The Whole Self in Action
• The Physical Self: We made the feet, and particularly their soles, the core input for the overall experience. We focused attention and awareness at the physical body level.
• The Emotional Self: By using different textures on the floor, as well as the light and sound triggers, we created external stimuli that gave the participants something that engaged their emotions. They were sometimes confused, sometimes peaceful, and sometimes excited, but all of them said they had run through a range of emotions as they walked through the space.
• The Inspired Self: Each participant came away more fully aware of his or her states of awareness and relaxation. Many of them said they were inspired to think about their bodies differently and to consider how small changes in their routines could have an impact on their overall well-being. Many went away with new goals or ambitions for their personal training routines.
• The Community Self: Though this was an individual experience, many of the participants stayed after because they wanted to talk with the others, learning from them and feeling more connected with the community of participants. In addition, their willingness to share their experiences with their own networks was a testament to how meaningful the journey had been.
• The Intellectual Self: Everyone who left the labyrinth was newly aware of how powerful the feet are as sense receptors. They understood Nike’s philosophy and technology better, and they could see how the technology could help them understand their own selves better.
• The Mindful Self: We engaged with people at a mindful level, and they engaged with themselves. They knew their connection to the space around them more intimately. Their senses were heightened, and their ability to feel the world around them was ultimately enhanced.
• The Aspirational Self: In the end, many participants walked away having moved their understanding of themselves a little further down the field. They had learned something meaningful about themselves and were more committed to changing or pushing themselves in a new or different way to more fully experience their mind-body connection.
In pulling it all together, we created an experience that was holistic and all-encompassing, and we also helped the participants connect more fully with themselves and the world around them.
LUCKY NUMBER 7
As we were finishing the Nike Hyperfeel campaign, Gil was very much in my mind, saying with a smile on his face, “Open every door you come to with your left hand, and see what you find.” That simple exercise had taught me how to engage with my whole self, and that had changed me forever.
Years after the Hyperfeel launch, I looked back on the work and the philosophical foundation we had built around empathy. It was clear that the seven Empathic Archetypes and the seven aspects of the Whole Self had something to do with each other. There was no question that the archetypes on their own were helpful, but my team and I were looking for ways to train our empathy. We wanted to really work with the archetypes, and all of a sudden it clicked: we could ask ourselves questions framed by the seven aspects of the Whole Self, and those questions would lead us to probe deeper into each archetype.
A group of us spent weeks thinking through a series of questions that would weave the two concepts together. In the end, each archetype was given a series of seven questions, one for each facet of the Whole Self, and we used those questions to provoke deeper insight and understanding for one another and, ultimately, for ourselves.
Here are the questions we developed for each of the Empathic Archetypes. They are arranged in the descending order of the Whole Self, starting with Aspirational at the top and moving down through Mindful, Intellectual, Community, Inspired, Emotional, and Physical.
The Sage
• What is your purpose?
• Where do you feel most present?
• How has your past shaped who you are?
• What is a lesson you have imparted to others?
• When negative emotions arise, how do you deal with them?
• How do you stay grounded when the world gets overwhelming?
• How do you nurture yourself and your practice?
The Inquirer
• What do you most want to know?
• What personal biases interfere most with your finding truth?
• When have your instincts led you astray?
• Whom do you go to with tough questions?
• What do you continually ask yourself?
• What types of inquiries make you most uncomfortable?
• How does your body communicate?
The Convener
• Where is your favorite place to be a guest?
• How do you balance being self-serving and selfless?
• What makes an experience meaningful?
• Whom do you collaborate with best?
• What are a host’s greatest skills?
• What about you most comforts others?
• When do you bring people together?
The Alchemist
• What motivates you to progress?
• What does approaching a breakthrough feel like?
• When does your curiosity create difficulty?
• Who has challenged you to be better than you once were?
• How does iteration inform the outcome of your work?
• What are the biggest sacrifices you’ve made?
• Where do you go to experiment?
The Confidant
• When is listening more valuable than counseling?
• What role can silence play in a conversation?
• How do you build trust?
• When have you breached a confidence?
• What should people better understand about you?
• How do you protect yourself?
• When are you the most observant?
The Seeker
• What mistake would you make again?
• How do you explore your inner self?
• When is failure productive?
• Who inspires a sense of adventure within you?
• How does courage manifest in your work?
• When does bravery become foolhardy?
• Where do you go to push your limits?
The Cultivator
• What are your most audacious aspirations?
• How do you build endurance?
• What do you purposefully leave undone?
• Who are your long-term partners?
