Day 276: Lisa Murrell

July 3, 2010 at 12:01 am, Category: Inspiration

“… that’s what I mean by being in relationship, that there’s a connection, that there’s really a caring about who is this other person or being or animal that is here in the same space with me, and what kind of awarenesses do we  have – what do you have, what do I have, what do we have together?  That really gets me inspired, because then I start thinking about ‘What can we cook up?  What can we create?  What can we play with?’”

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Lisa, for agreeing to be part of the Project today, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?

Lisa Murrell: Yes, I’m very happy to be here.  Lisa Murrell.  I am the cofounder of MetaSystem Consulting Group and Equine Alchemy.  I live in New York.  It is a coaching and consulting firm that works with leaders and executives all over the world.  MetaSystem Consulting Group is confined mostly to in-person coaching with just people, and the Equine Alchemy aspect, as you might imagine, involves horses; but it’s all towards the same thing – personal and professional development on all levels helping people and businesses to work optimally and create what they really want to create.

Toni: Well it sounds fascinating.  It’s a great lead-in to the first question, which is, when you think about inspiration, Lisa, who do you inspire and how does that happen?

Lisa: As I work with the horses, I have to say I got a totally different relationship, or developed a different relationship, with inspiration.  I feel like when I’m with them, they inspire me and I inspire them.  It is such a reciprocal relationship, and relationship is the key word.  So I have been experiencing and have been told, especially when people come to work with the horses, that they are so inspired by that one thing, being in relationship, because people don’t want to be alone.  They don’t want to feel like they’re on their own.

In fact, whether we’re talking about business and strategic planning or we’re talking about couples that come to see me, it is always about how do they develop relationships with themselves differently so that they can develop relationships with other people differently.  So those people who are seeking that are the people that I end up fortunately being in the presence of and working with the horses to inspire.

Toni: Can you give an example for those of us that may not be as familiar with that type of work?  How does that inspiration occur when you’re doing that type of work with individuals as well using the horses?

Lisa: Yes, actually, there was an amazing session that I had yesterday.  There is a woman who has MS, multiples sclerosis, and she has always been a very active woman and she has obviously … her physical capacities have been diminished in the recent years, and she’s always loved working with the horses.  And when I say working with the horses, it’s all on the ground, and it’s usually in a small round area called the round pen.

And so, she was in there with Coach Simon yesterday, and he was feeling quite agitated.  They’re just kind of together, not doing too much, just kind of seeing if they can actually relate with each other on a different level than either verbally, cognitively, or touching.  So it’s really about awareness of who you are and who the horse is and how that intersects, and she was having a feeling that they were not connecting at all, that he wasn’t paying attention to her, she was feeling bad.

Then for some reason, I don’t know why – I think it’s because I’m so intuitively connected when I do this kind of coaching — I decided to put a chair inside the round pen, something that I had never done before, and I invited her to sit down.  The minute she sat down, Coach Simon came over immediately, and he was so, so careful of her boundaries and her vulnerability, so he did not push himself in her space.  I mean, he was so perfectly in relationship with her and her with him, and I asked her “What are you taking from this?  What does this mean to you?”

She thought about it, and she was very, very passionate when she said “I have to understand what I can and cannot do, and that it’s okay for me to sit and not do.  I can be in relationship with people differently than I have before.”

Toni: Wow, that’s amazing.  Thank you so much for that example.  When you do this type of work, or it can be personally or professionally, how do you think that you help others to explore their own potential?

Lisa: Well, I’ll use the example of a leader that came here for a four-day retreat.  He was an executive, and he had been asked to do some leadership training.  I think his whole crew there loved his expertise and him as a professional, but he was not a people person.  So actually his coach knew about this work and they both came together.

One of the exercises that we have is called the leading exercise with the horses, and it is like you might think.  You have a halter and you have a rope, and you just simply lead them around.  Well, if you’ve noticed, horses are 1,200 pounds or more.  They’re not going to go anywhere with you unless they want to.  This gentleman was jerking and yanking and the horse just did not want to go anywhere.  There was no connection.  There was no relationship, because the horses need to be connected in the relationship with you because they are herd animals.

So he, through that experience, began to understand what people were telling him about the fact that he was not … he could never be the leader that he wanted to be.  He was just an expert in his field, because he did not know how to be in relationship with other people, and he had no idea what impact he had on people.  He didn’t know that he was doing that.  He didn’t know that he was getting in his own way.  He didn’t know that he was literally yanking and jerking on the horse.  He wasn’t even aware that he was doing that, but it was doing that energetically with the people that worked for him and with him.

It was through four days of working with the horses at the end – and he told me this when I spoke to him actually recently – he said “That changed my life.  It changed my marriage, it changed everything that was going on with me.”

