6 Affirmations for Your Belonging at Your Company

The story you tell yourself is the story you live. Our inner voice affirms things one way or the other, all the time. And in that story, you’re either in belonging, or you’re not. Your belonging more than anything else, determines how you’ll live your life on the scale of “the wonderfully alive,” verses spending 2080+ hours a year as a member of “the working dead.” Link to where I might have some insights on this, 5 1/2 Minutes.

Where do you fall on the scale of “the wonderfully alive” to “the working dead”?

If you ask yourself these 6 belonging affirmations below, they might just help you clarify. No, this isn’t another “do these six things” and your life will be perfect list. What it is… six statements of affirmation, that, if you can completely say yes to, you’re probably wonderfully alive. Each affirmation is intrinsically tied to your belonging. And, if you can’t, or it’s only partially yes or mostly no’s, know this, you already have the answers inside you, or, you have the innate power to get them. Sure, you might need a little nudge to pull those answers out of yourself. But, I know you can.

Each person’s answer is wholly unique to themselves. Each person’s path for each affirmation is just as unique. There are multiple nuances in each affirmation. You’ll either answer them, yes, or you won’t. Try not to worry too terribly if you find yourself more on the side of the working dead. With a shift in your belonging, you’ll come back on your own. Shifting is easier when you belong, to yourself and with others. Believe it or not, I’ll say it again, it’s innately in your ability to do so when you belong. We’re beautifully capable of making a wonderfully alive work and family life.

Here’s an infographic to assist you as an individual in reflecting on these affirmations, HBL 6 Aspects of a Belonging at a Crossroad, pdf version.

If you’re a founder/owner of a company, or CEO, or Head of People & Culture, definitely read this for yourself first. And then, look at it from the perspective of, would each of my employees be #yestimes6? And then, ask yourself this… “can I create a place where people can affirm these 6 areas of belonging for themselves in my company?” The answers are actually quite simple, though not necessarily easy at times to get to yes. You integrate ways into your organizational operating system to make the affirmations true. If you’re curious about this, I’m happy to share my experience, perspective, and the research I’ve come across. Being able to answer yes to these six affirmations is a massive win for your people and your customers. Here’s a link to the info graphic of the six areas: HBL 6 Aspects of a Belonging Culture, pdf version.

Belong

1. Can you say, "I belong with my company."? Yes, or No?
(Before you answer, check out the, What this means: … below each affirmation)
(And say the affirmation to yourself out loud, and notice how you feel in saying it. Does it feel true, half true, or outright I’m lying to myself false?)

What this means:

You feel, own, and care for your leaders and team members' successes, dreams, and failures. And your leaders and team members do the same for you. (Oh, all these questions work also in relation to spouses, partners, siblings, friends… etc. Example: I belong with my …)

We’re simply at our optimal best when we’re with whom and where we belong. Here, we simply live more and do better. That’s because, in belonging, we fear less and aspire more. Our hearts, brains, and guts are simply designed for us to belong. It’s a neurobiological thing. There’s a bit of a chicken and egg dilemma though. You’ve gotta belong with yourself to be able to belong with others, and, you can’t belong with yourself unless you belong with others. 🤔

It’s a two-way street of feeling for yourself and them, owning your life and theirs, and, caring for yourself and them. And they do the same for you. In today’s typical business emotional intelligence language, it’s mutual- empathy (feeling), accountability (owning), and compassion (caring for) that rests in personal, romantic, friendship, or universal, love. It goes far beyond and defies the transactional level. It’s beyond a sense of belonging, that is, where one just feels part of a group. In belonging, we choose ownership/accountability. Outside of belonging, we choose compliance as a response to fear and a negative outcome.

Ok, yeah to clarify, in belonging as I’m defining it, there are six yeses needed for this first affirmation. I feel for them, yes. I own them, yes. I care for them, yes. They feel for me, yes. They own me, yes. They care for me, yes. And, all in relation to each other in our individual successes, dreams, and failures. When you’re here, you’re in your tribe where you’ll die for each other, (okay, go to the ends of the earth for each other, if dying for each other seems too weird for ya), you’ll join and support each other’s cause, and you won’t let each other down.

