by Katrina Bos
Let's continue our journey of the masculine & feminine by exploring the symbiotic relationship of healthy leading and following. This can be seen in dance, raising children, in the workplace, and within ourselves. Are you a natural leader? Would you like to become one?
Meet your Teacher
Toronto, ON, Canada
Transcript
So today we are continuing our journey through the divine union of the masculine feminine and today we're talking about how to be an amazing and conscious leader. And of course this is within the leader follower dynamic of the yin yang of the masculine feminine and it's a very interesting dynamic because of this domination paradigm we've lived in for the last however many millennia. The leader follower dynamic is one of the most confused ones because what have been called air quote leaders were often just tyrants. There was sort of that tyrant king versus slave dynamic. I'm the boss, I'm in charge, I'm the most important one and all of you guys don't matter just do as you're told, Serve me. And that has sort of become synonymous with leader. It's sort of when we think of political leaders or that kind of thing and even if we know better that idea often lives within our consciousness and so sometimes we may end up in a leadership role. We may be a parent and as much as we may love our children and want to be a good parent because we have this tyrant king idea of being in charge in within us and maybe that's what we were raised with. Maybe that's how it's been done in our family for generations because that's the energy of the patriarchy, This domination paradigm. Suddenly the children just have to do as they're told because I said so and that's it and don't get me wrong. I was a parent. I understand that at some point everybody's just got to do the thing because sometimes we just argue for the sake of arguing. I get that but what I'm talking about is when we kind of believe that I'm the head of the household, You're going to do as you're told, It doesn't matter what you think. It doesn't matter what you want. It doesn't matter if this upsets you. I've made the decision and we're taught because we've lived within this paradigm that this is good structure. This is stability. This is all these things but what does it really do when we have that kind of leadership in the family? All it does is disconnect you from the kids because the kids very clearly like you've stated it with your words or your actions that what you desire is not important and that's a divider. It's not a judgment. It's just oh we're separate. You're in charge. I just have to do as I'm told. I am irrelevant. There's no connection there and of course this is part and parcel with this curious paradigm that I believe is ending. I believe we are learning how to actually do all of these masculine feminine dynamics in connection, In love, In kindness so that we can be bigger and we can be better and we can be happier and we can be more loved and more loving and all that kind of and create bigger things. Sometimes we're in a leadership position where we're at work and it's like my job is I'm the boss. I just have to do the thing and you just have to do as you're told. The people are irrelevant. My business, My rules and again I've owned businesses and I've had employees. I do understand that this actually is my business. I'm the one that doesn't get paid if there's no money. So in the end I do need to what I want to get done has to get done but that can still be done in connection with the people you're working with. You're working with people. Are they working for you? Kind of. You're giving them the paycheck but imagine instead you imagine you're working with them. In the end yeah you have the final say. You're the boss. It's your vision. It's your business. It's your creation out into the world but in the meantime do we consider everybody in the room as equals and I really mean equal. Have I hired these people for their gifts? Have I hired these people because I actually really want to collaborate with them? We all may have a different role. In this instance I may be the leader because it's my business and that's why I'm here and that's why I hired everybody but in the collaboration aspect we're all contributing. It's the same with being a parent. In the end yeah for sure perhaps what you desire is what has to happen. The children can't make decisions for the family. They don't see the big picture. They don't understand the bills. They don't understand the family dynamics. They don't understand the taxes. They don't understand all that so they're not in a position to make those kind of decisions. They're not in a maturity level to even be in a leadership role but that doesn't mean that they can't be part of the collective of the family. I've always kind of giggled that I was 25 when my son was born and I was 27 when my daughter was born and I thought I was always really conscious that in the grand scheme of the universe I'm literally only 25 years older than you. It's not like I'm 4, 000 years older than you. I'm 25 years that I have conscious memory of right now. That's all. Right now I'm 54 and my kids are 26 and 28. I'm not anciently older than they are. I've literally got a couple decades on them. Nothing. So it's really humbling to kind of realize that wow we're all pretty new here you know but in this role I happen to be in the leadership role and you guys are my kids and in the end I do have to make the final decision but in the meantime there can be this beautiful we. I remember there was this great book Barbara Colaroso wrote. There were two of my favorite books in parenting that really formed me as a parent and one was Barbara Colaroso's Kids Are Worth It and the other one was called Magic 123. These two