Harnessing Feminine Energy In The Workplace

Busy is our society's ultimate status symbol.

The modern-day hero's journey.

Making us so disconnected from our bodies and emotion,

When someone asks us how we are,

We respond with a productivity update like,

Super busy.

Perpetuating the message that the more tasks and activities we can jam-pack into each day,

The more valuable we are.

We high-five goal achievement and minimize the importance of rest and rejuvenation.

It's like we are aspiring to be machines that never power down.

Operating in this way requires us to animate our internal masculine,

The part of us that kicks ass,

Gets things done,

And calls for strong mental focus.

In order to be in our masculine and generate strong mental focus,

We have to gather all our energy from our lower body and harness it upward to our mind,

Requiring a complete body tightening paired with stress and tension.

All that stress and tension comes at a cost.

High-stress environments weaken and disembody us,

Using up all of our physical resources.

It's why we feel chronic tension,

Stuck,

Less creative and less sensual.

We literally lose connection to the effortlessness of our feeling bodies.

And when every day is filled with doing,

Striving,

Coping,

And pushing,

It creates a shape,

A pattern in our nervous system,

Forming our physical,

Emotional,

And mental habits.

Over time,

Our bodies carry this push pattern into everything we do.

Our creative,

Relational,

Feminine side often becomes regulated to the fringes of our lives,

Becoming harder and harder for us to find and often,

Therefore,

Begins to wither.

It's likely not a shock then to hear that one of the hardest things for me to figure out how to do was taking my femininity into business.

For most of my career,

I shed femininity and anything that interfered with my perception of strong and capable.

I abandoned beauty and my own love of beauty.

I recognized the ability to take advantage of tenderness,

So I accepted no help and lost my feminine ability to receive.

My choices were based on fulfillment and a linear path that left me feeling empty.

These sacrifices came at a price,

Self-betrayal.

I promised myself I would figure it out,

But days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months and still,

Every decision I made took me further away from the realm of me.

I was constantly stressed,

Going through never-ending to-do lists,

Always complaining about not having enough hours in the day.

There had to be a better way.

And there is.

The secret lies with timing your life to your monthly clock instead of timing your life to the 24-hour clock.

Have you ever noticed you feel completely different about work from week to week?

Some weeks you are excited about meetings and networking and other weeks you want to lock yourself in your office and read reports.

These changes are exactly how we are meant to live,

In cycle with creation,

From seed to growth to harvest to rest.

Our culture,

However,

Demands perpetual productivity.

We live and work in a male-hormonal patterned world where productivity is king,

Where projects are a straight shot to an end point.

You have been trained and tuned into a clock and routine that ignores your body's needs.

It's not sustainable.

The message that you need to be in constant production mode puts you in an impossible situation.

You are pressured to strive for peak productivity at all times,

Ignoring your rhythms.

You feel the need to do more even when you are tired,

Stressed,

Anxious,

Overwhelmed and suffering.

The relentless pursuit of productivity at work,

At home and in relationships forces you to put yourself last.

How are we supposed to function,

Let alone thrive,

In this way?

If you want to know where society got this value system,

Look no further than the male biology.

The concept of never-ending production mirrors perfectly the semen production that takes place in the testicles.

The way we have formed our society is based on what we have studied the most,

The male body.

Accommodating the male-hormonal pattern is the status quo in the work environment.

Corporate culture is optimized for male rhythms.

Women have to tone down their needs to fit into this pattern because corporate culture only takes into account one rhythm.

So much so that it's easy for us to think we suck at managing time or that something is wrong with us when we don't fit into this model.

But if you are like most women,

You probably don't work in an environment that supports your hormonal clock or organizes projects to your monthly rhythm.

You are just supposed to do whatever is asked,

Whenever it is asked.

So you dig in and get the job done,

Sacrificing your health and personal life,

Not realizing that trying to fit into a 24-hour clock,

Trying to perform the same day after day,

Takes a huge toll on your hormones and does not allow you to access the energy you need to perform.

