True leaders heed the call
to live out loud through events in
their lives that demand participation
from a deeply emotional place.
One obvious example is Michael J. Fox.
After contracting Parkinson's, advocacy for
patients with the disease became his life
work. However, most emotional story lines are
much more subtle.
Many of us were born into adverse
circumstances or
suffered hardships in the course of life. At
the same time, each of us entered the world
with an inherent
genius for creative problem solving. Those
who are able to survive and thrive often
become passionate about lending a hand to
others who still suffer.
Decades of
experience in transcending your greatest
challenge has given you an evolving mastery.
Your unique expertise may not yet have a
name, but it is a potency within that cries
out for full-throated voice.
Some of you are on the path of expressing
your gift with the precise passion that
attracts the people for whom you can make a
difference. For you sense that only then can you gain the
freedom that comes with fully "singing your song," and until then
you may suffer a sense of impaired vitality.
What may be missing is that you are not
contributing anywhere close to capacity.
I have come to realize that I have a
rage
to contribute. My primary emotional
story line (discussed in last
month's post--see below) is that as a child I was neither seen
nor heard. My natural
expression was squelched and remained underground
for 45 years. Then I found a way out that allowed
me to become a transformational agent for
others whose self-consciousness and
performance anxiety were stifling their voice
and compromising their gift.
Thus my rage to contribute alchemically
transmuted into Speaking Circles,
Relational Presence, and now Life
Contribution Coaching(SM). The fire rages on.
What is your emotional story line that is
inexorably transforming into your unique gift
in the world? I believe that exploring and
expressing yourself into great listening provides
peace and attracts prosperity.
More on emotional story line and contribution
The primal emotion that fueled my path was rage at my family for thoroughly clobbering my self-expression. My ongoing outrage as an adult is about the stifling of children’s natural expression, the lousy listening so many of them get and so many adults give each other, and the habitual self-consciousness that so many wonderful people continue to constrict themselves with at the expense of aliveness and expansion.
The expansion process need never end. At age 65, I have come into a new clarity around my contribution and how to deliver it at a more potent, lucid level, through Life Contribution Coaching. My 20 years of developing and perfecting Speaking Circles through the alchemy of Relational Presence was ostensibly about dissolving public speaking anxiety, but I now see that on a deeper level it was all about creating the rich listening field in which participants can access, express, and further their contribution.
My emotional story line in a nutshell
Like all of us I came into this world as a fully expressive bundle of divine energy, and like most of us my capacity to flow my energy freely in the world was severely compromised by the limitations of the adults around me to support my expression, or even tolerate it.
My wide open, luminous, curious eyes were met (or avoided) by older eyes signaling “no no no!” or “danger!” or “who do you think you are?” or “nobody home.” By age 5 the spontaneous child had gone underground and replaced by a timid, chubby schoolboy with worried eyes.
With my divine perfection hardly mirrored back to me at home, I came to read contempt and indifference in the eyes of the world I met outside the home. Until age 25, I managed to cope and keep up appearances while living the Nowhere Man’s non-life of quiet desperation.
Then circumstances led to a crack in the veneer which landed me in therapy, and over the next 20 years the light slowly began returning to my eyes as I explored the psycho-spiritual realm.
At age 45, I turned a corner, emerging in baby steps as a teacher of what I had been learning toward accessing my full expression. Over the course of the next 20 years I perfected a holistic cure for public speaking anxiety--a method of receiving and delivering massive doses of the divine mirroring so many of us sorely missed in childhood.
Taking my own medicine, I transformed my severe stage fright into luminous ease in front of groups of all sizes, became a masterful group facilitator, trained hundreds of facilitators around the world in my method, wrote the book, and touched many lives.
Now at age 65 the bigger picture has come into view. I see my drive all along was to make my contribution to humankind; to give my gift fully before leaving this plane of existence. And I see that every person I have touched, from classes and private sessions to writings and recordings, has been driven to access their contribution, express their gift in full measure, to not die with their song unsung and dance undanced due as a consequence of the mistake of self-consciousness.