books were philosophically the greatest books I ever read and what Barbara Colaroso talked about was the different parent styles and basically she's talking about different leadership styles. And the first one which of course I can't think of the name of it. It was basically that rigid tyrant. She has another word for rigid basically. You're gonna do it. That's it. No there's no other choice. Here was what it is and that doesn't work. The kids just rebel. The kids because the kids are fighting for some kind of voice. They're fighting for some kind of anything and eventually the kids either completely rebel against or they go out in the world and they just become that kind of parent as well and they may become that kind of teacher and that kind of boss and that kind of everything just sort of bullying everybody into everything. And then the absolute opposite was the jellyfish parent who perhaps was raised by that militant parent and was like I don't care what happens. I am not doing that to my kids and they go way the other way and there's no leadership at all. But of course the problem is that as humans and I've had this argument with people before. We actually love leadership in my opinion in my experience. We love knowing that someone actually is in charge if we are working as a group. There's a lot of people that believe in co-ops you know cooperative models and stuff and in many ways I theoretically believe in that as well. But I have a sense that we need to be in a different consciousness to actually have a co-op work because in our current world anyway somebody has to be able to make the final decision. Somebody has to actually have the whole vision in mind and actually be able to make that happen and that's the role of a leader because again you might have been in a very functional co-op but I've been in a lot of very dysfunctional co-ops which is very similar to in a family where there's really no parent. There's really nobody there and maybe maybe it's just because the parents in crisis and in some level of either acute crisis or sort of perpetual crisis or whatever because then what happens is the children will often rise as leaders and they actually will try to take over and they will try or they'll feel the responsibility of having to take over and I know you know I've met a lot of you guys like through doing energy grid readings and stuff like that. A lot of us grew up in families where maybe we were empaths and on some level we sort of took the reins of the family whether emotionally or mentally or physically and had to kind of take care of everything all the time even as a very young child because there wasn't that leader present and you can feel this anywhere. You can feel this at in a job site when the boss is not actually leading. On the one hand maybe they're way too rigid and too like tyrant king and then the people just mutiny either acutely or kind of just over time this constant commiserating and working there is horrible or the boss sort of in name only and it's kind of children of the corn and then what happens is biggest bully wins and all this kind of chaos happens or these people are always jostling for the leadership role because there's no one in charge. So this potential of leader and follower is huge but all of these weird things the excessive rigidity and the extreme jellyfish all happen because of this weird paradigm. It's not a character flaw inside the human it's just simply our natural response to our surroundings. It reminds me of there's that movie Michael where John Travolta is the angel and he's there to help the one guy go because he's going through a dark night of the soul or he hates his life or whatever right and he's trying to explain to him the benefits of love and he says let me tell you a story he says so one day the north wind was fighting with the sun who was more powerful who was more you know amazing and they each said you know the wind said i'm the most powerful i'm the most powerful watch this he says i can make that man take off his coat and so there was a man standing there had a coat and the north wind blew and blew and blew and no matter how hard he blew the guy wrapped the coat even tighter around him and he just couldn't get the man to take off his coat and then the sun said well watch this and he opened up and the sun went down on the on the man and the man gently opened his coat to let the sun in. This is the difference a good leader lets you relax it allows you to flow it allows you to do what you actually love to do a tyrant makes you pull tight and makes you like pull away it's like i don't want you to take my energy i don't want you to do that it's an important dynamic because again it's sort of seeped into every part of our lives so let's talk first about what does a healthy leader look like so a healthy leader if you imagine maybe like 10 of us all got together and we thought okay we're gonna do this project maybe we're gonna build a straw bale house or something we're gonna do something cool my ex-husband and i once went away and we learned how to make a straw bale house because we were gonna sell the farm and live off grid and you know the whole thing so let's say we're all gonna do this well a good leader one knows how to build a straw bale house or at least knows how to read the plans to build a straw bale house a good leader looks around the room and this is like let's call this a natural born leader because we will talk about how to be a good leader even if you're not a natural born leader natural born leaders can't help it but they will be sussing out every single person in the room they will know their strengths their weaknesses and they're not doing it because they're judgmental or they're competitive with you or anything