The truth is,

The daily grind is not in sync with your hormonal clock.

When you have two clocks,

You need to rethink your relationship to time and time management.

The key is to do things at the right moment,

Not necessarily sequentially.

When you orient your life around your hormonal needs,

The pressure to do it all,

To have it all,

Drops.

And immediately,

What rushes in to fill the space where that pressure used to be,

Is discernment.

This change is more than a mechanical shift.

It means switching from managing your time to managing your energy.

It begins when you preserve your female reality and the choices that you make.

I know for a fact I couldn't perform at a high level or accomplish all that I do if I didn't manage my time and energy in sync with my hormones.

It enables me to stay in a peak flow state as much as possible.

I schedule my days,

Weeks,

Months,

And year with the four phases in mind.

I make choices continually with what works for me and what doesn't,

Instead of just pushing to do everything asked of me at all times.

It's not realistic,

And it's not healthy.

Our next lesson will go over how to do this,

But first,

There is one more mindset shift you must make.

Just like society has us convinced we need to suffer through our periods,

It is common rhetoric that we likewise need to suffer at work.

We have been conditioned to earn success through struggle,

And we are so used to picturing ambition and success as being associated with hard work,

Self-sacrifice,

Effort,

Buckling down,

And all the grimeness of hard work.

When the mind believes that anguish is the cost that must be paid for success,

We hustle and we grind.

This point of view is predicated on seeing the world as a hostile place,

Negative,

Denying,

Frustrating,

And reluctant.

There is an easier way.

Femininity reminds us that life is a lot easier than most people live it.

It is an invitation to soften our body,

Enjoy every moment,

And trust the flow of life.

In the higher state of consciousness,

Our view of the universe changes.

It becomes loving,

Unconditional,

Approving,

And wants us to have everything we have asked for.

Although the world might be hostile and stingy to some,

There is no reason for you to buy into this paradigm.

When you buy into it,

You make it your life.

What stands in the way for most people is letting go of the pride of achievement.

You have to relinquish the vanity of all that sacrifice and hard work.

Give up the sentimentality that self-sacrifice,

Pain,

And suffering is what we need to go through to achieve our goals.

Let go of the pride you feel when you explain all you went through to make it.

Sure,

Technically,

Even in this environment,

We can have it all,

But it comes at a cost.

We lose softness and creativity.

We see many successful,

Accomplished women unable to create lasting relationships or find balance in their current relationships.

Alternatively,

You can view the world as a loving,

Friendly,

Encouraging place that wants us to have everything we have asked for.

Aligning to this view means relinquishing the pride of accomplishment.

To make this paradigm shift,

You have to abandon the vanity of all that sacrifice and hard work and reject the sentimentality of all the pain and suffering the world wants you to go through to achieve your goals.

We have tried to survive in a non-inclusive culture for too long by compromising too much of ourselves.

Equality to me looks like making room for women to work according to their rhythms,

Helping everyone succeed.

This is the next step in the evolution of feminism.

We have proven that women can do anything men can do bleeding,

Yes,

But we did so by tuning down everything that makes us women,

And we tried to become smaller versions of men.

The next step is making room for us to thrive in the work setting using our feminine wisdom and hormonal gifts.

I believe it is possible for women to do and have it all.

I also think it's possible for that to happen without the cost of our health,

Vitality,

And softness.

I believe in a system that supports women deeply.

What if we can incorporate that compromising isn't worth the cost,

That we do not have to suffer to succeed?

What we need now is a female-centric framework for how to live,

The freedom and permission to do what is right for you,

To end the confusion about how your body works and what your advantages are,

Advantages that will help you create a life of ease,

Joy,

And flow.

You see,

Women have a competitive edge that has been suppressed by trying to fit into the male hormonal patterned world.

Your edge is energy,

Not time.