Photo of Laurel Lambert

Guest blog by Laurel Lambert

Laurel’s daughter, Peta, and her friend Natalie, recently purchased a unit with the help of a mortgage. They also live in the Hunter, NSW, and have been through the NDIS. She says that one of the biggest factors in making change is having an ambition that is worth the effort and that you know, deep down inside yourself, will help you to be in a good place.

Want to hear more from Laurel about preparing for change? Click here and join us for our next webinar on 20th April!

We are here, at the pointy end of social reform. For those Australian citizens who live with disability, the National Disability Insurance Scheme promises greater possibilities through improved choice and control over one’s own life. Those among us who live with disability or love someone with a disability, welcome this change.

At the same time as welcoming such a reform, there are many among us who also ponder the question about what this may mean personally, how might it look, how might it feel. Some of us see it as a trigger to wonder what it would be like to live another way? The potential stirs feelings within us like hope, anticipation, uncertainty and anxieties about future risks.

Should I, shouldn’t I, will I, won’t I, I can, I can’t.

Such emotions are completely understandable when faced with such predicaments because for a long time, people with disability have been cocooned in services that have been prescribed by others. Choice has been limited to a pre-determined menu of activities. Such circumstances inhibit the ability to think beyond one’s daily parameters.

Being leaders in our own lives

Now, the ‘big ask’ that stands before us today is throwing up major challenges. This can be due to our lack of exposure to the notion that we alone are now responsible to shape our own destiny.

While ever we are alive, change will be an inevitable and many of us will be sorely in need of some solid leadership. Not the type of leadership that permits us to follow but the type that allows us to lead.

In a time of uncertainty, we often look outside to others for the answers. But in my own experience and in my work with other families in my community, I see that we actually have what is needed to make the most out of change.

Deep understanding

To take a step into change like this (what might it be like to live another way?), transformational leadership is needed. Such leadership can only be born out of a deep understanding of the individual, for this is the instrument through which one can motivate the person to desire change.

It is crucial that any aspiration must be formed out of the person’s own genuine insight and knowledge that there is a place where they truly wish to be.  Having something to hold on to, to aspire to, is a great driver through uncertain times.

For my daughter, and her good friend, having their own home, and more than this, owning their own home, was the light that helped us move through all the uncertainty of change.

Allowing free exploration of ideas

Secondly, it seems perhaps obvious to say, but we had to match this intimacy and knowing of the person with a creative, optimistic and welcoming environment in order to achieve this outcome.

Igniting enthusiasm, selling the benefits and painting a picture of future accomplishments, I found invited participation and developed a unified theme. Creating these shared values also fosters an attitude of continual growth and mutual respect.

We are also in a very good place to bring forward the other skills needed to bring about such desires and ambitions.

Authenticity

Firstly, the ability to know the kinds of communication styles that are going to work best for the person developing their vision. Without this a clear and honest outcome will not be achieved. Secondly, working in a framework of humility and authenticity, never forgetting that the ‘leader’ works to stimulate the environment, not create the thought.

Flexibility

What I also learnt to see is that some processes capture the imagination and energy of the person, and others do not.  What we do need to learn is that it’s OK to eliminate a pathway and try again if necessary. Perhaps a different technique may invite better outcomes. Reinforce our optimism that all is not lost, we are all still on our ‘L’ plates.

Letting go

Lastly, a key trait of the ‘leader/facilitator’ is to know when to surrender the leadership and power to the person so that intellectual stimulation, individual consideration and eventual personal motivation to change the status quo can occur.

Yes, we might feel rightly worried and uncertain at the prospect of change. But we also possess the foundations, when directed clearly, that can so genuinely assist another to take control. It is these foundations we can refine and develop in order to produce the guiding light through change.

Let people own their world, be the architects of their life, let them work to change it and so become that person they wish to be. In the end, their life truly belongs to them alone.

Want to hear more from Laurel about preparing for change? Click here and join us for our next webinar!

More about Laurel:

Laurel Lambert is a parent, a guardian for several others & a representative for several more women living with the NDIS. For many years, she has advocated for people to live inclusive lives. Laurel has worked in the voluntary & paid sectors of the disability industry for over 40 years. Currently, she is the Chairperson of a carer group whose mission is to build good lives for their family member with disability.

Our online sessions are highly practical and designed to assist those in services looking to support people with disabilities take more control. You get to learn firsthand what people are saying they need and the solutions they are seeking.

Thanks Michelle!

Transcript:

“You find people using words like person-centred and individualised a lot, but only a few really understand the profound meaning and transformation of experiences involved. It’s a huge cultural shift. What Libby Ellis of InCharge brings to our attention is the incredible importance of sustained real life experiences and the great insights that come from a hard won, values based analysis of experience. This depth of insight is essential to the success of person centred approaches. This depth is also a hallmark of the professional development opportunities pioneered at InCharge.”

In August 2013 I had the great privilege of being a participant at this incredible thing called Awesomeness Fest.