like that they can't help but notice it they know it at family functions they know it when they walk into a new job they know it when they walk into a classroom people just show themselves to them instantly so you sit down we've got the plans we've got the place we're going to build we've got the materials and you sort of begin a discussion and maybe that leader says you know let's just sort of talk about maybe share your skills share what you've done before what building experience have you got what would you like to do and everybody sort of shares and while that's happening that leader's mind is made for this every little bit of information is just chucking into there and they're like aha yes yes they don't know they're doing this because they've always been like this this is just how they're wired and by the time the last person has spoke a plan has been formed inside that leader's mind and he's going to say okay you know what you two guys over there take those boards go over there you guys over there can you go get that water and bring it in we need this concrete brought over here and everyone's like this person's really got it in hand okay and nobody's questioning it nobody's arguing back nobody's trying to be the leader because they realize they can feel inside of them that okay this this is going to work and then this joy rises up in everybody because everyone gets to work together there is such a thrill of getting to work together of having that symbiotic beautiful merging of souls when 10 people are really working as a team and something interesting is happening there's huge joy in this so now the question becomes that we have to ask ourselves because we don't want those old ideas that was old paradigm ideas to come in is the one designated leader more important than the others are they smarter are they more powerful are they responsible for the job being well done in my opinion the answer is no it is a truly a group effort every single person there contributed to the building of the straw bill house every person every person sweated it out every person had new ideas within their area that they were working on every person was working symbiotically with other people within the group the leader's job was just to facilitate this particular group of people together to create something cool that was their gift that person over there is exceptionally strong and is really good at doing that and that person over there has it has experience with concrete this person over here is whatever and this person over here the leader is really good at coordinating people so on this level it is a co-op it is a cooperative situation but to actually take into consideration that there may be someone in there who actually is genius at coordinating people that changes everything so that's the first thing that a leader does a leader sees every single person and naturally is able to fit them all together and so this is really interesting because if you are a natural leader if you're in if you're watching this right now and you're like oh yeah that's me i'm i am good at that i like doing that that's awesome that's easy peasy but let's say you're in a leadership role and you're not good at that that doesn't come easily maybe you're a parent maybe you're a boss maybe you're part of a group and you suddenly became the leader of it somehow we can cultivate this all it takes is we have to just slow down a little and look around the room we have to almost remind ourselves because if we're not a naturally good leader and we all have different gifts like we don't it all have to be great leaders but if it's not our natural gifting we will default to just doing it ourselves because i just don't even want to bother with everybody else and then we end up kind of just ordering people around because we don't even know what to do or we just don't bother doing anything or we just follow and we just complain about the leader there's a lot of a million options here but let's say you're in a leadership role then we just have to slow down and look around the room and be really honest about what people's gifts are and not only what their gifts are let's say you're a parent and you have to really look at people and say this is where they're at right now this is where that child is at this is where my partner's at this is where whoever's at and really be able to take that all in and then the question becomes what is my intention what is the intention say as a parent or a boss or a project leader my intention is this maybe if it's in a home maybe my intention is simply that we all connect and this place is a safe place for our kids to grow up and then how does this all work together how do i do how do i bring all these people together in that and this but this is key if we aren't naturally a good leader we've really got to slow down and consciously take stock like actually look around and see what's there because again a good leader doesn't pretend someone is something they're not because a natural leader knows that everybody actually has to fit together so if somebody actually doesn't know anything about concrete we don't want to give them that job so we don't want to pretend that they want they like concrete you know or that they're good at concrete so for example in a family if you're a really strong leader if that person over there is actually really upset that child is really upset and they're really struggling we aren't going to sugarcoat it because they actually need to contribute where they really are so again if we're not naturally good leader we want to become one that becomes quite a personal journey of being able to see someone where they really are but of course this comes back to us because we have a leader follower dynamic inside