I Am A Hostage Negotiator
Recently someone asked me what I did for a living and without batting an eye, I said, “I’m a hostage negotiator.” You should have seen the look of shock on their face because quite frankly, I would be the last person on Earth that you would think of when you picture a Hostage Negotiator. Scenes from a movie shot through my mind. Characters played by the likes of Nicole Kidman, Denzel Washington, Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise even Ashley Judd. You name it. Every big star in Hollywood has played a role where the character was either negotiating for their own lives or those innocent people. Incredibly clandestine.
In reality, while I enjoyed the experience of my “shock therapy” answer catching the individual completely off guard, I have to be honest, trying to describe what I do for a living is a complex answer that never seems to fit into that 30 second elevator pitch outlined by every sales book on the market. You know the one I’m talking about, right? As I type this, memories of running “elevator pitch” drills with my Port Shopping Guides flood back.
Scenario. The elevator doors open and you step into a group of strangers that are all facing forward. They are either engaged with their cellphones or are staring intently at the numbers above the elevator door. The purpose of the elevator pitch is to have a brief but impactful engagement with the people in the elevator, your potential clients. The goal is to pique their curiosity just enough so when you hand them your business card, they actually keep it and eventually call you versus handing it back to you with “good luck man, but no thanks, I’m not buying what you’re selling today”.
But how could I go from being a Vice President of Operations who holds a certification from the Gemological Institute of America to a Hostage Negotiator? Odd combination, right? A traditional VP of Operations is pretty cut and dried and has nothing to do with the training, development and coaching of a sales team. Operations are the support staff, supplying materials, keeping inventories, shipping, handling, getting employees from A to B on time. Sounds like an ad for FEDEX, doesn’t it? However in the port promotions sales and marketing world that I come from, that title for me was a misnomer and one that compartmentalizes this vehemently “label-resistant” individual. I digress.
So you may be asking yourself, why the new job title? Because when I tell people that I teach meditation, the average person hears “yoga” or “religion” or “woo woo” and they lean back. It’s not like I’m walking around dressed in tie-dye or smelling like incense, so that role disarms them. You see, I am a former corporate arena executive, who used meditation to manage my life. But soon I hear the plethora of excuses … “Oh, I can’t meditate, my mind is way too busy”. Or “I’ve tried meditation but I think too much.” Maybe, “I can’t sit still for that long.” The reality is, if you think too much or can’t sit still, you are my perfect student. Can answer yes to any of these? Are you feeling …
stressed
irritable
emotionally, physically or mentally exhausted
tired from lack of sleep
spend more time reacting to your kids than responding to them
are watching your relationships crumble around you
your grades are slipping in school
you can’t even concentrate on the conversations around you much less the ones you are involved in
you keep finding yourself reading the same passages over and over again
you can’t meet your deadlines
you are constantly living in fear waiting for the next shoe to drop
find yourself holding your breath for no reason
… just a few things come to mind … you get the idea. If you suffer from any of the above, then quite frankly meditation IS for you and I ask you, what are you waiting for?
As human beings, we are all hard-wired to listen to that negative inner critic aka our “inner roommate” who … Never. Stops. Talking.
Enter me as the Hostage Negotiator aka your Meditation Instructor for your journey towards mental freedom, where you actually begin to FREE YOURSELF from your self-defeating habit and thought patterns. As human beings, we are all hard-wired to listen to that negative inner critic aka our “inner roommate” who … Never. Stops. Talking. Just listening to it day in and day out is exhausting. We desperately pray that it will go on vacation when we go to sleep at night and yet, how often do you find them showing up in your dreams? God, the endless chatter telling us that we are not good enough. We are not smart enough. We are just not enough. No one wants us. Our opinions don’t matter. We don’t deserve to be loved. We are not the best, even though our mothers told us otherwise.
We fear two things in our lives … we fear that we are not enough and we fear that we won’t be loved. We are bound by invisible chains that allow us take steps measure in inches when we yearn to run or fly.
So how do you shut that inner roommate up long enough to find some peace and why the need for a Hostage Negotiator? Simply because we are held hostage by the thoughts that keep us small and a Hostage Negotiator helps us see ourselves from a different perspective.
