I’ve just released my third book, How to Do the Inner Work – A Guide to Self-Discovery, Empowerment and Emotional Healing. But what does it mean to do the inner work and what are the benefits? 
 
In essence, doing the inner work means that if you’re stuck and want something to change, your first point of call is to work with your internal world of thoughts, beliefs, emotions, body and breath, before seeking to change something external to you.  
 
If you only look for the answer to your problems outside yourself, you can get locked into a reactive and defensive mode of relating. Whereas instinctive reactions aren’t wrong, they keep you small and don’t address the root of your problems. 

​For example, you might feel frustrated and overreact because someone you rely on hasn’t done what they said they would. You send an angry email to a co-worker blaming them for a late delivery. Or you start looking for a new job because you didn’t get the promotion you were hoping for. 
 
These examples relate to work, but we could easily come up with personal examples too. The patterns are the same. We react based on an emotional trigger, which can make matters worse. Not only that, we get into a downward spiral of negative thoughts causing us to accumulate stress and tension beyond what is healthy. 
 
In another example you feel stressed and overworked. You have high standards, find it hard to delegate and don’t want to overburden your team. You thrive on praise from your managers, which makes it hard to say no to extra work. You secretly blame others for your situation and think to yourself “if only my workload would diminish, then I’d be happy. If only my team members had more capacity and were better skilled, then my stresses would melt away.”
 
Fixing your problems in the external world will give you temporary relief, but shifting them once and for all requires you to investigate which part of your programming is getting in your way. Do you believe for instance, that your self-worth is linked to how much you achieve at work? Do you believe that other people’s needs are more important than your own? And what do you do with the emotions that arise when you feel you’re not in control? 
 
When we uncover the beliefs that are running us, and learn to question them, we can change our perception and our situation quicker than we think. I know that to be true. I was once an overworked manager who found it hard to self-regulate in emotionally challenging situations. Until we dare to question our operating system, we will continue to feel stuck and overwhelmed. 
 
Doing the inner work can help us acknowledge how we feel, and shift our perspective so that we can take the right kind of action. Spending time uncovering our true desires, as well as our painful thoughts and emotions, is essential if we want to create healthier ways of relating to ourselves and the world.
 
If you feel curious and would like to go on an inner journey of growth and self-discovery, get the book or listen to it on audible. It will give you profound insights into your needs, behaviours, thinking patterns, and emotions so that you can reduce stress and infuse more joy and meaning into your life.

“This is a major, well-written and inspirational contribution to the science of emotional healing and self-discovery. Truly a self-help tool in a league of its own. A most needed beacon of light in the dark.”  ​-Lars Muhl, author of The O Manuscrip

In one of the sections of The Project Management Coaching Workbook – Six Steps to Unleashing Your Potential, I talk about the importance of identifying and removing our limiting factors. In the book I explain how a single constraint often sets the speed at which we achieve a goal and can have a negative impact on our ability to perform at our best. I also present the readers with an exercise that helps them address and challenge their limitations so that they can move to the next level and become truly successful project management leaders.

Over the course of my own professional life, I’ve addressed and overcome many limitations myself, and I’ve learnt how to work smarter rather than harder. But life is a continuous learning process, and I was recently confronted with another big limitation – my need for control - which resulted in a rather big and very cleansing cry!

The incident happened at a seminar with about 200 other people. It was a three-day business event designed to help us accelerate in our professions. About six hours into the first day the facilitator took us through a guided meditation which lasted about 15 minutes. The purpose of the meditation was to help us visualise that which we wanted to achieve in our professional lives and to let go of any conscious or unconscious fears we might have. In my case I visualised how I needed to change my ways of working in order to reach more project managers. I want to help as many project managers as possible to get to the next level without the experience of project failure, excessively long hours and negative stress.
 
Inside the room everyone had their eyes closed, the lights were dim and a very powerful and inspirational tune was playing. The facilitator asked us to imagine where we would be 3 months from today, then 6 months and finally 3 years. We were asked to float outside of our bodies and see ourselves from high up in the sky – and to keep moving further and further away. At one point I was way out there. I couldn’t even see my body any more. I felt so good and I was so close to my dream. I felt I could achieve anything. 

But whist I was floating around in outer space feeling near perfect, I got overwhelmed by a fear of stepping away from that which is known  to me and into the unknown. You see, as a project manager I’m a bit of a control freak. I like to be on safe ground and the thought of fundamentally redefining how I work – and possibly having to give up my day job in order to effectively reach and help more project managers – filled me with uncertainty and unease. On the one hand I saw the beauty and the potential, and on the other I saw the reality of my fears and I understood that my need for control was holding me back. 
 
My body started to shake and tears were dripping from my face. I was being confronted with one of my biggest limiting factors and I couldn’t stop sobbing!

