Stories and voices contributing to my inner dialogue.

line, they are open and curious. Further, we reveal that when leaders are below the line, their primary commitment is to being right, and when they are above the line, their primary commitment is to learning.

Shifting is moving from closed to open, from defensive to curious, from wanting to be right to wanting to learn, and from fighting for the survival of the individual ego to leading from a place of security and trust.

Content answers the question, “What are we talking about?” Context answers the question, “How are we talking about the content?”

great leaders pay more attention to how conversations are occurring than to what is being talked about.

The To Me state of consciousness is synonymous with being below the line. From our perspective, 95% of all leaders (and people) spend 98% of their time in that state. If I am in the To Me consciousness, I see myself “at the effect of,” meaning that the cause of my condition is outside me. It is happening To Me. Whether I see the cause as another person, circumstance, or condition, I believe I’m being acted upon by external forces.

Leaders in To Me are “at the effect of” the markets, competitors, team members who “don’t get it,” suppliers, the weather, their own mood, their spouse, their children, their bank account, and their health, to name a few. They believe that these external realities are responsible for their unhappiness (if only my spouse weren’t mean, I’d be happy); for their failures (if only my sales team would work harder, our top line would go up); and for their insecurities (if my board gave me a larger share of the company, I’d be secure). This “at the effect of” way of seeing the world doesn’t mean that leaders are always unhappy or upset. On the contrary, some are quite happy and successful, but the point is that they are pinning the cause of their well-being on external factors. We call this To Me mindset “victim consciousness”. In our experience, a significant difference exists between being a victim and having a victim consciousness. Most people would agree that children abused by alcoholic parents are victims. Thirty years later, if those same children, now adults, are still blaming their parents for their problems and suffering, they are living in a victim consciousness. Victim consciousness is a choice. As we mentioned, from our experience, most people choose to live this way. Those operating in the To Me victim consciousness are constantly looking to the past to assign blame for their current experience. They fault themselves, others, circumstances, or conditions for what is happening in their lives. Their thoughts and conversations are often dominated by “why” questions: “Why did this happen to me?” “Why don’t they respect me?” “Why are we losing market share?” “Why are my kids failing in school?” They search for answers that assign responsibility for the cause.

The gateway for moving from To Me to By Me is responsibility…

When leaders shift from below the line to above it, they move from the To Me to the By Me state—from living in victim consciousness to living in creator consciousness and from being “at the effect of” to “consciously creating with.” Instead of believing that the cause of their experience is outside themselves, they believe that they are the cause of their experience. To Me leaders think that the world should be a certain way, and if it isn’t, something needs to be different. For example, it should be warm and sunny out and it’s not, therefore the weather should be different. My children should obey me and when they don’t, they should be different. My employees should “get it” and they don’t, so they need to be different. Sometimes, however, the world is just the way they think it should be, although this is rare and fleeting for To Me leaders. The By Me leader chooses to see that everything in the world is unfolding perfectly for their learning and development. Nothing has to be different. They see that what is happening is for them. We suggest to leaders that life is like one big learning university, where we all enroll in classes that are perfectly designed to support our education. In these classes, we can either be “at the effect of” the teacher, the curriculum, and the other students or “consciously creating with.” To do the latter, a leader chooses curiosity and learning over defensiveness and being right (two cornerstones of the To Me consciousness). Instead of asking “Why is this happening to me?” the By Me leader asks questions like, “What can I learn from this?” “How is this situation ‘for me’?” “How am I creating this and keeping this going?”

The gateway for moving from To Me to By Me is responsibility—actually, what we call radical responsibility: choosing to take responsibility for whatever is occurring in our lives, letting go of blaming anyone (ourselves, others, circumstances, or conditions), and opening through curiosity to learn all that life has to teach us.

In the Through Me state of leadership, the “me” starts to open to another. Curiosity begins to guide this leader to a different set of questions, such as, “Am I the center of the universe?” “Is there something going on in addition to me?” “What is the nature of this other?” “Is it possible to be in relationship to this other?”

heroing is a primary form of unconscious leadership. It is toxic because it leads to burn out, supports others in taking less than their full responsibility (being victims), and rewards behaviors that ultimately lead to individual and team breakdown.

