Living & Working Intuitively: My Gentle Business Approach
This week Amanda Rootsey, Naomi Arnold and I are putting the finishing touches on the Gentle Business Mastermind, and as such, I’ve been thinking about the topic of gentleness in depth of late.
When I check in with my heart and ask what I most want to share today, it’s this; you can create a business, or find a way to work, that supports you and aligns with your values, personality and desires. It is possible. You don’t have to follow the crowd and do things the same way everyone else seems to be doing them. You don’t have to push, push, push or berate yourself for not always being ‘on’. You can rest, relax, play, have fun.
You can cultivate playfulness, creativity and gentleness in your life and still make money.
The fear of not having enough is such a strong fear for so many of us, and something I have to keep in perspective in my mind too. We live in a culture where we are told we must work hard, drive ourselves up the ladder of success, and achieve more with every passing year.
I want to enjoy life and that includes my work. I can easily slip into the very stern, strict ‘achiever’ side of my personality, but I don’t like how it feels. She is so driven by a fear of lack, that she can’t relax.
About five years ago I decided ‘Gentle’ was one of my core desired feelings. I very consciously chose it because it was a powerful and effective counterpoint to the very driven side of my nature. When I whispered the word gentle in my mind, it calmed my nerves and redirected my focus away from the hard edges of the ambitious, stern, strict and regimented expectations I had of myself and those around me, and back to the nurturing, accepting, wise and powerful woman I wanted more of.
A gentle person can be very powerful. I think this is because she loves and accepts herself, which in turn makes space to love and accept those around her. She has boundaries in place as to how people can treat her. She understands her worth and doesn’t have arguments with herself or others defending her desire or need for rest. She knows she works best when she feels cared for, calm and well nourished.
Last night I watched a documentary on SBS about food and the presenter was saying eating a high protein diet has the same effect on our cells as putting our foot on the accelerator and never taking it off. Instead of having time to rest and repair, our cells are in ‘go, go, go’ mode, which leads to premature ageing according to the scientist, and can increase our likelihood of developing heart disease and cancer. So instead of overdosing on protein, he suggested eating a diet high in fruits and vegetables, with only small amounts of protein, to give our cells time to repair. Which makes sense to me.
But this isn’t about nutrition, what I thought was interesting, was how easily one element in something, such as protein in a diet, or perhaps ambition in a business or our work, can be overused and over consumed. We think we aren’t building our muscles enough, getting ahead fast enough, or making a big enough effort to be successful, and so we do the equivalent of protein driving our cells to work, work, work, instead of taking time to relax, repair, play and enjoy the roses along the way. Which is not only more enjoyable, it’s also more sustainable, as we are less likely to burn ourselves out or find once we ‘arrive’ at our perceived level of success, that we still feel unfulfilled.
It’s so easy in our culture to believe we have to be ‘on’ all the time. Performing, achieving, producing, succeeding, in accordance with the societal norms around us which say success looks like more money, more wealth, more possessions, more influence. But what if success includes personal fulfilment, a sense of belonging, cultivating joy, creativity, delight, beauty, adventure and pleasure? Those qualities are deeply entrenched in our souls’ longing, and we cut ourselves short and don’t get to experience the full breadth of living if we don’t cultivate and nurture them with as much (or even more) fervour as trying to ‘get ahead’.
When we don’t nurture those qualities, from my experience and observations, we can get ahead, only to find our heart is still longing for more; feeling unsatisfied with the bigger bank balance, the bigger business, the bigger house. We are complex, yet simple creatures, who need more than one nutrient in life to feel fulfilled and successful in our own right.
Accepting & Embracing Yourself & Your Preferred Ways of Working
I think being gentle in business and with yourself comes from loving and accepting who you are, instead of constantly comparing yourself to others and feeling you are falling short of their level, or definition, of success. It takes self-enquiry to figure out our own definition of success, according to our own values.
Something I’ve found has helped me love and accept myself more, is getting to know myself through different lenses of personality types and most recently, discovering more about being a highly sensitive person.
Understanding what makes me tick and what motivates me, being aware of what can be my Achilles heel, and knowing more about how my nervous system is wired, makes it so much easier to have compassion for myself, work with my own rhythms, embrace my natural strengths, and figure out how to get into flow by honouring what works for me. It’s a tapestry of information which isn’t there to limit how I view myself, or lock me into a box, but instead opens up my understanding not only of how I work best, but also gives me insight into the fact my experience of the world isn’t how everyone sees or experiences the world. Therefore, what is right for them, might not be best for me.
Some of my favourite personality tests are the Myers Briggs (I’m an INFJ), the Enneagram (I’m a 3) and recently my friend Hayley Carr introduced me to the science behind how 20% of the population have nervous systems which respond differently to the other 80%, and are known as being Highly Sensitive (I answered yes to 26 of the 27 questions).
Now of course we have elements of all the personalities within us to varying degrees, and people who don’t identify as being highly sensitive are still going to be highly sensitive to some stimulus, but I find reading other people’s experience or research helps me feel more acceptance and less comparison when it comes to being me.
Knowing, accepting, and embracing who we are and how we work best is the most fulfilling way I’ve found to do anything we want in life, whether that be paint, create, be in a relationship, or build a business.
When we understand ourselves instead of blindly going through our days wondering why certain things feel so hard, when they appear so effortless to others, or feeling like we need to change who we intrinsically are to fit better into a box, then we can be kind, and yes, gentle, with ourselves. And that gentleness can overflow into all areas of our lives.
Beginning tomorrow, Amanda Rootsey, Naomi Arnold and I will be on social media sharing 7 Days to Gentle Business. You can find me on Instagram and Facebook, and I’ll be tagging the Mandy & Naomi in my posts so you can follow them as well. We will be sharing our own perspectives on the topic, and since we have similar values but different personalities and life circumstances, what works for each of us might be different, which I think is a positive thing.
While we are focusing on business, Naomi has had a number of people who are not in business tell her they’ve enjoyed reading our recent posts as they relate to balancing work and ambition with gentleness, so please feel free to follow along from that perspective if you’re interested in embracing more gentleness in your life too.
Have a great week and I hope to see you on social media!
~ Nicola
Featured image thanks to Emily Campbell from Unsplash.