Practical solutions for people + planet
How I have limited my leadership...
I'm intrigued by identifying biases in myself (that I've asborbed through our biased culture) that diminish the value of gifts that I bring to the world. Among them are: my creativity and arts-orienation, my emotional sensitivity and barometer, my 'relational intelligence' that informs me what others are feeling often before I know what I feel myself, my intuition, dreams and sensuality. As I've found ways to reclaim the value of these aspects of myself, I've noticed how often they're relegated to the 'feminine,' and used to demean women's leadership capacities. A lesbian activist I met in BC told me that it was harder for her to come out as an artist than as a lesbian. It fascinates me to realize that - as these biases become visible in myself and the culture - I increasingly see that these are many of the traits most needed to help heal our relations. To help build our communities, and help us learn to be kinder to ourselves and others. To bridge the differences that divide us. I wonder what other aspects of yourselves you may find yourself having under-valued, and what practices might serve us all in accelerating our own internal healing?
Tags: empowerment, healing, leadership, women
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Susie-Q on -
I have had to re-connect to my dreams as an adult. As a child, I was encouraged to follow my dreams and my heart, but when those dreams revealed themselves as a young adult, they were promptly quashed as being too impractical. No support was offered for me to pursue them and what's worse I was threatened to have all support withdrawn if I chose to follow them. Bad parenting, yes...but I adapted and internalized the lesson.
It is an act of devotion to acknowledge and cultivate my inner passions and I now recognize that by nurturing my dreams I am contributing to my community in the best possible way. I am learning to value my vision and give voice to it. I know that what I do best is what I'm passionate about and that I'll always strive to better when following my dreams because I stay interested and energized.
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Permalink Reply by Karyn Wolf Lynn on
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This is a great question to ponder, Nina. Thanks! I have a couple of tendencies on my part:
First, I acquiesce to some of the negative judgments that others have about me and struggle to retain my sense of self when the feedback is especially virulent. If I'm told that I'm too emotional or not "professional," if I'm told I'm bossy or overbearing, inappropriate, have poor boundaries, immature, or not much use, I will struggle with this, and ultimately some portion of it may carry the day inside of me through self disgust or shame. Then I of course have taken on an emotional wound that I have to work through--in addition to what other issues I have to address. It is because of my personal brainwashing growing up that if someone else felt threatened by me, they could control me and get me to "minimize" myself by putting me down. And I'm not one of those quiet, insecure women. I'm confident and articulate and creative; but these beliefs arise in the deepest places and I still have to root them out.
A very helpful guide that someone once gave me was, "when you start to feel bad, sick, crazy, stupid, or wrong, ask yourself what may be going on with the other person" to see if you're taking on an especially negative projection that has a moral weight to it that shouldn't be there. This has saved my butt so many times I can't say because it has enabled me to observe what is going on and to detach from the moral messages and judgments that I hear. It is also a real encouragement to me to seek loving and honest feedback from someone who is secure and unthreatened by me (often a woman!) and go about the real business of living, which is giving and growing in a healing and open-hearted way.
This brings me to my second point, which is honoring my own intuitions and insight more. You hear this so often that the importance and profundity of this is almost lost. For me this is not a small part of becoming whole, it is the whole part, because it is about being deeply connected to my source, knowing what I know when I know it, having integrity to live from that space, sloughing off the cultural training we've all had in denying intuition and living in a world of "shoulds." For me in the religion of my childhood, it was about believing that I was bad at the core and couldn't trust that inner soul spark. This trusting and intuitive relationship with the self is often the thing that is taken from us the earliest, and has to be reclaimed person by person, relationship by relationship, realm by realm. It's easy to admire people who appear to be so self-actualized, for me even to feel that I should be more like they are. Crazy, huh? How hard it is to get into my head sometimes that this life, this one precious life, is about me and about how I'm going to live it, and how I'm going to open to love and restoration and connection. And, that I am manifesting in some unique individual way that can't be dictated by another person's path!
Both of these could be summed up by a thought that Byron Katie has perpetuated: "there's only three kinds of business in the world: mine, yours, and God's." And getting into anyone else's business is painful! My own growing up experience taught me that everyone else's business was mine, and that my own business didn't belong to me. I am healing that now and finding my center of strength and being.
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Permalink Reply by Nina S on -
Yes, thanks so much, Susie, Marita, Karyn...I resonate with all of what you've shared. (Gorgeous picture, Susie!)
I notice myself apologizing too readily, and too often.
And am watching how frequently I make promises to myself, then break them.
How much more stringent I am about following through on my commitments to others, than to myself.
So I'm monitoring and choosing how to be more conscious about what promises I make myself, and then holding myself more accountable for not breaking them.
I feel this is building my sense of self-valuing.
Another practice I've adopted is making the choice, when others who are close around me are hijacked, or upset, to let it be theirs' and not take it on. This goes directly to your point, Karyn, and Katie's words, and is making a profound difference in my lived experience. I realize how much, and for how long, I've taking on other peoples' business, rather than staying with my own.
I find it so useful to see how your experiences reflect many of mine. Tx for all you've written...
Nina
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