Whole-Life Success Principles Podcast

Dori Etter
All right, welcome to today's episode. Today we are going to have an engaging dialogue with one of our core leadership circle facilitators. He is also our resident poet, the truly extraordinary Nick LeForce. And we are going to be inquiring into what it means to be authentic and how to bring your authentic self into your work and life. So welcome, Nick.

Nick LeForce
Well, thank you and happy to be here, Dori.

Dori Etter
Thank you.

Nick LeForce
Looking forward to our conversation today and sharing this work with the world.

Dori Etter
It's so exciting. So I'm going to just introduce Nick. Nick is the transformational poet. He has over 35 years of experience in the field of human communication and development, yields an undergraduate degree in psychology and a graduate degree in rehabilitation administration. He is a certified trainer in neuro linguistic programming and Ericksonian hypnotherapy. He is also an ICF-certified coach. He is also board certified as an examiner for the American Council of Hypnotists Examiners. He is the president of Inner Works, which was established in 1992, which is a coaching and training company located in Northern California that provides executive coaching services to businesses, as well as personal coaching services to individuals. He is particularly known for his language skills and his elegant (that's a very small word for what he actually does) but elegant use of poetry to help people find their own voice, reclaim their soul, and walk a path with heart. Nick has authored many books, his latest being the work of being yourself. He also does publish a Valentine's poet book every single year, a book of Valentine's poetry. And one of my favorite things about Nick is--You write a poem every day? And how many days have you maintained that?

Nick LeForce
Oh, for at least three years. In fact, I wrote 480 last year, and I'm already like 60 something and for this year.

Dori Etter
He is absolutely amazing. So So super excited to be here with you.

Susan Howard
I would just also like to say that when I met Nick, I was in one of his advanced NLP training classes. And although he did a great job of teaching that particular model, what I was most struck by was when he would, upon occasion, read one of his poems to the group. And I was so struck by the poetry and the quality of it, and its impact on me that I just was just somebody I really wanted to get to know more. Nick, you're such a great model of Austin's authenticity. So I'd like to hear from you about, you know, what does it mean to you to bring your authentic self to the world? And how does somebody know that they're actually doing that?

Nick LeForce
That's actually a great question. In the book that I wrote called "The Work of Being Yourself," I was exploring this idea of being your authentic self, because the implication is that that's natural. And that we should be able to do that easily. And, of course, you know, we find that it's not so easy to actually be ourselves. And the reason why largely is because we're not born into and grow up in a state of nature. We're born into a social world that socializes us. And through that, what you can say 12 to 20 some-odd years of socialization, whatever is natural, and this gets layered over with lots of ideas and concepts that are necessary to navigate the social world, but also separate us from our, you could say, our natural self, if you want to call it that. So I think actually, the closest thing to being natural or expressing your authentic self is going into the state of flow. So when you enter into those states, where you're not interfering with your expression in the world by mediating it through, you know, judgments or thoughts or ideas or through mixed emotions and mixed states internally. So for me, that's the experience of being authentic. And that's not an easy thing to do. It actually takes practice and work to get that and be able to enter that.

Susan Howard
So when somebody says, Hey, just be yourself, they're actually asking you to do something that's actually quite challenging where it sounds like that should just be easy.

Nick LeForce
Exactly, exactly. You know, what does that mean? When somebody says, Just be yourself, because if you look inside yourself, typically what you're going to find is just a multiplicity of expressions in the world. But each one could do like, like a self in the expression of that in the world. So, you know, at one point, you're a parent, a father, a mother, a spouse, another point, you're a CEO, or you're a manager, and what gets organized into those roles are different expressions of yourself.

Susan Howard
There's a great quote in "Alice in Wonderland" where the caterpillar asked her, you know, who are you? And she says, I hardly know sir at least, I knew who I was when I got up this morning. But I've changed several times since then.