I commit to taking full responsibility for the circumstances of my life and for my physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being. I commit to supporting others to take full responsibility for their lives.

self-blame is equally as toxic as blaming others, or circumstances, and it is NOT taking responsibility.

shift from believing that the world should be a particular way to believing that the world just shows up. Second,

shift from rigidity, close-mindedness, and self-righteousness to curiosity, learning, and wonder

Taking 100% Responsibility Worksheet.

four competencies trump all others as the greatest predictors of sustained success: self-awareness, learning agility, communication, and influence.

Effective leaders learn to get into a state of wonder on a consistent basis.

Though conscious leaders have a good grasp on what they know and are interested in what they don’t know, they are inexorably drawn to what they don’t know they don’t know.

Commit to learning over being right. Decide that even though you will get defensive at times, you will make the choice to shift to curiosity whenever you recognize you’re defensive and below the line. Also decide that you will consider everything in life as a learning opportunity and value learning above all else. Share this commitment with key people in your life and request their support.

Ask wonder questions. Keep a list and share them with people close to you.

commit to feeling my feelings all the way through to completion. They come, and I locate them in my body then move, breathe and vocalize them so they release all the way through.

we frequently prevent the natural release of emotions by recycling them, which occurs when we get stuck in a cognitive/emotive loop. Cognition is thinking and emoting is feeling. When our mind gets involved, we create an endless loop that causes emotions to recycle rather than release.

The body releases naturally when you vocalize and let it move to match energy. By vocalization, we don’t mean “talk about it,” because that usually leads to recycling. Rather, we just mean make a sound.

If you repress or recycle emotion, it can harden into a mood: Anger becomes bitterness. Fear becomes anxiety. Sadness becomes apathy. And these moods can last for years.

ANGER: Anger tells a leader that something is not, or is no longer, of service. Or, that something is not aligned, and must be changed or destroyed so that something more beneficial can replace it.

Fear tells a leader that something important needs to be known.

something new wants to be learned. Fear invites your full attention and presence.

SADNESS: Sadness tells a leader that something needs to be let go of, said goodbye to, moved on from. Sadness is the energy of loss.

JOY: Joy tells a leader that something needs to be celebrated, appreciated, or laughed at, or someone needs to be patted on the back. Countless leaders fail to create a culture of celebration and appreciation because they’re cut off from their joy.

When a feeling arises pause and… Locate the sensation in your body. What are the “bits” doing? Breathe and allow the bits to simply do what they do. Move and/or make a sound to match what the bits are doing.

“the team that sees reality the best wins.”

most firms and leaders practice selective candor, or put another way, they withhold.

leaders who reveal (facts, thoughts, feelings, and sensations) have a free flow of abundant energy for accomplishing their vision.

Candor is one of the great antidotes to boredom. If couples learn to reveal rather than to conceal, boredom is rarely an issue in the relationship.

whenever we withhold, we withdraw. Initially, withdrawing is often subtle. We slightly pull back from the other. We no longer fully engage with them. Often we say to ourselves that this person cannot be fully trusted, justifying our disengagement. This withdrawal leads to the final step in relational disconnection: we project.

unequal, unfair world that we can never change or escape. As Twist

He sees everything; he sees them set the coffin down at His feet, sees the child rise up, and his face darkens. He knits his thick grey brows and his eyes gleam with a sinister fire. He holds out his finger and bids the guards take Him. And such is his power, so completely are the people cowed into submission and trembling obedience to him, that the crowd immediately makes way for the guards, and in the midst of deathlike silence they lay hands on Him and lead him away.

care not to know whether it is Thou or only a semblance of Him,

does it matter to us after all whether it was a mistake of identity or a wild fantasy? All that matters is that the old man should speak out, that he should speak openly of what he has thought in silence for ninety years.”

