Strong Woman Chronicles

Believing Eyes

All my life I’ve adored words – the way they’re formed, their meanings, inflections, different languages – you name it where there are words, butterflies flitter in my stomach.

One of my favourite childhood passions was…..wait for it……….reading the telephone directory. Aged nine a flash of genius struck me. What if I picked a road in my nearby town, some 20 miles away, then systematically searched the telephone book from A-Z for all the people that live in that street?

I was beside myself with anticipation. Think of all those words I’d have to read ~ with great precision ~ in order to find the names of the people living in the 52 houses on one street. This was a challenge I couldn’t resist. It never occurred to me to wonder if other girls spent hour after hour scouring entries of this kind.

Years later I wrote a raft of publications as an academic, supervised postgraduate theses and boy did I need the discipline of trawling through line upon line of [often mindless] words.

Then a decade ago, on an idyllic beach holiday I met a wordsmith mentor to take my passion to the next level. Robert, businessman by day, champion Scrabble player by night winning competitions over the world.

Across a gin & tonic he offered to teach me the true art of playing Scrabble the Big-Boy way.

Could I resist? Course not. Leaving my then-boyfriend [known also as Mr Dull] to read his book on Chairman Mao I slipped away to be taught by a Master. Two weeks later I was within one point of Roberts scores.

How he grinned at his protégé’s progress. Robert saw something in the way I savoured words; he saw my insatiable thirst for rearranging, and strategizing. I discovered a deeper talent with words than I anticipated.

He helped me develop confidence in myself through words and most importantly by allowing himself to teach all he knew, without his ego being threatened.

Sonia Choquette, a spiritual teacher talks of ‘Believing Eyes’. These are people who see what you cannot see, often gifts you have overlooked, and call them out. Believing Eyes are the ones who believe that you can be a proficient scrabble player, even though you’ve rarely played a game. Sonia says it is rare, if not impossible, to fully realise our potential without Believing Eyes. I would not be where I am today, doing what I’m doing, without many pairs of Believing Eyes along the way.

Be Believing Eyes for someone in your life. It will make all the difference ~~~~~oh and in case you’re wondering, I found the 52 owners in that street, after several months!

Pimp my Job

I absolutely love my job.  I love the work, my colleagues, my clients, everything.  I admit I am lucky, as I have had jobs before that were more torture than pleasure.  Some people don't even think work should be a pleasant experience.  Perhaps you are trapped in your own workplace nightmare.  If so, there's help at hand.

Just like lucky MTV viewers who have their rides (cars) pimped (extreme makeover), Ned (communications networking genius) promises to Pimp Your Job and turn it into something you would be proud of.  I'm blessed not to need Ned's assistance, how about you?

Big Apple Bites

It's 5am in Brooklyn. You got it - that's Brooklyn, New York,

I'm over here to attend a conference - and there's something funny about that. It's the word 'attend'.

Most often I don't get to simply attend, absorb or relax fully at conferences. I've made it my place to deliver either a keynote or a workshop at pretty well all conferences I've been to over the past 3 years.

Here's the thing. When we go to conferences to listen to 'gurus', 'experts' 'successful people' we can get lost in the dynamism, the story, the success, the sheer wow factor of whoever is talking. At least that's what can happen to me.

We can hold these awesome people up as exemplars - they have the answers, the strategies, the path. Of course, [we might tell ourselves] if we listen very very very carefully we might learn one or two teensy lessons that transport us to whatever it is we see they have.

Hmmmm....know the feeling?

The focus here, as I see it, is 'over there' with others. And wow this can be powerful. As long as our connection to ourselves and the integrity of that doesn't get lost.

I'll tell you how this works when I speak. I'll typically talk about life as a 'successful' businesswoman, mother, woman in my own right with a solid identity as Danusia. I'll talk of being a mum of seven - Holy Moly - from then on in the audience can blow their own brains up.

As I continue talking they are busy making shedloads of stories up about me & my super abilities. They ask questions about managing, being slim, how I stretch time to fit, am I married to a millionaire - they seek a holy grail to what they think I have. Or surely I wouldn't be standing talking to them would I?

