Easing into Vulnerable

by | May 8, 2014 | Blog, Featured

Easing into Vulnerable

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Being raw. Sharing your truth.
Connecting through your story.

Sounds fantastic, right?
And maybe a little terrifying?

I’m all about being open in storytelling. On the vulnerability scale, I’d give myself a good, solid 5. Honest, but pretty tidy and controlled.

On a retreat last week (with the inspiring Therese Skelly), we worked on visibility and what blocked us. Our task was to tell our raw story. The one we don’t want people to know. The one that is likely preventing us from really being seen because we are working so hard not to tell it.

I shared something I’ve only told a couple of friends and my husband, and managed to get through it in a weepy puddle. It felt good. Then I watched each of the others stand and tell her story. They were so beautiful. Unburdened from the old weight of not telling that story. So clear. So alive. So energized.

The next morning I woke up with what may have been the worst migraine of my life.

A mighty clamp-down after that spacious opening, perhaps? Made total sense to me.

As I lay there for many hours waiting for it to lessen, I felt for the clients I’ve encouraged to tell their most honest stories. It’s so important to do but it can be so damn hard.

How do we navigate this landscape of vulnerability?

Here’s what I came up with:

Vulnerability’s the thing, but it’s a delicate dance. While we are hard-wired to be tender and vulnerable—and to react compassionately when others are being this way, we’re also pretty hard-wired to protect ourselves at any cost.

Showing up truthfully is a good thing in this brave, new Brene Brown world we live in, but most of us didn’t grow up drawing attention to our flaws or insecurities. In fact, we worked over-time to appear like we had none of these:

Jugular. Achilles heel. Soft belly.

They were as well hidden as private parts in my early working days.

Years ago, I stumbled as I was walking past the Executive Director’s office where I worked. Actually, I face-planted on the carpet, throwing file folders and coffee everywhere. He made sure I was OK and that was that. Later that day, he was coming up the stairs as I was going down and I made some kind of half-ashamed/half-funny crack that he should watch out in case I tripped again.

He called me into my office and told me that the key to success was NEVER to draw attention to my errors, and NEVER to give someone the upper hand by admitting I’d made a mistake. Whew. Contrast that to my way, which had always been to bond with others by making self-deprecating comments that didn’t begin to cover up my sense of shame. Not exactly a recipe for wild career success—but a vague attempt at some level of vulnerability.

I was confused, yet I knew there had to be a way to tell the truth without putting myself down.

I thank God the days of shoulder pads and cover-your-ass business strategies are behind me. But that doesn’t mean this more-open world is super easy to figure out. I got a migraine after revealing my truth to just five people, after all.

I believe the world is a safe and kind place–much kinder and safer than I thought it to be 20 years ago. And I am all about sharing the truth as a  compelling and powerful way to connect. That doesn’t mean leaping into the marketplace showing only your soft belly, however.

Here are a few suggestions for easing into vulnerability:

  • Get very intimate with your story. Tell it “raw,” then tell it with the lesson learned or insight received.
  • Work through your emotions to get to the core and truth of the stories you share and why you share them.
  • Trust that vulnerability doesn’t mean you need to share every story  from every stage.
  • Look at the story through the lens of your ideal client and find the thread that reveals the unique essence of you and what you provide them.
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The Golden Thread session is a great way to explore
the raw version of your story so you can begin to craft it
into a powerful signature speech or website copy.

 

 “Wow, there is magic around you! This is super, super awesome. While reading [my Golden Thread] I experienced the curious combination of deep relief, open weeping, and laughter.  That is exactly it!”

—Dr. Heather Clark, www.myvibranthealth.com

Click here to learn more.

 

Hand ’em a lens

by | Apr 4, 2014 | Blog, Featured

Hand ’em a lens

Last week, I was very happy to attend Align It Live, the 3-day event in Las Vegas my coach, Darla LeDoux, hosted.

Align.panelSome of the beautiful truth-tellers in our mastermind group
sharing their stories on Darla’s success panel.

 

On the first morning, Darla showed a clip of Jared Leto accepting his Oscar in February. (Just click here to watch if you haven’t seen this). She asked what we concluded about the actor based on these 2 minutes of watching him. People volunteered that they determined he’s family-focused, smart, brave, calm, confident, and compassionate—someone they could trust and wanted to spend time with…

We loved him. The world loved him.

And we all made a lot of snap judgments about him, too.

As people always do.

Darla then said something that turned out to be
a game-changer for me:

 

“We don’t exist except for the lens
people see us through.”

 

A truth about our species: We’ve all got automatic and complicated lenses through which we view the world. This is not a bad thing… it’s a survival thing.

