by Heather Plett | Jun 17, 2013 | dreaming, journey, Uncategorized
I have a love/hate relationship with the word “intention”. I feel similarly about the word “manifest”. In the coach-y personal development world that some of my work fits into, people like to say things like “you have to set your intention in order to manifest your dreams”.
That kind of statement always makes me cringe a little.
The cringe comes from years of experience that has taught me that, despite what we want to believe, the universe is not an ATM machine that will spit out crisp, beautiful, unwrinkled dreams if only we punch in the right code. There is no simple magic – unless you’ve put something into the account, the ATM machine has nothing to pump out.
It also comes from the part of me that is fed up with the me, me, me culture we live in that I wrote about in my last post. We can’t expect our dreams to come true unless we are willing to invest in the collective dreams of our community.
In addition to those reservations, I also continue to believe that there is a God who orders the universe, and most of the time, we don’t get to see the big picture the way God does. There are times when we’re going to have to live through devastating disappointment – when our dreams come crashing at our feet – and we won’t understand the value in all of that heartache until we’re far into the future looking back in the rearview mirror.
All of that being said, I haven’t entirely given up on the word “intention”.
About ten years ago, I read a book about naming your personal mission and setting the direction you want to head in your life. At that time, I was employed in a government job that made me miserable and I was looking for some path out of it and into something more in line with who I am and what I’m passionate about. In the book was the suggestion that you should write out a “day in the life” journal page as though you are writing it five years in the future. The author of the book claimed that nearly everyone she knew who’d done that ended up almost exactly where they wanted to be.
I wrote my journal page, and you know what? The things I wrote about doing are almost exactly the things I spend my time doing now – teaching, hosting workshops, and writing. It took a few more than 5 years, but I landed where I’d hoped to land. The only part that didn’t come true was my wish for a house with a front porch and a porch swing. (I’m still holding out hope.)
There is definitely something about naming and owning your desires that helps you move in their direction.
So, despite my reservations, I still believe in intention-setting. I just believe in a little realism thrown in for good measure.
Here are a few of my thoughts on intention-setting:
- Your longings and passion are there for a reason. God gave you a desire to do the things that you love to do and it’s not selfish to want to do them. It’s only selfish if you keep them to yourself or if you do destructive things with them. Explore the deep longings in your heart and set an intention based on who you truly are and what you have to offer the world.
- Be prepared for a lot of detours on the path. Just because you set an intention doesn’t mean you’re going to get a straight path to its realization. Like I often tell clients, your journey is like a labyrinth. You always know that the centre is your destination, but sometimes you turn the corner and find yourself further from the destination than you were before. A few years after my journal-writing, for example, I found myself out of government and in a non-profit job that I loved, but that wasn’t quite where I expected to be. I learned a lot from that job though, so I have no regrets. Keep following the path and one day you’ll reach centre, though centre might not always look like you expected it to look.
- Hold your intentions lightly. Sometimes, on the path to making your dream come true, you’ll realize that there’s actually a bigger and better dream in store for you, or that you were dreaming the wrong dream, or that your dream is rather selfish. The things I teach in many of my workshops now are actually even more close to my heart than what I wrote about in the journal because I’ve done a whole lot of learning in the intervening years. Much of that learning came in the form of really tough lessons and disappointments. Be prepared to adjust your dreams or let some of them go.
- Even when you go through the dark night of the soul, trust that the light will return in the morning. In the past couple of years while I’ve been building my self-employment dream, there have been many, many times when it’s been so hard I’ve been tempted to give up. And yet there continues to be this driving force in me that hasn’t given up hope that I’m doing the right thing. It takes a lot of trust to get through the darkness, but once you’re through, you begin to realize the value in that dark path. I have learned, for example, that my work in the world is partly about helping people navigate in the dark. I couldn’t do that work unless I’d been in a few dark places myself.