Look, we fear two things in our lives … we fear that we are not enough and we fear that we won’t be loved. We are bound by invisible chains that allow us take steps measured in inches when we yearn to run or fly. And the crazy part is that we actually buy into the negativity! We sit there and eat it up as if it’s the most delicious plate of food on the planet. This is insanity and we need help escaping it.
It’s like that scene from a thriller where someone has been held hostage for years. One day they are given the chance to escape and yet they don’t. The handcuffs are off and yet they remain captive. Why? Because they have come to believe that they are worthless … that the horrible environment that they’ve been held captive in is what they deserve. This is what our minds tell us. Over, and over, and over. “See, I told you so.” But it’s a lie.
Yes, a man can get used to anything, but do not ask us how. - Dostoevski
It’s how we are lulled by our environment. But I’m here to tell you that for as easy as it is to believe the negative, that is how easy you an do an about face and believe the positive. We have the choice to take back our control over our inner dialog. In the beginning it’s helpful to have a Hostage Negotiator there to support you as you negotiate with your mind … that same mind that has told you that you are the same “piece of shit” worthless human being for years. And our minds are wily. When it feels threatened, it comes back with force or there are times when it goes underground but it’s only hiding, waiting for you to have a moment of vulnerability and then it comes back saying “I told you that you need me”.
Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except for one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you. - Man’s Search For Meaning
You may be sitting here reading this saying “Yvette, I never have these types of thoughts” but I’m here to remind you, you are a human being, and it’s what we do. It’s a universal problem that is the result of being human. No one escapes this but here’s the good news! There is something you can do about it. You have the power to rise above it. You have the power to free yourself of the chains that have bound you … mentally incapacitating you for decades. You can be free, and the reality is you actually are already free, you just forgot.
Like the “elephant and rope story”. An adult elephant can pull down trees, knock over a house. However if they are caught as babies and tethered to the ground with a small rope which they are not yet strong enough to break, they grow up never comprehending their power or that they could easily break that rope and walk away. We are the same.
It takes a Hostage Negotiator to not only remind you of your greatness but to supply you with the language that will be accepted by your inner roommate. You will get relocate it, pick up the remote control, silence the negative self-talk, and replace it with new, positive belief systems. This creates new habit patterns and thus you remember your magnificence. The new language provides channels to your wellspring of peace, joy, happiness, self-confidence and self-love that lies within. You self-actualize.
Remember no mud, no lotus and just like that magnificent flower, as you work through the muck of your negative inner dialog to find the sunlight, the more often you practice your new language, the faster you make it to the surface.
So as the former VP of Operations, it was no mistake that I also served as the Compliance Officer for our Alaska-bound sales teams. What made me so unique was that instead of saying “you can’t say that”, I shifted their perspective 2mm to the right and opened their minds to the creative possibilities versus the dungeon of limitations. Although I didn’t recognize it at the time, I was honing my Hostage Negotiation skills. My team challenged me to prove that changing your perspective and focusing on what you can say versus what you can’t is the most powerful gift. I witnessed them listen attentively, hungry for hope.
Free your mind & leave the lock and key behind.
The keys to their mental freedom were in my words, planted in the rich fertile soil of their minds. Day by day, those seeds were watered until eventually they realized that the key to freedom was in the door all along, never locked … so they walked free just as you too can walk free from the self-inflicted limitations and self-imposed boundaries that currently hold you hostage.
About a week ago, right after I hosted my Sleep Seminar for the NCH Healthcare System, someone sent me a video of Kobe Bryant, former star of the LA Lakers (may he Rest In Peace). In the video he speaks of the impact that meditation and sleep had on his peak performance during their games. He credits industry-legend coach Phil Jackson for introducing him to the practices. When Phil Jackson coached the Bulls and eventually the Lakers, he brought with him meditation although wrapped in the word “mindfulness”. He respected his team and their individual religious belief systems, yet he knew what mindfulness could do for a star athlete. So they practiced every day. Not just jump shots but mindfulness aka meditation, and he transformed winners into Champions, freeing them from those limiting belief systems that distracted them on the court.
Welcome to the world of negotiating for your freedom through mindfulness and meditation. It’s time to fly.