Nick LeForce
Right? Exactly. Yeah, I love that. I love that thing in "Alice in Wonderland" about believing five impossible things before breakfast. So actually, what's interesting about what you just said, too, is this idea of awakening. Because you could say there's the awakening from sleep that we do every day. A common idea out in the world nowadays, especially in the spiritual community, is this idea of awakening, and how, you know, we need a kind of a global awakening on our planet, at this point in time, given all that's going on. And for me, that's really what being authentic is, is the kind of awakening to that ability to flow and to step into a state where you're not interfering with your expression in the world so much.

Susan Howard
Yeah, I think yet, in just to your point, too, I think we really grow up in an environment where we live in a question, What should I do? What should I be? What should I do? So there's this should that really comes from, you know, our families, society, or peers. And if you live into this question of what should I do? It's very different than living into the question of what is it that I really want? Or what do I do in the world? Yeah.

Nick LeForce
And of course, it's not necessarily a bad question, What I should do? One of the things I talked about in the book, "The Work of Being Yourself," is what I call these dynamic dilemmas, which are conflicts inside that can't be resolved once and for all in your life. You have to revisit them in different situations, because different situations demand different expression. And one primary example of that is the conflict between self and other. So we need to get along in society. Belonging is a big drive for us. So we have to find a way to navigate that world and that sometimes means doing what the world wants us to do. On the other hand, is this drive to be authentic. And I think these twin drives, belonging and authentic, are our core issues. We have to come back to throughout our life. So how do we then be authentic be expressing our, our true self what we want in the world. And again, you can't answer that once and for all in life and say, okay, only living for myself not going to do anything anybody else wants. Or say, you know, I'm only living for others; I'm going to deny myself. Both of those are a denial of some aspect of yourself. So for me, it's about how do we bring both and complement our life to the expression according to the, you know, the event or environment we're in?

Susan Howard
Yeah, I think the one of the things that I've heard from many people. Like you, as somebody who leads the workshops for many years, a lot of times we'll meet somebody who's in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and they have a lot of regret about the life they've led or that it wasn't somehow authentic for them or or an expression of their true self. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Nick LeForce
Yeah. You know, I think that regret, we have this idea in the world that we should live a life without regret. The intention behind that is to live fully and richly and to be happy with the life that you have. But I think it's an illusory goal to have no regrets in life. In fact, I think if you live with passion, you're going to do things occasionally that you're going to regret, because you're doing them out of your passion. And also, if you live with passion, you're probably gonna want to do more things that you can do. So regret is a natural part of life. And regret is really inviting us to identify what's the experience in the conditions that we wish we had done differently. When we regret something we don't like that we did something or we wish we had done something different. To me the conditions that we think about in our mind we get caught up on, rather than identifying what's the experience behind those conditions that we really want to retrieve or bring forth in our life or go for it in another way. And Susan, that's one of the things I actually love about what you do in the mastermind, because you will often invite us not just to think of what our goals are, our big dream is, but really to go beyond that to identify what's the experience in life that we want to call forth or bring into our world. And to me, that's where the richness lives.

Susan Howard
Yeah, and I think it would be a very different world if the measure of success was how authentically did you live your life? Or how fully expressed were you in the world? Or how fulfilled are you as compared to how much did you accomplish or how much money did you make?

Nick LeForce
Right? Yeah, we tend to have this idea that value is attached to network and to accomplishment or fame of some kind rather than to, you know, truly the life of the soul. For me, you can live an ordinary life on the outside and extraordinary life on the inside. And that's the goal. I have for the people that I coach and with my classes. It's helped people get to the realization that the life on the inside that you live is where the rubber hits the road. It's where your true experience of the world lives. So if we can put a goal on living a rich life in that arena, then what we do in the outside world is great and wonderful, and it may lead to fame and fortune and lots of money. But that's actually not the most important part. The most important part is that, you know, that inner experience so that when we come to our deathbed, so to speak, we can look back and say, yes, this was a beautiful life and I may have made some mistakes, and I may have screwed some things up and I may have done things I wish I hadn't done or not done things I wish I had done, but the life I live is beautiful and is amazing. And that's my goal.