- Be a gift-giver. Don’t make the realization of your dreams be solely about you and what you have to gain. Be a community-dreamer – set intentions for the collective good instead of your selfish good. Give your gifts to the community and be prepared to let your dreams change in the face of what your community needs. In my journal page dream, I was rather ego-focused, dreaming of the kinds of workshops I wanted to facilitate on my own. Since then, though, I’ve been immersed in the Art of Hosting and I realize that the work I now love to do, and the work that I believe will change the world, is more about co-hosting in circle and getting my own ego out of the way.
by Heather Plett | Jun 14, 2013 | Uncategorized
Earlier this week, I was feeling a little discouraged about the “me, me, ME culture” that seems so pervasive in our North American affluence. I wrote a bit about that in my post about all of us being citizens of the world.
Some days, I go through my social media streams, or I stand in a grocery story checkout, and almost all I see are self-focused posts, advertisements, and magazine headlines about how “you deserve to pamper yourself” and “you can make all of your dreams come true” and “you owe it to yourself to buy yourself more things” and “you can manifest abundance and an easy life”.
It makes me want to say what I sometimes say to my children, “It’s not all about YOU!”
Let me say right from the start… self-care is a good and necessary thing, and I am in no way suggesting that you shouldn’t be good to yourself. Many of us struggle with being kind to ourselves, so I understand the importance of reminding people to take care of themselves. I do this often in my courses, workshops, and coaching sessions. I was raised by a mother who modelled self-sacrifice and self-deprecation, so I know how hard it can be to honour ourselves.
The problem is, many of us replace self-care with self-centredness. We justify selfishness – buying ourselves extravagant and wasteful things, doing things that harm the earth, and ignoring other people in our communities – because we believe that we deserve it. In doing so, we isolate ourselves and we marginalize others.
We forget that we need community. We forget that we need to serve each other. We forget that in all of our lives, there will come a time when we will need to rely on the compassion and kindness of other people. My broken foot this week is reminding me of just that – I need people to do many things for me that I would normally do myself.
After the discouragement earlier this week, I started reading various stories coming out of Gezi Park in Turkey that gave me renewed faith in humanity. What began as a protest against the destruction of the park has grown into so much more. People are standing up to police brutality to protest the way that the concerns of common citizens are ignored by their government. In the process, they have created a beautiful community where they share food, make art, do yoga, look after each other, and dance.
One of the most beautiful stories I read was that of the mothers who showed up to form a human chain between the protestors and police after the Prime Minister told them to take their kids out of the park to protect their safety. I was so moved by that story, in fact, that I created a Facebook group to represent a virtual chain of mothers who stand in solidarity with those mothers.
What I love about these stories is the fact that they show that, at our hearts, we are a communal and compassionate people. When there is need among us, we show up for each other. When someone else is threatened, we stand united against the threat. This doesn’t just happen in Turkey – it happens in all parts of the world.
In the Art of Hosting work, there is something called the Four Fold Practice, which teaches that wholeness in this work (and in our lives) comes when we commit to each of the four practices:
- Be Present and cultivate a strong practice of hosting yourself.
- Participate in conversations with deep listening and contributing from the heart
- Host others with good process
- Co-create a way forward together
This is a beautiful reminder that, to live in community and in a world that needs each of us to show up and offer our gifts, we must host ourselves, participate actively, host others, and co-create a way forward. None of these can stand alone, and none of these is a complete picture. Unless you host yourself, you cannot offer deep listening to others, nor will you be prepared to host others.
I created this mandala awhile ago, playing with the idea that all four of these practices are connected, that there is a flow and an interdependence among them as we learn to work with our own gifts and the gifts of others, and that they are all part of what it means to be in circle with each other.
The more I do this work, the more I know that it is imperative, paradigm-shifting work. We cannot continue to function in a self-centred world, nor can we function well if we fail to care for ourselves or others. We need to rely on each other, but we also need to recognize our own strengths.
