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Welcome to Episode 114 of The Non-Anxious Leader podcast. Before we get started today, I want to let you know that we have a 45-minute workshop coming up on Wednesday, March 24th at 12:15 EDT. Please adjust for your own time zone.

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This workshop is on Compassionate Communication. My good friend and colleague, Rev. Todd Bartlett, who's been studying Compassionate Communication for the last decade, is going to spend some time with us sharing what that means. If you want to learn how to be able to express yourself as a non-anxious leader, to do it in healthy ways, as well as listen to other people in a way that you can be a non-anxious presence, then this is definitely a must. It is free. You can get all the details at the Non-Anxious Leader Network at network.thenonanxiousleader.com. I look forward to seeing you on March 24th.

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Now, without further ado, here is Episode 114, Put Your Own Oxygen Mask on First.

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Please obtain a copy of Friedman's Fables and read "Panic."

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And the moral of the story is, you guessed it, put your own oxygen mask on first.

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This fable is all about taking responsibility for self. The setting is a situation where surrounding togetherness pressure is created by an external event.

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I believe this is very similar to what we have experienced in the last year in the midst of a pandemic. For over one year now, we have been looking around at the events in our country and the world and wondering how they would impact our lives as individuals, families, congregations and organizations. Like the cascade of falling dominoes, the pandemic is real. The threat is real. The disruption to daily living and the functioning of our systems is nearly inescapable.

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The question is, what do we do about it? Like most of the dominoes in this fable, we could look around at everything that is happening and shudder with fear. We could even just give up and tip over without any incident that might actually cause us consequence. In the fable, the surrounding togetherness pressure created a tendency for people to look outside themselves and feel helpless and hopeless.

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Or if they were trying to fix something, they were looking to prop up their neighbor. They were looking for science. They were looking for something to help them out of it.

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On the other hand, one domino focused on taking responsibility for self instead of worrying about what was going on around her. The domino merely focused on how she could remain strong. This goes to Friedman's concept that the biggest factor in one's survival in a hostile environment is one's own response. A healthy response gives you a better chance of surviving. More importantly, if you are a leader, a healthy response means everything to the system you lead.

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Of course, in this pandemic, surrounding togetherness pressure is much more complicated. Some have felt pressure to wear a mask. Others have felt pressure to not wear a mask. Likewise, there were some who rarely left the house and others, who by choice, did not curtail their daily activities much at all. Of course, there were some who had no choice in what they had to do because of their job or life situation. But most of us were somewhere in the continuum between one extreme and the other.

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Nobody could decide for us, and the most important thing we could do is to take responsibility for self, to decide for ourselves what was going to work, what is going to work.

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I remember early in the pandemic, it became clear to me that wearing a mask could actually protect other people if I were contagious. That wearing a mask was something that I could do to help reduce the spread of this virus. So I decided that I would start wearing a mask to model what I thought was helpful behavior.

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The first time I did that, I went to a local gas station and convenience store in my small rural town. I realized that I was the only one wearing a mask. I felt very self-conscious. I felt surrounding togetherness pressure to not wear a mask, but I convinced myself to ignore it, to be a non-anxious presence, even though I felt anxious inside. I convinced myself to persist because I felt that this was the right thing for me to do.

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The interesting thing about this fable is not only does the non-anxious domino, who is willing to take responsibility for self and only self, stop the panic, stop the chain of events that is certain to destroy everyone. The non-anxious domino actually is able to reverse the course of events just by remaining a non-anxious presence, taking responsibility for self. Not only does that chain reaction stop, but it reverses and goes back and forth until everything returns to its equilibrium.

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This is a metaphor for what a non-anxious presence can do in the midst of panic, in the midst of a bunch of anxious people. But there is one subtle difference, and that is when a non-anxious presence is able to maintain her connection with others while maintaining responsibility for self. She doesn't just bring things back to where they were before. She actually brings things to an even more positive and more stable situation. So that is the thing I think that we need to realize as non-anxious leader is when we focus on taking responsibility for self, we help the entire system become less anxious. We help the entire system function more effectively. So not only can we help stop the panic, but we can actually help people move beyond it and move to a better place.

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In the midst of panic, non-anxious leaders are able to consider their situation and figure out what they need to do to take care of self and the system they lead. This varies greatly depending on the situation. That's content. But the emotional process is taking responsibility for self and owning it. It may well feel uncomfortable and it may create some anxiety because of the surrounding togetherness pressure. But it will actually make you stronger as a leader and more helpful to the people you lead.

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I believe that if you can do this in normal times. If you can take responsibility for self and a renon-anxious presence during normal times, you will be better able to do it during the most difficult times, like the ones we are facing now. This is what non-anxious leaders do.

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That's it for Episode 114. Don't forget to connect with me at thenonanxiousleader.com and don't forget to sign up for our free workshop on Compassionate Communication at network.thenonanxiousleader.com. Until next time. Thanks and goodbye.