Susan Howard
How do you think that being authentic applies for people who are in business or in leadership positions, because oftentimes it seems like the work environment is the least likely place that one can be authentic. What are your thoughts about that?

Nick LeForce
Well, I think actually, in a way, it's the place where we're challenged to be authentic. Because in the work world we have to drive towards goals. Many of those goals may or may not be chosen by us, if we're working in a company that, you know, we're an employee of a manager of, we may not have necessarily chosen the goal that we're working towards. But we're still in a context and in an environment where if we're not able to recognize what's pushing us against our values, and what's pushing up against our a deeper knowing about what's good or right or proper to do, then I think that's when we get in trouble in business. That's when people start to do things that are unethical. In fact, there's been research that indicates the more we narrow our focus to a specific goal, the more likely we are to engage in unethical behavior, because the end begins to justify that. I think the world of business is actually challenging us to stay true to ourselves more than any other arena. And I believe that if we can get to the point where more of us are doing that, businesses will be more successful. Because the people who do business with those businesses begin to realize that the members of that community, that business, are living according to their values and integrity, which is going to mean that if the business is off track, they're going to pull it back off. They're going to get better treatment as a customer or better service for whatever product that they bought. So I believe authenticity in the world of business is a critical need, especially at this point in time.

Susan Howard
I know you have a new iteration of your book about coaching in the workplace that relates to that. Can you say anything about that?

Nick LeForce
Yeah, I co authored a book with my colleague Tim Hallbom and Chris Hallbom, his wife. The two of them are well known NLP trainers. And we wrote a book called, "Coaching in the Workplace," originally designed primarily for workplace. We found over the years that that book was actually being read more by therapists and coaches. So we reissued the book, that's basically the same content. But we expanded a little and added a little. It's called, "Powerful Questions and Techniques for Coaches and Therapists." And the idea behind it is that, as a coach, what a coach essentially does is ask high quality questions that get you to find the wisdom within you and guide you to discover your own truth, and what's going to serve you in the world. And that I think that book as a as a self-coaching tool can be great, because it gives you lots of questions you can ask yourself. But also as a manager or a business person to be able occasionally to take that step back, you know, and begin to recognize whether you're, you know, you're doing something that you feel is in alignment with who you are. And if not, you know, then it's time to sort of look at that and make some choices in your life. Not necessarily that you leave, but that you want to at least take into account what that's gonna do and whether you're willing to take those consequences.

Susan Howard
So it really coaches or supports people in living their truth or being authentic in the workplace.

Nick LeForce
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And I think, you know, the way to do that is, is through inquiry. You know, we're trained through our schooling to value answers over questions, which means we often get to a point where, say we're in the world of work, our job is to have the answers. And because of that, a lot of times we either skirt by, forget, or just don't even think to ask questions, and lots of research that indicates miscommunication, which usually comes because we haven't asked the questions to make sure we got it right. Miscommunication is a huge cost in the business world. It was like $364 million dollars per year in large companies, just from miscommunication alone. If super high-quality questions had been asked, could have been avoided.

Susan Howard
So you call your work wording, the world wording the world? Can you share how important that language is not only to our authenticity, but to our experience and what wording the world really means to you?