• What commitment have you made to yourself more than once?
• When has mentorship played a role in your life?
• Where do you feel most nurtured?
With those questions completed, we decided it was time to take our thinking to the world. To do so, we created a deck of cards. After all, the tarot had been one of our biggest inspirations for the archetypes. We called the deck “Q&E,” which stands for “Questions and Empathy.” I use the cards in all sorts of settings, from workshops and client kickoffs to internal projects and even social gatherings.
We started to sell the cards, and the feedback began to roll in from everywhere. Teachers use them with students who have trouble opening up about themselves, and I have a friend who hosts a monthly dinner and leaves a card on every guest’s plate as a way of sparking new and deeper conversations around the table. We even have a few clients who have bought them in bulk and distributed them to their entire organization.
I discovered that not only are the cards great at provoking deeper connections, but they are permission-granting tools as well. If I were at a cocktail party, met someone I didn’t know, and asked him or her, “Where do you feel most nurtured?” he or she would probably think I was a creep. But when the cards are involved and they are the ones asking the question, people become more open-minded. I’ve seen it happen countless times. Complete strangers pair up and start working with the cards, and within minutes someone is crying, laughing hysterically, or gesticulating wildly as they
relay an impassioned anecdote about their life. The cards create space for connections to occur and empathy to emerge. People begin to understand each other on a deeper level.
One day I got a text from a good friend who lives in San Francisco. He told me he had been dating a woman for about half a year, and they had decided to take a road trip down Highway 1, riding along the coast from San Francisco to Los Angeles. He had taken his Q&E deck with him for the drive, and he and his girlfriend had started to go through all the questions together.
The message he sent had a photo from when they had pulled over on a turnout in Big Sur. The big blue Pacific Ocean was in the background, and in the foreground was his girlfriend smiling with tears running down her face. He said the cards had let them get deeper in a few hours than they had gotten in six months of dating.
I realize that this anecdote might seem a little sappy for a business book, but here’s the point: these archetypes have plenty of applications in our lives. Sometimes we forget that “businesspeople” and “colleagues” are real people, too. I’ve sat in countless meetings where clients have told us about their need to focus on business-to-business conversations—omitting the very obvious point that when their customers leave their office, they are regular people just like you and me. Though you will likely use the principles in this book at work, don’t be surprised if they also find their way into helping you connect with empathy in many other situations.
The Empathic Archetypes and the Whole Self together created a sort of powerful alchemy that spurs empathy. It’s hard to say why or how that happened, but time and again I have seen people change as they play with these cards and probe into territories we rarely reach during the small talk we all engage in. Give it a try, and see what emerges as you take a deeper look into those around you and, ultimately, into yourself.
CHAPTER THREE EXERCISES
Five-Minute Contemplations
You can glean new insights into your Whole Self through a series of five-minute contemplations designed to engage each of the seven aspects. Whether done in one sitting or incrementally over the course of a week, each of these prompts will nudge you into a deeper, more self-aware state of being, ultimately aiding in a greater sense of empathy for your self and where you find yourself in a given moment in time.
We start at the most tangible level of the self, the physical self.
Physical Self
In a comfortable seated position, close your eyes and take three slow deep breaths. Pay attention only to your physical body. Feel how your chest expands and rises with your inhalation and relaxes on your exhalation. Breathe as slowly as you comfortably can.
After breathing, conduct a “body scan,” moving your attention slowly to different parts of your body. For example, when you bring your attention to your feet, don’t just feel your feet, but feel everything about your feet. Feel the air around them, the ground below them. Feel the temperature of the room from your feet. Feel your toes and arches and Achilles tendons and everything else you can. The muscles, the skin, the ligaments. Feel every aspect of your feet.
Scan upward from your feet into your legs, your hips, torso, hands, arms, shoulders, neck, and head. Pay attention to what is easy to connect with and what is difficult. How in touch are you with the various parts of your body? Do you feel them as you go through your normal day, or is your physical body just a big vehicle to move your brain around from meeting to meeting? Take the time to move throughout your body and notice its quality. Is it holding tension in a particular place? Do you have discomfort anywhere? How does your body change when you sense it in a seated versus a standing position?
When you finish the scan, take a moment to sense the entirety of your physical body. Take three slow breaths again and open your eyes.
Ask yourself how different you feel about your body relative to how you felt when you began the exercise. Do you have a different awareness for your physicality? Your breath? Take a moment to write down your feelings, and pay attention to how they change as you continue to do this exercise.
Emotional Self
Check in with yourself and ask what emotion you most commonly feel at work / at home / at all times—whatever setting is relevant to you.
