Six Renewal Practices
By John O'Neil
For over 25 years, I have studied renewal practices. Over the years, certain questions kept jabbing at me. How is it that so many people never recover from the ego swelling that early success can bring?
For example, look at John Updike's character, Rabbit, stunted and forever defined by his high school athleticism. Why does defeat send some into a crippling depression while others spin failure into a luminous journey?
My search has been to find the common practices that set extraordinary characters apart-yet are available to any of us to apply in our own lives.
SIX KEY PRACTICES
The practices break down into six categories. There is considerable overlap among these categories, and individual styles vary widely.
1. Retreating for renewal. This is the cornerstone practice; the capacity to step back from daily pressures, to let the soul breathe, to think deeply. To refresh and renew is the necessary first step toward renewal. Choices range widely: flying, fishing, walking, meditating and praying can all be retreats that renew.
The renewal benefits of retreat practices are many and varied. Some people report feeling refreshed, more relaxed, but energized. Others describe creative bursts, cracking open problems like fortune cookies. Others claim epiphanies, major life-changing insights that flow from retreats. The paradoxical aspects of retreats seem to be that the simple act of letting go of the daily, sweaty, swirling demands life produces higher order thinking, and improved solutions to life problems. Churchill wrote of the benefits of his painting retreats:
"Change is the master key. It is only when new cells are called into new activity, when new stars become the lords of the ascendant, that relief, repose, refreshment are afforded."
2. Finding new learning curves. Long-distance leaders have the capacity to spot a decaying learning curve, to know when they have stopped growing. The modern mantra of enlightened organizations is continuous learning. All agree that fresh learning is imperative to handle the changes delivered by the massive backwash of global market forces. But what learning? What does each person learn at various life and career stages? Most managers fail at leadership tasks not because of ignorance about methods, skills, or processes-most fail because they have an inadequate emotional range, and they don't make the proper connections between seemingly disparate ideas and concepts. They fail at exerting the appropriate torque in motivating people. They fail at asking
"why" questions. They fail to get ego out of the way. They fail because they grow stale.
People cling to spent learning curves for comfort or because they are afraid of the unknown. At the base of every new learning curve is a dark whirlpool of chaos. The security of the familiar must give way to the risk of failure. That's hard. What people don't see is that the other choice is riding the old learning curve too long on a guaranteed trip to stagnation. What they must come to appreciate is the deep satisfaction new learning brings. This appreciation starts with small efforts and grows very slowly at first.
3. Cultivating creativity. The virtues of creativity are obvious. We need more creative solutions to longstanding, intractable problems. Creativity produces a competitive advantage. Creativity adds beauty to our lives. However, long-distance leaders use creativity in a special way; it is the juice, the charge, and the healing path for them. They apply creative practices as a direct means of renewing themselves.
4. Setting guilt-free goals. Narrow, self-serving goals promote guilt. Again and again I encounter successful people who are sick at heart. The prize they pursued and won has turned to dust; the race over, they feel a dark loss. Trace elements of guilt remain in the psyche when we unconsciously outstrip our mothers and fathers, when we have so much when others have so little. Rooting out guilt can be hard work, even when awareness dawns. Practicing goal setting mindfully to avoid menacing guilt is a solid investment in prevention.
New goals cannot be put in place until the clarification of some old issues takes place. For each person, the way is different. For most it is sufficient to recall explicit parental expectations, stated or unstated, that still linger behind the curtains of daily performance and whisper,
"That is not good enough." Some people need psychotherapy to throw their beasts to the ground; for others, small, daily practices of mindfulness are sufficient to keep guilt out of goal setting.
5. Developing strong psychic and spiritual immune systems. These include optimism, gratitude, humility, and altruism. It serves no useful purpose to separate out the toxins that harm the soul from those that weaken the psyche. When our spirit is sick, we are sick all over. There appear to be four elements to the immune system of the spirit: an earned optimism, an abiding gratitude, a deeply felt humility, and an exercise of altruism. I have deliberately stayed away from the word love, so hammered and worn it has become, but all of these elements contribute to acts of love or give rise to its expression.
6. Accumulating teachers, coaches, and mentors. It is always surprising to find how few people continue to enjoy the pleasure of learning under the wise gaze of a superb teacher. All long-distance winners treasure the company of learned people and go to great effort to find it.
The practices of long-distance leaders are neither exotic nor trivial. Renewal is the overarching goal, and there are no shortcuts. Each practice has the prospect for great satisfaction and provides the motivation needed when the flag touches the ground.
 John O'Neil is currently the President of the Center for Leadership Renewal. He serves on several boards and is an author, speaker, and advisor on leadership issues, providing leadership advisement and development services to senior leaders serving across a wide range of organizations from start-ups to mature enterprises.
John's book The Paradox of Success (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1993) has been a best seller in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Australia and was reissued by the publisher in 2004 as one of the best business books of the decade. His book Leadership Aikido (Crown/Harmony, 1997) focuses on the practices of enduring and creative leaders. Seasons of Grace (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003) co-authored with Alan Jones, Dean of San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, won the Nautilus Prize for Best in Spirituality category in 2004.
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