of us as well so the question is what does my inner leader look like and my inner follower my inner masculine my inner feminine and really in this one especially don't get caught up in the gender thing it's not men are the leaders and the women are the followers that's not it just masculine feminine energy inside of us do i honor my feminine do i honor where i'm really at or do i treat my inner self the same way as i want to treat that child that child is really struggling that child is in a dark night of the soul do i honor it do i honor me if i'm in a dark night of the soul it's just an interesting question it's always it's always interesting how the world reflects interesting things to us to look within the next thing about being a good leader is a good leader has vision so maybe they've sort of collectively seen everybody and they have the vision of how this can work but they also happily surrender to the goal they happily surrender to that vision so whatever the goal is they're like is that the goal okay i'm gonna figure that out so for example like even in a family the goal might have once been okay everybody's got to accomplish this and this and this and this today or something that's one goal but then maybe as the day goes on you realize everybody's really struggling today you know maybe the weather's weird maybe half the planets are retrograde but for some reason this isn't gonna happen today so maybe you and your partner you get together you have a discussion you're like you know what maybe this wasn't such an important thing that we all get done today you know what let's shift our intention and let's just have a nice day together let's just have peace in the house in the house today so you happily shift dynamic now we say okay you know what guys let's do this and this and this and then let's all get together and bake cookies or go for a walk or go to the beach or go do something because my goal now is for us all to be happy and just be peaceful and connected and feel good a good leader is not attached to the thing that you're trying to accomplish because who cares every single thing we want to accomplish in life is transient in two weeks you won't even remember that this was the goal but you will remember that knitting together of the family we will remember the cohesiveness and the symbiotic experience of working as a team it's the same thing if you have a brilliant project manager at work and you really like this person you actually love working for them like let's say you're on a team and you find out that this person is the manager and you're like oh i worked with them before so cool so interesting because you respect them because they're good leaders well that leader can do anything the job might be this the job might be that the job might be the other thing it doesn't matter because the leader doesn't have any ego attached in it the leader's just doing it and it's super fun and we love doing it with them so again if being in a leadership position is not your thing how do we develop that well the first thing we have to do is release any attachment to the thing we're trying to accomplish to actually say you know what i'm going to stay in this moment i'm going to stay present and i'm just going to enjoy the process because if i'm in the leadership role my job is actually to keep all the interesting pieces moving symbiotically together my job isn't to feed my ego my job is to facilitate whoever it is i'm in a leadership role with that's my job who cares what it is we're accomplishing or not accomplishing and that's an interesting thing to develop within us the other interesting thing about being a leader is leaders love the challenge they love it like it's a thrill it's exciting true leaders never complain about the challenge you always know like if you go if you have a boss that's always complaining oh my god this person showed up late and then this didn't happen and the materials didn't come in and now this and look at the economy these people aren't natural leaders they might be there out of ego they might be there because they were the son of the owner or something or they might be there because they just ended up in a leadership position but they never really wanted to be what do they call that the peter principle or something like that there's an interesting thing that happens in business where somebody is doing a job and they're doing it really really well it's brilliant and then they get promoted they get promoted to a management position well they never wanted to be a manager they enjoyed the job they were doing so now they're suddenly in this curious leadership position but they're not necessarily a natural leader this actually happens a lot in business where now you're in a job it's like yeah it was more money and theoretically better title but i don't like it i actually loved what i was doing and again this is a throwback to this weird domination paradigm where everything's a hierarchy and the higher you are up in the castle the more important you are which again is foundationally hilarious like it's just a it's a ridiculous idea that one human is more important than another but this is in our consciousness so all of a sudden you we take this job because it's somehow more important than my other job and we forget that the whole point of life is to enjoy it to do what we love to do and so sometimes it's very interesting to not take the promotion not take that other step because i don't enjoy leadership and this is a really important thing to unpack inside of us because again because of this paradigm you know the one of the things the things i've really come to in the last couple years is that one of the hardest things about transcending this patriarchal paradigm is that it's