Welcome back, leader. I'm so excited to talk to you about the mess, the mess that made me a leader, specifically a contemplative leader, the mess, the messiness, the mess. The things that I did in the dark that I would dread for someone to know in public. The things I did to my staff, to my stakeholders, to my shareholders that I wasn't proud of. The words that came out of my mouth, the behavior that was unnecessary. It was driven by anger, hatred. bitterness, so many emotions that come up. And so I've lived the mess. I have lived the things that I'm shameful in doing either in the dark, behind closed doors, or in front of my staff. There were things that I just didn't care to say. I said it without compassion. I said it without care. I said it without any remorse. Because I was a messy, messy leader who was filled with so much trauma and so much programming and so much... conditioning. And it's not an excuse. It's not an excuse. I don't say this to bypass the responsibility that I have as a leader. What I'm doing today is sharing with you the messiness, the mess. I'm calling it the mess because the mess equals your message. And because of the messiness, I'm able to stand here, sit here, talk to you right here to tell you about the path that I experienced so that you don't have to follow that path in your shoes. So you don't have to go through what I went through. So the messiness started very young, like many of us, right? We've got some interesting childhood stuff. traumas, conditioning behaviors, you know, things that... Your parents told you, well-intended family members told you, the things that you learned in school or didn't learn in school, right? All of it, all of it. There's conditioning that happens. And what's interesting about the critical years of a child's life, and there's research that shows that before you're seven years old, you are embedded with the values of the values of your parents, your culture, your community, your extended family members. It's like we are in this theta brain wave level where we are absorbing, where we are tape recording everything into our unconscious mind. That's the research. So when you look back at that time period for yourself, What do you want to uncover? What do you want to unearth? So many of us have buried that and it's under the rubble right now. It's like a building came crashing down and you're like, I'm just going to leave that mess there because my nervous system doesn't know what to do with this. Consciously, I don't even know what to do with this, where to begin with this. How about some therapy? How about some other mental health work that I can do to unravel this? And so you may have done the work already. You may already know. You know, that was pretty traumatic. And it is what it is. Like, I'm one of three sisters. I'm one of three girls. I am the middle child. And what was interesting is that there were three girls raised by the same parents under the same roof, and we don't recall all of the same things. We don't have emotional markers on some of those memories. Because we're not the same human. We may have DNA shared, but... and environmental variables that we shared, but we did not capture those circumstances and recorded them as trauma like some of us did. So when I have conversations with my sisters about certain circumstances that are vivid in my mind and in my body because the body keeps the score, y'all need to read that book. It's incredible, especially if you're a leader, you got to read that book. I'm having conversations with them and I have a very strong memory about certain things and because my body, my nervous system has recorded them in history. And the only history I know is the history that's stored in my body. So as I'm bringing things up, they're going, I don't know what you're talking about. didn't experience that for myself. What do you mean you were in the other room? How do you, how did that not like register for you? And they're like, well, no, I mean, I, I was playing with my dolls. I don't know what you're talking about. And so I just, I just want to bring this to your attention because each of us are storing memories, AKA some trauma in our bodies and Because this is how our nervous systems are designed. Mine is not designed like yours. Yours is not designed like hers. Hers is not designed like his. Thank God. Thank God we're all so different. I mean, that is like the best news ever. We are all unique, individually, divinely designed, right? And so your history may be very different. Like my husband says all the time, not all of us had a bad childhood like you. what? You mean I'm the only one who had this kind of child? He's like, not everyone suffered trauma like you. Like you have to start looking at them individually and not through your pain, not through the lens of your historical memories. You have to separate yourself from that because not everybody experienced a crappy childhood. Ooh, that was one of the biggest, most incredible lessons that I've learned in this marriage. Probably the biggest, the biggest. So I bring the messiness up because it is our responsibility. It's like radical responsibility to do the work. to uncover the rubble. And maybe it's taking one brick at a time, right? Maybe it's taking one board at a time and moving it aside and then just contemplating, reflecting on it, maybe even praying over it. And maybe for some of you, you're taking a bulldozer and you're like, I'm just going to plow this shit out of the way because I got to do some work here, right? So whatever your nervous system is capable of doing right now, cool. right? Take your time if that sits better for you or get that dang bulldozer and plow it the hell out of the way. But the messiness, ooh, ooh, the mess, messiness, the mess equals your message. This is how you show up as a leader. It's like, listen, I'm flawed. I am extremely traumatized and conditioned in certain ways, but I'm going to show up as a leader. And I'm going to do the best I can to do the resolving of some of this work, to