Thor Olafsson in conversation with Katrijn van Oudheusden

Thor Olafsson talks to author and coach, Katrijn van Oudheusden. Katrijn has systemic organisational development qualifications, as well as training from Byron Katie’s School for The Work. Her coaching is based on her understanding of non-dual approaches, which emphasise the unity of all existence.

Her traditional corporate work was completely focused on the outside world, on becoming a better professional. She notes all that time she was ignoring herself. She was feeling not good enough, not okay. After intensive work with Byron Katie, she reached a point, where for her things changed. When she went back to work, she saw these defective humans, projecting their defectiveness and their limiting beliefs on everybody else at work. It was so obvious.

The classical non-dual insight of the non-existence of the ego first led Katrijn to feel she could stop trying to improve. She notes:

“We’ve all been conditioned from the time we’re born into this world to create a constructed ego. It’s not our fault that it happened, it just happened. We need the identity that comes with it, but when we fully and totally identify with it, is where problems are created and you’re saying we can make the step to realise that this construct is a bit of an illusion even though we need it, we can also let go of it and not have it control our lives. We realise that if you relax into it and just allow yourself to be lived, all judgement falls away, all guilt and shame fall away.’’

Key learning points:

We’re being lived so we don’t need to micromanage our life, our life actually lives itself, which leads to this freedom from the stress and the planning and the frustration.

We’re actually new in every moment. We don’t have to believe the whole set of beliefs that we carry with us from the past. We can let go of it and be new, because it’s not real unless we think it is -there’s a lot of freedom in that thought. In that reality everything is possible unless we believe that it’s not, so that creates creativity, innovation, foresight which was one of the key qualities of servant leaders; being able to work with what emerges in the moment.

We’re all connected; this interdependence interconnection means I can pretend I’m an island, but I’m not and this means that we can really co-create. We can really collaborate and we have to, because we’re all dependent on each other in a really ultimate sense. So if you see these three, well I’m not selfless, we’re all connected, we’re new in every moment then the result is, well okay, I’m selfless, I’m literally without a self.

Now the only thing that’s left that happens through me is service because selflessness equals service to others because it’s no longer towards myself. It’s no longer just about me, it’s about everyone around me. So the good news is you’re automatically in service, you’re automatically a servant leader.

In summary:

I think the essence of what I discovered for myself is we don’t need to become something. So all this striving to become better, to improve ourselves is so deep in our psyche. It’s so fundamental to everything we’re doing all day but we don’t need it. We can let go of that and that’s ultimate freedom. Just be instead of striving to become – that’s what I wish for everyone that they find that.

Catch the full interview here https://beyondego.com/resources/leading-beyond-ego-podcast/