Held in Bali, and the brain-child of entrepreneur Vishen Lakhiani, Awesomeness Fest lived up to its crazy name. Part TEDTalks, part leadership development, part personal development, part business development, part networking (a profound kind, not the skimming kind) and all over extreme fun.

I was thrilled to attend alongside Nathan Basha who, by the way, is your next keynote speaker – BOOK HIM NOW!

I learned so much, and I’d like to share some great stuff connected with the 5 elements of being truly incharge. One of these is Living Your Potential.

Low expectations – an absolute killer

People with disabilities are by and large, plagued by low expectations. Centuries old and deeply embedded not just in the community but often in the consciousness of those close by, like family. Couple this with another deeply held view – of people as recipients only, as just the receivers of service and the good of others – and we’re in trouble. Low expectations and not a contributor in your own right? It’s a killer combination.

Thinking big

So when we talk about Living Your Potential our vision is really that. Let’s smash the ceiling. Let’s think big for ourselves and those we love.

I believe that a significant experience of disability is no barrier because all human beings need 2 great things to thrive and be fulfilled – the need to grow ourselves and the need to contribute. If we’re thinking that this isn’t for the person close to us then we too are plagued by that killer combination. Living our potential is all about what is deeply inside every person and how we can live from that place. When we are working from this place, we more easily attract others to join with us, and we can more readily see, create and jump on opportunities. When we are in this place then all the tools, financial resources and practical skills needed for self-direction have great purpose. The reason for them, and the use of them, is much clearer.

Some tools to think big

Here are some things I learned at Awesomeness Fest that may grab you. They are all about asking yourself some really cool questions.

If you’re answering these questions with someone you care about, I urge you to think deeply, creatively and laterally into these spaces. If people can’t articulate an answer, how else can we know and discover these things about them? How can we challenge our own beliefs and assumptions that might hold someone back?

Idea 1 – find your outrage!

What are your core values?

One way of finding this out is by tapping in to your outrage!

How can you tap into your outrage? Tell someone trusted a couple of your Hell No stories!

What’s a Hell No story? Well it’s just that – it’s a time in your life when you decided enough was enough. Something had crossed your line and you decided to take a stand.

The job of the person at the receiving end of your Hell No story is to pick out the words dripping with meaning and start asking you why this is so important. Keep asking questions about why and eventually you’ll start looping back on yourself or you’ll get to a ‘just because!’ answer where there is no explanation because you just feel so deeply about this.

There you have a core value! This is what drives you. In here is your great gift.

What is your great gift? The thing you have inside you that has no off-switch. Perhaps it stopped working for a bit and this is when you noticed it; you noticed it gone and life wasn’t the same.

Idea 2 – what is your eventuality?

What the? Eventuality?

This is a way to take a crack at those seeds of self-doubt when you’re working on/out your bold mission.

Shake self-doubt by thinking of your bold mission as an eventuality. Behind your vision are forces propelling it into creation. It will happen with or without you so why not you in there as part of it or as leading it?

What is your eventuality?

Write it down and then remove yourself from the equation. Will it come true? What are the forces that will make it eventual?

When we are mission-driven and communicate our passion and our big dreams we excite, invite and entice people naturally. What an exciting way to think about asking, inviting people and building your tribe. When people see that it’s going to happen, that it’s big and powerful they are much more likely to join with you. This is such a great technique when we think about asking and inviting others in to our lives countering the isolation that is the experience of many many people.

For more on this see the guy who’s idea it was – Khailee Ng

Idea 3 – The 3 most important questions

And finally you might find that these questions really grab you.

All of us have two great needs – to grow ourselves and to contribute. True fulfilment comes when we do this – when we get to experience great things and become a more creative person, and when we get to put something back.

We can make a list in three different areas that help us with this.

Experiences – make a list of all the things you want to do and get out of life. On your last day you look back and feel like you’ve truly done it. Think about this as if time and money were no object.

Growth – make a list of all the ways you want to grow and become a more creative human being.

These first two can mean happiness. Fulfilment comes when we think about contribution.

Contribution – make a list of all the ways you want to contribute to the world. This is not saying that the purpose of life is to give. But rather, life is just better, life is fulfilling when we can chip in to it.

Click here if you want to be guided through these questions by the guy behind AFest, Vishen Lakhiani.

I’d love to hear how you go!

Connection with others is part of why we’re here. To love, to be loved in return and to belong.

But the risk here is heartbreak, let-down and rejection.  So strong, caring relationships and belonging keep people safe but they are also a key experience of vulnerability. Many people decide that this is too big a risk to take on behalf of themselves or their family member. How might we find a way forward here?

In my experiences around my brother and with other families and individuals in building relationships within community, I find a common struggle. It is not with the intellectual understanding as to why relationships are important. It is with emotional step to start, to try, to reach out to others, to ask.

So I’m going to talk about the things that get in the way that I think are within us. It is comfortable to think that devaluation is something that the ‘system’ and others create. It means that others are the ones that need to change.

