Businesses where women flourish profusely
December 7, 2022
Dr. Rosie Kuhn is the principal of The Paradigm Shifts Coaching Group, a boutique coaching firm which focuses on personal and spiritual development in oneself, in relationships and in the workplace. She is considered a preemminent thought leader in the field of transformation.
Dr. Rosie is a transformational coach and has been in the field of self-transformation for 40 years. She is the author of 14 books including, Aging Like a Guru – Who Me, and I’ve Arrived! Well, Sort Of… 101 Discoveries & Revelations Stumbled Upon While On the Sacred Path to Who Knows Where. Her books can be found on
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Dr.+Rosie+Kuhn&crid=CQ2MVH05L07K& sprefix=dr.+rosie+kuhn%2Caps%2C139&ref =nb_sb_noss_2
She has been training individuals to become Transformational Coaches since 2001. If you are interested in speaking to Dr. Rosie about coaching or training with her, email her at: [email protected].
Listen to Dr. Rosie’s podcasts, anywhere you listen to podcasts: Spiritual Immersion – Taking the Plunge, and, Aging Like a Guru – Who Me? She can also be found on YouTube – Dr. Rosie Kuhn, and her website is: theparadigmshifts.com.
The Inward Bound Bootcamp for Self-Transformation can be found at: https://www.suivera.org/b7-inward-bound-bootcamp
Being in business, regardless of your position or title, brings you and ever single individual, face to face with choice-points. These are specific moment within which we are choice to choose what we choose. It’s nonstop!
Exploring what has us choose what we choose gets us closer to what motivates us to be who we ‘be’ and do what we do, as professionals. Each choice clarifies why our professional and personal lives are what they are, and not something different. It explains why, regardless of our ambition, education and experience, we are where we are. And, more likely than not, where we want to be.
If there were only one thing I’d like to get across to all of my corporate clients, it’s that, the personal is the professional, and the professional is the personal. How we ‘be’ in our personhood, our humanity and life in general is how we ‘be’ in our professional world as well. Always, and everywhere.
Within every organization, how each person chooses what they choose to choose, regardless of their rank and title, is most likely how they choose to choose in every other context of their lives. Though the content may be different, the process, by which they choose, is consistent across the board. As a coach, I’ve seen this over and over again.
Here are 3 fundamental principles for how many business and corporate people choose to choose. You may find some of these apply to you and some do not. And, you may discover one or two ways that you choose to choose that I’ve not discussed here. Yay for you, for being curious enough to recognize and acknowledge something about yourself that is new!These principles are not in any order.
This is How Its Always Been Done
This is how it has always been done, so this is what I’m choosing to choose to do today.” Choosing based on the fact that this is the way that its been done in past, limits and restrict our ability to choose to think outside our comfort zone, and perhaps the comfort zone of your company. You can’t choose differently because you don’t know that you have a choice to choose differently. So many individuals aren’t even aware that there is a box to think themselves out of. So they do what everyone before them has done.
What Will People Think?
We are afraid of what others may find out or decide about us. More people than you can imagine operate from this principle. We source our identity from a decision we made a long time ago, perhaps when we were only four years old, when we found ourselves trying so hard to be seen heard and gotten. For so many of us, as young children we felt powerless and afraid that we were unloved, unworthy and undeserving of love and acknowledgments. Even at that age, we began cultivating specific strategies to get attention and to avoid feeling insignificant, invisible, or unworthy. Even as children, we have an incredible capacity to be brilliance in our strategies to survive—but maybe not thrive.
Having cultivated this believes system so long ago, we continually live and work within this fear-based reality. Wherever we are, wherever we go, we armor ourselves against being found inadequate, unworthy and unlovable. Within an instant, we imagine what other people will think if we do, have or be, and as quickly as possible, attempt to fill expectations of others, even when it isn’t in alignment with who we are.