Thou mayest not add to what has been said of old,

Whatsoever Thou revealest anew will encroach on men’s freedom of faith; for it will be manifest as a miracle, and the freedom of their faith was dearer to Thee than anything in those days fifteen hundred years ago.

to do so had gathered together all the wise men of the earth- rulers, chief priests, learned men, philosophers, poets- and had set them the task to invent three questions, such as would not only fit the occasion, but express in three words, three human phrases, the whole future history of the world and of humanity- dost Thou believe that all the wisdom of the earth united could have invented anything in depth and force equal to the three questions which were actually put to Thee then by the wise and mighty spirit in the wilderness?

we can see that we have here to do not with the fleeting human intelligence, but with the absolute and eternal.

what is that freedom worth if obedience is bought with bread? Thou

In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet,

will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them! They will be convinced, too, that they can never be free,

And if for the sake of the bread of Heaven thousands shall follow Thee, what is to become of the millions and tens of thousands of millions of creatures who will not have the strength to forego the earthly bread for the sake of the heavenly? Or dost Thou care only for the tens of thousands of the great and strong, while the millions, numerous as the sands of the sea, who are weak but love Thee, must exist only for the sake of the great and strong?

They will marvel at us and look on us as gods, because we are ready to endure the freedom which they have found so dreadful

Choosing “bread,” Thou wouldst have satisfied the universal and everlasting craving of humanity- to find someone to worship. So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship. But

to find community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity

man prefers peace, and even death, to freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil?

So that, in truth, Thou didst Thyself lay the foundation for the destruction of Thy kingdom, and no one is more to blame for it.

those forces are miracle, mystery and authority.

Is the nature of men such, that they can reject miracle, and at the great moments of their life, the moments of their deepest, most agonising spiritual difficulties, cling only to the free verdict of the heart?

Thou didst not know that when man rejects miracle he rejects God too; for man seeks not so much God as the miraculous.

Freedom, free thought, and science will lead them into such straits and will bring them face to face with such marvels and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, the fierce and rebellious, will destroy themselves, others, rebellious but weak, will destroy one another, while the rest, weak and unhappy, will crawl fawning to our feet and whine to us: “Yes, you were right, you alone possess His mystery, and we come back to you, save us from ourselves!”

hundred thousand sufferers who have taken upon themselves the curse of the knowledge of good and evil.

For if anyone has ever deserved our fires, it is Thou. To-morrow I shall burn Thee.

“look around you at the gifts of God, the clear sky, the pure air, the tender grass, the birds; nature is beautiful and sinless, and we, only we, are sinful and foolish, and we don’t understand that life is heaven, for we have only to understand that and it will at once be fulfilled in all its beauty, we shall embrace each other and weep.”

“And that we are all responsible to all for all, apart from our own sins, you were quite right in thinking that, and it is wonderful how you could comprehend it in all its significance at once. And in very truth, so soon as men understand that, the Kingdom of Heaven will be for them not a dream, but a living reality.”

No sort of scientific teaching, no kind of common interest, will ever teach men to share property and privileges with equal consideration for all. Everyone will think his share too small and they will be always envying, complaining and attacking one another. You ask when it will come to pass; it will come to pass, but first we have to go though the period of isolation.”

the isolation that prevails everywhere, above all in our age- it has not fully developed, it has not reached its limit yet. For everyone strives to keep his individuality as apart as possible, wishes to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for himself; but meantime all his efforts result not in attaining fullness of life but self-destruction, for instead of self-realisation he ends by arriving at complete solitude.

mankind in our age have split up into units, they all keep apart, each in his own groove; each one holds aloof, hides himself and hides what he has, from the rest, and he ends by being repelled by others and repelling them.

have science; but in science there is nothing but what is the object of sense. The spiritual world, the higher part of man’s being is rejected altogether, dismissed with a sort of triumph, even with hatred. The

For the world says: “You have desires and so satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the most rich and powerful. Don’t be afraid of satisfying them and even multiply your desires.” That is the modern doctrine of the world.

we're now seeing customer support and content marketing give way to a new era of customer relationships: the customer community.

four factors that contribute to a sense of community: membership, influence, integration/fulfillment of needs, and shared emotional connection.

think about how to create real community for your people, rather than just slapping the title onto everything. Because if you can create a true sense of community for people, that's what will make them care enough to contribute. And that's what will unlock all the business value we'll talk about in this book.