Did you tally your yeses? Got any No’s? If so, it’s time to turn those No’s to Yesses. Follow your no’s and you’ll know where you need to change. Different always precedes better. There’s a story here you’ve been telling yourself, and you’re living it. How will you adjust that story so that you live your Who and How differently?

(And if you have a bunch of No’s, feel free to contact me. I’d like to hear your story.)

Believe

2. Can you say, "I believe in my company."? Yes, or No?

What this means: 

You believe in its core values, shared purpose, in your leadership team, your teammates, your company's strategic direction and abilities, and, in the products and services you provide to the world. Yeah, this one seems like a tall order to get to affirmation, there could be nine yeses to getting to saying this affirmation is true for you. If it’s false, don’t lose heart yet, there may be things you can do, or maybe, you’ve overlooked.

Imagine you’re driving down the highway and the car next to you swerves into your lane? What happens? Out of your mouth comes the gasp of curse words that are then followed by an instant reaction of your body’s response to a threat. There’s something about that life flashing before your eyes. Then your head tries to make sense of it. It’s a very short quick story. That guy’s an ass hole!

That is parallel purpose and it’s what happens every day in companies when two or more people believe in the same purpose and they’re driving passionately towards that purpose. But, they don’t believe together in shared purpose. And shared purpose, well, it only happens in belonging. From a company standpoint, purpose is absolutely essential for going forward, but it has to be shared. Without shared purpose, the path to fulfilling that purpose gets filled with various levels of road rage. Having that purpose come down as an edict from the top, or hiring people who have that purpose, doesn’t make it a shared purpose.

There’s what you believe and what you believe together. What you believe in shared purpose works like a shock absorber for humanity’s bumps in the road as you head to your company’s promised land. The very short quick lane to road rage becomes a road where you’ll give understanding to each other. Giving each other a friendly wave of I’m sorry, gets returned with a that’s Ok, as you keep going towards the company’s destination. Heck, you might even pull over and figure out how to navigate the narrow lanes to help each other get through without incident. Even help fix a flat.

I’ve only touched on shared purpose here in Believe. There are eight other yeses to affirm, to where you can truly say, yes I believe in my company. More yeses than no’s moves you towards a life of the wonderfully alive. The story you’ve been telling yourself, helps you embrace and get to the yeses, or, live in the No.

Live Values

3. Can you say, "I know and live my own core values and strengths, and I am encouraged to live them to their fullest in deep personal accountability in my work at the company."?

What this means:

You identified and know your core values and you actively live them without violating them at your work.

Nothing makes for a frustrating and dead life than reaching for your aspirations from a place that’s counter to your values and anchored in your weaknesses. And here’s the rub, most of the time we haven’t even figured out what our core values are, or, if we have, we haven’t evaluated our work environment to make sure that the values espoused are compatible with our own. Have you taken stock of your own core values? Do you know what your company’s core values are? You kinda have to know both. Living by values counter to your core is like mistakenly putting diesel in a gas engine, by the time you notice, you’ve done stalled.

If you have, a wonderful hell yes on this affirmation, go celebrate! Your story begins with harmony in yourself and in the daily encounter of being human, the bumps and scrapes are far easier to handle when we start from harmony. Telling yourself your story that originates from your strengths and values when facing adversity, is a completely different story versus being an unknown adversary of yourself in your own story, brings about a fueled life, wonderfully alive.

If you’re on the, uh… the no’s have it, side of the scale, review your core values, look at the story you've been telling yourself, and do a little editing. Maybe there’s a way to navigate your path in alignment with your values and from your strengths. YOU can make a shift in the choose your own story, the one that you tell yourself.

And, if you can’t, you might have to ask yourself, “is this with whom and where I belong?”

Join Stories

4. Can you say, "I know and live my personal strategic story and can join it with my company's strategic story (without conflict)"?

What this means: 

You know your own unique strengths, and how to use them, you live them and in shared pursuit of your company's unique purpose to change the world, where others' companies can't or won't.

This is the part of your story where you and the company say, “I do.” Before you get to this, you experience and then realize, yes I belong, yes, I believe, and yes, I live in my values and strengths as me! The sense of belonging moves into real belonging here. You may have dabbled in acts of belonging that went both ways before, now you’re embedded in it.

