Glossary of Terms & Concepts
It’s easier to move in a new direction when you know where you’re headed. This is especially important in personal growth work because we’re usually so embedded in our patterns that it’s hard to see them with enough definition to know what to change, and if we knew how to move into a solution we would have done it already.
The concepts and qualities of being below will provide some texture to your growth. They should paint a bit more of your internal landscape, to give you more handholds and toeholds to reach for as you scale yourself. I hope they illuminate a path forward and help you map additional territory to expand into.
These definitions have all been created in partnership with the founders I’ve worked with in-session.
Balance: An active process of shifting your energy from one thing that matters to another, and then back again.
Balance feels like a wobble. Balance is not an idealized, static, perfectionistic end state.
Belief:
The organizing principles of our psychology. The origin of our thoughts, decisions, communications, emotions, and actions. Often unconscious.
A practiced thought.
Coaching: A professional relationship that enables personal growth in the context of work.
Confidence:
The ability to listen to yourself deeply and act on what you hear.
The experience of trusting yourself. Syn.: Self-trust.
Core Belief: A thought so well practiced that it functions as an organizing principle of a person's psychology. The source of other beliefs.
The internal origin of many of your actions, decisions, communications, and emotions. Often unconscious. ▪ For example: I am/am not lovable. I am/am not enough. I am good. I am bad. It is safe/unsafe to be my authentic self. I feel safe/unsafe in relationship. I feel safe/unsafe in the world.
The primary working medium that most psychotherapies and some coaching practices seek to understand and change.
Distortion (i.e. a cognitive distortion): An emotion (fear) that feels like a thought. Distortions stem from fear and therefore lack fact.
It’s helpful for founders to differentiate between a thought and a distortion because distortions will negatively impact your actions and serve to constrain options, whereas thoughts will simply add information to the situation at-hand.
Integrity: Doing what is morally and ethically right, even if it's difficult or costs you. Integrity is ensured by authenticity and built through courage.
Leadership: A guiding presence that springs from vision and is rooted in service and wisdom.
Leadership is not rooted in power and authority- fear is.
Patience: The strength to allow things to take the time they take.
Reciprocity: Harmony within community.
Therapy (psychotherapy): A professional relationship that enables personal growth in the context of relationships, especially the relationship you have with yourself.
Vulnerability: There are two definitions, and it’s best not to confuse them:
1/ A strength that feels like weakness from the inside.
2/ An actual weakness - a liability in your company, product, or strategy.
Wisdom: Knowledge applied. A movement inward that is reflected outward.
The felt experience of wisdom is the moment in which a movement inward is balanced by its outward motion.