insidious and by that i mean it hides in the folds of good ideas and it just sits there and it it kind of poisons us it poisons our ideas our ideas but we have this idea that we always want to be in the masculine role again the patriarchy is not about men that's maybe how it manifested around the world but that the most important role is the masculine so that means you're a bigger person if you're a natural leader versus being a natural follower one is more powerful and more interesting than the other and so we end up in this position where well i should try to be a better leader i should this makes me look like i'm strong and i'm confident and i'm intelligent and i'm obviously the leader in the room like we have these ideas within us but what if we love following what if we love that and again we just have to get rid of this weird stigma that it's the best to be the leader it's not one of the reasons that we think that we always want to be the leader is because we've never had a good leader we've maybe only ever had tyrants in our life tyrants as parents tyrants as partners tyrants as bosses and so we're like you know what i am finished with people telling me what to do i am finished with marching to the beat of someone else's drum so then we decide well i'm going to be the leader i'm going to open my own business yep that's what i'm going to do i'm gonna i'm gonna have my own business because i am sick of being someone else's whatever but we're not all happy leaders and this is where it comes back to that thrill of the challenge the thrill of being a leader if you want to be an entrepreneur you have to love the thrill of the challenge of being in charge and when you really think of what in charge means again in the context of the patriarchy in the context of the domination goal in charge means you get to tell everybody what to do that's not what in charge means historically if let's say you were a nanny the children you were caring for were your charges you were caring for them you were responsible for them you were responsible for their well-being that's what it means to be in charge you are responsible for those you're caring for not everybody wants that kind of responsibility most people don't really enjoy that responsibility most people love going to work for a boss they love doing their job five o'clock checking out and going home and then they go to work the next day nice and fresh and they start up again there's a great joy in that and it's not less it's brilliant it's really important this is important this is this epic collaboration how a village gets things done but it's a very important thing to de-stigmatize this and to say everyone doesn't have to be a leader and to actually be able to say in your heart actually i love following i love following a good leader you know i don't love following someone who's not good at it not paying attention a tyrant all that obviously i don't want to follow that because that's not leading and following that sort of tyrant king slave thing we don't want that so it's just very very interesting to identify ourselves as someone who loves the challenge of making sure all the bills are paid and the employees are paid and everything's done and we're still making money and all that like do you love that or you're like actually no i like to take a portion of the work and do that every day that's actually what i'd love to do within my gifts and skill set this is a huge deal and then what that also does because there are times that we will find ourselves in leadership roles like becoming a parent but if i know that actually in my heart i prefer following hmm but now i have all these children or maybe i'm caring for an aging parent and i have to take a leadership role simply knowing that this isn't my bent allows me to take a step back and say okay i need to look at this differently and i need to develop my abilities to be a healthy leader so then maybe we read books about that maybe we take on a mentorship mentor maybe we do something interesting because we we know that yeah this isn't my thing but i'll learn it for this job and anytime i can i will enjoy taking a follow role because the follow is awesome because again look at how we've diminished the feminine this was the weird thing about the patriarchy that for whatever reason it diminishes the feminine even to be able to say i love following i don't know about you but for me there's a little program inside that says but isn't that weak doesn't that mean you're like weak-minded that you can't lead like there's a little program in there that stigmatizes you don't want to be identified with the feminine because that's the weak side but we all know that the feminine is so strong and in many like especially like in taoist beliefs the feminine is stronger than the masculine not women stronger than men the feminine within all of us is stronger than the masculine the other piece about being a leader is you have to be trustworthy you have to have integrity because otherwise why would anyone follow you it's unsafe our natural self-preservation mechanisms would tell us to run the other way if we're paying attention but very often we will try to command respect you have to respect me because i am your elder i am your boss i am your parent i will command respect but that's not it again that just is a division that just creates separation but instead if you prove yourself to be trustworthy people will naturally relax and if you say you know here's what i was thinking like are you into doing this and this and this if they know you're trustworthy and they like your vision they'll say sure i'm in one of the stories in my book the divine union of the masculine feminine i used to teach dance i used to teach ballroom and latin dance