do the uncovering, to do the removal of the rubble so that I could be better for myself, better for my family. It's a byproduct. You do the work on yourself. Guess what? The byproduct is better for your family, better for your community, better for your business, better for your organization, better for fill in the blank. You do the work once for yourself, first and foremost, and then everyone else gets to reap the benefits. Ooh, the benefits. I am a better human because I was brave enough to say, ooh, that rubble, that's interesting. And I've taken a piece of brick out of the way one at a time. I'm not a bulldozer kind of chick. I'm not. No, I'm slow and steady. And I like to contemplate and like to reflect. For me, I need to ground in the learnings. I need to understand the learnings so I can change from the inside out. I'm not rushed. I'm not hurried. I am very intentional in how this work works for me. So the messiness is what is important here. This is the core of who you are as a leader. You have convictions because of the messiness. You have beliefs so strong. These beliefs that you have, oh my gosh, no one can overturn them. No one can change your mind because you lived through some crap, right? You lived through the mess and now you have a belief system that is anchored because of the experience, right? And so you are responsible if you're calling yourself a leader, formal or informally, if you're calling yourself a leader, whether you have a formal title or not, whether you're leading humans in an organization or leading humans in your family, you are a leader and you are responsible for doing this work. I know so many of us are afraid to go under the rubble. We are afraid to see what was left under the rubble because we've gone on to get careers, get married, have the children, have the dogs, have the pets, have the life, whatever, right? We've been busy, busy where we have forgotten there's rubble that we need to clear off. right? This is a hazardous location and no one has bothered to clear the hazard in decades, in years. And maybe this conversation that I hope you're open to having with me today is, huh, okay, there's mess in there. And here's how I know there's mess over there, because I've got some interesting patterns. You know, the self-abuse, oh, raise your hand. Raise your hand if you know about self-abuse. The self-abusive talk. That's filled with shame and guilt. Oh my gosh. For some of us, it's daily. We are so self abusive. It's like, you know, I wouldn't even allow my partner who I love, uh, not more than me, of course, but who I love second. Um, I wouldn't let him look at me cross-eyed. Why would I, why am I doing that to my, why am I talking to myself? Like I am an enemy. I should be my biggest ally, but my words, because if you were to put a microphone, oh, I've got one right here. If you were to put a microphone to my brain, to my mind, and if you were to hear the thoughts, the self-abuse, the self-shame, the guilt, all the feelings, all the feelings, if you were to hear those thoughts, And those emotions tied to those thoughts, you would cringe. You would be so shocked. Now, don't be so shocked because some of you are saying the same things I'm saying to myself. But the point I'm making is we need to... look at the signs of the mess that has been unattended the mess that's under the rubble and it looks like patterns and it looks like self-talk it looks like self-abuse it looks like self-sabotage it it it manifests in your everyday. Just look at how you treat others. Just look at how you treat your children. Just look at how you treat your employees, right? All you have to do is look at the results that you're creating to then reverse engineer the quality of your thoughts. I say this every time to my clients, show me your results and I'll show you the quality of your thoughts. Show me what you have produced and I will show you the quality of your belief systems. Show me the outputs and I will have a direct correlation to your inputs. That's all we have to do is look at what we've created in our lives to then go, okay, all roads lead back to the rubble. Okay. So all of this stuff that I've created, it's been, it's yielded a negative effect. you know, negative output, right? Because some things you've created are so incredibly amazing. Some things may have started out pretty rocky, but now they're like so incredibly amazing. But when you look at an output, And that output has yielded negative results. Well, okay, let's go and look. Let's go and look under the rubble. Let's go and see. Let's go and see what is left unattended that's been there under the rubble for decades, for years. What can we look at? Let's take one brick off at a time. Let's remove one debris off at a time so that we can do some contemplative work here. We're contemplative leaders after all. We're tired of surface level leading. We're tired of surface level conversations. We're tired of surface level politics. Oh my God. Talk about surface level. Let's go deep, y'all. Let's go deep. If you're going to run for office, please have some conviction and make sure that it is rooted and anchored in something bigger than your ego. Please. And I say that to every single leader, whether you have constituents or you have stakeholders or you have shareholders or you have customers or you have clients or you have community members or you have children. We need more contemplative leaders in our world now more than ever. We need you. We need you front and center. But you are of no use to us if you haven't done the work in clearing the rubble. So the mess that made me a leader, the mess that made me a contemplative leader was was tending to and having enough courage to go back and look under the rubble. To go, oh, I didn't know that was there. Wow. Wow. My nervous system must have put it there because it needed to protect me. And okay, that was interesting. And now what do I do about this? And what's incredible about the contemplative leader principles, the universal principles that we