Feminine Leadership Archives

Demystifying “Daily Practice” By Heather Barron

Leave a Comment / Power of WE Blog, Success Stories / By jbillesbach3

How to bring greater balance into your life one day at a time – Heather Baron – Founder of Luminous Life, Inc. Heather is an Integral Life & Mindset Coach, Writer, Speaker luminous-life.com

The words “Daily Practice” bring great joy to some. But if you are anything like I’ve been in the past, perfectionism, resistance and a whole host of other things have gotten in the way of creating a sustainable Daily Practice – even though we fully understand the benefits of having one!
This blog is about what gets in the way of us choosing the very thing that could bring more balance into our daily lives. We will start by demystifying the phrase “Daily Practice.” Then we’ll walk through a “Process of Discovery” to help us identify a Daily Practice that works for us.

To keep things simple, we will return to a basic elementary school lesson for the Discovery Process: Who, What, Where, When, Why, How (but because we are playful, we will look at them in a different order!).

Your WHY:

This is how we demystify the concept of “Daily Practice.” Oxford English Dictionary defines the word practice as: The actual application or use of an idea, belief, or method, as opposed to theories relating to it; and also as Repeated exercise in or performance of an activity or skill so as to acquire or maintain proficiency in it. For the sake of life-balance, Daily Practice helps us move from our theories about life into our hearts and actual embodiment of life.

WHY HAVE A DAILY PRACTICE (and why haven’t I been able to stick to one that works)?

Barring any recent twists in life, we are already living a life we have practiced our way into. So it isn’t that we don’t know how to “do” daily practices. If we are seeking greater balance in our lives it is because what we are currently practicing on a daily basis – consciously or unconsciously – is not necessarily aligned with what we most desire to have and to experience in our lives. As a Perfectionist, I’ve wrestled with this too. Even as a Life Coach for others I get so swept up in the endless lists of everything that “has” to happen each day for life to continue. And I often hear my internal response of: “I don’t have time to do anything about this!” when I can feel my life is out of whack. But when I get honest with myself, realizing no one else can bring more balance to my life except for me, then I can see the work that is mine to do to create the change I long for.

Until we practice something new, the old default setting will run our lives. When we PRACTICE something new (something we want to have in our lives), we’re REPLACING something old and stale that is not working for us. This can feel overwhelming at first, no doubt! But, if we are truly wanting more balance, we will get to a point where maintaining the old way is more exhausting than trying to learn a new way. And that is where the magic of a Daily Practice can make all the difference.

For the other Perfectionists reading this: PRACTICE IS MESSY – at first. Have you ever been to a soccer practice for 5-7 year olds? Or seen Pinterest Fails compared to the perfect cake/painting/vase they were trying to recreate?For us Perfectionists, we need additional layers of PERMISSION and TIME on our foundation before we introduce new practices. We need to give ourselves permission to be messy, inconsistent, and imperfect at anything new we are trying to introduce into our lives. And we need the time to sort through whether this newness is just uncomfortable because we are not perfect at it yet, or if it is something that actually doesn’t work for us (and there is good support for this process!).
IF PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT, WHAT ARE WE ALREADY PERFECTING?

So what ARE we practicing each day? Let’s look at this so that we can see where there may be an imbalance for us. This will help point us in the direction of our “What” – the right Daily Practice for us.

Are we practicing gentle, empowering inner conversation with ourselves, or are we practicing negative and defeating self-talk?
Are we practicing “busyness” and “not enough time,” or are we practicing listening to the right order of our day to make time for what matters most to us?
Are we standing up for ourselves in a culture that has a gravity to wear us down and strip us of our equanimity, or are we in default mode just following the trail of fires that “need” to be put out?
Are we practicing saying “No” to additional commitments and requests for helping others that we know won’t allow us to maintain a healthy balance, or are we saying yes out of guilt, wanting to be liked, wanting to be perceived as helpful and then resenting ourselves and others later?These are not easy questions to dig into for ourselves. But to get to truly understand how to bring greater equanimity to our lives, we need to get honest with what is already in place as our daily operating system. We need to see our current imbalance to know where to focus to create greater balance in our lives.
WHAT DO I WANT MORE OF IN MY LIFE?

My WHAT: What is it we actually need in our day to balance it out? This is not the same for all of us. Here is a quick list to look through. Close your eyes. Take three deep breaths letting your attention drop down out of your head and into your heart. Place your hands on your heart and ask through the following list. “What do I feel is missing in the balance of my daily life?”
1.Calm
2.Stability
3.Joy
4.Self-knowledge
5.Fullness
6.Satisfaction
7.Peacefulness
8.Wisdom
9.Solitude
10.Processing Time
11.Depth
12.Rest
13.Creativity
14.Voice
15.Boundaries
For your WHAT, choose one or two of these qualities that you most long to have more of in your life. This will be your focus for finding a Daily Practice that works for YOU.