and especially i would teach wedding couples how to dance and what was interesting about teaching a couple how to dance often time there was one person who really wanted to learn how to dance and the other that didn't in our area here in rural ontario it tended to be the women who dragged the husbands in so i was always really used to the woman being really excited about learning to dance and creating a choreography and having that beautiful first dance and the husband being kind of not really into it well there was this one couple that came in and she was like epic she was like this really fiery woman and she was like yeah we're gonna do this we're gonna do this and she seemed to be kind of pushing the guy around a lot and he was sort of this passive sort of oh yeah whatever and kind of sarcastic guy and i was like you know because again it's very interesting to watch the dynamics of the couple when you have to teach them how to dance because the first thing we do is repeat whatever dynamics we have in our relationship on the dance floor especially in leading and following because leading and following we do take these roles in relationship all the time one person has an idea and we really want the other person to be in on it sometimes not all things we don't have to do all things together but maybe it's parenting like when we were raising the kids my husband he was like he was like no you know what i'm going to default to you with the kids you know i really you know i love your family and i love the dynamic and so i'm gonna i'm gonna default to you on that and it came to the farm i defaulted to him he was the leader we all do this in relationship all the time and we also in relationship battle for personal sovereignty what i mean by that is when we join together with another human being especially in the bond of marriage or the bond of a long-term relationship a committed relationship the danger is that you lose yourself and so what happens is the human being fights to maintain some kind of autonomy some kind of sense of self and if either person has any kind of distorted leader follower tyrant slave thing going on in them probably from their own family it will come into the relationship and then the other person will be fighting and so that's what we would often see when a couple comes to learn how to dance we're seeing the fight for sovereignty within the person within the marriage within the relationship so it was always a huge job that was probably the biggest job way more than teaching people how to waltz so this couple comes in and she is ruling the roost right she's just like okay you sit there you okay here's the music we're going to use here's that you know so then when i see that one of my great challenges as a dance teacher is somehow i have to get the guy to lead and i somehow i have to get her to follow because bottom line she doesn't want to lead the dance she actually wants him to step into the masculine because for all intents and purposes he also wants to be in the masculine which is why he's rebelling against her because he doesn't want to be controlled it's a very very deep rabbit hole we could go into there so anyway they start dancing and so the beginning you teach them the moves okay here's the choreography here's your step here's your step teach them how to go around the floor hear the music all that kind of thing and of course he's fighting leading the whole way she's trying to tell him what to do the whole time and i'm trying to really focus on him and get him confident enough to lead and get her confident enough in him so that she can follow and it's not going well it's not going well at all shifting the dynamic between them it was almost impossible and yet there's just no other way right there was no other way to do this particular couple we finally got to the point we were we only had like two more classes together i had to let him lead and her follow so classically what i would always do is i would tell him okay now it's time that he's going to step into the leader role and you're going to step into the follow so i really guide him and i say to her close your eyes let him lead you and completely relax and normally what this does is it relaxes the follower and this could be the same in same-sex couples and all that kind of thing too it relaxes the follower she has to completely surrender which is a challenge but normally it brings the masculine partner into that place of responsibility that place of being in charge that i am responsible for this person's well-being so that's what i was hoping was going to happen anyway so they start dancing she closed her eyes and you can almost see her starting to sweat like she's just dying and she's got her wedding shoes on that they're kind of heels and i had a stage set up in the ballroom because like we had we're having concerts at that time and it was this really rough lumber this was just a plywood stage anyway he starts dancing and he starts leading her and she is sweating and i said to them i said make make sure you stay away from the stage because that's going to really hurt her and he's just like yeah yeah i said no no really like you're in charge her eyes are closed and she's walking backwards the follower is normally walking backwards in a waltz did he back her right into the stage he backed her right into it she scraped the back of her ankles on the edge of the plywood and i watched it and i kept warning him you're getting too close you got it and he's like yeah yeah yeah right into the stage and i remember thinking well no wonder she was such a spitfire like no wonder she was being so controlling in the relationship there's no way she could have ever allowed him to lead so i i got mad i said what did you do that for why would