What Pandemic Parenting Taught Me About Loving Leadership
"Mummy, I love you." - said my 5-year-old boy Alex.
"I love you too. Tell me, what does love feel like for you?" - I responded.
"Light." - he said instantly. He is so wise!
Inner Light As Love 101
I know a little about this inner light that love expresses itself as. Both as the agent that stimulates sight or makes things visible and as the feeling of being unburdening or not heavy. I often experience a sense of lightness and ease when I am full of loving energy. A feeling that comes from honoring life from moment to moment. From being at peace with my own limits and those of others. A calm attitude when things are imperfect, or incomplete.
In fact, the biggest shift I’ve experienced since I have stepped into leading with love is my experience and expectations around what love looks and feels like, and the appreciation of my inner light.
In 2020, I deployed a coach to lead me through a personal challenge that was about ‘going to bed each night feeling love and light’. Navigating the pandemic as a person, as a parent, and as a professional had me realize more deeply that the main thing I wanted to figure out was how to stay at peace amidst change. From that place of love and light, I knew I could make wiser decisions and walk my path more gracefully. Behavior precedes others’ experience of our values. I could speak, draw, and write about my values all day long, but for Alex – it was my behavior that gave away what I really stood for.
My challenge was about aligning my daily behaviors towards the values of love and light. I learned so much about myself and about life in that year from observing and getting to know my child and tending to our relationship. I saw how often we both struggled to express love in the right way. When love felt somehow heavier, and darker.
Struggles When Aligning Behaviors and Values
Here are 3 things that I found dimmed the light and created heaviness. These came from my experience pursuing my challenge, and from observing my son’s struggles during that period. After further research and exposure, I’ve found these to be common to how we all struggle in life and in the workplace when we try to align our behaviors to our deepest needs and values.
1. Ambition
When my young son wants to achieve something that's out of reach – it often doesn’t look like love. He forgets it's a process, obsesses with the outcome, then feels so disappointed when he can’t quite grasp it. When this happens, he shouts at me. He throws things with a loud exclamation 'I can't do this stupid thing!'. Does this behavior sound familiar to you when you struggle with ambition?
Whilst I don't throw things, I certainly have spent years throwing myself into things, compromising my health and self-care to achieve an outcome.
When my coach started to ask me each day, “What would you like to learn from this activity?”, it shifted the focus on the outcome and reinforced a vital learning attitude within me. What helped me navigate was actually slowing down to get complete clarity around my current state. Then, creating small incremental changes and learning about their impact.
On a good day, Alex will walk back from school sharing excitedly how many crosses he got that day. We would both feel happy – an X marks both a mistake and a treasure. We learned to focus on the treasure. It feels lighter that way.
2. Responsibility
In my most ambitious moments, I observed this interesting tension around responsibility. When I hold a goal tightly, I hold my responsibility forcefully. And when I fall short, feelings of guilt, embarrassment, and even shame, or hopelessness flood in.
When my son doesn't understand where his responsibility lies, he tries to do things autonomously at the wrong time or place. Then, when he falls short, he gets angry at me because I am responsible for helping him understand. When this happens, he usually storms off. Does this behavior sound familiar to you when you struggle with responsibility?
I learned through pursuing love and light daily that some things are beyond me. I learned to let go of that which I felt responsible for which, but realistically control. (Hint for other parents out there: a lot of these were around my expectations as a parent.)
3. Communication
Alex gets frustrated when time, space, and conditions prevent him to share his authentic needs and desires. When this happens, he withdraws. Does this behavior sound familiar to you when you struggle with communication?
I resonate with these limitations around the ability to express my full experience in a way that others can understand. The demands of parenting, and leadership, sometimes require me to communicate before I have taken the time and space to process my experiences.
If you ask me what the world needs the most right now – I’d say the spaciousness to sense our needs, and the ability to express them in a clear, calm, and aligned-to-values way.
Working Towards Our Inner Light
In the inner work we do in our Light Labs team, we often talk about our inner light. What dims it, and what brightens it. It’s our way to discern how could one learn to align their outer behavior to their inner value of love. Same as my young son, we all want to feel light and be in a state of flow, harmony, and calmness. What we need is the spaciousness to focus on learning rather than achieving, letting things go more easily, and the ability to realize what our deepest needs are and how to express them.
An Invitation To You
If you are craving an intimate community exploring your own inner leadership. If you seek to align your own behaviors to your values. If you’d like to learn how to activate your ambition and responsibility in a loving way. If you wish you finally learn how to communicate from your most authentic loving self – join us for REVIVE The Light Within, a leadership group coaching program, starting June 17. Our light shines brighter when with you. Details and signup forms are here.
