Well, it is Sunday evening again. I work to stop myself from saying “Where has the week gone” every time I sit to write one of these love letters to you at the end of another weekend. It is part of my commitment to working in my best expression of my integrity and definitely not going to always be perfect.
I know I can get all anxious about that just like I become anxious if I remain thinking about how fast life really does pass. When I do not choose to reject the emotion attached to the thought immediately, I can get stuck and procrastinate. If I let it in, I know I need to move it and remain conscious during the processing of it out of my head and through my body so I might dance or write a brain dump. If I am weak in my state of being, I will start to scroll on social media.
Can you relate to the work of disempowering a trigger?
I trigger the heck out of some people.
One of the most frustrating things for my clients to get used to is that the style of coaching I prefer is non-directive. That means I may trigger you in a question and then take the venom or reflect it right back to you. I often avoid giving my clients the answers to their problems unless they specifically hired me to. Instead, when I have my full-on coaching hat on, I redirect towards revelation instead of focusing on education. There are times I do have to educate so there is not only equal access to the wisdom to share but also equity in the ability to take advantage of the equal opportunity to access that goddess wisdom view of life. That means there needs to be a competence and capacity level established and receptivity to the process.
In transformational mindset coaching and visionary leadership, life is viewed as a school, and each of our experiences is a relationship of some sort and a lesson to be learned from or ignored. If I were to direct you, I might take away a learning opportunity for you and you will just repeat the lesson. If you were looking to speed up the process of acceptance, gain commitment to the process or jump into new uncomfortable zones, that delay sure as hell would not be effectively coaching you.
I might resort to bossing you for my emotional egoic needs or jump back into educating which would be directing a version of you that was more congruent to me. I much rather be resolved with the fact that if you need a person to blame then do not hire me. I will definitely not open myself up to that positioning in the fire. I get enough push back from people that asked for help and then reject me because it is working. This is why ALL curvy coaching is intentionally non-directive until it is clear there is a need to curve into education, inspiration, or back to principles of motivation. But in order to be transformational, which is why a client will usually choose me and my framework, I need to be able to style flex amongst all the psyches with an emphasis on guiding revelation so that there is attained wisdom and integration into behaviors by each client moving forward.
The Feminine and Masculine ways of establishing the personal agency
I am an advocate for women that identify as holding and leaning with the feminine power flex of energies as their dominant style.
A way to view a feminine leadership approach in contrast to a masculine power flexing one can be explained through farming. Depending on the seasonal and social needs, one style may be more beneficial in cultivating your life.
The feminine power-flexing farmer thinks to prepare and fill in the gaps in their process before there is an emergency need. This farmer will tend to surrender to the need for urgency. To the feminine-powered flexing farmer, timing is everything. Getting the best seeds in fertile soils too early or too late will yield less abundant outcomes. Seeds that have been prepared to receive optimally and that are nourished to give from, are seeds invested into long-game successful high yield intentions.
In contrast, there is the masculine energetic pattern of farming dynamics. Not wrong, not right, just intentionally different.
If the entire land can be cultivated for mass reward in the more immediate, the masculine-powered style flexing farmer may use willpower to get that golden yield. This may be the intention despite the fact it may create an obstacle such as less fertile soil or weeds in the next planting season. There is an urgency and sense of performance and dominance that is innate in the masculine power code. There are times of high stress and survival that require that fast acquired respect such that there is leverage off another to impact any future obstacles. There is no time to obtain positioning for more power through cultivating optimal inner power so the target is a combined force instead. It sets the tone but is still non-directive if it honors surrender in key decision-making and remains focused on the now.