Climb down inside your ancestral self for a moment…

Your lens was a super-powerful and necessary tool. You had to rely on it to tell you who to trust and who to run from.  It helped discern quickly between “safe, known tribesperson” and “dangerous, unknown stranger.”

And today your lens still does just that. Your busy brain and gut are perpetually scanning the stranger’s shoes, smile, grimace, clothes, hair, body type, expression in eyes, posture, bumper stickers, signs of marital status,… Whew, right?

(And that’s even before she opens her mouth.)

Your lens shows you who to like and who to avoid… and who is your peer, teacher, or competitor.

Looking back at that Oscar speech, we can see where this whole idea gets meaty and interesting… especially for entrepreneurs like you who lead with your story.

Before we could really dive into all that judging, assessing and conclusion-drawing we do, Jared Leto handed us a lens.

That’s what you do when you share your story, too.

Your audience’s minds are going to start working like frantic squirrels trying to figure you out when you appear before them (whether on stage or online).

Looking through the lensSo, why not hand them a lens to help them see more quickly if you are their tribe?

One of the things I love about working with people on the theme of their story (what I call their Golden Thread) is that it gives them a lens that helps them look at their own life. So instead of seeing your life as this tangled line-up of random, tender, or embarrassing, when you look through the lens of your Golden Thread the anecdotes that are most effective to tell simply rise up and make themselves known.

Now for the game-changer. I see that the lens is not only for the storyteller…. It’s also for the audience.

Sure, people watching you are going to respond in their automatic way to your hair/shoes/car/hands/voice/sense of humor or _____(fill in blank).

But when you share your story masterfully, you may just over-ride that knee-jerk response to help them see the YOU that exists beyond their lens… and more importantly, how you connect with THEM and help them transform.

 

Darla's masterminders

A few of us past and present masterminders.
All with big messages and new insights to share—it’s good not
everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Want to find your Golden Thread?

Email madeleine@inthewriteplace.com to schedule complimentary half-hour clarity session to start exploring.

Only Connect

Only Connect

by | Jan 31, 2014 | Blog, Featured

Only Connect

John with Finn in January

Today is the first day of the year of the Wood Horse.  A marked difference from last year: The Snake.

Last year I felt much more snakelike—hidden, slithery, undercover, shedding. The Horse is about power, decisions, movement, action. The Snake… well, not so much. I want to be more like the horse.

When I created a theme for life and business in 2014 I picked these words: Dare, Connect, Magic.

So far, there has been a lot of all three.

On New Years Eve, my beautiful old dog Finn collapsed. A mass in her spleen had burst and the vet told us she might last a few hours or a few days.

We took her her home.

Almost 11 years ago, she jumped into my arms at a shelter and she saved my life a thousand times since. Finn was one of those once-in-a-lifetime dogs…. at my side for breakups, our wedding, hiking, kayaking, step-parenting, every single errand I made, miles and miles of skiing.  Being abandoned once meant she stayed close to me all the time.

Elegant and attentive, Finn resembled a dog that might sit next to an Egyptian queen. But she had a way of shapeshifting. One day years ago, someone asked me if she was a Chihuahua and the very next day another person wondered if she was a Great Dane.

Despite the fact that she could not control herself around gas station attendants, highway workers or certain other female dogs—God, she could bring me to my knees with her alpha moments—I adored her.

John and I took turns sitting with her for five days. We cried into her fur and thanked her for doing such a good job caring for us and teaching the new puppy all she knew. We told her all the stories of things she’d done, great moments she’d had, the wonderful day I met her.

As she sleeplessly watched with her giant brown eyes, I felt like she was taking in her humans to remember forever. Or that she was teaching us to be ready for her to go. She grew more and more ethereal.

Magic moments started to happen. One afternoon, a crazy bird noise broke out. I went outside and dozens of crows were circling our house. I’d never seen one crow in these woods before… and for about 15 minutes tons of them flew round and round, perching in trees and cawing, and then circling more.

Finn couldn’t move but her ears flickered wildly as she listened from her spot near the couch. I swear the crows were calling her.

On her last night I carried her outside and waited with her, but she didn’t pee. She just stood, wobbly, with her head pointed up. It was a starry night and the coyotes were loud. I felt like I was watching a very intimate moment as she stared at the stars, all the howls echoing around her.

Sunday morning her eyes focused more in the distance than on us and her breath grew raspy. She hadn’t eaten in almost a week and her muscled body was all ribs and knobby spine. John dug a grave out under a fir tree.

When my vet friend Kath arrived Finn wagged her tail and tried to get up. We laid her on her favorite blanket and Kath found a vein. She said she had never seen an animal die so calmly.

We buried beautiful Finn with a note from each of us and her favorite bone.