When talking about the value of community, people often focus on customer retention, and how being a part of a community will make customers more loyal. This value is big and shouldn't be ignored, but the BIG competitive advantage comes from how you activate those loyal customers to contribute their energy, knowledge, and skills. It's their contributions that unlocks scale. It sounds simple enough, but it's actually a MASSIVE shift in mindset for most businesses.

Ultimately, what makes a business successful is the same thing that makes a community successful: Owning a topic in people's minds. Building community is one of the most powerful ways to establish your brand as the most trusted leader in a category, or to get people bought into a category that you're working to create. You want your community to be the first place people think of when they have a problem that needs solving in your category. For millions of developers, when they get stuck on a problem, the first place they think of to go for help is Stack Overflow. For millions of sales admins, when they have a problem, they turn to the Salesforce Trailblazer community. For inbound marketers, there's no better resource than the Inbound conference and community hosted by Hubspot. Humans are creatures of habit. When we find something that works, we do it again and again until neural pathways form and it becomes automatic.

Owning a topic in people's minds is quite simple (but not easy): you need to successfully solve their problem for them enough times that your community becomes the most efficient and trusted place they know of to get an answer, and they form a new habit. They need to feel confident that if they ask a question in your online community, they will get quality answers in a reasonable amount of time. They need to feel confident that if they show up to your event, the content and the attendees will be high quality, and they'll get the value they came for.

two things that every community program should focus on: How it creates value, belonging, and emotional safety for members How it creates value and measurable results for the business

elements of community are there: symbols, common language, shared sense of identity and purpose, communal spaces, an intentional culture, levels of leadership, etc.

The community team is responsible for organizing and facilitating spaces for members to connect with each other.

SPACES Model: The Six Business Outcomes of Community

All community programs will drive at least one, but often multiple, of these six business outcomes: Support: Customer service and support. The goal is to improve customer support and satisfaction, and reduce support costs by empowering members to answer questions and solve problems for each other. Product: Innovation, feedback, and R&D. The goal is to accelerate innovation and improve your product offering by creating spaces for members to share their feedback and discuss ideas that they'd like to see you apply to your product. Acquisition: Growth, marketing, and sales. The goal is to increase brand awareness, grow market share, and drive SEO, traffic, and leads, by hosting online and offline community spaces and/or empowering ambassadors to create content, organize events, and advocate on your behalf. Contribution: Collaboration and crowdsourcing. The goal is to motivate and accelerate the contribution of content, products, and services on your platform, marketplace, or social network. This is a common objective for companies whose core offering is a community, or is inherently social. Engagement: Customer experience, retention, and loyalty. The goal is to increase customer retention, average contract value, and customer satisfaction by giving customers a sense of belonging and organizing engaging and valuable community experiences. Success: Customer success and advancement. The goal is to make customers more successful at using your product, resulting in increased spend, retention, and satisfaction, by empowering them to teach each other, help each other skill up, and grow in their careers.

The purpose of a Support community is to create a space where your customers can answer questions for each other.

Product teams absolutely love having an engaged community that they can always turn to for feedback.

For our own product Bevy, it's rare that a company becomes a customer who hasn't engaged in the CMX community in some way. It's very likely that they've attended an event and have multiple people participating in our community before they ever get on the phone with a sales representative. Our sales reps love hearing that, because they know that there's already established trust. That makes their job a lot easier. There's absolutely a wrong way to use community to drive sales. But when it's done right, and authentically, it can become your company's strongest growth engine.

### Tool #1 — Acknowledge the kid's feeling and give them the words to describe it

Instead of dismissing or arguing with a feeling ("you're fine," "stop crying," "it's not a big deal"), name it for them. Give the emotion a word the kid can hold onto.

