The words ‘fearless’ and ‘leader go together in ways you may not imagine. It’s not magic when a leader shows up courageous, steadfast and clear. It’s a decision.
Recently, my clients’ stories have highlighted the tremendous value hidden inside difficult life events.
“It started with Covid!” they’d say before listing a series of gut-wrenching losses that seemed to follow in the wake of the pandemic.
For my clients, each one of these losses would have been a lot to process: loss of parents, children, best friends, careers, homes. Experiencing all these losses within months of each other meant they piled up, one on top of the other, leaving little room for recovery and integration. These caring people were being challenged in ways they’d never encountered before, and they felt they were teetering under the weight of these stressors.
Did Covid mark the beginning of a long period of stress for you?
Have you experienced a higher number of losses? Perhaps a loss of confidence? Loss of self?
You’re not alone.
At the official end of the pandemic in May 2023, the American Psychological Association (APA) published findings indicating that society at that point was experiencing collective post-traumatic trauma. The long-term stress of the pandemic had led to a state of chronic high alert.
If my coaching practice is any gauge of our larger community, I believe we’re still there.
A chronic, vibrating undercurrent of uncertainty and fear remains in many folks. There’s a heightened vulnerability leaving us feeling more porous. Less solid. We feel more confused about what and who to trust, including ourselves.
If this is true for you, your results at work, at home and inside of yourself are reflecting back a difficult truth: you’re not yourself. To become a fearless leader means turning towards this reality.
Life hasn’t changed. We have.
We’ve been changed by the pandemic. That’s the reality. And as much as the experience feels difficult, there’s an invitation to lean into something more powerful, more self-affirming.
It starts with understanding what’s leading you to feel more vulnerable.
When life is being life, and chronic stress is already bubbling underneath, we’re more likely to feel traumatized by regular (hard) life events. They feel harder than they might otherwise feel, and we have less room to BE with them. We have less spaciousness to process and manage strong emotions.
If you’ve experienced this pattern, you’ll recognize the yearning for something solid. Something foundational on which to stand. Something on which to rely for succor and guidance. For hope.
The leadership that serves our deepest personal needs is the same leadership we need to serve our communities with grace, heart and consistency.
Being a fearless leader inside of yourself shows up in everything you do. You’re intentional. Neutral. Present. When you’re in alignment with what IS, your results cannot help but be magnificent.
What is Fearless Leadership?
Being a fearless leader doesn’t mean you’ll never experience fear. It means you’ll be able to act
from your leadership, rather than your insecurities – no matter what’s going on.
You have one job in this life. To love and honour yourself first, wholly and without judgment – so that you can love and honour others. This is the essence of fearless leadership. When everything around you feels unstable, uncertain and unpredictable, you rise.
Since the pandemic, we’re being called to have the courage to turn inward and take full responsibility for what we think, emote and believe.
This commitment to personal responsibility is how we begin to deepen the route home. It’s how we develop the reflex to return to what is true, to what is neutral, loving and accurate.
How do we become the fearless leaders of our inner world?
Understand Trauma
Trauma is an overwhelmed nervous system. When the volume of stressors is too
large and too much all at once, current strategies don’t work anymore.
There is no failure if you’ve experienced trauma related to a life event, or a series of events. It’s simply a reflection of the current state of your nervous system: dysregulated and stuck on high alert. Your body is tight and hyper-vigilant against some potential threat, even when there’s no direct threat to your life immediately in front of you.
When you’re chronically defended against the possibility of a (potential) threat, as many of us felt during the Covid shutdowns, you close off your ability to contact the beauty that is actually already here. It’s a way of being that is contracted, small and reactive – and it can become a habit.
If you recognize that you’ve been holding on tightly in this way, as if you’re the only one who can keep you safe, you’ll want to pay attention. You are not defective for living your life with this suffering. You didn’t create it. You’re human. And this is simply what happens to human nervous systems from time to time. But you are responsible for addressing it. Healing it. Loving it. Ensuring that your internal echo system is balanced and clear.