It developed an awareness for him, a different perspective that he never had before, because with people when we try to have these interactions, there’s so much cognitive … what I’m going to call “baggage.”  But with the horse, there’s not so many variables, and they’re very pure and it’s very easy to just really relate to those nonverbal cues, if you will, or electromagnetic fields of our heart.  You can learn so much about yourself that you never knew before, and that could be certainly eye-opening, and most of the time inspiring.

Toni: Oh, absolutely.  It’s interesting, because by the horse having no filter, so to speak, was giving the most important feedback of all.

Lisa: In fact, even when I work with … well, anybody, but I’m speaking specifically about executives and in the corporate realm, everyone always tells me “I’ve never had such immediate, undisputed feedback.”

Toni: That’s what I’m taking away from this is that there are no filters there; there’s no politeness, there’s no, you know, “This is how I was brought up to give praise and criticism,” but the horse just tells you like it is.

Lisa: Yes, which is actually quite helpful when there’s people from different cultures, and culture can be defined any way — it could be from different countries, it could be from different nationalities, it could be from a large family and a small family.  People don’t know what their cultural biases are and that they are so much a part of them in how they interact in their lives.

Of course, you as a coach would know all of this plays into what kind of success you’re having in your life, where are your blocks, where are your challenges, especially if you just can’t figure out why you never seem to get to the place you want to.  You don’t know where you’re getting in your own way.  You don’t know what’s happening.  And so, work with the horses, I like to say, it makes conscious that which is unconscious for us.

Toni: So what inspires you, Lisa?

Lisa: Well, I don’t know if you can tell that I like this work.

Toni: Slightly.  I think we only hear that slightly in your voice.

Lisa: You know, the thing that really inspires me — and I didn’t know this, Toni, until I started taking this journey with the horses — is really being in relationship with someone.  I mean, even when I’m sitting here with you and we’re having this interview, I feel like you’re listening to me.  I don’t feel like it’s something where you ask the question and then there’s the answer and then that’s that.  And you took the time to be in relationship before we had the interview.

So that’s what I mean by being in relationship, that there’s a connection, that there’s really a caring about who is this other person or being or animal that is here in the same space with me, and what kind of awarenesses do we  have – what do you have, what do I have, what do we have together?  That really gets me inspired, because then I start thinking about “What can we cook up?  What can we create?  What can we play with?”  So for me, that’s the way I work the best, is when I’m in relationship and partnership with someone else, and I learned so much about that from the work with the horses.

Toni: Are there tools and resources that you tend to reach for on a regular basis when you are looking for inspiration?

Lisa: Yes.  There’s some work from Karla McLaren, who did a series of tapes in, I think, around 2000 or 2001 called “Emotional Genius,” and basically her concepts follow closely Daniel Goleman’s, but there’s definite departures.  She talks about the messages behind emotions.

And so, a couple of parts to it … one, our emotions are part of us and our feelings and our body’s sensations, and they’re there as information, so being aware of them, and then really contemplating “Why am I feeling this way?  What is going on?  What is this other piece of information that if I’m using my body as an organ of perception and intelligence, not just my mind, how can I live more fully and listen to it, or through listening to it?”

And so, looking at those messages behind emotions is very, very helpful for me.  And the other place that I probably get inspiration all the time is my spiritual path.  I am very devoted to that path, and I meditate on a regular basis, and I feel like I see that in other people a lot, and I recognize when I don’t, and I question if that’s where I need to be or who I need to be working with.  Those things are very important to me.

Toni: And what do you do now, and what will you continue to do so that you can continue to explore your own potential in all of these areas that you’ve spoken about so eloquently to continue do the great work that you do?

Lisa: It’s interesting that you ask that, because I was actually just kind of recommitting to myself and my vision and my family and my work recently, and one of the things that I realize that I must do is continue to do the work with the horses on myself.  To continue to understand that every moment that I am with them, if I’m paying attention, is a reflection of who I am, and then I generalize that to recognize very clearly that the people that I’m coaching, the people that I’m around or with anywhere are still reflections of me as well.

And if it’s a difficult or challenging time I’m having in that situation, asking myself “Well how is this like me?  What part of me is being reflected in what’s going on right now?”  Because I feel like we’re all so connected that we’re really not that separate, so we can see the good, the bad, and the ugly in everything if we just choose to look.

Toni: What great advice, and what a great place to leave the interview with everyone who will be reading and listening to you.  It is really fascinating, the work that you do, and you can tell that you’re very passionate about it.  And for sharing this with us today on the Get Inspired! Project, we are so appreciative, Lisa.  Thank you so very much.

Lisa: Thank you, and I appreciate all the wonderful work.  This is really important, what you’re doing, so thank you.

Toni: Thank you.  Take care, Lisa.

Lisa: Okay, you too, Toni.

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For more information about Lisa Murrell:  www.equinealchemy.com, www.equinealchemy.com/equinealchemy.com/blog

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