How does a leader become mentally mature?

In our previous articles, We have discussed the theme of leadership development, and we have shared the following

▼The key to leader growth is not a technical challenge, but an adaptive challenge, and mental maturity with a change in values is important.
▼ A leader’s growth requires the experience of inner conflict, and that inner conflict is the experience of facing “the contradiction between living in subjective truth and living in harmony with one’s surroundings”.
▼Even if the environment has not changed, one’s inner changes about “living in subjective truth” will bring about an inner conflict. And the experience of “breaking out of one’s shell” that accompanies this inner change can be created by anyone at any time.

In this article, I’ll talk about how to use ISHIKI(consciousness) in the “breaking out of one’s shell” experience that is necessary for leader growth.

Responding to Adaptive Challenges Requires ISHIKI(Consciousness) management

The first thing I would like to confirm is why we pay attention to consciousness.

Phenomenon
↓
Structure and background of the phenomenon
↓
Behavior
↓
Decision
↓
Thoughts and feelings
↓
Mental models (Belief systems)
↓
Intuition (Subjective truth)
↓
Self (The subject of self-consciousness)

This figure organizes what causes or underlies the phenomena that occur in front of you. For example, actions are caused by decisions. Decisions are caused by thoughts and feelings. In this figure, everything from “decision” to “self” is related to “consciousness”. Consciousness is the source of all phenomena.

I’ve also told you that the key to a leader’s growth is not a technical challenge but an adaptive challenge. Adaptive challenges are challenges that are difficult to solve with existing ways of thinking and require changing or letting go of some of our traditional values and beliefs. Therefore, working with adaptive challenges means dealing with the mental models (belief systems) and intuition (subjective truths) in the above figure. This is another reason to focus on consciousness.

So now that we have focused on consciousness, how should we use consciousness?

The key is to increase the degree of freedom of consciousness. More specifically, it refers to being able to use each of the domains of the 3+1 Model of Consciousness at will.

Before talking about freedom of consciousness, let me briefly add a few words about each of the 3+1 Consciousness Model.

The most obvious of these is bodily consciousness. We receive external stimuli through our five senses. The bodily consciousness is the one that receives this stimulus.

We then perceive and interpret what the received stimulus is. For example, the seven colors of light arching across the sky are perceived and interpreted as a “rainbow”. This perceiving and interpreting is part of the thinking consciousness.

Intuition consciousness is the consciousness that is activated when an inspiration comes to you. It may be a little difficult to understand because it is not always something you can feel or verbalize, but I think we all have had the experience of an intuition coming down.

Meta-consciousness is your awareness of yourself from a bird’s eye view. It is your perspective as a film director, looking after yourself as an actor in a film.

In this way, by making yourself conscious in the 3+1 Consciousness Model, you can make use of the characteristics and strengths of each consciousness, and you can deal with things flexibly without being biased towards a particular consciousness.

From now, let me explain what I mean by increasing the degree of freedom of consciousness and and how does it lead to mental maturity in two ways.

1) Perceive yourself “as you are” without being biased by a particular consciousness

I told you that the experience of inner conflict, which is necessary for the growth of a leader, is the experience of facing the contradiction between living in subjective truth and living in harmony with the surroundings. Therefore, let’s start by connecting with the subjective truth.

What is your subjective truth? If asked, how would you answer?

In fact, there are only a few people who can answer this question clearly. And I’m not saying that it’s good because you can answer it, nor that it’s not good because you can’t answer it. Recognizing subjective truth is not an easy task in itself, and expressing it in the limited expressive form of words is quite difficult.

Subjective truth belongs to the intuitive consciousness of the 3+1 consciousness model. To paraphrase this meaning a bit more, it’s an image of intuiting what you “really value” without getting caught up in the merits and demerits or common sense (i.e. thinking consciousness) that you think in your head.

Because this is intuition, it is often difficult to explain in words. Therefore, if you can’t explain it well to others, but you are deeply convinced within yourself, you are likely to be getting closer to the subjective truth. As the word “subjective” truth means, it is of the nature of being subjectively convinced by one’s own subjectivity, and is the opposite of “objective” truth.

For example, when I look back on my life, one of my subjective truths, if I dare to put it into words, has been to “A sense of unity with the greater through the quest for essence”, or more concretely speaking, “finding the universal law of things”. My physics studies as a student and my current educational and training business are both built on the same subjective truth.

And if you ask me why I am pursuing this subjective truth, I can’t explain it well with words or logic. It’s just that my energy is there. This is the nature of subjective truth.

How do we access our intuitive consciousness?

Unfortunately, the subjective truth felt by the intuitive consciousness is not found by thinking. The act of thinking is itself thinking-consciousness, which makes it rather difficult to access the intuitive consciousness.

Modern people are prone to be biased towards the thinking consciousness. The thinking consciousness is good at sharing information with others because it can handle language. In the world of business, it is not surprising that the thinking consciousness is especially important because of the importance of accountability and share-ability.

However, verbalization and objective analysis through the thinking consciousness can easily create stereotypes. In order to access the intuitive consciousness, the key is how to become free from fixed concepts or stereotypes.

For example, when thinking about “what I want to do,” the approach using the thinking consciousness is as follows.

▼Analyze the external environment and judge by opportunities and risks
▼Judge by the advantages and disadvantages for you
▼Judge by something tangible, such as reputation or annual income
▼Judge by how others see you

Thinking consciousness itself is very effective. However, if you put too much emphasis on it, you will create fixed concepts such as “this is what a working person should be like” or “this is what management team should be like”, and you will not be able to see what you really want to do.

First of all, you need to set aside the above judgments based on thinking consciousness. Then, look back at your past experiences and reflect on the moments when you truly felt joy.

The subjective truth comes not in what you’ve done, but in “what resonated” of what you’ve done. Don’t just write out your biography in words, but look back on the experience. If you do that, you may find your own connections to things that don’t connect in your head, like in my example, physics and entrepreneurship. That’s where the subjective truth, the voice of your true heart, is hidden.

Together, it is important to use bodily consciousness. Using body awareness means not ignoring the body sensations of pleasant or unpleasant. For example, if you know in your mind (i.e., thinking consciousness) that there is a benefit, but you don’t feel comfortable with it, you don’t ignore the feeling, but you accept it as it is.

When you look back on past experiences, the subjective truth is more likely to appear at the right moment when the feelings are triggered. By properly receiving the messages from the bodily consciousness, it is easier to prevent an undue bias to the thinking consciousness and connect with the subjective truth of the intuitive consciousness.

The meta-consciousness is to be aware of the workings of the intuitive, thinking, and bodily consciousnesses mentioned so far, and to observe the three consciousnesses from a higher dimension and to take a neutral view of which consciousnesses are currently working (or not working).

As I mentioned earlier, meta-consciousness is close to the film director’s point of view: the self working on the three consciousnesses is the actor in the film, and another SELF with meta-consciousness observing it is the director of the film.

Without getting caught up in the stereotypes of the thinking consciousness, and without ignoring the pleasant and unpleasant feelings of the bodily consciousness, we connect with the subjective truth of the intuitive consciousness. In addition, utilizing the meta-consciousness, we observe the whole of these three consciousnesses. In other words, capturing the “ self as it is” without being biased towards any particular consciousness is the starting point for maturity.

Here are the quests of the day. (If you’d like, please share your thoughts in the comments.)

・In the 3+1 Consciousness Model, if you had to pick one consciousness that you often activate, which one would it be?

・In the 3+1 consciousness model, which consciousness is the one that you do not usually activate and that you would like to activate?

Bunshiro Ochiai