I met Mark Nicolson when I attended his conscious leadership workshop at Esalen Institute in November 2018, titled “Conversations on the Edge: The Leader of the Future”. Since then we became friends and had the opportunity to work together.
I first heard the idea of “being successful in one’s intimate relationship is what is usually required to be a good leader in other areas of life” from Mark.
In his TED talk, Mark talks about how connected moments of vulnerability become critical in seeing the truth. Mark also talks about how good marriage therapy actually helps us to transform our deepest negative feelings like anger into fierceness.
Mark says the best way to transform negative feelings like fear into courage, shame into humility, and grief into compassion, is by turning towards our pain, rather than away from it.
Mark recently shared with me a great book. “You Are The One You’ve Been Waiting For” by Dr. Richard Schwartz. In this book, Dr. Schwartz shares the process of therapy that he has developed, called Internal Family Systems.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a therapeutic technique aimed at helping us to recognize various beliefs and the “Parts” associated with us.
Cathyann Simmons, a therapist who utilizes IFS in her work, says:
“When we can lead from Self (also called Core Self, Self Energy, or Spiritual Core Self), we can get some distance from all of the different messages that various Parts carry. Utilizing what IFS refers to as the 8 C’s — Compassion, Curiosity, Calmness, Clarity, Courage, Connectedness, Confidence, Creativity — we can begin to understand and find the answers we need to care for ourselves and experience deeper relationships with those closest to us.”
Since reading Dr. Schwartz’s book, I have been making a deeper effort to utilize these 8 C’s to care for myself and those close to me.
Kerim Baran 