NOW FOR THE WHERE WHEN & HOW

My WHERE, WHEN and HOW: Now we get to explore what works for us! Each of us has different needs. So let’s discover YOURS.

This part of the process is meant to be a heart-date. Set time aside to have a date with your heart – even for 15 mins in your back yard with your journal or a notebook (or in your car in the driveway, or in the bathroom with your toddler locked out!). Settle into a chair and take a few deep breaths. Feel yourself being held.

Now take 5-10 minutes to journal through the following to get clear on your Where, When and How for your Daily Practice.

1.What is the best time of day for me to fit in a Practice right now? Am I a morning person, a Night Owl, or some combination?

2.Where could I do my Practice? Is there a quiet space I can create/use to honor my Practice? Or can I use tools like noise-cancelling headphones, eye-mask, etc, to create a quiet space?

3.How do I need to prepare ahead of time to carve out the space and time I need? Do I need to ask for help (“Honey, would you be willing to read the kids bedtime stories and keep them in their room for 15 mins each night while I disappear into the garage for my Practice?”)?

4.Can I give myself Permission to make this one of my biggest priorities? Committing to a Daily Practice that can bring greater balance is a gift to myself but it is also a gift to all I am responsible to. Write yourself the Permission Slip you need to allow yourself to do your Practice.

Next, using a search browser, type in Daily

Practices for {YOUR WORD HERE – Restfulness, greater Joy, etc}. Spend 5-10 mins looking until something fits with what your needs and abilities are. You can make a list of different practices that speak to your heart (this is not the same as ones that just “sound good” or that worked for someone else).

Choose one to start with. START SMALL – 5 minutes, or 10 minutes at most. You can always add but start with something that you can fit in each day.

NOTE: I do recommend, if you are able, to have the same location as much as possible. This helps you to tune in more quickly because you gain a felt reference of place = activity. – CAN I GET A WITNESS?

My WHO –

The final piece of this Process of Discovery is determining WHO we can ask to support this Practice, either through being our accountability person, our babysitter, our cheerleader, or even our partner in the Practice. Accountability can be the key – having someone we shoot a quick text to with a daily check-mark or emoji we’ve chosen can be the final ingredient.

THE BALANCING ACT –

To truly feel balanced is not necessarily the result of adding things to a different side of the scale. Instead, I invite us to think of Daily Practice as a way to create a stronger more stable foundation on which we, as whole and complete women, stand.

When we start from a place of I am enough, then the practices we explore do not have the power to make or break us, do not have the ability to make us feel like successes or failures.

Instead, standing on a firm foundation, anything we add as a Daily Practice is meant to ENRICH and UPLIFT and GROW us. When this foundation it is solid, we are more balanced.

And yes, all this can be done in 5-10 minutes a day.

At the August 17th The Power of We webinar join panelists: Stephanie Amend, Katharina Papenbrock and Heather Barron to discuss Defining A Balanced Focused Way. Held at noon register free here.

Leading from a “Feminine” Perspective: developing a strong, diverse, balanced and committed leadership team By Katharina Papenbrock

Leave a Comment / Power of WE Blog, Success Stories / By jbillesbach3

Rural Opportunity Representative
Remote Worker, Colorado Office of Economic Development & International Trade choosecolorado.com

I was groomed to lead from an early age. My sister and I were dedicated to our studies, sports, music and volunteer efforts, the same way my parents dedicated themselves to their careers, community and us. I embodied what I thought a leader was supposed to be: straight A’s, team captain, “Most Likely to Succeed,” etc. In my late 20s, my professional resume shone but didn’t resonate, I only saw paths determined by a “no” or an “unwanted consequence.” If you asked me for a five year vision, my answers were always curated to the audience. Then, I blew it up.

I moved to Ouray to start a restaurant, during the recession. It was spurred by an authentic love of food and autonomy but also by a husband who wanted an excuse to move to his dream town. My business partners closed our partnership with a handshake, “because that’s how we do it here.” Within two years, my marriage was over, the partnership blew up and I wasn’t confident enough to pursue my legal rights. Help was there but I hadn’t learned how to ask for it.

My leadership style was extreme self-reliance, which is pretty common among business owners, immigrants, women, adventure athletes and rural Americans. I went into my new job with the local Chamber with all of those boxes checked, ready to fix everything and then learned that taking on a leadership position in rural Colorado is a study in rapid education and humility. Luckily, you also realize that you are surrounded by incredible examples of leadership, knowledge and support. I started to see that effective leadership doesn’t mean you stand alone, never admit to a mistake, are emotionally unwavering and never burn out; it comes from being your authentic self and is always a team effort.