The next morning at 4 a.m.I left for Mexico. A couple weeks earlier, my old friend Joanne had asked me to join her and her daughter for 9 days there. There was no possible way I could afford the trip or the time away.  So of course I booked a flight.
I went for Chinese food that night and got this fortune: Take a trip with a friend.

Joanne was diagnosed with cancer 7 years ago—and has survived longer than her doctors thought she would. Breast. Bones. Liver. Stage 4 now. A few months ago she felt a little better than she had in years. Enough to decide to take Manami, home from college, on an adventure.

Each morning I went out when the sky was still dove gray to get a coffee from Armando.

“How is the Mama?” he’d ask.

He fixed green juice and ginger tea for me to bring her.

Our last day there, he kissed Joanne’s hand and said, “The only thing that matters is here,” holding one palm to his big barrel chest and putting the other on hers.

One night at dinner I told Manami stories about Joanne zooming around Boston on her 10-speed, in a dress with her blonde hair flying.  Skinny dipping in Vermont waterfalls and dancing at blues clubs without spilling her Rolling Rock. Learning to drive a stick in my VW Rabbit, smoking a Camel.

Tears rolled down Manami’s face and I asked her if she wanted me to stop. She said, “No, I just wish I knew her when she was like that. Keep telling the stories.”

Joanne hobbled out to the balcony to watch as Manami and I body surfed. I looked up to see her little hunched-over form, waving her cane at us. I asked her about it later—if it was hard. She really loved swimming in the ocean. She was always, always, always in motion.

She said she actually feels glad now to see others being happy and doing things. That it was a little hard to describe, but she was not full of yearning or self-pity or envy as she watched us or heard the stories of people’s lives—she just felt happiness.

Joanne, Manami, me with jugo verde.

Like I did with Finn, I felt I was watching someone become a master.

It is only 30 days into this new year.

Death. Life. Sun. Stars. Ocean. Release.

Dare. Connect. Magic.

E.M. Forster wrote, “Only connect.”

Only only only connect.

Joanne’s back in San Francisco.
Manami is at college. John strung lights
in a tree at Finn’s grave and they twinkle in the rain tonight.

The first few weeks of this year have given me an urgency to connect. And a rekindled belief in the magic of our stories.

Like a horse who can’t bear not to run, now is the time and we must get going.

It’s not too late to say what is most true for you and your work. Because your story means something. Your story means everything.

And your story’s not too tangled or too long, nor has the time passed for you to tell it.

Only connect.

I would love to talk with you about your story and your message—and how we can work together to share it in a way that’s all yours. Because now is the time.

Just hit reply if you’d like to schedule a complimentary clarity session.

Happy new year.

 

 

 

 

Sorry Seems To Be the Hardest Word

Sorry Seems To Be the Hardest Word

by | Oct 11, 2013 | Blog, Featured

On a camping trip to the hotsprings a couple weekends ago, I thought I’d give myself a little challenge.

A challenge NOT to say “I’m sorry…” unless I was really sorry.

I had just heard my brilliant client and friend, Lea McLeod, describe the “Sorry Syndrome”—in which women undermine their communication by overapologizing.

I knew I had the Syndrome, but figured that because we were far from many humans (to whom I would be tempted to apologize needlessly), I had this in the bag.

I didn’t.

What happened is that the trickster universe pulled out all the stops to get me to utter those two little words.

It started immediately.

1. Stopping at the registration shack, I pull out $20 to pay for a campsite. “It’s 20 bucks a PERSON,” the grumpy guy says. “Whoops!” I say as I dug out another bill. Close, but no cigar.

2. We set up camp and I’m basking in the isolation when Bodhi, our puppy, slips out of his collar. He’s small and very fast, and begins running through campsites and tents, grabbing towels and pot holders and licking whoever he can.I sprint after him in bare feet over the stubbled desert grass.

As he dashes right into one guy’s tent, I call out, “Hi, could you grab that dog?” as nicely as I can.

“No!” the guy shouts back. “I don’t like dogs. I don’t like touching dogs.”

But I don’t cave…

“That’s OK! I understand!” I yell back.

After following Bodhi through a few more campsites, I come really close to reverting to old form. I’m almost out of substitute phrases: “Excuse me!” “Excuse him!” “Oops!” “Whoops!” “Hey, thanks for your patience!”

A woman catches him and hands him to me. I want to apologize so much I’m bursting. “Thanks for being so cool!” I say instead.

3. That night there are coyotes close by and the dogs don’t sleep. I’m out walking them in the morning and pass a bleary-eyed woman, sitting by her fire, nursing a mug of coffee. “Are those the dogs that were howling all night?” she asks.”Yes, these are the ones,” I mutter, feeling like a total jerk but managing not to falter: “Thanks for being so patient with them.”

