What hides under your shiny, cool-sounding achievements?
What if we speak about this hidden undergrowth more? It's manure, it helps us grow. ๐ฑ
We rarely see the messy shit under the hood of other people's shiny achievements. And we usually don't show it openly in our movement spaces, masterminds or communities either.
Like this recovering founder's confession that she got really, really sick from being successful. She was living an overcaffeinated, panicked nightmare as her greeting card company lit up the front page of Reddit and major news channels. Ironically, she sold cards about practicing self-care et cetera.
"Everyone kept telling me what a great job I was doing, because we were profitable and growing, which were the agreed-upon metrics of success. But instead of feeling fulfilled, I was brittle, hollow, overwhelmed. And confused."
Scroll on LinkedIn and Instagram for a minute, and your brows will furrow as you compare your colleague Charlie's shiny, amazing feat with your seemingly endless string of mundane afternoons. You got on LinkedIn for a quick social-media snack, but you closed the app feeling like a bag of 5-day old compost.
Dominant culture may not make space for the more vulnerable, tender stories that play in our heads. But we can. When we let ourselves be vulnerable, we feel more free, more powerful and more liberated. ๐ฑ
What if it was normal for leaders to speak about the tender undergrowth that hides under our cool-sounding achievements? When you consciously share a moment of vulnerability with others as a leader, that takes courage. This courage is a source of your power. It is also manure that helps us all grow. ๐ฑ
Let's tell more humanising, honest stories about our successes.
Up next... Part 2.
I have two pieces of very exciting news for you. And I'll reveal the hidden undergrowth for each (aka stuff that 95% of us will never mention on LinkedIn. ๐
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