use, they are principles that we embody to help us move through the rubble. These principles were designed to bypass your ego, to bypass your conscious mind. These principles were designed to truly embed and embody and imbue this work that you were called to do. But we have to use these principles so that we can clear the rubble, so that we can then show up in our organizations, in our communities, and in our families. fully integrated, fully whole, huh? Oh my gosh. Can you imagine being anchored into something greater than your ego? Please say yes. Please say yes. This is the work that we contemplatives do every single day. This is serious business. You want surface level leadership? I'm not the gal for you. This club ain't for you. You're not in this collective. And that's okay. That's okay. That's the point of diversity, equity, and inclusion. You don't have to think like me. Thank God you don't think like me. You wouldn't be so kind to yourself if you actually thought like me. Listen, I'm being so honest. with you about all of the work that I've had to do. And so many of us are at the beginning of that journey while some of us are midway through the journey. I don't know if you ever end somewhere. I don't know if there's an end point and I don't care if there's an end point. I'm going to keep resolving things that keep popping up. Because I owe that to myself first and foremost. And secondly, I owe that to my family. And I owe that then thirdly to my clients and my community members and the collective of contemplative leaders that I'm creating here, that I'm building here, right? So I'm going to do the work first and foremost. So my mess has become my message. My mess has become my convictions. My mess has become this new leadership approach called contemplative leadership style. Call it style, call it approach. I don't care, right? This is not theoretical. This is formed in the fire. Like, let me tell you, the journey that I've been on Has not been easy. but I'm here and I've come through the fire. I'm here now. I don't know if I'll be in another fire, right? Like there's different circumstances, different events in my life that may or may not happen. I don't know, but I'm now on the other side of it. I'm on the other side of it today. And this is why I'm able to share with you what contemplative leadership style is. And these five principles that we embody, that we embed, that we imbue, that we put into practice, it's called operationalizing it. If you're an empirical researcher like me, then you know there's a conceptual idea, but we got to operationalize this sucker. And that's what we do with these five principles. This is how we make this pragmatic. This is how we make this real, right? Like in the real world, real life, real time, right here, right now. This is how we show up with these five principles. And I show you these principles inside the sanctuary. Join me inside there. It's a free community for, for contemplative leaders. The reason why it's not on Facebook or on LinkedIn groups or wherever else there's a group is because I want you away from social media. I want you away from doom scrolling, drool scrolling dooms. Well, there's some drooling too. I follow a lot of chefs and like pastry chefs. Oh my God. I'm like drooling all the time. So I created this sanctuary to get us the hell off of social media because that's where the conversation is deep. It is sacred. It is safe. It's where we can reveal our messiness and we get to work on that rubble so that we can show up so anchored, grounded in spiritual principles that are bigger and greater than your ego can even understand. That ego of ours gets us into some interesting circumstances, but we're contemplative. So we're highly aware of our ego and we make sure that we anchor into something that's greater and more important than our physical selves. So contemplative leaders like you and I, we do the work. We're not afraid. We know our messiness and we're not afraid to go dig things out of the rubble. Yeah, there's a rubble over here. You can't see it. Good, because it's ginormous. And I've been working on this pile for a long time, but I'm not in a rush. I have no shame anymore about this rubble. I will talk to you about anything that I've experienced and the good, bad, and the hideous. And I'm very honest. And my family knows the crisis and the chaos that my body has experienced through our childhood, through adulthood, through just last week. So I'm not afraid to talk about those experiences because my mess, all that mess, is my message to you today. A contemplative leadership is not grounded in theory. There's theory, sure, but there's spiritual truths. Spiritual truths that are so ancient to us that maybe our ancestors knew about them, but it doesn't matter. We're here now doing the work, but it is greater than our egos. We're grounded in something far deeper than superficial surface level leadership. So my mess is my message. And I wanted to share a little bit about your mess, my mess. We're messy. We're messy. But don't disregard that mess. It's time for us to do something about that mess. And I invite you into the sanctuary where we get to do that together. So wherever you are listening to this episode, you're going to go to the show notes. You may be even watching this. By the way, there are video components to my podcast episodes. So if you're on Spotify or you are on Apple and you're listening to the audio, but you want to see my facial expressions and my hands moving all over the place, you're going to want to watch the video. So in the show notes, you'll have a link to go watch these videos. But in the show notes, you will also find the link to join me inside the sanctuary. Get you off of social media into a private, sacred, very safe space for us to work on our mess. All right, leader. I hope you enjoyed our time together today. I know I do every single time I meet with you. And I'm looking forward to serving you inside the sanctuary. So hurry up. I'll go see you over there. Take good care.