If you want to learn more about this, you’re welcome to attend a one-day introductory workshop on The Art of Hosting and Harvesting Conversations that Matter that I’ll be co-hosting in Winnipeg on July 24th.
by Heather Plett | Jun 6, 2013 | Uncategorized
Standing in the park on Saturday, surrounded by my students after the Stand Up Super Games, I got a little choked up. I was immensely proud of this great group of students who’d pulled together, despite some of the rough spots they’d been through, to create a great event for a good cause.
Yes, the students had initiated the event because their assignment in the PR class I teach is to create some kind of PR campaign, but the energy they put into organizing it and fundraising for Osborne House showed that it had become so much more than an assignment; it had become a cause. Most of them showed up in that park not just because they wanted to pass the course, but because they cared for the women taking shelter at Osborne House due to domestic violence.
In showing up for a cause that they care about, my students were demonstrating that they are citizens of the world and they are doing their part in trying to make it better.
In his book, The Abundant Community, Peter Block talks about the difference between citizens and consumers.
“A citizen is one who is a participant in a democracy, regardless of their legal status. It is one who chooses to create the life, the neighbourhood, the world from their own gifts and the gifts of others. A consumer is one who has surrendered to others the power to provide what is essential for a full and satisfied life. This act of surrender goes by many names: client, patient, student, audience, fan, shopper.”
Sadly, there is a tendency in our culture to forget what it means to be citizens and to focus instead on our rights and entitlement as consumers. A recent news story about a man who refuses to mow the lawn on the boulevard in front of his home demonstrates that tendency. He believes it is “the city’s” responsibility to mow that piece of grass, forgetting that “the city” is each and every one of us who live here and that we all have responsibility to care for the place in which we live.
This man is not alone in his sense of entitlement and lack of commitment to the world around him. How often have you heard people complaining about the government, when they do very little to lobby the government for change and often don’t even vote? How often have we ignored the fact that our neighbours may be struggling with poverty or oppression because it’s “not our problem”? How many times do we ignore the damage being done to our earth because we assume we deserve the creature comforts that are produced from the earth’s limited resources?
As a friend living in Haiti reminded me on Facebook this morning when I ranted about this issue, this is the “tragedy of the full belly”. When we have too much, we expect too much. When we become self-reliant, we assume we don’t need other people and that they don’t need us. We stop contributing to our communities because we can get along just fine without them. And when we stop being community-minded, it becomes less and less important how our actions impact the people around us.
That’s why I got emotional when I was standing with my students in the park. In showing up for this campaign, they demonstrated that they haven’t forgotten about the need to contribute to their community. They’re willing to step out of their own comfort zones, forget about their own entitlements, and serve a cause that is bigger than them. This is what we need to foster more of in our schools and work places. This is leadership.
Meg Wheatley defines a leader as “anyone who is willing to show up and help”. Leaders, in other words, are those people who remember their citizenship and are willing to be part of a larger community. The students who contributed to the Stand Up Winnipeg campaign are willing to stand up and be leaders.
The more I do this work, the more I feel passionate about the need for us to stop being so focused on ourselves and our entitlements and start serving as citizens and stewards of the world. That’s why I’m so excited about the three upcoming events I’ll be co-hosting this summer.
On July 6, I’ll be in Ontario co-hosting Ignite: A day of retreat for women sparking change. On July 24, I’ll be in Winnipeg co-hosting The Art of Hosting and Harvesting Conversations that Matter. And then on August 1-4, I’ll be in Asheville, North Carolina, co-hosting Engage! A retreat for women with love in their hearts and fire in their veins.
All of these events are designed for people, like my students, who want to stand up and be counted, people who are willing to be citizens of the world, people who understand that communities thrive when each person shows up and makes a contribution.
These events are not about the old understanding of the leader as a hero, they are about a new understanding of the leader as a host. A host shows up and makes people feel comfortable. S/he engages people in meaningful conversation. S/he makes sure there is good food to eat. S/he is a steward of the place in which she lives. S/he builds community, not from the front of the room but from a place in the circle.