Do you find yourself anxious? Distracted? Angry?
Perhaps you’re contemplative. Or joyful. Or in love.
Whatever it is, that’s the emotion you want to zero in on for this exercise.
Set a timer for five minutes. Without overthinking things, simply connect to that emotion and write down whatever comes up for you as you sit within that state. The writing needs no structure—some of it may be stream of consciousness, while other parts may make great sense. That’s totally fine. Just express your emotions on the page.
• Describe how this emotion makes the rest of you feel.
• How often do you feel this way?
• Can you control how often and when you feel this way? Does this emotion control you?
• Are there specific people who trigger this emotion in you? Why do they do so?
As before, there is no right or wrong way to conduct this exercise. Simply stay connected to the emotion and give yourself the space to document it without analysis. Just feel and write whatever comes to the surface.
When the timer goes off, take a few deep breaths, and then read what you’ve written. Some of it will likely be what you expect, but other parts may surprise you. It’s possible you could discover that this is a persistent emotion you don’t want controlling your life. Or perhaps it may become clear that there is a trigger (a person, a thing, a circumstance, etc.) that causes this emotion to arise within you. Understanding your emotions and what gives rise to them will ultimately help you manage them more acutely.
You can use this exercise to log your ongoing relationship with a variety of emotions that arise within yourself. All of this information will provide you with opportunities to learn more about your inner world and the shifting tides of your emotional state.
Inspired Self
Some of us find inspiration more easily than others. But like empathy, inspiration is something we cultivate by connecting to it and understanding it, allowing inspiration to become a more familiar state.
To begin, recall a moment when you felt truly inspired. Perhaps it was when you heard someone deliver a pep talk that lit a fire within you. Or maybe it was the time you took a watercolor painting class. It doesn’t matter what it was. Just go with it.
Start your timer for five minutes, and focus on your memories of that inspired moment and remember where you were.
• What was the environment like?
• Were you alone or with other people?
• How did it feel when your inspiration began to manifest in action?
• Were you conscious of it at the time, or did it simply take over your actions?
That’s the richness of good inspiration: you can’t control what happens next. If we’re lucky, the power of the Inspired Self takes us on a creative roller-coaster ride, supporting the making, doing, or experiencing of something that truly satisfies our Whole Self.
Ask yourself what about this particular moment brought such inspiration to you. Was it the setting of the moment, or was it a person or even a side of yourself you didn’t know existed? What lit the fire within you?
Once you’ve grasped the elements of this experience, try to determine the aspects of it that you can re-create in order to reignite inspiration. Create a short list of no more than three to five things, and use it as your Inspired Self’s “cheat sheet” for when you need to drop back into that state.
Maybe a music playlist or a walk in the park inspires you. It could be a phone call with an old friend, a ten-day vipassana meditation at an ashram, or just a great piece of chocolate cake.
Whatever the things are, understand that they are a part of your tool kit and you can utilize them to reconnect with this aspect of your Whole Self.
Community Self
The Comm
unity Self is the self that relates to the people around you and they to you. Because of this two-way street, we will divide your time into two parts for this exercise.
For the first two and a half minutes, contemplate what community or communities you spend the most time serving. Your family? Your friends? Your coworkers?
Ask yourself how you feel about providing service to those groups. Do they recharge you or deplete you? Why do you support them in the first place? Do you feel that you have a choice to support them or not?
Write down your answers if you’d like, or simply think these questions through. Some people find that the act of writing their answers helps them concretize their feelings, but if you prefer simply to contemplate these questions, that’s fine, too.
Next, flip the question and ask yourself what community or communities support you. Are they the same ones you support? Why or why not? What makes the group(s) so helpful and restorative for you? Do they give you something you don’t have within yourself, or do they shine a light on things you already have in abundance?
Taking the time to consider the people around you and the dynamics that cause them to be prominent in your life will undoubtedly present you with powerful insights to help you understand how a key part of your Whole Self interacts with the world around you.
Intellectual Self
Too many of us have a tendency to overuse the Intellectual Self, which controls how we present ourselves through words and concepts. This overuse can manifest itself in talking because we like the sound of our voice or going on and on about big concepts and our perspective on them. Left unchecked, this is the self of an overzealous ego. When balanced against the other selves, however, it helps us calibrate our views with composure and humility.
Take a moment to use the tools you’ve learned in earlier chapters and look at yourself with as much objectivity as you can. Allow your Intellectual Self to analyze where you are in your life and the pursuit of your ambitions.
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