Yesterday I had stuff to do – guest posts to write, videos to create, and some new ideas to wrangle into submission. So, what did I do?
Well, watch the video to find out…
And guess what? Sitting at the centre of the labyrinth, I created three videos, finished a writing assignment, and came up with a couple of new ideas. Productive? You betcha.
In my e-workshop, How to Lead with Your Paint Clothes on, there is a section called “Pause and Reflect” about the importance of incorporating times of quietness and contemplation into our leadership journeys.
Here’s an excerpt:
When M. Scott Peck, a busy writer and internationally-renowned speaker, is asked how he gets so much accomplished, his answer is “Because I spend at least two hours a day doing nothing.” Those two hours of doing nothing are the most important hours of his day. For three forty-five minute periods throughout the day, he spends time in solitude and silence, meditating and praying. It’s the only way he can keep up with the demands of his schedule of writing, traveling all over the world, and speaking to thousands of people every month. “I cannot survive without it,” he says.
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“We are always doing something, talking, reading, listening to the radio, planning what next. The mind is kept naggingly busy on some easy, unimportant external thing all day.” – Brenda Ueland
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Leaders often make the mistake of assuming that quiet contemplative time is a luxury they can’t afford. I would argue that we can’t afford NOT to take those times. If we keep denying ourselves the kind of space and time for our minds to take a deep healing, re-energizing breath, we will burn ourselves out, blow up at our staff, and/or cease to be of any value to our organizations.
Want to be more efficient, proficient, productive, and just plain brilliant? Go find a park, a labyrinth, a meditation cushion, or just a lawnchair in your backyard.
You can purchase How to Lead with your Paint Clothes on and join the learning circle that already includes some amazing people here.
One of the videos I created in the labyrinth was specially for the Paint Clothes tribe.
Last night was my daughter’s first rugby game, and let me tell you, she was FIERCE! She threw herself into the game just the way I knew she would – with her whole heart and body. She dug her feet in and pushed with all her might against the opposing team in the scrum (what you see in the photo – but that’s a borrowed photo and not her team). She pummelled any opponent who dared to run by her carrying the ball. She dashed across the field whenever the ball was tossed to her… and she SCORED! In the last seconds of the game, she made it across the line to score her very first “try” (like a touchdown in football) in her very first game.
I thought I would be scared to watch her (this is the girl who tore a ligament in her knee and had to have surgery because of a soccer injury – partly because she is such an intense player), but the truth is I LOVED IT!
I LOVED the energy on the field. I LOVED the way that those young girls get to live out their fierceness in such a healthy and fun way. I LOVED the way Nikki would not back down from even the biggest opponent.
I’m a little ashamed to admit this, but I used to be afraid of her fierceness. I used to think it was my job as her mom to help her cage it in some way. I used to cringe when I’d watch her get fouled out in basketball or get penalties in soccer. It was hard to watch that fierce look in her eyes when she’d throw her passion into a sport, because I was afraid she’d get hurt or that she’d hurt someone else. I’d tell her, when she’d come off the field, “can you be a little less vicious? Tone it down a little.”
But now? I am thrilled for her that she has found a sport that honours that fierceness in her. I told her last night, “Honey, don’t ever lose that fierceness. Find healthy ways of using it, but don’t ever let people tell you it’s wrong.”
Because I realized something last night as I watched her. Somewhere along the line, I let my fierceness be caged. I let the expectations that I be a “nice girl”, a “well-behaved girl”, a “quiet girl” put me inside a cage and it is taking me years to break out of that cage. Even now I still fight those bars, trying to break out into freedom. Even now I keep silent when I should be shouting, I make choices that limit me because I don’t want to hurt people’s feelings, I tell little white lies because I hate offending people with the truth, and I bottle anger inside because it scares me.
After the rugby game last night, I read Ronna Detrick’s magnificent post about the vision, the roar, and the muse and I knew what I needed to do. I need to ROAR! I need quit trying to bottle the fierceness inside me. I need to quit letting myself believe I have to be polite and nice and never hurt anyone’s feelings. I need to challenge those people who dare to bottle my truth just because it scares them. I need to let my inner warrior CHARGE forward with courage and strength.
This morning, as I ran, I had a flashback to the birth of my second daughter. In the depths of labour, after I’d let out a fierce, primal scream, a nurse told me, with a measure of impatience, “if you keep screaming like that, you’ll have no voice tomorrow.” Instantly, I went to that place I go when I’ve dared to step out of the role of “nice, respectful, quiet” girl and someone calls me on it – I went to shame. I bottled the next scream deep inside because I didn’t want to cause anyone annoyance, I didn’t want to embarrass myself, and I didn’t want to risk tomorrow’s voice.