you do that and he's laughing his head off and he's just like isn't it funny though i mean it was hilarious she had her eyes closed and everything like it was hilarious and i thought wow imagine it was a real wake-up call to me that there's a real reason why we don't follow certain people there's a real reason that some people should never be in leadership roles and so just to really take that seriously inside of us that if i'm in a leadership role i am in charge i am responsible for everybody within that everyone under my wings and then when people feel that when they feel that you really have their best interest at heart it's easy people will naturally want to follow and you naturally kind of step into that role the last thing i want to mention and then i'll put my glasses on and we can see if there's questions is this is all external but of course it all is also mapped inside of us so the question becomes what kind of leader am i inside of me do i order around my body my emotions my being like the tyrant because this is what happens because again we have this curious paradigm the intellect being the masculine likes to override the feminine the body the emotions reality reality our feminine is our manifest self manifest shakti energy this is who we really are and it's so easy for our intellect to watch some social media influencer read a book take a course do this thing and go oh my god i've got a great idea i'm going to make that happen inside of me and you can feel the complete disconnect it had nothing to do with where i was really at in life it had nothing to do with whether that actually was maybe even part of our journey but that's such a great idea i'm going to force it onto myself so now of course what does the follower do the feminine inside of us it rebels and it says no i'm not doing that i'm not doing in fact you know what you think we're going to do a new workout regimen guess what watch how much chocolate i can eat i'll tell you i'm not going to do that that's right yeah i'm not only gonna i'm gonna do worse you know what i'm gonna stop doing the exercise i was doing that i was really enjoying that's what i'm gonna do i'll tell you that right now how often does this happen and we can call them all kinds of things we can call them self-sabotage routines we can call them all kinds of things but really it's the dynamic between our inner leader and our inner follower what kind of leader are we actually maybe our leader we've simply embodied a parent mother or father and that person is now living within us controlling the children being me maybe i've embodied someone else that i respect and i'm trying to make myself into that even listen to those words i'm going to try to make myself into something i'm not that's the tyrant leader so it's a very interesting thing to also look at all these dynamics within ourselves am i kind am i connected am i considering all the pieces of who i am when i make choices am i being honest with myself about where different aspects of me are where my gifts are what my preferences are am i being honest about that because if i'm being honest and i take all of me into consideration and then i make a plan the likelihood is we'll happily follow that plan and it'll be great all right i'm gonna put my glasses on so her intuition was correct in her safety but not so much in her choice of partner with that interaction on the dance floor the marriage possibly should have been abandoned my curiosity is why do we abandon our intuition for big things i don't know but i know for me that sometimes my intuition is right but it's almost like it needs to go in and it needs to percolate for a while it needs to almost inform all the pieces of my being because all the pieces of my being i hadn't been affected yet do you know what i mean like i needed to kind of do it slowly and then all of a sudden all the dials are turned in the right direction and now i can step forward i mean she would rather micromanage or feel nervous in the relationship rather than not marry someone that's not a good match but we do this all the time sometimes we're very attached to getting married we just want to have a couple we just want to start our life we just want to start and honestly too sometimes we don't have any better role models that maybe her relationship with him was better than anything she'd ever seen in her family in her own growing up and it was actually an improvement how would you go about the stepmother role the child fears his mother and wants to be with his father and i i think he has more to learn from the tyranny of his mom all i know is that when my children were very young i came to the realization that i the only role or the most important role i had in their lives was that i wanted to be the safe place that they could come that even though the whole world might be crazy and judgy and telling them what they should or shouldn't be doing and all that i wanted mom to be the one safe place and hopefully there were more but at least that that is the best thing you can do for your children and your stepchildren that they do have to have the experiences that they have to have no matter who they are there may be times that you step in as mother bear in protection but you just have to really trust that inside there might be times that you speak up with the child's father and say i really feel strongly about this and that might be part of his journey because he also was connected to the mom as well so there might be some interesting discussion and learning there but in the end with the child as long as they know that they have one safe place to go no matter what battles they have that creates incredible sanity inside so thank you so much for being here and i hope you have a wonderful day
