With tears streaming down my face I sat there in the car next to my date (who I’ve only been on about 7 dates with) and shared my emotions – The emotions that were being triggered by being close to someone again after the trauma I had with my husband, were fear, vulnerability and actually downright terror!
I felt ‘mushy’, weak, a bit stupid and a F*ck up, if I am honest!
So why was I sharing?
Because I believe in being authentic and real!
You see we always think we have to be so together.
And sometimes this is true.
However a lot of the times it’s just an excuse not to ‘go there’ with the ‘dark stuff’ we all have inside of us.
Recently, what I am increasingly noticing in my business is that we women entrepreneurs are leading the way on being authentic and open.
I have had conversations recently with colleagues and clients that have begun with them saying things like “I’m feeling REALLY ANGRY today and it has nothing to do with you”. And ending with “I Love you” or “I appreciate you”.
Yes, these are my business clients!
How cool is that.
Does this mean that I am giving them a free counselling session, or that we are all bursting into tears every time we feel sad?
No, not at all! However we are willing to be open about where we are emotionally on any given day so that we can honour our feelings and STILL be effective at business!
Plus we are sharing the kind of love and appreciation that just makes EVERYTHING in life BETTER.
I realise that to the ‘fuddy duddy’ old school ways of doing business, the above might sound pretty alarming! To the purely masculine mind it may even sound ludicrous! (Emotions & business, what is the world coming to??!)
But it isn’t.
I believe that this level of authentic communication is the way forward for how we will do business.
More than that it can heal the world!
It IS still important have healthy boundaries, however that does NOT have to mean denying our emotions, our humanness and our essence as women.
Sometimes It’s Hard to be a Woman!
Sometimes it can feel hard to be a woman. We are emotional creatures yet we are born into a society where the expectations around how we show up and do things, especially business, are inherently masculine.
So is there any place for emotions in business?
I SAY YES.
I believe that right now our world needs a more feminine approach to business.
We need a new way of doing things that includes more cooperation, more love, more partnership and a softer, more caring approach.
Without getting too woo-woo, we need to remember that we are all connected and we are connected to our mother earth also.
The role I see emotions playing within our businesses are to guide us – When we have a question about which direction to go in, or what is next for us in our businesses, we can tune in to our feminine intuition and get solid guidance.
Our emotions will let us know when a business partnership or client is not right for us to work with, if we are brave enough to listen.
So assuming that we have cultivated the emotional maturity to express rather than spew our emotions, and to know when is good to share and when it is better not to, I believe that we can all benefit from expressing more authentically in business.
It takes a special kind of bravery to risk being perceived as ‘weak’ (and in fact it takes pure strength inside). And I believe we women have that – It’s our time!
Let’s claim our femininity within business, blended with our masculine, doing energy, and reach heady, new levels of joy and success.
Let’s all Do Business Like a Woman!