have found enormous comfort in the spiritual rituals of our ancestors; both Maori and European. I have found meaning in the faith of my Muslim, Buddhist, Baha’i friends. I have found centering and powerful emotional connection through yoga as much as through boxing. I believe that the world is full of signs to point us on the way. We came to define coincidence and serendipity by experiencing and describing those circumstances. The world is full of signs – from the tui that sings in the trees outside my window no matter where I sleep to the reminder of the ongoing rebirth and rejuvenation of creation that happens constantly beneath our feet while we talk about the demise of the planet.
I believe there is no greater way to discuss or describe music and the arts than to engage the part of the human soul that reaches outside of itself to a higher or deeper expression. I have seen a birth. I believe in a creative power in the universe. Even if our engagement with that creative power is no more than to acknowledge the mystery of it, to resign ourselves to not understanding the complexities of the world in which we live – I would rather that, than to cast aside the possibility.
I am smart. I know church history. I am learning and engage with broader faith practices than simply the Judeo-Christian traditions. I know, better than many but less than my scholarly friends, the critical errors of church polity that have caused so much friction and fracture within communities that should only thrive in serving a wider society. That’s probably why I’ve been so afraid of losing the opportunity to connect and engage with people if I wear my spirituality on my sleeve.
I’ve been struggling for years to walk the line – not to deny my spirituality but also to run a mile from becoming a proclamation-based, traditional Evangelical. The core of my fear is my dislike of traditional evangelism. I am actively engaged in the exploration of what faith means in this world. My challenge, is to be honest about how little I like to publicly own my faith, despite the enormous amount of time I spend with people who don’t have connection with traditional Churches or spiritual contexts. In the darkest of nights, I’ve questioned whether in fact, I am a fraud.
There is much about the historic and the modern Church that disappoints me. But I will not quit it, for transformation is only made possible from the midst of her. I will not quit. I wrestle, argue, get frustrated as much, if not more than those who hate the Church. But I won’t give up on it, because the idea of a community of people committed to the same values of serving humanity should be the most successful humanitarian work on the planet.
I work really hard to not be a spiritual weirdo. To be grounded, relatable and approachable while still exploring and expressing my own spiritual beliefs and journey. Those beliefs are prone to change from time to time, but my values largely are not.
“Feed them, clothe them, love my sheep.”
It’s a paraphrase of a conversation between the prophet known as Jesus and one of his most passionate (and at times, hapless) followers, Peter the fisherman, and those three verbs are practical expressions of the values I hold most dear – people, hospitality, love, generosity and nurture. That’s what I’ll value the rest of my life, regardless of how my spiritual beliefs and expression may change.
So what do you think? Is my fear ungrounded? My insecurities for nothing? I promise, I’m not what you’d expect – but only you know what that is.