Nick LeForce
Yeah, it's kind of funny because, you know, I've used language in my career for years. And probably I think, in the early 2000s, I began answering the question of, you know, what do I want in life? I would answer it with saying I wanted to live the poetry of life. And then people would ask, what does that mean? And I really could not answer it. It was kind of stymied by that, but it felt so viceral and so palpable to me, that phrasing. And then one day I looked up the word context, the origins of the word context, and that word comes from the Latin roots con, together, and text, which is of course, words, as in, you know, a book a text, but also text, as in the textile industry, it means weaving. And I realized that context actually is the weaving together of work. What that means is that anytime we're in an environment of any kind, wherever we go in life, that environment is held in our mind by the description we've learned of things. So we know a door is a door. So we don't look at doors very closely anymore, because it's already got a label, a handle on it, that holds it in our mind in a certain way. And when I realized this, I realized that how we use our language to describe the world that we're in determines the experience we had. Just one other note on that: in the 60s Carlos Castaneda (many people may know him), who was a UCLA anthropology student who found a mentor, a shaman named Don Juan. And one of the big experiences that Carlos had in that time with Don Juan was Don Juan challenged him to stop his internal dialogue. And I remember being fascinated by this idea when I was young. In Don Juan's description, he said, once we stopped the internal dialogue, we actually would stop the world as we know it. And I think as I began exploring that in my life, I realized that we have a kind of sub-vocalization you could say, understanding a network of descriptions of life that have allowed us to not see reality anymore that closely. And it's great because it gives us tools to navigate quickly through lots of situations. And we had to figure out every time we saw a door, what it was, how it worked, you know, that would be a very limiting life. So it serves a highly important function. In the world of meditation, a lot of times the goal is to get beyond words. I've tried that and I've done that; there have been times when I've actually got to a place where I felt that there were no words anymore. It's a beautiful experience and also frightening at times. But I decided after looking at wording the world that maybe rather than trying to stop the internal dialogue. What if we elevated it? What if we began to use our internal dialogue to elevate our descriptions of the world around us, and therefore elevate our experience? And if you elevate your descriptions to a work of art, it becomes poetry. So for me, that's the poetry of life.

Dori Etter
I would love to have you share. And I think this is a perfect moment to share some of your poetry.

Nick LeForce
Actually, you know, what would be a good one to share? It's this poem I wrote, and at the end the work of being yourself. It's called, "I Woke Up This Morning, a Different Man." And we're talking earlier about this idea of waking up, not only waking up from sleep but waking up in your life, waking up to a greater presence. And for me this poem is about that waking up and also about what happens if we can get beyond our descriptions in a way or get into the richness of our description so that they elevate our experience of life.

"I Woke Up This Morning a Different Man"--I woke up this morning a different Man. I didn't know it when I first opened my eyes and through the covers off my life. But when I lifted myself out of dreams, and my feet hit the cool surface of solid ground, it all seemed so casual. So matter of fact, if I had always known it would be so, and it required no notice from me. I walked out the door with my stained grace and broken dignity, clear eyed and curious about what lay ahead of me. Everything shimmered alive, and I fell into step with my heart. I had no need of plan or purpose, no destiny to follow, no desire to fulfill, no fire to put out, and no litter to pick up. I felt nothing. For the first time since before I could remember, nothing at all between me and the world.

And I think that's what happens when we elevate our descriptions, or we actually step out of our dialogue. I think both of them end out at the same place. And that's when we end up so intimately connected with life and with the world that we are at one with ourselves, we're at one with a world. That's the experience of flow.

Susan Howard
You know, I know that this coming weekend you're going to be doing some work with our mastermind community about wording the world. I'm wondering if there's something that you could give the people who are listening to this podcast, some kind of prompt or exercise or something that would allow them to begin to think about how to elevate their experience, to their, maybe their inner conversation or the way that they speak or something?