STAND UP now, and let’s make the world a better place.
by Heather Plett | May 8, 2013 | Uncategorized
Last Friday was a bad day – one of the worst I’ve had in a long time. I spent a lot of time worrying and stressing and trying to control the outcome of things that were outside of my control. I also spent a lot of time beating myself up for doing these things (because I know better), and then getting really down on myself for not being further evolved than I am.
I won’t go into all of the details of what was going on, but one of the things was my disappointment over low sales of Lead with Your Wild Heart. I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback on this program and many emails of interest, and I am completely convinced that it is a beautiful and meaningful program, so I let myself believe that those things would translate into significant sales. I was wrong. For whatever reasons (a saturated market, wrong time of year, marketing to the wrong people – your guess is as good as mine), sales were low, and that means that once my current contracts end at the end of June, I’ll have to work harder at finding more sources of income over the summer. Sigh.
Things began to shift over the weekend, though. I took a couple of long walks in the woods, visited the museum with my family, and walked the labyrinth where crocuses are beginning to bloom. The coming of Spring helped to shift my perspective. Life can’t be all bad when crocuses are blooming.
A few things kept going through my mind on the weekend. First of all, I reminded myself of an ongoing mantra of mine… “The outcome is not my responsibility.” In other words, I am not responsible for how many people show up to receive my teaching, I am only responsible for whether or not I offer my gifts and whether I do my best to make them available to people. I’m doing that. I’ve poured my heart and soul into Lead with Your Wild Heart and I KNOW that it is the best possible expression of my gifts. I also know that it is a deeply meaningful journey for people who choose to take it. I offer, people receive, and that is all that I am responsible for. The numbers have no relevance to the value of the offering.
The other thing that kept going through my mind was what we’re taught in Art of Hosting… “whoever shows up are the right people.” This is what I tell myself every time I teach a course, host a retreat, or throw a party. Even if only two people show up, they are the right people. Even if I show up alone, I am the right people. There is value in large gatherings, and there is value in small. If the offering is made, the right people will show up whether it’s two or twenty or two hundred.
And so I spent my weekend surrendering, trusting, and letting go. I walked, I prayed, I released, and I trusted.
Now, there are some simplistic versions of this story that we all want to believe in, and one of those versions would be this: “After letting it all go, I attracted abundance, hundreds of people showed up and I was rich.” That’s the version you might seek after focusing on things like the Law of Attraction or The Secret. I hear that version ALL THE TIME on the internet and I cringe every time I do.
That version has a limited view of what “abundance” means. That version sees abundance as monetary gain, or all of those things that make life easy and smooth.
The real version of the story is still about abundance, but it has nothing about money or fame, or even ease.
Only a couple of more people registered. No crowds were knocking down my door. Abundance showed up in different ways.
On Monday, it suddenly occurred to me that there was absolutely nothing on my calendar on Tuesday. AND I didn’t have any projects due or papers that needed to be marked right away. WHAT?! How could that be? My calendar has been over-crowded for months now, and there is almost always a to-do list a mile long.
Not only was the day wide open, but the weather was stunningly beautiful after many long months of snow and cold.
A free day AND beautiful weather? That sounded like abundance to me!
I dedicated the day entirely to self-care. After dropping the girls off at school, I packed my journal and camera, bought a chai latte, and headed out to a provincial park not far from the city. I found a hiking trail and I wandered for hours in the woods. Then I stopped at the beach, and dipped my toes in the water, feeling like I’d been sprung from the prison of a long, hard winter. When I got hungry, I drove into the city, picked up some picnic food, and ate lunch at a special place called Oodena, a celebration circle near the forks of the two rivers that run through our city.
It was an exquisite day and I relished every moment of it.