Since I can't control their responses [yet have witnessed a pattern many times now] I go straight to th heart of this awe-inspiring-made-up stuff that could stand in the way of the audience to discover something from my message, FOR THEMSELVES.

Because they aren't me. And I'm not them. Doesn't work that way.

No point even trying to make comparisons.

Let's face it, there are never going to be too many women who choose to simultaneously build a full-on career while growing and nurturing seven kids. Objectively, this is not the easiest route in life. If I were looking at me, I'd call me Mad!

Here's what I see the danger is: what scuppers many of us, especially when we listen to 'Top' speakers is we focus on the amazingness of them rather than asking ourselves: What does this person have to say that will help me be more of who I am?

In a couple of hours I'm off to the conference. I know I'll be impressed by Andrea Lee, Michael Port & Milana Leshinsky. I'm eager to hear from them. I've not come all this way to ignore their wisdom.

AND I'm most excited to listen to them, stay connected with what is true for me [for my heart, soul, life, longings] and then go kick ass in the world.

Tell you more when I get back folks.

XXX

Confessions of a Self Saboteur - Part II

I was born ugly or at least that’s what my mother told me.

At 7years old the reason she said my real mother gave me away was ‘because your birthmarks made your face ugly’.

Inching the mirror up to my nose ~ I’m super short sighted so it needed to be touching the tip of my nostrils~ I was sure I wasn’t THAT ugly that my own mother was compelled to get me out of her sight.

Over and over I heard the same message. Ugly ~ Birthmark ~Easier to get rid of you ~ Lucky to have a home~ being taken into Care is an option ~

Look as I did, I just couldn’t agree with my mother’s view. Sure I wasn’t the best looking girl around. What with specs [bottle thick lens of course] and blonde ultra fine hair in thin plaits ~ my heart knew she had it wrong.

I checked daily, sometimes hourly. I looked close. So close I knew every crevice of my face ~ the chickenpox scar above my left eye, the moles, bushy darker-than-my hair eyebrows.

You could say I made a study of my face because I felt I had to.

It was as if my life depended on it. Am I really that ugly? I’d repeat internally. Am I so unpalatable my natural mother wants nothing to do with me?

I reckoned not on the basis that it didn’t make logical sense. After all I knew first-hand girls who were truly unattractive yet their mothers thought they were the bees-knees, sliced bread, the hunky dory……

It didn’t make sense that I was gross, worthy of casting aside at a year old because my face was unbearable to be with.

I looked for evidence or proof that my adopted mum’s words were true or more hopefully untrue. It seemed she was right about my ugliness when no girl at my convent school included me in chat about who is pretty. The message that ‘boys don’t make passes at girls with glasses’ played into my ugly-girl self-dialogue; oh and then there was that time when three boys mocked my wrinkly knees.

As I searched for a counterbalance to all this I felt desolate. If I believed my ugliness drove my natural mother away, then it looked to me like I had two choices. 1) Accept this lying down and take on the identity of UGLY with the choices and consequences this would bring or 2) build a sense of self from a belief that I am not my body and that I am beautiful, in my own unique way.

It took a long time to live fully the second choice. Waking before my husband to be fully made up; never answering the door without full make up; not one friend ever seeing me without ‘dolling myself up’; - always trying to measure up physically to avoid re-enacted rejection.

Slowly, small gestures by others and by myself to me, meant I saw through the veneer that beauty is external. I realised, as I healed the little girl in me that ugliness was not my issue. It was my adopted mothers way of dealing with her own sense of not being pretty enough as a woman. I woke up to knowing beauty is indeed inside and that I’m a good looking woman.

I didn’t need to hide or have a need to be ashamed.

Aged 34 I met my natural mother ~ no mention was made of looks, no reason around ugliness led to my adoption. Her reasons for giving me a different upbringing than she could provide, at that time, were not about my physical appearance.

I spent many years fearful I would be exposed as a fraud – the ugly girl who needed to make up to be pretty. Now I walk head high, lipstick or not, knowing that beauty is from within.

We can choose to not believe the stories others make up about us. We can, with compassion, forgive people for projecting their insecurities onto us ~ fact is, we never have to believe them if we don’t want to!

