sharing our secrets
You’re not ready until you’re ready
I have something I want to share with you, something I wasn’t ready to share in this way before.
A part of me worries that, if I share this, you might discredit me as no longer legit.
The other part knows that sharing this might change your life in some way.
That first part comes from our ego/survival brain, where we fear being judged, excluded, abandoned.
The second comes from our intuition/sage brain, where there is deep trust, faith and hope.
I’ll trust my intuition. I will share.
Here’s my secret: I have a higher power.
And…you have a higher power too.
My connection with this higher something exists beyond my own thinking and has brought me the greatest experience of awe, ease, love and gratitude. It’s the sacred piece to which I credit my deepest and most awesome growth.
How paradoxical, then, that I fear I will lose credit if I share the very thing to which I credit my greatest growth? The thing we most fear sharing may also bring about our greatest salvation.
If I want to keep growing, I have to keep a soft focus around how my vulnerability will be received. I have to trust that there is some intelligence behind why I feel compelled to share.
As I write this, my pen is being written by my hand, which is being moved by something deeper and richer than anything my own ego and limiting mind can begin to approximate.
For me to experience this awe and flow, I have to be willing to be vulnerable - and possibly judged.
The call to be honest and channel something important supersedes the reflex to hold back.
Why share this now? Why share about my higher power nearly five years into writing dozens of blogs and newsletters?
Over the last several months, I've become more clear about my purpose. With this clarity, comes an inner-knowing of not wanting to hold back. I no longer want to hold back from fully owning my purpose - because I know that my purpose brings me closer every day to the awe and wonder of my higher power. And, even if I never reach my vision, living my purpose every day feels so much more fulfilling than not living it.
My purpose, by the way, is to support others towards transformation.
It feels amazing to meet each day with this intention.
Im my recent daily connection with my higher power, I’ve received even more clarity on my next steps. I’m learning that my purpose is to support leaders to discover and live out their authentic success in all areas of their life - work, wellbeing, relationships, fun! Now, on the other side of a decade working corporate and struggling with imposter syndrome and burnout, I feel called to help teams evolve how they connect with their work so that their many working hours feel more sustainable and fulfilling.
The striving and overachieving was the only way I knew to advance in those early years of corporate but, today, that strive–to-survive setting no longer fires me. Today, my fulfillment comes through the grace and adventure of deepening my connection with something greater than myself.
What fires together, wires together. When I take the time to connect and listen to this inner knowing - you may call it Spirit, God, Creator, Energy - I feel deep satisfaction versus the fleeting highs of external accolades and validation. Before I discovered the power outlet of this higher connection, I sought out sub-optimal ways to feel filled up. The destructive overeating and overexercising, endless overworking and bottomless validation-seeking only deepened my never-enoughs deficit. When I hit my own bottom and shared it with someone else, something new opened up for me. It was almost automatic. The vulnerability that came from being honest with someone else was the key that opened-up a whole new way of experiencing the wonders of life. No burnout required, no self-loathing, no need for shame spirals.
Almost automatically, I felt compelled to slow down.
I became willing to slow down the simplest things like how I ate my food, how I exhaled, how I looked at trees and birds, how I sensed the sun’s warmth on my skin and how I listened to others.
Sharing reveals what is glaring.
The word vulnerable comes from the word “to wound”. As we share our wounds, we heal - ourselves and each other. Vulnerability transforms.
For this moment…
What is an inner truth which you have been keeping secret but have a longing to share?
What fear might be keeping you from sharing this part of yourself?
If you couldn't fail, what might your next step be towards sharing this part of yourself?
Photography: Melanie Gordon