The rhythm is what gets you
There is a known rhythm of reaction to inflection points and the masculine flex will tend to follow a projection and injection of seed at the vulnerable time. It may also conserve energy for a later war it may in fact be setting itself up for. In that way, it is not mindless but rather hopeful there will be such abundance and progress out of the initial performance of crops. With that intention of outward challenge and performance, that farmer intends to invite and gather more help based on past performances than future yields. This is in contrast to the feminine power that is intentional on multiplying for power in the future. This also requires surrender but with much more faith and patience with the process. The masculine farmer’s approach requires great personal strength or great outside personal reverence and trust given to it with urgency. It sound’s like force but to the person who holds a skill, you get transformation too. For example, we all have had great sports or business coaches that ran this way. They basically robbed us of any sense of personal authority immediately, which seemed harsh. It led and set the tone of commitment by setting up a very rigid structure with clear consequences and then that person coached us through the process of intentional commitment to that initial decision we made. Every day we are forced to choose to stay or leave. The key here is that our freedom is never inhibited. We can abandon our integrity any day. In bad coaching through the masculine power authority, that option is never there. There is only failure and fear, not a choice. It is constantly the dance between manipulation and submission of our authority instead of a surrender. In bad coaching through feminine authority, our leadership never commits or surrenders and remains chaotic and basically gives its power to farm without sponsorship or leadership away.
Harmonic Coaching
In my coaching, whether I use feminine flexing or masculine flexing way, it is always my intention to leave each client with an experience of having a sense of achievement and commitment. The approach is bespoke and custom tailored to the personality of the person before me. I asked clients to make a decision to play and stay but I am very clear that if we do form this partnership there will be working to do in this relationship. When we each own our role and responsibilities and then execute each day, before long, we become more confident people together. I get a gift and give a gift that way.
How to be coachable
To be coachable at all, we must be willing to surrender the ego at the door immediately and somehow trust we will gain confidence, and conviction and with greater self-agency, take more risks and reject more emotions that we became addicted to when they no longer serve our goals. Directing you through the art of surrender without giving your power away is a hustle. There are curves and it is not easy. We, as a patriarchal society, have not been conditioned to understand there is a different way to surrender the pain that is not about avoiding all the experiences required in your life school curriculum or by numbing any infliction of pain. Instead, the Curvy Hustler is accepting and committed to being coached through the surrender and receptivity of power-building tools and practices we need to master.
Out of ignorance and also fear we all have been somewhat robbed of the comfort of the feminine power flex. We were convinced of its negative impact and influence on our mission as women to become the evolving humans that would take the lead as become role model options right now. There was a lot of prevention there in the role I had as a therapist, technique trainer, or health and wellness educator but not a lot of nondirective, yet very revered style flexing.
In coaching, my effectiveness has evolved to run deep and go as wide as we need to in order to correct that. We need harmony. That is not always equal but it is always equitable because my ideal client is now someone who has more money than time and more confidence than comparison stopping them I know they will do what they need to do in order to maintain the energy for participating with the shared intention of optimal outcomes. Nondirect, compassionate, and yet high commitment coaching is a style that is not for everyone but…
If it is for you, and you commit to seeing through the entire process, in a year your life will change. In three years it will have changed for the better forever.
This week’s Homework: Fear {less} Love {more} action step
While it feels so much safer when there is an outside place or person to blame for our unexpected or feared outcomes, how can you practice being non-directive with someone else wanting to do just that? For example, if a teacher has a student that shows up without their homework because they said they did not know what to do. You could take on the authority and direct them on what to do now or…
You can recite the rule “Assigned homework must get completed in the timeline given or else there is a loss of playground time”
YOu can recite the rules and then ask “Is there an action you can take to come back into integrity for the day?” or you can ask them several questions requiring them to think about their process of being in the situation of not knowing what to do. It is to provoke revelation and to get them out of their head about the quality or shame. There they may not be too emotional to ask for exactly what they need to get it done and regain integrity with the intention to pass the class.
You can yell at them and feed into any loss of personal power or fuel the rebellion identity they may hold.
The trick for success is actually coaching out the person inside you who will be the CEO of their life by being the Chief Executive Officer of your own experience in leadership and relationships with another this week.
The choice is yours on how you approach this week’s assignment. Come back to this email and comment below.
Tip: To commit to success, tell me about what you commit to doing this week right now in the comments. It will establish the accountability factor. Then come back and tell me what you experienced when completing the action. Tell me how you decided to approach the situation and if it was the correct power flex for the person you interacted with.