I wish you a day in which you have a solid sense of who you are and what you are about. Let me know what this sparks off for you, if anything.

Deal-A-Day Sites

You'll probably guess from previous posts I'm a resourceful woman. In fact, being resourceful is an important value of mine.

Don't confuse this with being mean, or tight-fisted. It's not even as if when I open my purse, moths come flying out. No. I can be as lavish and extravagant as Paris Hilton [without her inheritance, that is].

Growing up, my father, an immigrant entrepreneur, made and lost money and one of the ways I'd know how the bank stakes were doing was by the food we ate. When deals were flowing and customers paying there would be roast chicken followed by trifle. In lean moments, my mother would try to convince me that Spam and jelly [no fruit cocktail in it though] was almost as good as my favourite roast.

Living in an area where wealth was taken for granted [Dartmoor in the South West] - with the accompanying attitude 'why live here if you aren't loaded' I became used to passing for rich while being resourceful. Despite living a couple of doors away from Lord Foot, my mother and I regularly attended jumble sales packed with discarded aristo trinkets.

Mum & I chuckled over bargains and I learned a precious lesson about being grateful for finding buried treasures in unlikely places.

If you too share a glee for offers then you may want to visit some of Jennifer's links to online bargains. Quantities are often limited, but bargains are there to be enjoyed.

Happy Shopping folks!

FREE Test to find more of Yourself

I've been reminded recently of the power of the Enneagram. It's a personality typing system that consists of nine different types with everyone considered to be one single type, although we can have traits belonging to other ones. While it's uncertain whether this type is genetically determined, many believe it is already in place at birth.

The nine types (or "enneatypes", "ennea" means "nine") are universally identified by the numbers 1 to 9. These numbers have a standard way of being placed around the Enneagram symbol. Enneagram authors have attached their own individual names to these numbers.

People of a particular type have several characteristics in common, but they can be quite different nevertheless. It depends among other things on their level of mental health. Unhealthy (neurotic) people from a particular type can look quite different from healthy ones. Riso and Hudson distinguish 9 levels of mental health and have type descriptions for each level of each enneagram type.

To find out which Enneagram type you are, see which description fits you most, complete this free Enneagram Test.

Self Made Man Shows the Way

I'm reading an amazing book at the moment.

Written by Norah Vincent, it's the story of the year in which she disguised herself as a man.

Norah built a new identity as Ned - honing a facial hair technique, binding her chest, having her hair cut into a flat top, wearing rectangular spectacles, building muscle bulk and buying her 'packable softie', and hiring a voice coach to deepen her voice.

Norah is neither a transsexual not a transvestite. Her aim was to taste portions of male experience unavailable to her as a female observer.

Her story covers her journey of immersion as a man - her 8 month stint on a men only bowling team; strip club culture; dating women; interviewing and then working as a salesman; living in a monastery & being part of a men's movement group.

Norah's daring, exposing, sad and painful experiment to see what it's like as a man is nothing short of awesome. As she says, " I had to do a lot of crossing out as I crossed from woman to man. I hadn''t anticipated that as I started out as Ned. I thought that by being a guy I would get to do all the things I didn't get to do as a woman...but when it came to the actual business of being Ned I rarely felt free at all....spontaneity went out of the window, replaced by terseness, dissimulation & control. I hardened and denied myself to the point of ossification".

Norah as Ned discovered how somebody is always evaluating your manhood. Whether it's other men, women or even children. And everybody is on the lookout for your weakness or inadequacy. Ned was scared stiff of being 'found out' and it wasn't being found out as a woman that terrified him. It was being found out to be less than a real man that meant he endured endless scrutiny and self-scrutiny.

The straitjacket of the male role - no less constrictive than its feminine counterpart [in different ways of course] - is that men are not allowed to be complete human beings. Instead men end up as a jumble of stoic poses.

Women's expectations of men too were highlighted and especially how hard we are to please. We want men to be in control, big and strong in spirit and body while at the same time tender, vulnerable, 'bunny soft' and maybe even subservient to our whims. At least that's what Ned felt. And on the other hand Ned saw how in turns men can feel both brutish and powerless in the company of women. Ned surprised himself by getting in touch with the enormity of men's rage at and love for women.

