Dyer’s Dozen

After recently revisiting a book by Wayne Dyer that he read many years ago, Ralph was inspired to discuss with Bill the 12 principles the author identified as critical to effective leadership – “Dyer’s Dozen.” How many are you already practicing, and which do you need to introduce or optimize to enhance your own leadership?

Bill Berthel: Welcome to the Get Emergent Podcast, where we discuss leadership concepts and best practices. We like to provide ideas, concepts, and pragmatic experiments to help you develop as a leader. I’m Bill Berthel.

Ralph Simone: And I’m Ralph Simone. And Bill, today I came across some things I’ve been unpacking. You know, I moved recently and starting to realize that I have too many books, so not a thing, not a thing.

The listeners out there. I, I need to make some donations, but I’m, I’m looking at, I need to buy more bookshelves and I still have boxes and boxes of books that I haven’t emptied yet. But one of the positive things that came about is I’ve been starting to reread some things that I read many years ago and I think it’s like reading them for the first time. Right. You, You’re at a different place. Things that you notice about the books and, and one of my favorite authors, uh, was Wayne Dyer. I read a lot of what Wayne Dyer wrote over the years, and I think he was a positive influence in a lot of my coaching and consulting work.

And I came across something that I had framed for friends of mine called Dyers Dozen. I was looking this list over and I was intrigued. First of all, you know, I. What did he mean by these? But I think, so today I want you and I to talk about what they mean to us and how people could use them in their own personal development.

Bill Berthel: That’s fantastic.

Ralph Simone: And he starts his first one and, and, uh, is want more for others than you want for yourself.

Bill Berthel: Yeah. I think in our language we refer to that often as the selfless leader. The servant leader. Many people attached to Greenleaf’s work in leadership from a service, a place of service. I love that space.

Ralph Simone: I think it also speaks to abundance. Because if you’re thinking from abundance, you’re not worried about not being enough for you, but wanting more for others. And I think in coaching, that’s really important. You know, holding the space and wanting others to really step into their full potential. Which leads us to number two, which is one I I have thought a lot about.

Think from the end. And of course, my foundation is, this was with Stephen Covey Habit. Two of the seven habits begin with the end in mind. I think too often we start meetings, we start conversations, we start careers without having at least. Some clarity about what is our desired outcome.

Bill Berthel: Yeah, I think it’s a great way of being clear of your intentions in the Covey work, the one exercise of, you know, writing your own eulogy, so, Does that from like a lifespan perspective. Matter of fact, just in a coaching engagement yesterday, this exact topic came up and I threw that possible activity out and it was too morbid. And I understand, I feel sometimes that’s too morbid. But what my coaching client loved was the idea of writing it from perspective of her retirement party.

What would, what would the people around her that has worked with her for decades, say at her retirement party? It’s keeping the end in mind. It could be smaller units of keep the end in mind of this project.

Ralph Simone: So he has a very catchy way of saying it. It’s actually his number six on his Dyers. Dozen.

Contemplate yourself surrounded by the conditions that you intend to produce, and I think too often all things are created twice. We wanna build these strategic pauses so that before any major event or segment in our day or our life, so that we can contemplate ourself. Surrounded by the conditions that we intend to produce, at your retirement party.

You know, what would you want people to say about you? Yeah. That’s really your leadership brand and you know, thinking about it leads to then inspired action.

Bill Berthel: Absolutely. I loved it. In that conversation, she even pictured the cake they were gonna serve, which was just fantastic.

Ralph Simone: What kinda cake was it?

Bill Berthel: I think it was marble with vanilla frosting.

I said, I want to be there. I’m ready, not ready for her to retire, but I, I’m ready for that party. Right? Number three on the list, be an appreciator.

Ralph Simone: Yeah, too often, and I think this is where curiosity can help us. Too often I find myself judging things. critiquing things and energetically that’s really not high resonating energy.

So, you know, appreciating just nature, right? Of all of the beauty that’s around you. Uh, I think that’s where gratitude also comes in. Just be grateful. For not just the good things that are coming into your life, but for the challenges that you had the strength to learn from and overcome.

Bill Berthel: We absolutely can, we can appreciate, uh, either those challenges or those lessons that find us.

We can appreciate the pivotal conversations we have with someone. It doesn’t have to just be gratitude or appreciation of beauty or excellence. It’s all around us. There’s plenty of opportunities for appreciation.

Ralph Simone: Yes.

Fourth 20 talks about staying in rapport with source energy. You know, we’ve both been trained in energy leadership.

We’ve studied the map of consciousness and there there is, you know, resonating energy. The Law of traction talks about it, but lower resonating energy is victim energy. It’s conflict energy. And you know, I think what Wayne Dyer means by staying in rapport with source energy. That’s the energy of people like Gandhi or Mother Teresa.

It’s non-judgmental. It’s the energy that we create from, because it, it just becomes not, I don’t wanna say effortless, but there is less resistance. There is less resistance because we’re operating at a non-judgmental, almost a unconditional loving energy. It attracts things. It brings things to us that enables us to achieve what we are intending to produce.

Bill Berthel: It really is, and it’s the word source here, is so important that it’s fundamental, and we tend to stack things in between us and the source, so it’s a reminder to get back to that source energy.

Ralph Simone: Which leads to, you know, four and five are linked. Understanding resistance was his fifth one. And you know, understanding the things that cause you to feel sorry for yourself that cause you to judge, that cause you to fight.

And that’s a level of self-awareness. And you have to be kind to yourself even when you understand that resistance so that you don’t get stuck in it.