Nick LeForce
Yeah, you know, there's lots of practices you can do. I'll give a couple and I'll just describe briefly one you might do as an exercise. So one is it's just notice and catch your internal dialogue, and catch not only the content of it but the quality of it. Like how you talk to yourself and how you describe events, and the themes that are in them. So one challenge I give my coaching clients is I challenge them to track their internal dialogue per week, literally make notes of it, you know, stop every once while catching stuff and make notes about what they're literally saying inside to themselves. And most of the time, people will find themes emerge. And a lot of times those themes will be around injustice or around things going in unexpected ways. So you get themes, so that's one nice assignment. Second thing that I like to do is I like to give people the challenge of unnaming things--a little exercise where I'll have you like pick out some object to look at in the world and then notice what happens if you begin to engage with that topic and literally take names off of it, the words off of it, and begin to perceive that directly. What happens almost all the time when you do that leads to this wording the world process actually, which is the second step on that. Most of us find we try to unnamed things, we look at something. Like right now I'm looking at this iPhone holder, you know holds the iPhone up and has a space at the bottom where you can plug the iPhone in. And its silver, shaped kind of with a wider base, and a little narrow at the top. It's got two little pads on it. And as I'm looking at it and noticing the colors, I can begin to describe it. But I noticed my mind immediately formed the image of an elephant. It kind of looks like an elephant's head. So what happens to most of us when we try to unname things is our mind starts to do things with it. So the goal in a lot of meditation is just to let that go, and let that go until you you don't have any descriptions, if possible. In wording the world you actually go with what comes to mind so the mind is bringing this image of an elephant and that is a doorway into an inner world where often amazing wisdom comes down. So in wording the world we notice what our mind starts to do with the things we see when we take the time to really carefully, look or listen or go beyond. So it's what, what does that mean to me? What's that teaching me or telling me? What's that opening in myself. And I found when I really go with that, it leads to transforming experience into wisdom, which is what I believe, wording the world is all about. It's when we begin to let our experiences inform us, and our inner world that's beyond our conscious mind, that's giving us some reflection of that or some response to that; it allows us to take those two things and shape that into experience. So there are actually five steps in this wording the world process or bearing witness, as I call it, one is presence, bring yourself into the present moment. Second is engagement, which is connecting and engaging with something and the world around you, or it could be the world inside of you. And then the third step, this is the transforming step, called reflection. And and there's two parts to it. One part is we reflect the thing that we're looking at; we sort of take it inside of ourselves. It would be like reflecting it in a mirror. So you look in a mirror, it's almost like the mirror reflects back to you what you see. So you can reflect it inside of you. I can take that iPhone holder as if it's inside of me and feel what it'd be like to be that shape or that substance. So that's one part of it. And the second part of it is reflecting on it, which is what's that reminding me of? It reminds me of an elephant? What's that teaching me? Elephants are associated with memory, so here's this memory holder. So begin to go down this line of thought about how I hold memories and the objects around me. How the world of things in this office that I'm sitting in right now, each one of them has memory. And those memories are part of my life. So I begin to understand how this environment that I'm in is actually supporting my life. So there's reflection, and then once you get that idea you start to cultivate that idea. Like what does it mean to have external cues for memories that can remind me of things in my life in my world? How do I want to use that in my life? Where does that take me? What benefits does that give me? What if I couldn't begin to explore all of those things until it turns into something that I bring back to the world? So presence, engagement, reflection, cultivation, and then expression. Those are the five steps.

Susan Howard
That's great. That's beautiful. Yeah, I'm looking looking forward to that this weekend with everybody. You know, in mastermind we always talk about one of the premises that we operate from is that we always and forever are living in two worlds, which is this inner world for playing an inner game with ourselves, as well as an outer game that we're working with. And you know, in a mastermind we focus a lot on business, but also other elements of life. But looking at, you know, what is the outer game and how do you navigate that and navigate it skillfully? And then how do you discover your inner game and then navigate that skillfully as well. I know that you've created a kind of a map around that, which I think you call the map of the archetypal journey. So maybe you could talk a little bit about that as well.