But it got even better…
In the evening, I came home to find a package had been delivered by someone my daughter didn’t know. Inside was one of the most beautiful hand-knit shawls I’ve ever seen. I was dumbfounded. This was for ME?! I opened the letter in the package and discovered that it was a gift from a very special woman who’s been a student in my Creative Discovery class. She’d poured love and prayers into every stitch of it – specially for me. “Heather, I prayed that you and your family would be blessed with all that God knows is right for you and that He would guide you and give you the wisdom you need as you travel your path. His beautiful shawls seem to have a wonderful ability to heal, to encourage and comfort and to give solace and protection, especially in difficult times, and they give the most warm Divine hugs too.”
The shawl is burgundy and magenta, and this is what she learned about the meaning of the colour magenta: “Magenta represents universal love at its highest level. It promotes compassion, kindness, and cooperation and encourages a sense of self-respect and contentment. Magenta is the colour of the non-conformist, the free spirit. It pushes you to take responsibility for creating your own path in life. Magenta inspires change, transformation, growth and personal development.” And then she added: “Do you recognize yourself in all this?”
Wow. TALK ABOUT ABUNDANCE!
It was especially meaningful to receive this gift from someone I met through one of my courses. She has been touched by my work to offer her own gifts. (Her first book is coming out in publication next week!) What more could I ask for than to be an inspiration for other people so that gifts continue to flow in the world? I don’t need hundreds of people to show up – I just need the RIGHT people to show up!
And… I don’t need a lot of money, when I have abundance of another kind. I have the abundance of being part of a gift economy that can never be measured by monetary transactions.
Just one more story of abundance and the gift economy… this morning I went to yoga class at my favourite studio and I didn’t have to pay for it. Why? Because I have exchanged coaching sessions for yoga sessions with my coaching teacher! We are both sharing abundance and money has nothing to do with it.
Yes, abundance shows up, but it may not look the way we expect it to look, and it may only show up when we’ve walked through the fire of surrender and trust.
by Heather Plett | Apr 30, 2013 | Leadership, Wisdom, women
I’m a statistic. I’m one of the women Sheryl Sandburg and others talk about who don’t, in their opinion, help the cause of feminism. I made it all the way to the glass ceiling, peered through the cracks, decided I didn’t like what I saw, and walked out. I’m a “walk out who walked on.”
There’s a pretty good chance I would have made it through that glass ceiling if I’d “leaned in” long enough. I had all of the credentials and was an ambitious up-and-comer at the time. I took the fast track through the ranks of the public service, had the title “director” added to my name, got the office right next to the corner office, and was making more money than I’d ever dreamed I could.
On top of the career, I had a good feminist husband who carried his share of the household and parenting responsibilities, a couple of beautiful daughters, a house in the suburbs, a minivan, a trailer at the lake, and a boat. You could say I had it all – the feminist’s dream.
And now? I still have the husband and daughters (with an extra one since those days), but I no longer have the trailer at the lake, the boat, the comfortable paycheck or the title of “director” attached to my name. Instead, I have a tiny office in my basement without a window and a fledgling career as a teacher, coach, facilitator and writer.
Some might call me a failed feminist. I let go of the dream that my foremothers fought for. I quit the corporate climb on the wrong side of the glass ceiling. Instead I now spend a good portion of my days creating mandalas with Sharpie markers, hosting story circles, and inviting retreat participants to stitch together quilt squares – not exactly the things a traditional feminist would take pride in.
Why did I walk away from the corporate career and the frequent flyer points in favour of Sharpie markers, quilt squares, and women’s retreats?
There are a few reasons.
- At the height of my career, I had a stillborn son whose presence in my life reminded me that my priorities are not wealth, work, or prestige but rather family, community, and space for spirituality.
- I wanted to find happiness. I knew that the corner office wasn’t my path to happiness.
- I became convinced that it’s time for feminism to grow into something new, and I was pretty sure that I could serve a greater role in helping to birth the new wave of feminism from outside a corporate structure.