The worse part for Norah was what she calls the 'three-note emotional range' that Ned was 'allowed' to experience. This range embraced bravado through to rage.

If you are looking for a deep, funny, scary, eye-raising read, you could do no better than to buy Self Made Man.

Let me know what you think.

Starting Out with Meaning

An engaging site, Monday9amtv.com, offers free videos each Monday morning that allow you to learn about the world in 5 minute snips of film. And the subjects are always compelling.

The other week there was an interview with activist John La Rose who died recently at the age of 78. He was an eternal optimist and imbued with total passion and joy. I got a lift all week watching this simple film. Click on Play the Film and let me know what you think.

Love, as ever

x

In the Entrepreneurial Habit

Monks know a thing or two about business. They understand the core components of top companies.

In the sixth-century, the Rule of Saint Benedict asked monks to take vows of stability, conversatio[Latin], and obedience. Stability emphasized the need to work for the good of the community. Hence, all actions taken were in the context of "will this be of assistance to all rather than just a few?"

Eileen McDargh tells us why conversatio is so important in the workplace.

And if you need more convincing that Monks can show the way beyond the rosary, consider the case of one of the USA’s top ‘fast 50’ Innovators. LaserMonks is headed up by Father Bernard McCoy, Abbey Steward at the Cistercian Abbey. He is perhaps not your average monk.

He has a pilot's licence, is an avid racketball player, is proficient in five musical instruments and started his first business at the age of 12.

And now he runs a very successful e-business venture selling printer and imaging supplies. "I was looking for a toner cartridge for use here at the monastery, and it struck me how incredibly expensive black dust actually was," explains Fr McCoy. "It's a product that everybody needs that is sold with an extraordinary mark-up. And I thought: 'there's got to be a better way'." And there was.

The monastery was looking for a way to raise money, both for their own living expenses and for use in charitable endeavours. “Traditionally, monks used to sell what they produced on their own property, but today you simply can't do that. There are only five of us in the monastery, and we asked ourselves, what do we have, what are the resources we can use to support ourselves?”

He voiced his idea of selling cut-price printing supplies to a couple of manufacturers, who were "delighted" to hear from him.

By making deals directly with manufacturers and selling over the internet, LaserMonks typically save consumers 30-60% on standard retail prices. Obviously the knock-down prices are a significant factor in their customer appeal, but Fr McCoy thinks there is more to it than that.“Our customer service is following on our order's tradition of hospitality. We try to transfer monastic hospitality into commerce hospitality, if you will. We try to treat every single customer with kid gloves”.

What I love is how LaserMonks use their passions and strengths, aligned with their values, to create a profitable modern business. Great eh!

When Passion meets Profit

One of the joys of working with people who want to align what they do with who they are is I hear of all kinds of business ventures that tie-together passion & profit.

Cynics among us say this just isn’t possible. That is, making money at what you love doing.

TOSH!

I work with plenty of people who do just that.

One client swapped his Operational Director’s post to run a ski chalet business; another swapped a Directorship in a corporation for 3 days heading up an export business and the rest working on the family farm; while one client traded a senior post to re-train as a chef and after an entrepreneurial spell is about to re-enter the corporate world – this time with food as the centre, because that’s his passion.

Here then is a super duper example of someone bringing together passion [in this case literally] with profit.

Coffee, Cake and Kink is the brainchild of Alan who dreamed of a stylish space where he could enjoy quality coffee and kink. His idea sprung from frustration with a lack of a stylish, upbeat space where he could enjoy three things he likes most in life - coffee, cake and kink!

With almost everything you see at the cafe for sale (with a possible exception of the personnel), customers enjoy cakes but also much more. From gifts, mugs, postcards and coasters to books, prints and art to cuffs and jewellery, all their merchandise is top quality kink.

Not satisfied just as a café, you can find classes on all manner of sensual subjects here as well as events featuring scrumptious art. I’m delighted to meet clients here for an almond macaroon and a steaming coffee – how clever Alan is to team up his desires so neatly.

I wonder then: how could you combine your passions and bring ‘profit’ to your life?