Here’s what one of my clients shared: “I choose to pretend to be a team player. I’m always listening for what others want. However, I don’t contribute any new ideas for fear of being found out that I’m inadequate. I hate to be ridiculed, so I avoid any possibility of that happening, even if it means not getting promoted. In this way, I gain asylum from ridicule and feeling inadequate.”
Again, more people than you can imagine limit their professional development because they operate from an immature emotional guidance system. This strategy keeps them choosing based on fear, as opposed to the fulfillment of their human spirit. People with greater degrees of emotional intelligence choose based on the needs of the organizations, not fear.
As a professional myself, if I continue to choose from a fear-based paradigm—the one I developed when I was four years old, I imagine I’ll remain safe and invulnerable to attack. The consequence of this choice is I won’t manifest what I want, because I’m limiting how I will choose to choose what I choose. And, if I choose differently, I worry that I will open myself up to vulnerability. This is a dilemma. A lot of people develop fence-sitting strategies to avoid facing this dilemma. I know this place well!
However, if I choose to choose, based on what is fulfilling to my human spirit, inevitably, I’m more likely to cultivate the capacity to weather attacks and not be devastated by them. If I choose to choose from the fear of what people will think, I cannot grow myself personally or professionally.
It’s All About Me
It’s not uncommon to hear my executive clients say: “Though I said I was a team player and joined this company to further its growth, I’m really only in it for my own personal gain. I’m choose to choose based on what will bring the highest visibility to my efforts and will get me the promotions I’m seeking.” Yep! That’s what they are saying!!!
Frankly, we are all in it for personal gain. However, this can mean different things to different people. Personal gain can be related to security, stability and safety, to gaining recognition and rewards, to gaining freedom, fun and flexibility. We never know what personal gain means to us until we distinguish what it is that we want from our life in general, and our professional life, specifically.
Choosing to Choose From Something Other Than Fear
To grow your career you have to grow yourself personally. In doing do, your vision, your intentions, your desire to lead is not focused on what you fear. It is based on what you desire to experience, personally and professionally. Individuals doing their personal work will ask something like: “What’s in the best interest of my organization and in my best interest at the same time?”
A client of mine shared: “I can see my own limitations and inadequacies. And based on my fear of being found out I can hide in other peoples’ vision. I see how this limits the fulfillment of my personal and professional vision. At the same time, I know that there are ways of being that will advance the initiatives I believe in. In alignment with those initiatives, I’m willing to open myself to possibility, as well as risk ridicule. This is scary, but I’ll practice being more assertive with my opinions and ideas. I know doing this creates the risk of appearing inadequate, but I’m willing to experiment and see what shows up. I have no doubt I’ll feel shaky and anxious, but I want to know what it’s like to be the me I’ve been hiding for so long!
Trust: The Ultimate Fence-Sitters Tool for Growth
Trust is foundational to any change process. If you don’t trust yourself, your organization, your execs, managers, or even your peers, then you won’t choose to choose differently—it’s too risky! If you don’t trust yourself to have what it takes—an adequate amount of skills, experience, knowledge, and most importantly, self-trust, then you won’t take even baby steps toward your desired goal.
In my 40 years as therapist and coach, the most important factor for cultivating a fulfilling life and career is self-trust. You are where you are, personally and professionally, because you’ve trusted yourself in so many ways. To elevate yourself, personally and professionally, all that is required is that you expand your capacity for self-trust to the next level.
Through the work that I’ve done with hundreds of leaders and executives, I can tell you, without a doubt, that you will experience fulfillment of your human spirit in ways you’ve not yet imagined. Your heart will be so happy. And those you serve will also experience new found ways to grow and feel fulfilled.
The Women CEO Magazine is a platform that features the women leaders who are not only leading in a pioneering method but also assisting others (women entrepreneurs, team members, community) with a brave heart. These women leaders are not only the founders and managers but those who through their experience have achieved success and leadership lessons which they are now sharing with everyone.
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