Knowing Your Intent is Only the Beginning — Embracing Mastery and Change
I can pinpoint the exact moment, 5 years ago, that began my journey towards life balance. Quite frankly, it was messed up and any capacity I had to be a mom and an HR professional was being sucked out of my soul.
I was on the bus at the tail end of my daily three-hour commute home from work. I was the manager of the Pacific Region Fisheries and Oceans Canada HR team, a position that I had held for three years (on paper). See, I was promoted to this position the day before I went on maternity leave. I came back to the position and a year later, I went on maternity leave again. This was a position that I always wanted, my Director was amazing and I loved the team. The irony was, I got a position I was striving for, at the same time that I got the family I was longing for; it was bound to happen that my worlds were going to collide. On the bus, my heart was aching and my mind was anxious – I wanted to see and spend time with my kids. I got home around five, which gave me three hours to play, eat, bath and then get my kiddos off to bed. My daughter was sleeping now, and I was reading a story to my son. As I was reading, something awful happened, in my mind, I was willing him to go to sleep; pleading “go to bed, I’m tired”. After my son fell asleep, I was on the couch in the family room, crying. My husband walked in looking confused and scared and asked, “What’s wrong?” The conversation that followed was one about my journey towards life balance – owning what I want and taking the steps to make it happen.
Fast forward to the present day, I feel as though I have 4 full-time jobs: being an empathetic impactful human, a mom, founder of my own consulting company, and a Free Agent with the Canadian Federal Government. Now you may be wondering, “how the heck is that providing life balance?”
Yes, I’m wearing lots of hats and my life is full, but it is on my terms. I implemented strategies such as going back to school, leaving my management position and working from home so that I could re-create the life I wanted. Working towards my intent of having life balance is hard. What I continue to learn and think about is how mastery and change have played significant roles in realizing my intent. I want to share with you lens on these three concepts: intent, mastery, and change.
Intent
Synonyms to intent include purpose, objective and goal. As an adjective, it means “resolved or determined to do something.” In the personal development space, you undoubtedly have come across literature and ideas related to finding one’s purpose, sometimes articulated in a vision, mission or manifesto statement. Knowing your intent provides direction, yet can be daunting. Identifying where your intent comes from and what’s influencing it brings a level of self-awareness, understanding, and acceptance, which I believe can be empowering. Case in point, my intent is life balance and digging deep to discover what’s driving my intent has helped me in creating and executing strategies to achieve it. This brings us to the “resolved or determined to do something” part of intent. The “behind the scenes” factors influencing intent are many; including, life experiences, psychological needs, culture, and human rights elements such as family status, ethnicity and gender identity.
Mastery
In the study of human behaviour, mastery is described as something that we all want to achieve. It is something that helps an individual to acquire self-knowledge and at the same time promote self-development and growth. Peter M. Senge in his book, The Five Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization (2006), describes mastery or “personal mastery” as something beyond competence and skills, it’s “approaching one’s life as a creative work, living life from a creative as opposed to reactive viewpoint” (p. 131). To me, this means that mastery is a journey of continuous improvement and a way of being when it comes to how you approach your life. Enrichening the concept of mastery is Carol S. Dweck’s research on growth and fixed mindsets. In her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2006), she describes the impact of self-awareness and how “the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life” (p. 6). For me, I thought I had reached a point in my life where I had “my shit together”, but this was far from the truth. A growth mindset is having the understanding that abilities and intelligence can be developed, whereas a fixed mindset is believing that your qualities are static. Individuals who are in pursuit of mastery will have a growth mindset – the two concepts are a natural fit.
Change
Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, said, “the only thing that is constant is change.” So, instead of resisting it we should just embrace it. Embracing it to me means not only understanding why we are resisting change but also welcoming resistance as a necessity for change. For many, there is safety in the status quo and change threatens it. Change means that what was once will now be different. Joanne Hunt, Master Integral Coach, beautifully describes how “resistance lets us clearly know that we are trying on something new … [it’s the] indicator that we are actually attempting some kind of change.” Self-reflection can be a powerful way to gain insight and can lead to a deeper understanding of what we are looking for in our lives and start or re-ignite change.