In recent years a personal shift I have taken is to value and focus on my inner self more. If something out there needs to change, what am I doing in myself about it? In my 20s I thought this was a luxurious navel gazing experience for middle class wankers. The world was going to buggery and there simply wasn’t time for this. Action was what was needed. Now I see that, whatever our position – whether we are thinking about ourselves and our own relationships, or whether we are thinking on behalf of another – we can all reflect on our place and our power in our own or another’s life.

What are safeguards?

We might typically think of them as measures which offer protection against vulnerability arising from devaluation.

A small example: several years ago in checking Matthew’s budget book we discovered a discrepancy between the amount Matthew withdrew at the bank and the amount that would be entered into his ledger. For example, his bank statement would say he took out $160. His ledger would note $120. Small amounts – usually 20, 30 dollars would be missing. And always the same signature of the staff member when this happened. Theft by a known and trusted person in Matthew’s team.

We realised we had little knowledge of Math’s weekly monetary matters. The safeguard we created was that from now on a family member would check Math’s budget each week, create a new budget, write it in his ledger and draw up the withdrawal slip with the amount on it. We’ve never had a problem since. But have we had other potentially negative impacts?

Wounding experiences

This leads into thinking about wounding experiences. Matthew has faced many wounding experiences from people whom he and we trusted, or that the service system supported and trusted. Some of them are still too painful to mention. What happens when trust is broken? What happens when you feel people have let you down? Matthew’s disability is such that he just does not comprehend these experiences intellectually and this makes it all the more painful because his experience is being in close relationship with someone one day and then never seeing them again. He can’t speak so how does his voice get articulated in these experiences? Often it simply doesn’t.

The question I have been asking recently (and no clear answers yet): as a family governed system of support, have we created safeguards from these experiences that come from a wounded place, a place that often finds it hard to trust, a place where we are trying to make up for all that lost time when Math was away from us, a place of feeling let down and hurt by others?

If this is the case, and in a ‘representative system’ (that is where family and others largely represent Matthew’s interests), are we inadvertently adding to vulnerability when we take action from these places? It is only human to find it hard to bounce back from the breaking of trust, from experiences of rejection: to move on and treat the next experience as totally new, without the ‘baggage’ of the past. No-one can be blamed or judgement made about any of these very human reactions and experiences. But in a representative system, because you are acting on another’s behalf, it is always healthy to ask questions and to reflect. A case in point with the example that I have used above. With only family now with authority around Math’s weekly finances, what impact dos this have for others in his system? I have found that we have locked ourselves into a solution that doesn’t give us much freedom. Who do we ask if family members don’t want this role anymore or want to go away or are somehow unavailable. Do we trust anyone else?

My hypothesis

I still firmly believe that relationships, connection to others and inclusion are the strongest safeguards against wounding and devaluation. What ultimately keeps people safe is other people and there are lots of powerful and life-giving examples of this in Matthew’s life. For starters the difference in his life since he came back to us and reclaimed his place in our family. Connection is why we’re here. I believe it is part of our human identity – to love, to be loved in return, to belong. Our identities are relational. I am me because of my relationships to others.

So here we have the block – believing in the power of relationships but having experienced multiple wounds from relationships.

Fully embracing vulnerability

The bind is that relationships, inclusion, belonging keep us safe, but they are also a key experience of vulnerability. In order for connection to happen we have to allow ourselves to be vulnerable.

What if we tried to see vulnerability a bit differently; as a human experience?

I would encourage you to take a look at the work of Brene Brown.

Listening to her research into these areas of connection, vulnerability, shame and authenticity changed my whole perspective and was catalyst to me delving into these questions. Check out the fantastic presentation she did for TED Talks a couple years ago.

The risks when we reach out are being misunderstood, being rejected, feeling out of control, feeling exposed, fearing being seen as needy, all our crappy characteristics will become known and then we we’ll be left, being in a place where there are no guarantees …… this list goes on.

As a family member, I think we often take on these fears on behalf of our person with disability. They have faced so many wounding experiences already that we don’t want them to have to face anymore if we can help it. Actually we become afraid to take a risk on another’s behalf.  All the previous wounding experiences pile up and this history makes it hard to take any more risks. Do we then become part of the wounding structures ourselves because we can’t bring ourselves to do this, because we perceive too much risk in reaching out? Because this kind of vulnerability is also the birthplace of joy, creativity, love and tenderness.

Brown’s research reveals consistently that the one thing that keeps us out of connection with others is fear of not being worthy of it. People who felt they were worthy, fully embraced vulnerability. To them it wasn’t pretty but it was necessary. If I haven’t tempted you to her website, I hope I have now!

This then got me thinking about shame. Do we carry shame about ourselves or shame on another’s behalf? Do we believe that we or the people we represent, are imperfect but worthy of love and belonging? If we don’t believe that people can connect to others in their vulnerable and imperfect state, or that there are some people worthier of love and belonging than others, then we won’t be able to take the steps of reaching out to others, of developing relationships beyond those paid to be there.

Brown’s research over many years has revealed that the only difference between people who have a strong sense of belonging and worthiness and people who wonder if they are good enough is that they believe they are worthy of love and belonging.

We need the courage to be imperfect, compassion to be kind to ourselves and celebrate who we are.