Yesterday I was preparing a session for my women’s business group coaching program and I was exploring our tendency to judge our personality traits, strengths and weaknesses and default behaviours as either good or bad. We can spend a lot of time berating ourselves for rushing in to quickly or for always procrastinating. We compare our creativity or our ability to get stuff done with someone elses and 9 times out of 10 measure ourselves as being not good enough. But this is not necessarily the case, even our most challenging qualities that gets us in to trouble the most can be superb strengths if we play our cards right.
You’ve got to know when to hold em and when to fold em!
In the context of my coaching work we were diving into business creation. My passion is supporting others to create businesses that they fall in love with. Businesses that are both sustaining from a financial perspective and also on a spiritual and emotional level. To create work that fills you up, gives you a sense of connection, allows you to be completely yourself and is deeply personally satisfying, is living your purpose.
This type of business requires really intentional creation. In the initial “seed” stage it asks us to be very connected to our feminine energy, to use our qualities of creativity, imagination, vision, to be receptive and open to what emerges. This is how we create from the heart and birth a business that is aligned with our values and purpose.
However we need our masculine energy and traits if this seed idea is ever going to grow into a flourishing business. Once we have that seed beginning to shoot its time for action, for doing for rational and logical thinking and to make things happen.
Whether we are male or female we all have masculine and feminine traits within us and will naturally act from our strongest traits. My personal style in my working life has always been more on the masculine spectrum of striving to achieve, ticking off goals and targets and getting things done. I have had to learn to balance this with creativity, love, imagination and vision to find work that was able to meet my deep need within for something that felt more soul filling for me.
Which brings me to the Kenny Rogers principle. Just like in his song The Gambler we need to know when to hold em and know when to fold em. The key is to know when to work from your feminine aspects and when to work from your masculine aspects.
To do this we can ask the question “What phase of my business am I in? Do I need to create, generate new ideas, nurture or germinate a seed of something new? Or is it time for action, goal setting and making things happen?” This way all parts of our personality are valued and accepted, we have a deeper connection with ourselves and our work. We also get the best use out of our strengths and the opportunity to use and develop forgotten parts of ourselves which are often the parts that need to be included for the work to be soul satisfying on a long term basis and allows us to feel connected to our purpose.
This way we always hold the best cards!
Which cards are you playing today?
For more info on my group coaching prgrams and 1 on 1 coaching check out my facebook page http://www.facebook.com/Paulamcfarlanecoach
In Search of the Joybug 