The truth is that most of us are uncomfortable moving away from something we know well and into a place where we have not been before. In some instances we overcome the discomfort and do it anyway - for instance when we wrap up the old project and start a new one. But in other instances we let our fear control us and stop us – for instance when we dream of switching sector or moving to a foreign country. In these situations we have to show strength and determination and remind ourselves that in order to get something we never had, we have to do something we never did – and by definition that means moving into the unknown. 

We only really grow and learn when we embrace the unknown. That is not to say that we have to jump into it with our eyes closed. But we have to accept that we cannot remove all uncertainly even with the best risk management.

So, let’s relinquish a bit of our control. It’s okay to be on shaky ground and it’s okay not to have all the answers. It’s even okay to fail; some would say that it’s essential. So let’s not hold ourselves back being that which we really want out of fear of failure or fear of the unknown. As the adage goes; Feel the fear and do it anyway!

- Which things do you currently avoid doing out of fear? 
- What would it take for you to start accepting and overcoming this fear?
- How can you gradually start to expand your comfort zone and take one step towards that which you really want? 
 

To read more about how you can overcome your limiting factors as a project manager, get hold of The Project Management Coaching Workbook - Six Steps to Unleashing Your Potential


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A number of years ago I was, like many other project managers, working hard on a project that seemed to become increasingly complex, with tighter and tighter deadlines. I was stressed and overworked, and I was not leveraging my capabilities in the best possible way. I spent most of my time planning and tracking tasks and dealing with urgent issues. There was not much time left for being proactive, thinking ahead - or spending quality time with team members or stakeholders. I was under a lot of pressure and did not feel that I had anyone to delegate to. But more importantly, I was not enjoying myself, and I was not always in control of the project.

A number of things made me change.

The defining moment was a coaching session in which I discussed my issues with stress and managing my workload. Within just one hour, I realized that one of my core beliefs was that project management is inherently stressful (and painful), and there is nothing I can do about it. At that stage in my career I had been managing projects for well over ten years, and my experiences told me that project management was a very demanding and stressful job. Period.
 
Recognizing that project management does not have to be stressful was a true eureka moment for me. I instantly understood that my belief was subjective, not the objective truth, and that I had the power to challenge it and change it. What a shift that was! Understanding that my belief was not necessarily true allowed me to start working with it and to slowly dissolve it and become more effective and valuable in my job.

When you realize that you have the power to change your beliefs and remove a limiting factor that has been constraining you, you have an “aha!” moment. You feel relieved and empowered.
 
My eureka moment made me pause, take a step back, and do less.I did this to regain my energy and to free up time to collect my thoughts. And then something magical happened. New ideas started to pop up, and I began to see patterns and connections that I had not noticed before. I looked at the bigger picture and started to understand how I could leverage my strengths and work more effectively. I gave myself the opportunity to be more proactive and to work smarter. 

I had a closer look at myself as a project manager and the values that were driving my work. I examined my own worth, and I explored my boundaries. Why was it so important for me to work long hours and to micromanage my team? Was there a better way to get things done? I had to acknowledge that it was not the hours I put in that mattered, but the quality of my work. I realized that in order to produce better-quality work, I would have to change the way I spent my time.

One of the changes I made that had a significant impact was delegating more. I recognized that I could not do everything by myself and that I needed to get better at asking for help and support. I got a project administrator on board to help with lower-level task tracking and administrative work. It was essential work, but it was not essential that I did it. 
 
When I started delegating more, my focus shifted. I spent more time liaising with the team and key stakeholders, listening to their ideas and concerns and looking at what we could do better. I started focusing more on picturing the end state of the project and proactively reducing the risks associated with the road to getting there. This shift enabled me to become more proactive and effective, and to leverage my strengths better.

Today, I put as much emphasis on people as I do on tasks. I listen, I build strong relationships, and I trust others. I manage and lead people in a way that complements their individual needs, as opposed to micromanaging everyone across the board. 
 
                                                ****
 
If you are facing some of the same challenges as I did, first free up time to think clearly. Maybe you feel stressed because you spend too much time being reactive and not enough time on pro-active and strategic project activities. Maybe you too, need to get better at delegating, saying no and levering your strengths better. 

A good way to go about this is to identify the 20 percent of tasks and activities you do during your day or working week that produce 80 percent of your results. What are the activities that you do really well and that make all the difference in your performance and increase the likelihood of project  success?
 
Then identify what you can do to focus relatively more time on the 20 percent of tasks that matter. Which activities do you need to stop doing in order to create more space for the 20 percent that matter? How can you start doing that?
 

If you liked this post, you may also like:
Be a Project Champion
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with your stakeholders
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Delegate Effectively and Thouhtfully