Wise Wednesdays

When a force breaks an egg from the outside, life ends. When a force breaks an egg from the inside, life begins. It was a joy to open the graduation ceremony for my beautiful client Eleni’s inclusive cohort of incredible women from Europe and Africa who were reclaiming their power to create and contribute to the world. I shared the stage with Sharath Jeevan OBE who is one of the world's leading experts on re-igniting inner drive and I emceed the evening to celebrate these powerful women and the products they had created from scratch in a mere 10 weeks. Together, they grew in harnessing their inner-force and overcoming challenging outer-forces. But how did this come about in the first place? Well, if you think that taking a career leap is impossible, how about taking two? Legend in the making: Eleni hired me as her coach 3 years ago. Over this period of working together, she took 2 big career leaps. First, leaving a 10-year corporate role to step into a new leadership role with ...

  “Don’t you dare give me that attitude”, he snapped. “What attitude?”, I thought. Within a few seconds I found myself at the receiving end of a senior colleague’s yelling prowess. I’d never had an “attitude problem” as a student. But I did disagree with his suggestions for the paper we were co-authoring… I’ll never know exactly what was going on for him (but I do know that, sadly, he got into trouble for inappropriate behaviour with another female student soon after). I stayed calm and it blew over but, today, I would have handled the whole thing very differently. Today, I would have handled the whole thing very differently. These confusing interactions happen all the time. About a third of the coaching conversations I have each week with clients involve a degree of unpacking, processing and responding to similar events from a place of deep awareness and compassion. These CPDs are not one-off incidents but patterns that develop in relationships. The good news is that most of them ...

I am no longer available for gratuitous shaming. By gratuitous shaming, I don’t just mean when someone tries to humiliate you for fun. I mean the subtle invalidation that occurs when you don’t conform to expectations and where conforming to feel a sense of belonging doesn’t serve you or the world. [n.b. To distinguish guilt from shame and make sure they don’t unduly influence your career choices, see this Wise Wednesdays from the 2016 archive.] Death by a 1000 Subtle Invalidation cuts This Subtle Invalidation doesn’t have to be in the form of a direct attack. It can also be an absence of acknowledgement, support or encouragement for your choices (because they don’t fit with expectations). It can also be an internalised form of invalidation which includes self-doubt or self-criticism but also lack of self-appreciation or self-celebration. Create your self-acceptance manifesto: the path to inner-freedom If you’re breaking with convention, pushing the boundaries or creating a (R)Evolutio...