How do I get rid of the False Self the fastest way possible?
After The Three Levels of Leadership came out in 2011, readers followed up with questions on leadership, leadership psychology and self-mastery – all of them interesting. So interesting, in fact, that I’m releasing my answers here as they supplement the “Three Levels” material and others may find them useful. Here’s the seventeenth in the series. I’ll post the others over the coming months…
Q16. The question I was asked at a leadership workshop was: How do I get rid of the False Self the fastest way possible?
Answer:
“Consider this, how long have your False Self fears been inside your mind? I realise you won’t have an exact answer, but you can be pretty sure the answer is, “Most of my life.”
Now what’s the average age of the people on this programme? 40 years? So in other words, the chances are that your False Self has taken the best part of 40 years to develop.
So what do you regard as “the fastest way possible”? What is “fast”? Five times faster than the False Self took to develop? Ten times faster? There is no right mathematical answer, but can you see that the challenge of dissolving the power of your False Self is one that’s likely to take years? It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
So how do you free yourself from it in the fastest way possible?
Well, my first answer is: practise self-mastery.
My second answer is: make sure you understand what self-mastery is. Ask yourself, mastery of what? And mastery by what?
We did two exercises this afternoon that gave you the answers to these two questions. The first was the exercise where you concentrated on a small object. And the second was when we looked at how the self-image beliefs of a former client of mine had changed substantially over the decades.
Do you recall what you learned from these two experiences? You concluded that you are neither your mind nor the contents of your mind… that although you have a mind and you have contents in that mind (beliefs, memories and ingrained habits)… you are more than the mind. Armed with this conclusion you should be able to answer the two questions I just posed.
My third answer is that you should get cracking on the challenge of self-mastery as early as possible. That way, you’re likely to finish earlier. And that means you need to regard this challenge as your highest professional priority. That’s if you’re serious. I outlined a roadmap today and The Three Levels of Leadership gives you more detail in chapters 8 and 9.”
[NOTE: I answered this question when only the first edition was available. In the second edition, which will be out shortly, the chapter numbers are 10 & 11.]
The author is James Scouller, an executive coach. His book, The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill, was published in May 2011. You can learn more about it at www.three-levels-of-leadership.com. If you want to see its reviews, click here: leadership book reviews. If you want to know where to buy it, click HERE. You can read more about his executive coaching services at The Scouller Partnership’s website.