Nick LeForce
Yeah, you know that I think this whole idea of the inner game/the outer game is really fundamental to us navigating life in general. So for me, I had this late-night epiphany years ago, when I just decided to revamp a whole course that I'd been teaching for years. And this idea of how does the inner world the outer world relate to each other? That became one dimension of a grid. So vertical dimension is outer world and the inner world. Horizontal is the known and the unknown, what we know or what's conscious to us and what's unknown or unconscious to us. And that four quadrants then became this map of the archetypal journey. And by that what I mean is that if you take these each of those quadrants, each one has a for me a kind of philosophical question. It turns you in a certain direction, a poetic question and then resources we need to navigate that. That whole map serves to me as a sort of map of the landscape of the soul, as I call it. So my current book that I'm writing, which is about that map, I called, "The Undiscovered Country: How To Live in Your Own Heartland." So the idea behind it is that if we can navigate the outer world, from our own heartland, from the place that is the core of us, then we're going to live a more rich, fulfilled life. We're going to be more authentic in the world. We're going to be happier about the life we live, because it is a life that's true to ourselves. And it is a life that we can say we truly brought our best to the world. So this map inspires questions that I think we have to answer on that journey. So for instance, the known inner world would be what you know about yourself. It's your relationship to yourself and the philosophical question there is, Who are you? And the audit question is How wide is your embrace for your life? How willing are you to accept the things that you regret or that you think are your flaws or faults, as well as your strengths and your greatness, and even suppressing those as well. So how wide is your embrace for yourself in your life, and the resources there are love and acceptance: being able to accept yourself, being able to love yourself, which a lot of us, of course, do very poorly at--how well we take care of ourselves and how well we treat ourselves. So each quadrant is like that, is a philosophical question, a poetic question. Just as an example, if you went to the unknown inner world, the philosophical question is, Where do you come, or What is your source? That's why it's unknown. It's beyond you, something you can't quite grasp. And the poetic question is, How deep are your roots of trust in life? Your willingness to trust that life is going to turn out okay somehow or other? You're going to get through situations. The known outer world, that's about what's important, what really matters. And the poetic question there is, Is your horizon, which is your ideas about life and your beliefs in the future, big enough to hold your dreams? And then the unknown outer world, which is about why what you're here to do, because the philosophical question is, Why am I here? What's my purpose here? And the poetic question is, How willing are you to extend the reach of your heart into the world? So you find out what's important to you. You embrace yourself more fully. You have that trust in life. And then you bring that out into the world, and that means you bring it into the sort of the unknown. And how willing are you to extend that reach of your heart into the world?

Susan Howard
That gives us all some really great questions to think about. Dori?

Dori Etter
That's wonderful. I thank you so much, Nick. I love the words that you choose. That's one of your unique talents and makes it so special to be with you and to listen to you.

Nick LeForce
I'm wondering if before we end, if I can share one little, short poem?

Dori Etter
I'm going to have you close us with a poem. We can have a poem for sure. I want to let everyone know that you can find out more about Nick at his website, nickleforce.com. Of course, that link will also be on this episode on our corelc.org website. And I would love Nick for you to close us out with a poem. So thank you, Nick. Thank you, Susan. And thank you our listeners, and Nick, if you would.

Nick LeForce
Thank you, Dori. And thanks again for this opportunity. The poem I'd like to share is called, "We Are Messengers."--We are messengers. We may leave our footprints on the earth, but we walk and happen. Our light shines farther than our own vision. Our words, think deeper than our own wisdom. They teach what you have lived before does not determine who you may become. We are learning to live a simple truth of the heart. What we see in others, we awaken in ouorselves. We become what we give to the world.

And just as a quick note: I wrote that poem six months before my mother passed away, and then shared the poem at my mother's funeral. And as I looked around the room sharing that poem, I realized that these people that were there, my mother had touched them in a particular way, each one. And each one had touched my mother. It was almost like I saw that she had become what she had given to the world. I believe those two lines, "What we see in others, We awaken in ourselves," teaches us to be careful about our judgment. To see the best in people, to bring that out. And secondly, to know that what we give to the world is what we become. So may you be messengers of life.

Dori Etter
Lovely. Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai