Overview
Welcome to Module 3! Let’s take a minute and appreciate your journey so far.
You’ve faced into your challenge, including a consideration of organizational and societal factors.
You’ve embraced your power by getting off the drama triangle and reckoning with your positional and societal power. This culminated with making a decision as to whether or not you actually want to take action related to your “acorn.”
Regardless of whether or not you want to do something about that particular acorn, this next module will serve you well in all your endeavors to make the world a better place.
We’ll start by creating some space to face into your feelings, and to name them accurately, and understand the gift that your emotional intelligence and body wisdom are trying to share with you. We’ll spend a few extra minutes on sadness and anger, as those two emotions are chock full of goodies that we can tend to overlook.
Finally, we’ll conclude this module with an experiential exercise that takes you step-by-step through getting whatever it is off your chest, then using that to return back to yourself and find the clarity on the other side. This Blurt-Breathe-Move exercise is deceptively simple and one you’ll want to keep in your toolbox for yourself and perhaps even to share with others.
All right – please watch this video and then see you in the next lesson!
Giving Yourself Permission to Feel your Feelings
Module Downloads
Worksheets: Emotional Range Body Map & Emotional Range Chart
Knowing what you’re feeling – and the wisdom that your emotions and your body are attempting to share with you – is an invaluable tool for social change leaders, and our first step on the way to commitment.
If we bypass our emotions – about our acorn – or anything else for that matter – we deprive ourselves of this rich information.
So, please follow along on the video with this emotional range handout from the Conscious Leadership Group (who facilitates similar workshops like this for Fortune 100 executives) and then take some time to reflect on which emotions are coming up for you related to your acorn.
Use the first page to prompt your thinking and get you in the right ballpark of emotions, then go through the instructions on the 2nd page to tune in to the information your feelings are giving you. Please be open to receiving your emotions as the gift that they are and let me know what questions you have by commenting here.
Befriending Sadness and Letting
Module Downloads
Worksheets: Emotional Range Body Map
If sadness is coming up for you, I want to invite you to befriend your sadness and begin to consider what wants to be let go of in your life and/or your work.
Which “flavor” of sadness is coming up for you? Got the blues? Meloncholic? Grief-stricken? It’s all welcome here. All of you is welcome here.
Here are some reflection questions for you to consider as you tune into sadness:
And are you willing, as a leader, to create the space for yourself and everyone on your team to welcome their sadness and feel it all the way through to completion?
Are you willing to cut it out with suppressing anybody’s emotions, including your own?
Are you open to the possibility that being in tune with your feelings and emotions and the associated body wisdom are gifts coming through for you and your colleagues in your work to repair the world?
Using Anger to Advance Justice
If anger is coming up for you, I want to invite you to befriend your anger and give yourself permission to explore where or how you are feeling thwarted.
Anger is your body’s way of telling you that something is standing in the way of you getting what you want or need.
So, you know, GRRRRRRRRR.
And what a gift to bring this into your conscious awareness so that you can get super clear about what you want and who or what is in the way.
Anger can be a clue that a trespass has occurred or that a boundary has been violated.
It is a natural consequence when it’s time for something to be stopped, changed, or ended.
It is important to differentiate between anger and abuse. Simply feeling – and expressing out loud – anger is purely information for all who witness it. Feeling anger and lashing out at others verbally or physically is abuse. It’s violent. There is absolutely nothing wrong with feeling angry. It crosses the line when it becomes abusive. At the same time as I’m writing this, I’m also sensitive to the reality that some people are afforded more freedom to express their anger than others. So, by differentiating between anger and abuse, I am by no means wanting to reinforce white people’s perceived “right to comfort” that Tema Okun critiques. I share that critique. It is so important that, as leaders, we create the space for everyone on our team to experience and express their anger. Just like with any other emotion, there is necessary wisdom in our anger. To deprive anyone of the space to express that is to deprive us all.
So which “flavor” of anger is coming up for you? Are you feeling irritable? Indignant? Or outraged? Just like with sadness – and any other of your feelings – it’s all welcome here. All of you is welcome here.
Here are some more reflection questions for you to consider as you tune in to anger:
Are you willing to express your anger without violence or abuse?
And are you willing, as a leader, to create the space for yourself and everyone on your team to welcome their anger and feel it all the way through to completion? Especially people for whom racism has diminished their safety in expressing their anger? This might entail running interference with your colleagues who don’t get it yet.
Are you willing to cut it out with suppressing anybody’s anger, including your own?
Are you open to the possibility that being in tune with your anger and the associated body wisdom are gifts coming through for you and your colleagues in your work to repair the world?
Choosing Your Personal Power
Still not sure exactly what it is you are feeling? Or want an experiential exercise you can use again and again when you can’t quite put your finger on it?
I give you Blurt – Breathe – Move.
I created this exercise when I realized how cathartic and helpful it was for my coaching clients to have permission to blurt. When I realize people are tippy-toe-ing around how exactly to precisely word what it is that’s on their mind – so much so that their authentic truth is being obscured – I interrupt the session and offer, “I’m going to set a timer and your job is to blurt in the most unenlightened, unprofessional way you can possibly imagine. I’ll set a timer for two minutes, let’s go – let ‘er rip!”
At first people are a little hesitant, but then they get into it. And I’ve yet to find anyone needing more than two minutes to get whatever the heck it was they were beating around the bush about off their chests. This permission to blurt is really powerful and can open the floodgates to something that’s been stuck in the recesses of your subconscious for a long time.
The key is to do this with someone that you know will hold your blurt with graciousness. Someone who won’t take what you say personally. Someone who won’t gossip about what you said to someone else. Someone who won’t judge you for saying something messy or inappropriate. Someone who understands that just because you say something in a blurt doesn’t even mean you believe it to be true. That sometimes you just need to get it out – and see what’s on the other side.
You can do this all by yourself, or with a partner. This would be a great exercise to try out with your accountability pod.
Once you’ve sufficiently blurted, it might be helpful to ask, “is there anything else” once you think you’re complete. Just get it all out! But once you’ve gotten it all out, set a timer and give yourself the gift of being still and breathing for at least two minutes. Don’t try to do any fancy meditation techniques. Just be still. And breathe. That’s it.
Then get up and move around however feels good to you in your body. And try moving in ways that are different from your typical ways of moving. Hop like a bunny. Refuse to walk in a straight line. Try on a new posture. Wave your arms in the air like you just don’t care! Whatever you need to do to get your energy moving and back in flow. Settle at a pace that feels right for you. And see what comes through to your consciousness. See if an authentic “want” starts to emerge for you.
Don’t reach for it – allow it to come to you and it will in due time!
Then appreciate yourself for being willing to explore this.