4. I  stop by the porta pots on my way back. I pull open an unlocked door to reveal a horrified man, sitting on the john, pants around his ankles. “Whoops!” I say and slam the door shut.

I could go on to describe several more of the tempting opportunities I was given, but doing this super-challenging challenge got me thinking.

It’s no secret I’m a chronic over-apologizer—all my life I have begged forgiveness for everything from harmless, normal day-to-day goofs right on up to the major  stumbles and fumbles I’ve made. I get that. But a few days of not saying “I’m sorry” made me see something bigger.

I have been apologizing for me. For being me, and taking up space.

When I was little, I’d get into arguments with my brothers and say, “I’m sorry for BREATHING!”

Well, I think I’ve actually felt sorry for breathing. (Not easy to admit.)

And it has come through how I write and how I share my story.

When you get emails or read sales pages or people’s bios, do you ever feel the silent “I’M SORRY” behind the words?

We all see those multi-exclamation-point-apologies sent out when someone includes the wrong link in an email or hasn’t sent their newsletter for a while. But what I’m talking about runs deeper.

And it happens when you haven’t woven your story fully together. When you haven’t owned that thread that connects your mistakes, your triumphs, your funny stories, the things you love, the things that make you cringe, and the things that you don’t want any more of ever. I call that the Golden Thread.

It’s really (really) easy not to own it. Because it takes some work and some digging… Because it can be pretty hard to find it and follow it on your own… And because it’s really a lot easier to hide and not be seen for who you are and what you stand for.

But when you find it, things come together. (It’s a thread, after all.) You feel visible and on purpose and safe in a different way than you thought possible. And you realize there’s nothing about you that you have to apologize for.

If you want to find and unravel your Golden Thread, schedule a free 30-minute clarity session by clicking here.

 

Freedom + Alchemy

Freedom + Alchemy

by | Aug 25, 2013 | Blog, Featured

Freedom + Alchemy

Last week my husband and I moved. And I got a PhD in Magic.

 

For the past six years, we lived in a magical spot: a log cabin nestled in a cedar forest alongside a roaring creek. We had found the house in a “magical” way. Our mortgage person told us she’d done some “magic” to get us approved (back at the tip-top of the market). We had big magic dreams for all the retreats and gatherings we would hold on this land. We built a sweat lodge with friends. People described the house and its setting as… yeah, you get it.

 

Magic was a word that got bandied about a lot these past few years…

 

Fast forward to this past January. After a lot of stuff happened–from stepping into my business full-time to not being able to sell a piece of land or refinance, from a few expensive medical crises to two layoffs, we’d tapped out everything in order to keep our magic house afloat. Though we kept trying to make it work, it was slowly choking us.

 

And yet for all these years, I had kept believing that there would be some magic solution. That something amazing would happen.

 

After all, the signs pointed to that, right?

 

A piece of me stopped living in the real world and started living in this world that would begin when my ship came in, when the lottery paid out, when an unexpected inheritance landed on our doorstep. Magically.

 

Exhausting, constricting and unsustainable, you say? Yep.

 

So… in January we got real. We decided to sell the house and land.

 

Then, weirdly enough, it was like the magic did start to happen.

 

We created a vision of the people we wanted to buy the property, and two weeks after it went on the market, we had a full-price offer… from a family who seemed to have every quality on our list.

 

I mentioned (to just one person) our desire to find a small house or cottage where we didn’t have to sign a long lease… and she just happened to own such a cottage. And that’s where we are living now.

 

While packing, I found all kinds of stuff I thought was long-gone, including that little “Freedom” bottle in the photo. Someone gave it to me long before we bought the house. It was almost like I had tucked away my freedom all those years ago–and then found it again… just in time.

 

So, what does this have to do with anything? Well, for a while now I’ve thought about my work as a kind of alchemy. It’s about taking what you are and what you’ve done and where you’ve been–as leaden as it might feel–and turning it into your gold.

 

This alchemy transforms what is real about you, your shadow, your story–into something you work with, instead of hiding. And in doing so, you release the burden of hoping and praying that people hear about and like you. You give up the glued-together-popsicle-stick, fingers-crossed version of doing your business–and get REAL about what your foundation really is. You put an end to doomsday thoughts like, “If only I had a masters degree” or “If only I hadn’t married my first husband” and instead see how all the threads of your story and your life matter and have prepared you to be exactly who you are and serve the clients only you are meant to serve.

 

Then and only then, so much clearer and lighter, are you FREE to experience the real magic…  Putting your message out to the world. Doing the work you are meant to be doing. Experiencing freedom.

 

That’s alchemy. And it can’t begin until we put away all that old magical thinking.