Understanding the stuggle

(between our evolutionary systems and the 21st century systems we live and work in)

What happens when there’s no more room to work harder? 

You already work with excellence in your role as an executive leader. You’ve done the courses, learnt skills, you’ve worked really, really, hard. Yet, an atmosphere of stress and pressure blooms, you're busy searching for the “right” answer and it’s exhausting. 

You may sense a lack of connection - with yourself, with others, with the meaning of the work you do. There’s nothing wrong with you; you don’t need to be fixed; you’re not broken.

The culture we operate in, what we’ve been entrained to do is to work even harder… and this equals results - that’s what everything tells us should bring success.

The dark side of high achievement culture

But there’s a dark side to high achievement culture when perfectionism and striving for excellence becomes laced with self-criticism, stymying creative risk taking. 

You watch your (and your team’s) capacity for problem solving and productivity falter and start to sense the limits of traditional models of hustling and working harder. 

Clarity doesn’t come in the noise. As a leader you need a process of space making that you can come back to time and time again no matter what the challenge is.

Typical coaching jumps to ‘problem solving’—quick fixes and hacks, which sometimes just prolong the agony. Talented, dedicated people end up leaving because they just can’t work any harder, or they stay in a role, but are just going through the motions.

When we are in a state of overwhelm, anxiety or disengagement, we can’t see the woods for the trees anymore. It isn’t helpful to take action or make decisions from that place–and if you do, you’ve missed the opportunity for your team to explore its next evolution.

Compassion and the brain

Psychologists have understood that compassion can rewire our brain and improve our physiological responses to stress for decades – yet compassion is frequently misunderstood to be about being endlessly patient, kind and nice. 

Compassion differs from mere sympathy and care. It’s the ability to be aware of your own and other’s distress, and also to be motivated to take action to alleviate yours or another’s suffering. 

It includes the courage to really be honest about how we are thinking and feeling and to sit with the discomfort of our failures and shortcomings. It’s the bravery to take actions that might take us out of our comfort zone or challenge us to be vulnerable. 

‘Fierce’ highlights the strength that true compassion takes. Research shows that developing our capacity for compassion brings many benefits to physical and mental wellbeing for ourselves and others, and unlocks our creativity. 

It’s for when you notice…

Everything feels urgent.  You're busy searching for the “right” answer and it’s exhausting. When you aren’t striving or achieving you feel anxious.  Your thoughts are running at a million miles per hour, and you feel disconnected from those around you (and yourself). Your productivity is falling. You push even harder, but you aren’t getting results. The problems mount up and so does the self criticism …“what’s wrong with me?”. You’ve reached for success and find yourself lonely in leadership. The insecurity sets in “am I the only one who thinks this way?” 

“As a business owner, it often feels like there's no one who can help me. So, sometimes there becomes this solo burden, and then the mind’s threat cycle starts, causing this urge to lean in even harder to solve everything myself.” - coaching client

“I couldn’t find compassion within myself, because there was too much criticism going on.” - coaching client

“As a leader, you tend to forget when you weren't. So you lose that empathetic connection to the other people that you're working with - that connection of self and other.” - coaching client

What’s really happening…

You’ve been hijacked by your evolutionary systems - Threat and Drive.

Threat

When balanced, Threat acts to protect us from dangers. But, when overstimulated we see problems everywhere, our view narrows, we become negative and irritable, and we either try even harder or begin avoiding and procrastinating (we fight, flight or freeze). 

Drive

When balanced, our Drive system motivates us towards desired outcomes - it feels good to achieve and learn. But, when overstimulated we become a slave to the next goal, rushing and so busy we override our limits and boundaries (and other people’s too!).

We try harder (drive) and when that doesn’t work we panic (threat), so we double down and try harder (drive) and then get stuck (threat) on the Threat-Drive loop - exhausted, frustrated, hopeless. We are caught in a struggle between our evolutionary systems and the 21st century systems we live and work in.

Getting out of the Threat-Drive loop

We have a third system that is hugely underrated and misunderstood in our modern society.

Soothe

Our Soothe system calms us, helps us rest, and gives us a sense of security, co-operation and connection. The Soothe system tends to be significantly under-developed in modern Western society.

Compassion is the key to unlocking the potential of our soothe system. We can learn skills to help strengthen the soothe system - bringing awareness, understanding and empathy to ourselves and others.

As we stimulate our Soothe system our Threat system de-escalates, and our Drive system slows down.

We build our compassion capacity. We recognise our Threat-Drive loop. We understand how and why our habitual responses have been triggered. We can be kinder and more accepting of our very human struggles.

With the three systems regulated, we are able to draw on the strengths of each system - protection, motivation and connection, which unlocks the ability to see the next wise action we can take.

Fierce Compassion Coaching

Fierce Compassion is a process that helps you unhook from the Threat-Drive loop. 

You learn to stimulate your Soothe system with skills in awareness, understanding and empathy, which bring Threat-Drive-Soothe back into balance. We can draw on the best of our three systems to consider protection, motivation and connection.

The Fierce Compassion process offers the first critical steps out of the negative cycle. It’s the support to pause and develop a broader perspective, which brings greater awareness. 

As we gain a sense of space and perspective, we can learn to generate understanding of ourselves (even those bits we are ashamed of) and others and from here cultivate empathy for our foibles, challenges, failures and inadequacies – touching the vulnerability of our human experience. 

These important steps of awareness, understanding and empathy are the foundation from which we can consider what wise action to take. Action–this time–which includes the whole picture, so that solutions are broader, richer, more holistic and thorough.

Build a supportive scaffold that you can return to time and time again

In a time of great change and uncertainty, where the ground beneath your feet is constantly shifting, we don’t need ideas from the past.

Fierce Compassion is not a one-shot wonder, but rather a sustainable and adaptive set of skills that last a lifetime.  

Fierce Compassion for me is about being able to slow down, find space and observe. It's about getting outside of yourself and the problem and creating that distance to see objectively, and then map possible useful actions. It encourages energy to go into the right places.

Heath Lowe, Executive Design Director, Special 

Fierce Compassion is about finding equilibrium. Fierce Compassion is a framework - and once you've got that framework, it's much easier than to go okay, well, I'm being pulled this way or that way or that way, and here are some techniques for being able to rebalance.

Dan Heyworth, Founder, Box

Dr Mary Miller

Fierce Compassion Founder, Fierce Compassion Leadership and Transformation Coach

Fierce Compassion first emerged through my clinical practice working with senior medical professionals, executives and  managers. I saw how traits like perfectionism often came with intense self-criticism and poor mental wellbeing, even though the rest of the world praised them for their  achievements.

I saw over and over again how practising a multi-dimensional form of compassion and inner strength (what I now call Fierce Compassion) allowed these leaders to open new doors inside themselves and amplify their contributions to their staff and their organisation.

A richer, connected, more fulfilling professional life? That’s what I want for you.

Reach out to chat with Dr Mary