Trauma presents an opportunity for a deeper plunge into your beliefs: your beliefs about what you’ve experienced and your beliefs about yourself. It’s an opportunity to purge, explore and settle. You don’t have to do this alone. You may want to find the appropriate professional to accompany you in this process.
When you consider this opportunity for healing, what does it bring up inside of you?
What judgments/misunderstandings may you be holding that prevent you from getting support?
Watch for Rumination
Brains are miraculous human computers designed to solve problems. And they’re so good at it!
But sometimes they devolve into circular thinking. They revisit the same situation in the same way, over
and over again, as if something new could possibly arise that would solve your anxiety. This is an appealing strategy for your brain. And for you too, when you desperately want to feel better.
Your brain tricks you into thinking it’s doing something useful. But more thinking, especially circular thinking, is not helpful. It deepens anxiety and heightens your sense of helplessness.
Choose to break the cycle.
Find something else to focus on that will hook your attention: a compelling movie or book, or choose one action that may move you meaningfully toward your goal. Remind yourself that one small action, including distracting yourself for the time being, IS doing something toward your wellbeing.
Being mentally flexible in this way creates more ease and expansiveness. Flexibility allows you to step out of emotional reactivity just long enough to remember that you have choices. You can choose to breathe, and then breathe again. Nothing more is required.
What have you noticed happens when you ruminate? How helpful is it? What will you focus on to break the cycle?
What will remind you that your power is found in letting go of rumination?
Radically Accept. All of it.
This can be a tough one. I know this from my own experience. But it’s the practice that makes the biggest difference. It’s the most powerful tool I know of for interrupting rumination, a sense of disconnection and fear. And it’s hard to do! At least at first.
Radical acceptance means allowing reality to be as it is – without trying to fix anything at all. You don’t have to like what’s going on. Most definitely you won’t like it! And you’ll have strong feelings about it too. But your power is in accepting it all – the situation and whatever feelings you may have about it.
Say to yourself, ‘This is just the life of the moment. These are just my feelings of the moment.’
Acceptance in the face of crises feels like a radical act. It is. Your whole posture will shift when you move to a state of allowing.
Try it for a moment.
When you’re fighting the situation, you’re literally leaning forward. It’s as if you’re in opposition, ready to solve, address, protect or get rid of it as quickly as possible. Have you noticed this?
When you accept that this uncomfortable situation is occurring, you’re sitting back, your shoulders go down as if a weight’s been lifted. Clenched fists open. You don’t need to fight for calm anymore. It’s already here.
You can open to experience by putting the palms of your hands face up on your lap. Open your fingers. No clenching. Just breathe. Say to yourself, “I don’t have to do anything. Reality is already here.”
How accepting are you when everything feels like too much?
What would support you in melting your resistance to reality?
See your Belonging
Belonging is the antidote to fear.
What you’re going through doesn’t make you different or separate from others, although it can certainly feel that way.
The truth is, you’re part of a much larger community, a global, intergenerational family linked by our common humanity – whether or not we feel this in any given moment.
And our sense of this belonging is critically important to our sense of wellbeing. As humans, our very survival depends on our belonging to community. Beyond food and shelter, we have a primal need to be seen and understood. We crave belonging.
Your practice is to cultivate your connections. Savour them. Be present for them. After the isolation of Covid, or the isolation following the death of a loved one, you’ll need to reconnect. You’ll need to restore the sense that you’re not alone. That you’re connected in spirit, body and kind.
What choices will you make to deepen your sense of belonging?
What comes up inside of you when you consider turning towards the idea of belonging?
No matter what series of events have occurred in your life, and I hope they haven’t been too hard, you can bring alongside of them a commitment to working with life.
Resilience, calm and expansiveness are waiting for you to turn toward them.
As you open to receive this grace, your fearless leadership will grow – and with it, your muscle for hope.
With love and gratitude,
Lynda
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