The structural move: mirror the feeling out loud so the child knows they've been heard. The naming itself often defuses the intensity — language acts as a release valve.

In practice this can sound like: "You're really frustrated that the tower fell down," or "It's hard to stop playing when you're having so much fun." The point isn't to fix or redirect; it's to validate first. Cooperation gets easier downstream once a kid feels seen.

### Keep a wishlist as a way to capture wants

When a kid wants something we can't (or won't) give them in the moment — a toy at the store, a snack before dinner, a thing a friend has — write it down on a "wishlist" with them. Saying "let's add that to your wishlist" honors the want without requiring a yes/no fight in the moment.

The move is about acknowledging the desire (similar foundation to Tool #1) while sidestepping the immediate-gratification trap. Over time the wishlist becomes its own object — a kid can see the wants accumulate, pick favorites, drop ones that no longer matter, and connect them to birthdays / gifts / saved-up effort. It also slows the want, which is its own teacher.

“How well does it connect people? What new network does it create?”

This is why the naive view is wrong to believe that creating more powerful information technology will necessarily result in a more truthful understanding of the world. If no additional steps are taken to tilt the balance in favor of truth, an increase in the amount and speed of information is likely to swamp the relatively rare and expensive truthful accounts by much more common and cheap types of information.

When it comes to uniting people, fiction enjoys two inherent advantages over the truth. First, fiction can be made as simple as we like, whereas the truth tends to be complicated, because the reality it is supposed to represent is complicated. Take, for example, the truth about nations. It is difficult to grasp that the nation to which one belongs is an intersubjective entity that exists only in our collective imagination. You rarely hear politicians say such things in their political speeches. It is far easier to believe that our nation is God’s chosen people, entrusted by the Creator with some special mission. This simple story has been repeatedly told by countless politicians from Israel to Iran and from the United States to Russia. Second, the truth is often painful and disturbing, and if we try to make it more comforting and flattering, it will no longer be the truth. In contrast, fiction is highly malleable. The history of every nation contains some dark episodes that citizens don’t like to acknowledge and remember. An Israeli politician who in her election speeches details the miseries inflicted on Palestinian civilians by the Israeli occupation is unlikely to get many votes. In contrast, a politician who builds a national myth by ignoring uncomfortable facts, focusing on glorious moments in the Jewish past, and embellishing reality wherever necessary may well sweep to power. That’s the case not just in Israel but in all countries. How many Italians or Indians want to hear the unblemished truth about their nations? An uncompromising adherence to the truth is essential for scientific progress, and it is also an admirable spiritual practice, but it is not a winning political strategy.

Telling a fictional story is lying only when you pretend that the story is a true representation of reality. Telling a fictional story isn’t lying when you avoid such pretense and acknowledge that you are trying to create a new intersubjective reality rather than represent a preexisting objective reality.

For the scientific revolution to gather pace, scientists had to trust information published by colleagues in distant lands.

unlike the Catholic Church, the Académie des Sciences did not command huge territories and budgets. But scientific institutions did accrue influence thanks to a very original claim to trust. A church typically told people to trust it because it possessed the absolute truth, in the form of an infallible holy book. A scientific institution, in contrast, gained authority because it had strong self-correcting mechanisms that exposed and rectified the errors of the institution itself. It was these self-correcting mechanisms, not the technology of printing, that were the engine of the scientific revolution. In other words, the scientific revolution was launched by the discovery of ignorance.[91]

innate censors and motivators exist in the brain that deeply and unconsciously affect our ethical premises; from these roots, morality evolved as instinct. If that perception is correct, science may soon be in a position to investigate the very origin and meaning of human values, from which all ethical pronouncements and much of political practice flow.

Which of the censors and motivators should be obeyed and which ones might better be curtailed or sublimated? These guides are the very core of our humanity.

To chart our destiny means that we must shift from automatic control based on our biological properties to precise steering based on biological knowledge.

Are human beings innately aggressive? This is a favorite question of college seminars and cocktail party conversations, and one that raises emotion in political ideologues of all stripes. The answer to it is yes.