It’s that last point that I want to talk about in this article. Instead of a “failed feminist”, I like to think of myself as an “emergent feminist”.
It’s time, I believe, for women to change the world. That won’t happen simply by getting into CEO positions and taking more seats at the boardroom tables. Women will change the world only if we CHANGE LEADERSHIP.
When I was in formal leadership, on my way to the top, I thrived because I learned to think like a man. I listened to the voices of mentors who told me that “feelings have nothing to do with leadership and you should leave them out of the boardroom”, I shut down my intuition in favour of logic, I left my spirituality and much of my creativity at home, I was careful not to be too wild or passionate, and I even started to believe what I was told once that “relationships get in the way of good programming.”
By the time I broke away from formal leadership to start my own business, ten years after being named a director, I was almost completely burnt out from living in a way that was not authentic to me. I returned to the things that made me feel alive – spiritual practices, art-making, wandering in the woods, and relationships – and when I did I realized that THESE THINGS were exactly what had been missing in my leadership practice. More importantly, they weren’t just absent from my own journey, they were missing from leadership in general.
Instead of leaving them at home, I should have clung to them and brought them into my work. Instead of shutting down my feelings and encouraging my staff to do the same, I should have invited them to bring their vulnerability into conversation circles. Instead of creating strategic plans that rarely evoke any imagination, I should have drawn mandalas that wake up the right brain and invite it to the table. Instead of sitting around energy-killing boardroom tables, I should have held staff retreats in the middle of the woods.
For far too long, we’ve accepted a masculine-dominated leadership paradigm in our government offices, our businesses and even our non-profits that is no longer serving us. As Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze say in Walk Out Walk On, we’ve been relying on the leader-as-hero model, when what we really need now is the leader-as-host. In the words of Tina Turner, “we don’t need another hero”. We need people who can lead from a place in the circle, people who can help heal the brokenness in the world, people who help us feel connected again, and people who can remind us of the importance of our relationship with the earth.
“Leadership is about rearranging the chairs, getting the questions right, putting citizens in front of each other and then knowing what’s worth focusing on. The leadership I’m longing for is the leadership that says my number one job is to bring people together, out of exile, out of isolation, and into connection.” – Peter Block
All around us, we see signs of how disconnected we have become – over-consumption of our resources, terrorist attacks, climate change, extreme poverty, etc. These are the stories of a disconnected human race and this disconnection has been fueled by competitive, hierarchical, power-driven leadership that has been allowed to run un-checked.
If the new wave of feminism has a role to play in the world it is not about pushing harder for the corner office, but about bringing us back to a place of connection. Instead of fighting for the top jobs, the power and the prestige, we should be urging our leaders to bring us out of exile and back to community, back to spirituality, back to earth stewardship, and back to ourselves.
Instead of simply fighting to gain entry into the halls of power, we should be working to change the furniture in those halls. It’s time to move the chairs into a circle and open the windows to the world. It’s time to air out the corner office and replace it with conversation spaces. It’s time to replace competitiveness with collaboration, and hierarchy with community.
This is why I decided to walk out and walk on… my role in the world is no longer to fight for power, it’s to help us figure out how to balance power with love. Instead of standing in front of people, I’m sitting beside them and creating space for conversations. Instead of thinking like a man, I’m inviting men to think more like women.
I don’t want the corner office, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see a woman there. I will always fight for her right to be there, and when she gets there, I’ll be standing beside her, helping her to take down the walls of her corner office and invite people in. I will urge her to see the world through balanced eyes, honouring both the feminine and the masculine in the world, and creating space for us all to have meaningful conversations that lead the world into the transformation it needs.
I’m now leading from a place in the circle so that I can help other women (and men) learn to do the same. When we’ve gathered into that circle, we can all lean in and listen to each other.
If you’re looking for a new way of defining leadership, join me on a free call on Re-imagining Leadership for our Time on May 1 at 2 pm. Central.