Bill Berthel: Absolutely. And uh, you mentioned being out in nature earlier. It’s if you ever get off that beaten path, whether that path was created by humans or or other animals, you feel what resistance requires.

It is a function of not just staying on the path, but nature finds the path of least resistance to stay with the source energy to stay with what’s possible.

Ralph Simone: Love it. This is number number seven. We’ve already talked about six, which was the one around contemplating yourself surrounded by the conditions you intend to produce.

But that leads to seven, which is understanding the art of allowing. Too often we’re trying to force things to happen and you know, one of the things that’s aligned in my purpose statement that I will trust, and allow things to flow and unfold at their own pace and speed and understanding the art of allowing that things will come to you when you are ready.

I’m a big believer in manifestation, but I know that the timing is not up to us. But the art of allowing actually, I think speeds up the timing a little bit because we don’t get in our own way.

Bill Berthel: And so many great places to practice this. Just yesterday, you and I were in the vehicle together and we were at a red light and someone decided to make a left hand turn on that red light, and if they did it safely, I’m like, oh, we’re doing that now.

So it could, could have been easy to judge that and no one got hurt.

Ralph Simone: condemn it and stay. Yeah, . Could have been still at the light, right?

Bill Berthel: It’s like, oh, okay, we’re gonna do that now. But there’s lots of opportunities in our work and in our leadership to allow something that might be just a little bit different. Experiment in that space.

Watch. Be an observer instead of a controller. Allow it.

Ralph Simone: Yeah. The eighth one, I this has been coming up for me a lot. It’s called Practice Radical Humility. And when I say that statement. I think of a, a number of people. One is my son, who I think practices radical humility. And if I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard, and mostly men refer to themselves or a colleague as the smartest person in the room.

I think where is the radical humility there? Yeah. I mean, Naive even. You know, because we’re all geniuses. We all have gifts, but we also wanna balance that genius in gifts with this radical humility, this teachability, this humanness, this vulnerability that allows us to connect and influence other people.

I think I need to be reminded of that one. I think sometimes I get a little carried away with myself. Confidence is fine, but balanced with humility is finer.

Bill Berthel: Well, we need confidence to be either leading or doing good work. We need that. But the balance, the balance is the point.

Ralph Simone: Nine, he talks about being a constant state of gratitude.

I think one of the practices that we use, I do daily gratitude journaling. I encourage people that are looking to shift their energy, To a more positive state is to get into a consistent practice of gratitude journaling. Three things. You know, our listeners could do it right now. Three things that have occurred today that you’re grateful for.

It doesn’t have to be complicated, but also not just think it, feel it right. Both. Think and feel those things that you’re grateful for and do it daily.

Bill Berthel: And I think we can share that as well. I’ve, I’ve shifted my practice of gratitude journaling to actually writing three gratitude notes a week and sharing that, sharing that outwardly to others.

It keeps me all week watching for what note I’m going to write. It keeps me in that place of catching people doing really great things, and I like that. I like that space.

Ralph Simone: Keeps you mindful and present to the energy that’s resourceful. that’s contagious.

Number 10, do not resolve a problem by condemning it.

I think we heard this last night on a class we participated in, it was an Einstein quote, right? You can’t solve a problem at the level of thinking when that problem was created. And so when we condemn a problem, we’re actually, we’re at the low resonating energy of the problem. We are not in a creative state, we’re not in an energetic state by which we could have an aha moment.

And so I think that’s a, a really nice reminder. What is is, I think it’s, you know, it’s, it’s this idea of accepting what is, it’s almost a fool’s errand. It is a fool’s errand not to because it’s in front of you. And I think our condemning and judging it keeps us stuck often.

Bill Berthel: It absolutely keeps us stuck.

And what resonates here, if, if we changed one word, if we do not resolve an emotion by condemning it. I think about, I believe it was Freud that first said it, but I know Covey has been cited saying it as well that an emotion not fully lived, its life will come back later in, in some usually more significant, uglier way.

And so condemning our thoughts, our feelings, or a problem that we’re having isn’t the end resolve.

Ralph Simone: No. Lean into it.

Lean into it and allow it. Yeah. To die naturally. Right. To run its course. So

Bill Berthel: I don’t, number 11, what does, what does this mean?

Ralph Simone: I had to think about that. But I think the word congruence comes up for me.

Play the match game.

Play the match Game.

Congruence. So what we want is that we wanna have congruence between our thinking and our feeling. And our emotion. And even our body, right? And so when we play the match game, what we say we want, there’s a congruence between how we feel about it.

That alignment creates more of a powerful attractor. Oftentimes people say one thing, but they feel something else. By their body language or their emotions.

Bill Berthel: So matching the energy, the emotion, the language, and embodying that. The somatic presence we have matching that for the better outcome or the clearer outcome.

Yeah. That’s my best recollec.

I like it. I like it.

Ralph Simone: And then the last, yeah. 12 is meditate. We like to call that create moments of stillness in your day. But this is slowing down to go faster. This is creating the space. This is the introspective work. We’re moving so quickly that sometimes we’re not able to really see things clearly.

There was a passage that I was reading this morning that talked about the benefit of meditating and, and slowing down. Said, manage your reactions by slowing down. Listen to your intuition by slowing down. Restore your energy by slowing down. Enter the moment by slowing down. Feel the truth by slowing down.

Feel your truth. Meditation. Is the door, is the opening into that slowing down to do all of those things and more.

Bill Berthel: Thanks for listening to the Get Emergent podcast, and you can listen to a new podcast two times a month here at Get Emergent, where we bring you contemporary leadership topics and ideas, balanced with best practices you can apply in your leadership.