Carole Lévy

Today, I reconnected with two powerful images of my childhood:

1) An image from my light child, joyful, animated, enthusiastic, spontaneous and grateful.

2) An image from my dark child, alone, afraid, disappointed and in scarcity.

I’m a sophisticated French Parisian, so I’m cool and stylish. Still, I approach life with a filter of lack.

Today, I’m grateful that I reconnected with my filter of luck, my filter of appreciation. It’s in me. I had just forgotten.

Nothing can prevent me to choose luck over lack in my daily life, except habit and… Hot Buttons!

I’m definitively not done with the subject…

Sometimes, when a hot button is triggered, it’s in the middle of my face but I don’t see it.

When somebody tries to make me notice, it’s upsetting.

The truth is that If I wasn’t already triggered before, I wouldn’t react to this attempt of support.

When I’m self-deluded about a hot button, I can sometimes become an exaggeration of myself, like my own caricature… a clown.

If I’m able to laugh at myself, I say  “Bravo!” It’s true Personal Mastery!!!

Most of the time, I’m not able.

But if I feel persistently shut down or ready to punch somebody, I know that I need a reflective time.

Evolved people know how to recognize their inner clown, deal with their own button and let it go.

I’m not there yet. But what I know, is that after being committed*, the most indispensable step to overcome my hot buttons is to become self-aware.

*http://www.littlecarotte.com/2013/01/29/being-detached-in-2013/

I wish I were more detached in my life.

Angeles Arrien* defines Detachment as our capacity to deeply care from an objective place.

As a leader at work or a mother-wife at home, I deeply care, but too often from a subjective emotional place.

What’s preventing me from caring from an objective place?

MY HOT BUTTONS!!!

A HOT BUTTON is a point of sensitivity that represents a threat for the self-worth.

When a HOT BUTTON is triggered, we react ineffectively.

At Learning as Leadership http://learnaslead.com

we call it a PINCH® because it often starts with a physical sensation.

When my hot buttons are triggered, I sabotage my capacity to effectively communicate with others, to creatively use my brain and to simply enjoy life.

It’s my main commitment for 2013 to master my hot buttons and get rid of them.

Yes, I know, it sounds like a titanic task.

So don’t leave me alone and join the club! More is coming about the subject…

*Angeles Arrien is a PH.D., cultural anthropologist, author, consultant and wonderful teacher.

The current environmental crisis in Beijing with this unprecedented polluted cloud  highlighted for me once again the non-sustainability of our current consumer society and the urgency of re-inventing a healthy one.

But this time, instead of feeling paralyzed by the complexity of the problem, I decided to offer one of my great and naive ideas:

What if, instead of building stuff that nobody needs, a collaborative team of innovative engineers (who would have first read my up coming book “The Bumpy Road to Collaboration”), would focus their talent and energy on building a mega-gigantic vacuum cleaner to aspire our clouds of pollution?

Then, the same innovative and collaborative team would build a space rocket…

… to send the  vacuum cleaner bags full of fine particles…

… to Mars!!! Since on Planet earth…

… we don’t have anymore room to hide our pollution.

I hope that all my wonderful client-engineers will pick up on my idea.

Meanwhile, I commit to be more conscious of my consumption of stuff!

Dear Friends,

 In 2013, Little Carotte will be different. I don’t know yet how nor when, but change will occur for sure! Thank you for following my blog, commenting and sharing. It really makes a difference for me to know that my words and drawings resonate. So keep going! I wish you a great year, full of creative thoughts and good ideas… See below.

With love,

Carole

“My good ideas often come to me when I’m walking in the hills behind my house.

At first, I started to walk with a pen and a notebook to write my good ideas down. But I noticed that stopping during my walk to write would also stop the spontaneous flow of creativity.

Therefore I developed the habit of repeating my thoughts out loud, over and over, with the rational that it’s a healthy way to exercise my aging brain and that, when good ideas are really good, they stick.

Well, good ideas stick but not ALL of them. On the path of developing my right brain function, perhaps I still don’t have enough faith in my higher muse and I still want to control the outcome too much. So I went back to the pen and the notebook…

But tell me, how do YOUR good ideas emerge or fall? What’s your creative mode? I’d love to read your good ideas about the subject…”

Interestingly, I failed my first attempt to deliver yesterday… Here is another one that should work!