Have you missed me?
This weekly musing has run amuck amongst a 90 day challenge that was made to me seventy days ago that involves me getting a guidebook published and out but I wanted to return to our Curvy Musings asap and explain that as well as something I really struggle with in case you do too.
How do you manage the personal code switches and powerflexing you need to do in order to get the respect and hold authority in the world and in your home?
I realize this was a major blind spot as a conditioned Alpha female of my youth and I had thought I worked on it enough but I am realizing as I heal and evolve post marriage that a two entrepreneur household needs a different rule book and a lot of relationship development because #entrepreneurlife is such an absurd yet amazing power play in itself.
Saturday I had a win around this that turned into some self sabotage that I will get to later but first I want to celebrate the win part in case you are like me and you tend to ignore the little wins or minimize rather big ones because you are as self critical about your performance benchmarks as me! I have been enrolling my ex husband for about 3 months into owning a 10/10 divorce for a better coparenting relationship. This has been such a testing lesson of surrender and release for four years now so I am doing this by enrolling him into a better relationship with himself and then having that person have a better relationship with me. The difficulties had left me deciding to let lacrosse be his thing and I really did not come around things after the pandemic. On Saturday he and I actively shared the vision I presented to him about co parenting better at our son’s first parent’s weekend. Big win but, it also made me a little sad. I had a momentary realization that I was not expecting and with it, I had a lot of inner mental chatter that left me losing my $%iT with my daughter on the way home.
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I was always kinda the problem.
As I sat there next to my ex and the others, I couldn’t believe how much it felt like I was in a time warp. That was the problem or maybe I was the problem but nothing had changed. It wasn’t even about being back in 2017 or 2018. It was like nothing had changed since I was sitting in the Lacrosse house back in 1993 with my ex being the college kid like my son. It was just like some other parent’s party with the same general Lax guys and their girls and the moms getting drunk on mimosas while their dad’s compared their son’s plays that day. This time I was the parent and not the girl friend. I thought to myself this was once the shared dream but now, it was just a confirmation of how much I was incompatible with this man’s vision of the good life. His life vision was always fairly simple. To get here with his son on the weekends.
My life vision was always going to be doing something bold between those weekends like talk on stages across the country, be on shows and try to get the Curvy Hustle Culture to go viral. My ex had different people to “solve” what we fought over yet, as I watched him, little of his life seemed to have changed in what blew us up. I was in a win but I was also sad. I realized I never felt safe and covered enough to really let my guard down and code switch until very late in the marriage and when I did, it must have really confusing to him because that was the same timeline a lot of the distrust issues came from but I am not going to lie, we needed counseling back a decade ago and I seriously did not see it.
Now, after about six hours of being back in that life, I was tired. I was thinking we could really use some counseling and yet it was so much better than the past two years have been in keeping the peace. It got me to think how important it was to work so hard on this the past few months and how messed up it is that this was the case. I think it scared me to think…”Do I even want this with him?” “How important is this to the children after all?” Maybe we just get to have two different families. Who do I get to be if I am just not a part of my ex’s life in any way ever again?” and I sadly think I might be happier and for the first time in thirty years I considered just letting completely go of any image of relationship if this was going to be the capacity for it . What is really best for our children and me? That shook me a bit.
I know it shook me because of the way I behaved on the car ride home. I definitely did not have the emotional resiliency I thought I had to consider something like this. My daughter needed that win this weekend. I am not sure if my son did. I am fairly sure my ex could care less and I thought I really did but now I am thinking I don’t need this level of effort for the ROI anymore.
The Art of being an Ambivert being in Relationship on an Introverted Day.
Ambiverts are people who are both introverted and extroverted in their social energetics depending on the situation. In these types of things, I am introvert all the way but, I had to be friendly and open to possibilities. I had spent the day trying to approach people by who they are in their use of personal space, manner of connection and communicative force and then speaking to them in that psychological safe way to connect. I am learning in Heart Core leadership that it is helpful to be enrolled in ourselves first and then open to the possibility of being able to connect in ways with people that we were not expecting. It all comes easier if we listen in on who the person is instead of bombard them with who we are upon meeting. I call this a Communication Powerflex.