I was lucky to be selected for the Colorado Tourism Office’s Colorado Tourism Leadership Journey and I can’t champion enough finding a structured way to combine personal reflection and learning with direct contact to other leaders and mentors. Even finding a loose network of mentors or colleagues to share challenges with will help you reflect and adjust along the way. Always include someone that intimidates or challenges you, and look beyond job and community lines.

Track the “ah-ha” moments along the way. One that still resonates was a “taking risks”-themed session that connected the toughness honed from life-threatening adventures to the grit you need to work through professional problems.

Qualities I internalized as “weak” were actually strengths, like vulnerability, empathy and an obsession with data.

Empathy morphed the disappointment of my professional and personal failures into a wish to help others navigate their own challenges.

Vulnerability allowed me to open up and connect on a human rather than performance level. My robot brain collected resources and data and imagined new projects and potentials. My personal values aligned with the values my team had defined for our organization: authentic experiences, responsibility, prioritization of local assets and talent, data-driven decision-making, organization and consistency, leveraging expert resources and saying “thank you.”

Learning that it takes more than you to lead came along a little too late in the game. Our big transition ultimately fell flat but the time spent getting the right people in the right spots to move together toward that goal was worth the effort.
In rural Colorado, we know that everyone looks to the STP’s – the same 10 people – until they burn out, to the loss of the community. My challenge was to look beyond them for sustainable teams and they fell into the “categories” below. Most of the time, their role had nothing to do with their day job but with their passions, experiences and thought processes.

The Cheerleader is the person that you always want to put front and center when you want to get people inspired about what you’re doing. They’re natural storytellers and have a knack for relating to people on an authentic level. I was lucky enough to have one as my colleague for nine years and she connected and pushed me into more new ways of interacting and sharing stories than I can ever say “thank you” for. You’re lucky if your cheerleader is also your Online or Social Media Whiz. That way your internal and external online voice are always consistent.

The Researcher is your trusted source for data and case studies to support and provide input on your goals, objectives and deliverables. At the end of the day, ROI still matters and they’ll let you know if you made it. They’ll have to work with the Cheerleader to make the data accessible and relatable to your stakeholders, though.

The Big Picture Planner helps with community connections to past, current and future projects to ensure a lasting outcome. In many rural communities, key planning positions don’t even exist so look for people that are always thinking about the next step and higher purpose of individual activities.

The Politician yes, we all need one! This can be an elected official who is a champion for the project or an enthusiastic community member who is committed to attending public meetings to give input, listen and disperse information.

Local Champions are locals who have a relationship with your stakeholders. They know how to speak their language, what’s at stake when there’s uncertainty and can personalize your goal. They may already be overtapped, so it’s best to use them as a sounding board, information distributor or planner rather than a worker bee.

The Financial Wizard checks all of the idealists with hard financial facts of what you can actually accomplish and afford. They should also be creative in connecting to resources and leveraging every dollar.

The Realist is often the same as the Financial Wizard, and will respectfully check everyone’s enthusiasm with what’s actually possible in their community or network.

If you have no one at hand, always start with your Industry Partners. It’s worth the time to find the ones that really jive with your experience. Over time, you’ll build a network of trust and mutual support based on the shared experience of your industry.

I originally left the Cat Herder off of the list but it has turned out to be vital to every project. This person ensures that all members of the leadership team share resources, communicate and move cohesively through the project in their respective swim lanes. The cat herder is also always looking for new team members to fill gaps that emerge.

I always fell into the “cat herder” role but I’ve realized that it authentically fits with my personality and values. If you find yourself in this role, take time to nurture other roles that interest you, too; for me, that’s squirreling away to research and collect data so that I can gauge progress. The responsibility of acknowledging every member of the leadership team as a leader in their own right and recognizing them for that also falls to you.

Wherever you are as a leader, take time away from all of those “cats” to take care of yourself. This is doubly-true in our new normal where life changes almost daily. At the end of the day, personal leadership and building or participating in a strong leadership team only works if you are sound and healthy. That’s certainly an ongoing journey for me, but I’m getting there, one hike, book, visit, free hour and bite of the proverbial elephant at a time.

Feminine Leadership

Your WHY:

WHY HAVE A DAILY PRACTICE (and why haven’t I been able to stick to one that works)?

WHAT DO I WANT MORE OF IN MY LIFE?

NOW FOR THE WHERE WHEN & HOW

Next, using a search browser, type in Daily

Choose one to start with. START SMALL – 5 minutes, or 10 minutes at most. You can always add but start with something that you can fit in each day.

My WHO –

THE BALANCING ACT –

Instead, standing on a firm foundation, anything we add as a Daily Practice is meant to ENRICH and UPLIFT and GROW us. When this foundation it is solid, we are more balanced.