EMBRACE, EMBODY & EXPRESS YOUR LEADERSHIP WISDOM
As we are seeing with the President of the Ukraine, there are certain moments in time when our innately powerful self shows us and the world who we are as a leader.
The experience I share in this true story that I narrate was one of those moments for me. And what it gifted me continues to be a blessing I share in my Epic Leadership Coaching and wisdom card deck.
Listen to discover what it gifts you.
Like a small seed blown by a gentle wind, whispers of a thought blew through my mind in the winter of 2020. Months later, I was opening a package that had just arrived from Amazon, and as I pulled the Sacred Shaman card deck out of its box, I heard in my inner ear as clear as a bell: “This is the prototype you will use to create your card deck.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to this clear yet very unexpected message. So I played with the Sacred Shaman deck, looking at the images on the cards and reading the Oracle messages.
Several weeks later, I received an email from a colleague about a MasterClass in card deck creation. I signed up for the free offering and at the end of the introductory series I knew that this was my next step. So in the summer of 2021 I joined the course and began my journey of creating a deck of 54 cards.
Fast forward 9 months to 2022, and the final edited version of my Epic Leadership Journeys card deck and guidebook is ready to go to the designer once the challenges of selecting a printer are successfully addressed.
Meanwhile, an Epic Leadership MasterClass—where inclusive women leaders use the cards for Insight, Innovation & Impact from a shared place of Deep Wisdom—is emerging from the feedback and input of clients, colleagues and friends who have previewed the deck.
What was barely a whispered thought in 2020 is evolving into my leadership legacy work. Clearly, ‘Destiny’ has spoken.
What you don’t know is bigger than you. ~Epic Leadership Journeys
The ‘Unknown’ is a place of mystery, creation, and infinite possibilities. Being uncomfortable with not knowing is a natural human response. Yet when you stand in the mystery of the ‘Unknown’ and just allow yourself to imagine what could be possible, your Inner Knowing activates. Notice what your Inner Knowing—instincts and intuition—reveal to you when you ask these 3 questions about your particular challenge, situation, or concern.
What could be possible that I’m not seeing or sensing?
What could be an outcome even better than I desire?
What best possible outcome am I ready to receive?
Just because what you’ve been waiting for has not shown up the way you thought it would doesn’t mean it hasn’t arrived. ~Epic Leadership Journeys
Perhaps you’re too tired to see or recognize new possibilities appearing before you. If so, which of the 7 types of rest do you need to receive? Notice the difference when you give all 7 to yourself.
You’re busy with work and life, yet feel scattered and “all over the place.”
You’re dealing with sudden rapid change and feel like you can’t get your footing.
You’re seeking a ‘new normal' while feeling anxious, uncertain and depleted.
You need to free up space for mental and emotional clarity, discerning focus, and imaginative creative thinking.
Your concerns about results cause you to doubt and second-guess yourself—not fully trusting your decisions and communications, or your years of hard-won experience and expertise.
In the back of your mind you harbor a growing sense of alarm because it seems you are not doing enough, or need to be doing things differently and better.
You’re searching for practical insights and empowering perspectives to reframe and liberate your epic leadership in these distressingly challenging times.
Innovative approaches and inspired visionary solutions keep eluding your grasp.
This is because the impact of epic change on you is significant. And… You are not alone.
As a leader you are dealing with complicated challenges present in the illusive epic change of these times.
You can’t navigate this epic change, its challenges, and unknown territory ahead unless ‘your come from’ is Epic.
Simply the Best Coaching helps you move into the Epic Expansion these times require of your leadership.
Feel welcome to contact me: sylvia@simplythebestcoaching.com
The poem Maya Angelou wrote in commemoration of the UN's 50th Anniversary in 1995 has continued relevance for humanity during these dark and difficult time now. Her words invite us to lead from this generous space of inner wisdom, shared knowing and expansive possibilities. Ready or not, it’s time.
Maya Angelou reads her poem "A Brave and Startling Truth" which she wrote in commemoration of the UN's 50th Anniversary, in 1995. A Brave and Startling Truth...
Our humanness is rooted in the ways we belong to each other. In fact our brains are hard-wired for social connections. Inclusion brings human dignity, diversity, equity and justice together in powerful and transformative ways.
House of Culture - Points of View | 📷: Sylvia Warren / Wild Wisdom Journeys
Funny thing about “right timing.” It has a way of not showing up when we think it should.
Instead we find ourselves waiting in the “In-Between” — a space between what has already happened and what has not happened yet.
What if that space is there for us to “catch up with ourselves” —see where we are now, given our journey to get there (or ‘here’ in this place, space and time).
The “In-Between” invites us to pause, to breathe in and breathe deeply, to appreciate and fully embody the distance we have traveled. This simple act releases us from perpetual motion, freeing us to catch up with the growth we have experienced, and who we are now that is more us, more powerfully self-expressed, than who we were before.
Such is the beauty and the power of being in the “In-Between” when we look all around us, rather than just constantly looking ahead.
So patiently allow the “In-Between” to reveal its riches to you. And notice the difference in your business, leadership and life.
House of Culture - Reykjavik, Iceland | 📷: Sylvia Warren / Wild Wisdom Journeys
📷: Sun Voyager - Reykjavik, Iceland
Courage is not about being fearless, it’s about letting fear transform you so you come into right relationship with uncertainty, make peace with impermananence and wake up to who you really are. ~Dr. Lissa Rankin
Too often we are afraid to slow down because of what we would experience in unhurried and unguarded moments. Yet when we take time to pause, we see and feel what we miss in our normal mode of “always being in motion.”
Experiencing Iceland via Wild Wisdom Journeys allowed a client to see and feel what she was missing in her fast forward pursuits. Pausing to look at this photo of the Sun Voyager and other images of Iceland, she became more present. During this virtual travel experience she felt herself shift into a state of “Awe.”
Different perspectives and deeper understandings opened the door to her becoming unstuck in persistent behaviors that don’t sereve or honor who she is. This release freed her to easily identify next steps. As we began to unpack the revelations of her journey, she started to reclaim her Inner Peace.
Her epipanies and transformational insights unearthed buried aspirations that once awakened clarified her best next steps. And in her words, she is now on a path to her “Personal AWE.”
The photo below reflects what experiencing “Personal AWE” looked like on my Wild Wisdom Journeys in Iceland—source of the transformational virtual travel adventure I’ve created to facilitate simple elegant solutions for leaders, like the client who gave me permission to share here the significance of her virtual Wild Wisdom Journeys experience.
📷: Skogafoss - Iceland
~Robert Bresson
Ethnias, a large nural by graffiti artist Eduardo Kobra at Porto Maravilha, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
(James Baldwin, Author - Beale Street)
Simply the Best Coaching helps inclusive women leaders experience new ways of seeing, thinking, feeling, knowing and acting to help them navigate the noise, confusion and chaos of energy depleting challenges and unprecedented—Epic—change.
Sylvia Warren, MBA, coaches inclusive women leaders, culture shifters, and entrepreneurial innovators to thrive as leaders — so they engage more fruitfully in difficult conversations, confidently make wise strategic decisions, and expand their influence and impact to create meaningful lasting results without forfeiting who they are or what they value.