Powerflexing is a communication skill focused on the psychosocial and energetic way of holding other people high. You are looking to set up their best experience of the interaction with you without feeling powerless in giving them that authority in the interaction. Powerflexing requires us know our own underlying communication style and theirs. Then during the conversation you can code switch to connect and bond. Saturday I was working hard to fit in by code switching and yet be myself in conversations. Code switching is the term used in corporate circles for when someone plays a cultural chameleon. You learn to match the cultural “normal” of the other person in order to be accepted as a friend and not a foe. I still have some code switch work to do when placed in circles I enter feeling very awkward. Being the only divorced parents of the crew felt very awkward.
I have learned that conscious leadership is a lot more like an adaptive dance than a strict ritual. We can share power and will empower but do not ever take power or disempower others. If we do, chances are it is one of our mental nerds popping into our mind and taking over our behaviors into more comfortable patterns of reaction. Like I said, all the Lacrosse family stuff kind of just stopped for me four years ago. I was out of the Lax World code zone. The entire sports mom role in general was never really a robe I felt comfortable wearing. I did it “for the family” and to be supportive of my son and now that family is no longer existing and my son is well, nineteen and not looking for his mom to be around alot. To be honest, I can now see how disappointing it may have been for my ex to see me so disinterested in what was so important to him. I just never new him intimately enough until now to see that that life was an entire joy and connection with a time in his life he had a lot of vision and youth on his side. “Just the past to forget to me” being forward facing in my personality was “The best days of my life” to him being a bit more nostalgic.
.
I mean the scenery changes, the name on the jersey changes, the exact people changed and the age of the kids and the parents change, but for the most part, I was powerflexing on a new level of accepting myself now. I wanted my son to see I cared and yet, I was not sure if he wanted me to remain there or not. I realized there is still a lot more family healing to do but that is part of the journey that I think a lot of medicine women and men sign up to do. The everyday attachment to the worldly story and the journey into a spiritual assignment sometimes converges at a place that can feel like the gap between who we were, who we know we are not now and who we still understand we are not quite yet molded to be.
How I failed my own success !!!
So long story short, I was really in my head about the fact that after 3 months of work on this coparenting shift, I got what I wanted but did I still want it? I also got to see that not being there with this man, in these sideline story situations from 2021-2022 did not matter one bit. I still did not feel very free or passionate about being a lax mom in a lax mom lifestyle. I comfortably step right back into it all but I guess I just expected a different experience because I really feel like I have such a different perspective on life. Then I got really confused because if that was true, why was I reacting hours later in the car the same way I hated to a few years ago? Here I was, three months of core leadership and powerflexing practice and I got the outcome I have been trying to have for about four years with this man and I still had absolutely nothing in common with him to talk about besides the kids. That saddened me because that was always the case. I just made the most of my own convenient illusion. We were attracted to each other and helpful to each other’s plans for life but not really compatible. In other words, we both lived a fairly compromised half a life and it had nothing to do with the things we said broke us up. It had nothing to do with his reactions and my fears or my reactions and his fears. It had nothing to do with the fact we were divorced or not or if either of us had evolved. Saturday confirmed I want to excel in the enrollment of me in this new situation because right now I don’t want to be enrolling him to be there again, but I love my son.
Can you relate to the inner game of self awareness and leveling up on your own relationships?
As leaders we tend to be busy and processing things a lot. We can forget how to let down the load and just follow the crowd sometimes and just make the win be about learning something. As business builders we forget how much of our success will be in the enrollment into another’s vision meeting ours. To do this we need to communicate. Even when it is uncomfortable. We need to listen and not react. Enrollment in one thing is our level of excellence in enrollment in everything. Enrollment is all about powerflexes and code switches and levels of intimacy in social exchanges. We get to have new relationships in uncomfortable new circles we want to be in. We get to expect to be the CEO of our life across the board. We get to keep changing.
xoxo- Dr. Lisa
We learn to live enrolling and being enrolled because we want to roll with the tides, not fight the waves.
I am still working on not having other people suffer for when I am in a wave of habit or self sabotage. I use my quick and very detailed multi-dimensional assessments to figure me and other people out. I am a passionate, free, loving woman but I am still an evolving human. We all are really trying to be better humans but some of us do not see our own behaviors. Feel free to get your assessment and live debrief now.
Well, what did you get out of this?
What are you operating as and how are you doing in code switching and powerflexing? Do you know the difference?
I was thinking of holding some workshops to give people the tools of self reflection and for building skills in enrolling relationships. Reply back if you are interested.