You are SO sensitive!"
I've been hearing this phrase all of my life.
And it's true. I am very sensitive — energetically, physically, and situationally.
The good news is that my highly-tuned reality has provided me with valuable skills I use on a daily basis as a coach and mentor. My nuanced awareness allowed me to observe the clarity process and the transition journey in such detail that I've created several robust models that I share with clients and other Change Catalysts. I am quite grateful for the way I'm wired.
The not-so-good news is that throughout my life, my plans can derail fairly easily. When I experience a certain feeling or I sense that something isn't aligned well with my style, my work, and my business, I have a difficult time moving forward.
When this happens, I tend to hesitate. I may cancel or reschedule. I may go quiet.
At certain points in my life — after the death of my father, during my own bouts with chronic fatigue, while I was evolving my work — my reality would get very small as I pulled in to make sense of my experience and find my way through to the other side.
"You are SO creative!"
As I was coming through the deepest Winters I had ever experienced, I knew I needed to redesign my life. There was no way I could continue working in the corporate world. My body was rebelling. My soul was adamantly against the notion.
I had no idea where to start.
- Being my father's daughter, I started with a logical approach. I tried to think my way to a new picture of how to live and make a living. As you might imagine, that did not lead to very satisfying options.
- Then I had the insight to focus on how I wanted to feel in my new life. Tapping into this channel allowed me to design my new life in ways that aligned with my needs as an introverted sensitive, intuitive, creative.
As my life improved, I started using this same approach with the day-to-day details of my life. I realized that if I could discern what was making me hesitate in the face of a particular situation, I could often redesign the experience in a way that felt good, or good enough that I could proceed. Over the years I've become skilled at discerning and designing my life, my work, and my business to feel more aligned.
You are SO intuitive!
If you are a Change Catalyst, it's likely you are also intuitive, creative, sensitive, and possibly introverted.
You are able to pick up on the most subtle nuances, which is an asset in your work with clients, but may constrain your success as an entrepreneur.
When you experience something, anything, that feels unaligned or out of sync, you are wired to take note so you can sort out what's going on.
With clients, your insights about their gaps, blocks, or inconsistencies are like magic! They wonder how you can be so perceptive, so aware of the most subtle aspects of their world.
With your own life and work, your sensitivities may mean you experience uneven progress. You may find that your desire to move forward with your work and your business ends up being a push-pull of sorts. When something arises that doesn't resonate for you, you instinctively put on the brakes.
You are SO attuned!
You want to be out there with your business, but you don't always feel safe or aligned with the direction you are taking or the methods you are using.
If you follow our culture's general approach to success, which is often perpetuated through business and marketing training, you'll hear the messages to "get over" yourself, and just "go for it." Or you've got to "push through" your hesitation to "take action."
And that approach may well work for some. They may be motivated and inspired by the challenge and thoroughly engaged by the push required to succeed.
Personally, as sensitive as I am, I've never been one to engage in pushing and straining and fighting to get somewhere. I can't tolerate the angst and stress inherent in pushing myself in a way that doesn't feel aligned with who I am and the work I do. If you share even some of my sensitivities, the essence of these messages likely doesn't speak to you either.
Instead, I choose to honor this nuanced sensitivity that I have honed over the years that provides such powerful insights for my clients and those around me.
It took some retraining, awareness building, and creative exploration to discover how to use my own hesitation as a guide in developing my work and my business. The results of this journey have brought me to a more natural way of evolving my work. There's a naturally organic flow to my journey that is informed by the slightest indications of hesitation. I am far more at ease with and in my work as a result.
Are you interested in awakening this awareness within yourself?
Recently I've been sharing what I've learned about honoring my hesitation.