But you know what? Later, after I held my daughter in my arms, I thought, “BULLSHIT! WHY would you tell a birthing woman to keep silent? If you can’t scream in childbirth, when CAN you scream? And what kind of nonsense is not screaming today because it might hurt your voice tomorrow? If today needs a scream, well then, dammit, SCREAM!”
I can’t go back to that moment and let out that next scream I bottled, but I can choose to not let anyone bottle the next scream that needs to erupt from that primal place in me.
And I will sit on the sidelines and CHEER as my fierce daughter charges headlong into a sport that may very well hurt her. Because DAMMIT if she can’t relish her fierceness now, then some day she will be lying in a hospital bed and letting a nurse silence her primal scream.
There’s been a longing in my heart for 14 years now. It’s a longing that has often left me feeling incomplete, lonely, lost, and perhaps even flawed in some way.
I have been longing for some book or workshop that would validate ME as a leader (in all my messy, creative, intuitive, contemplative, chaotic beauty), not try to make me conform to a leadership box that didn’t fit. I wanted someone to say “You’re okay. Your intuitive sense of what it takes to be a leader is not wrong. In fact, it’s very, very RIGHT.”
I wanted that, but I never found it. Not completely. Oh, I found whispers of it, in books by David Irvine, David Whyte, Michael Jones, Christina Baldwin, and others. And I found heaps of it at ALIA, but there was still something lacking. Something that spoke the truths I knew in my heart but had learned to doubt because they had been so overshadowed by other paradigms – more established and more acceptable ways of doing leadership.
In recent months, though, there has been a growing realization in my heart.
The answer to my own longing could be found in the deep places in my own heart.
The book I longed for, the workshop I dreamed of participating in – those were the gifts that were meant for ME to offer the world. I didn’t have to wait for them any longer. I simply had to open the door to them and let the words flow from the places in my heart where the wisdom, ideas, stories, and inspiration have been gathered.
I am releasing my VERY FIRST product for sale on this website and it comes straight from those deep places in my heart. It comes straight from years of longing, years of gathering stories, years of listening to the wisdom all around me and in my own soul, and years of a growing realization that the old paradigms don’t work anymore.
It is this… a workbook called How to Lead with your Paint Clothes on.
It is the wisdom I sought those many years ago when I began to doubt my own leadership because it didn’t fit the existing paradigms.
It is the wisdom I offer you, if you too feel like you’ve been swimming in the wrong tank for too long.
It is the wisdom of art brought into the world of leadership. It is the wisdom of creativity, chaos, courage, authenticity, curiosity, contemplation, and doodling.
It is for leaders, dreamers, parents, entrepreneurs, innovators, artists, dancers, and world-changers of all kinds.
It is for anyone who longs to use their artistic gifts to make a difference in the world.
There’s a workbook available, but there’s more. If you’ve felt like I did so many times in the last 14 years, I don’t want you to have to walk this journey alone. I’m also offering a learning circle and the opportunity to have one-on-one mentorship with me.
Go here to find out more. You can download the first 8 pages free.
This is not an expensive product. I’ve made it affordable (only $30 for the workbook, and more if you want to be part of the learning circle or be mentored) so that it can be accessible to all kinds of leaders, including those who are just beginning to trust that intuitive voice inside themselves.
Please share this with your friends. Because I KNOW that I’m not the only one who’s tired of trying to fit into the old paradigms.
I thought I had spoken my truth, until I found another layer of truth much deeper than I’d dared to look.
I thought I’d expressed myself and dealt honestly with my feelings, until I discovered a deep and fierce rage buried in a place I’d long since locked away.
I thought I’d learned to surrender, until a whole new layer of surrender was required of me.
I thought I’d found courage, until I saw with clearer eyes the places where fear still holds me in its grip.
And now, here I am. Going deeper into my truth, rage, surrender, and courage.
Hoping and praying that Spring brings new growth and that those things that have died and been tossed on the compost heap will make space and offer their nutrients for new things to grow.
This week, my guest is one of my dearest friends, Christine Claire Reed. I met Christine online a couple of years ago, and since then she has become my cheerleader, confidante, supporter, and friend. I have been known, on occasion, to send Christine frantic emails when I most need a shoulder to cry on, and she has always responded with just the right kind of wisdom to help me find the hope again. What I love most about her is that her wisdom comes from a deep and authentic place in her heart, a heart that has known great suffering, pain, and mental illness, but has found a way to continue praying, hoping, dancing, and seeking joy, even when there is no ground beneath her.
In this interview, Christine shares an experience in which she learned to “give up fear in order to surrender to joy.” (The rest of this interview will be shared when I release the e-course.)