Upon “I do,” you’re still the same person, but now, both stories live in your life. Your personal story and the company story serve as mutual force multipliers. The accountability of “own” in feel, own, and care for each other, is in full effect for you. And just to clarify, it’s not that you fit in the tribe, it’s that you’re a full individual in belonging, within the tribe. You live bigger because, the story you tell yourself is now bigger, in belonging and in shared purpose. We do for each other from our pooled strengths of heart, intellect, and physicality, in pursuit of our shared promised land. And on that journey, we won't let each other down. You’re all driving down the lane together, sometimes leading, sometimes drafting, and always making sure nobody’s broken down and left behind.

Is the tribe’s story yours? And, is your individual story the tribe’s?

Practice

5. Can you say, "I understand, am given authorship and take ownership of my practices at work, and welcome how I am measured and developed."?

What this means: 

You know what good looks like. You define your part in how you are measured fairly by your company. You are measured in ways that lead you and help you grow.

The life you live from your story, that comes only from your story, those are the practices you do. Practices thrust upon you aren’t yours. Do your practices belong to you? In the context of your work, your practices measure with the company’s core values, for staying in belonging. Your personal practices aren’t determined by the company core values, informed yes, and they must be compatible with the company core values. A mismatch here leads to a dangerous crash on the interstate, lots of casualties, and a traffic jam. Me, I like driving a giant truck. My Dodge ram 3500 can carry an off-road camper all over in the Alpine forests of Washington. If I join a tribe that’s all about moving very fast on flat pavement, driving Ferraris will be the jam. Chances are, we’re a mismatch for belonging. Your practices, the way you belong and get shit done, that makes you uniquely valuable as wholly human, can only lead to your growth and the growth of the tribe simultaneously if they contribute to belonging and furthering the company purpose. But don’t forget, belonging’s a two-way street. The tribe’s there for you as much as you’re there for the tribe.

Do the ways that you belong with yourself and others, work with the ways of the company you work for? Oh, and vice versa. Do your practices contribute to the way the company gets shit done. Does the way the company gets shit done contribute to you?

Grow

6. Can you say, "I understand, define, take welcomed ownership of how I am grown and help my company grow."?

What this means: 

Your growth is encouraged and assisted by your company, and you understand how it benefits you personally and in your contribution to helping the company grow in fulfilling its purpose.

Have you ever felt, if I was only given what I needed, I’d be a superstar? Especially, given that you’re regularly supposed to perform at superstar levels. They gave you a wheelbarrow instead of a front loader and a dump truck.

Growth in belonging is different. Your mutual ownership, of each other, between the company and you, motivates the company to care for and provide for your growth, inspires your accountability. Make no mistake, your every effort, focus, and fortitude toward your growth, belongs solely to you. Your story you tell differs now. It’s not you against the world. It’s the people in my company who have my back and are relying upon me. And for that reason, you’ll grow so the tribe will grow, and vice versa. Sustainable growth starts with you the individual, extends mutually in belonging with your company, and then further extends growth to your customers.

Are you alone in your growth? Are you growing for each other and the customer, or in spite of them?

6 Times Yes

When you can craft ways in belonging to get to your yeses in the six areas of affirmation, Belong, Believe, Live Values, Join Stories, Practice, and Grow, you’ll be in a great place to be wonderfully alive. For the areas where your yeses outweigh the no’s, make sure you take some time and celebrate that. Sadly, most of our work world is designed for the carrot and stick, not belonging. Also, make sure you sustain what you’re doing to get those yeses. Don’t lose sight of them as you work to turn no’s into yeses. For the areas where the no’s outweigh the yeses, work on the who you belong with and then the how. Your ways will be unique to your attributes, strengths, and values. Hopefully, these 6 affirmations will help you target your efforts to move you towards, or keep you, wonderfully alive.

If you’re finding these questions inspired you to live more and be even better, give me call, 206-714-6113, send me an email, paul@heartbasedleading.com, or use this Contact Me form. We’ll set up a short meet-up on Zoom. If we’re feeling good about each other there, I’ll be happy to offer a gift to you, Experience Professional Coaching 2hr Session.

If you’re finding your really not where you belong after reflecting on these affirmations, feel free to connect up with me.

Catch ya, Paul