Retail Observer

AUGUST 2020 RETAILOBSERVER.COM 43 A situation with a co-worker feels frustrating, concerning or unfair. You might feel hurt, angry, discouraged, misunderstood or misheard. This state of discomfort is an invitation to you: something isn't working. Something doesn't feel right. Often, we will move quickly to blaming or shaming of the other. We will find evidence for our right-ness, our righteous certainty, about the other person's actions or words. However, in order for anything positive or miraculous to even be possible, there must be willingness. Willingness, initially, is an internal conversation. We are invited to hear the question – Are you willing? – and to breathe it into our bodies even before we do or say anything. Am I willing to look inside myself? Am I willing to ask the hard and beautiful questions? Am I willing not to look away? And then I must be willing to acknowledge that something isn't working – something isn't right – and that it's possible I might be part of that not-rightness. I have to answer the question of whether I'm willing to move toward this courageous, important conversation that matters. When I become willing, I become vulnerable, and I am at risk. I risk not being right, not feeling safe, making it worse, but I also might risk losing much more than "face." In some instances, I could lose my job, a relationship, or something more critical, my life. When I become willing, I move toward the conversation with humility, and I remove myself from the center of what might occur. I become willing to let go of a story or conversation that's no longer working between us. I may have to let go of what felt like solid ground beneath my feet because I am willing to be curious and venture into something that's unknown and mysterious. If I am not willing, there will be no space for growth, resolution, or healing. If I am not willing, I erect a barrier, a wall, a fortress that separates me not only from others, but also from what is essentially the best part of myself – the part that holds the capacity and capability for expansion rather than contraction, for hope rather than despair, for compassion rather than divisiveness. Willingness is powerful because of its vulnerable nature. It is powerful because it imagines something greater and brighter than what currently exists. Willingness is not without the honest and often painful path through my own self-assessment, and my own acknowledgement of participation in what has transpired. When we come together to navigate or negotiate a relationship that has gone wrong, we must first enter through the door, the portal, of willingness, and it is the very first, very most essential step. "Start close in," my friend, poet David Whyte, says. Start right here, where you are standing, at this moment. Willingness could happen in an instant, but often willingness is curated over time through a deep listening and noticing from which we cannot turn away. There is a deep knowing that swells to the surface of things once we say, "Wait. What is my part? How have I been ignorant, arrogant, or complicit?" Or, "How have I let the story that has unfolded here to become the only story within which I am operating?" Without willingness, all the doors are closed – there are no friendships mended, no marriages reconciled, no apt reparations made. There are no careers re-calibrated, no communities salvaged, no countries re-born. Without willingness, there are no policies changed, systems shifted, justice transformed. Without willingness, we stand on the other side, empty-handed or close- fisted, perpetrating the suffering of separation. First, we become aware. Then, we accept what is. Finally, we can act. We can take that first step, that essential action. With willingness, we can become informed, we can listen and learn, we can express in our own voices, what needs to be said from a place of trust and respect. When we become willing, we can answer the most essential question of all: what is uniquely mine to do? End note and offering: if you are an organization, group, team, or individual who might benefit from a facilitated courageous conversation to increase trust, shift divisiveness, or heal broken relationships, please reach out to me directly for support. If you are an organization devoted to safety, social justice, community development or increasing peace and kindness, please reach out to me directly. I will offer services for free to those for whom cost of consulting/coaching is prohibitive. Please send me a note at libbywagner@libbywagner.com. RO RO Libby Wagner, author of The Influencing Option: The Art of Building a Profit Culture in Business, works with clients to help them create and sustain profit cultures. www.libbywagner.com

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