Board Principles and Dynamics (Part 3 of 3)

In previous posts, we’ve been exploring how conscious collaboration with the members of Your Personal Board of Directors (Sage, Guardian, and Muse) helps you reveal and advance the highest good with equanimity in each moment. In this post, I share a personal example to demonstrate some of the common ways the members show up and interact in real life.

A Personal Example

Now that you have a solid footing in personal board principles and dynamics, I will breathe additional life into the construct by sharing a story about one of the many ways they have shown up in my life recently.

The fifteen months before releasing this book were amazing for me. High productivity of the effortless centered-in-love kind, not the forced march variety. A nonstop shower of insights and opportunities, doors opening right and left, with me stepping across the portals in flow with confidence, enthusiasm, creativity, and serenity. These opportunities included

hosting a monthly public access group coaching program sponsored by the Colorado Library System in Aurora;
rebranding my practice under Choose Your Energy: Change Your Life;
revamping and expanding my website;
implementing a total of nine social media channels through which I publish regularly;
writing my first book with Hay House/Balboa Press;
producing a weekly talk radio show on VoiceAmerica’s EmPOWERment Channel;
doing multiple speaking engagements;
completing ordination as a spiritual celebrant;
being initiated as a Deeksha or oneness blessing giver;
completing the Karuna level as a Reiki master teacher;
being chosen by the city of Aurora as one of two local personalities with a three-page feature interview in the 2013 Aurora Guide (www.tiny.cc/djwauroraguide);
building new individual and group coaching programs, seminars, and workbooks based on my Discovery Framework; and
receiving a steady stream of new clients—individuals and groups.

I am honored by the calling the Universe has entrusted to me and grateful for Its never-ending flow of support. These developments have required lots of deep breathing and self-awareness. I’ve learned to demonstrate genuine respect for my personal board of directors—Claire, Ella, and Bee—when fear overtakes them and they shift into gremlin mode. Their clever and dire warnings have included such classics as, “Honey, it’s been hard enough to keep you safe as it is. How are we going to manage to protect you if your presence in the Universe gets any bigger? You do this and you might as well paint a big old bull’s-eye on your back for all the naysayers to aim at. You remember how badly that’s gone in the past, right?”

When my clients report that their fears have reached up and grabbed them by the ankles yet again, I congratulate them. That means you are on the threshold of a big growth spurt, and your sage, guardian, and muse have “gone gremlin” because they are afraid they won’t be able to keep you safe when you get that big. The answer?

Seek to understand what old concerns have been brought out of hiding.
Help them differentiate the remnants of past pain from today’s reality.
Remind them that small does not necessarily equal safe for an adult.
Clarify that following your authentic path with love and without fear is what safe looks like now.
Harness their loyalty.
Leverage their core gifts of discernment, discipline, and imagination to keep moving yourself forward into a life you love.

So how did that particular scenario play out for me in January 2013? A while back, I recorded some unscripted radio interviews with a friend who is a professional radio personality. I loved the process and result so much that I set my intention to manifest a regular radio presence through which I could share my message of hope, possibilities, and empowerment more broadly and facilitate the ability of others to do likewise.

Just a few hours later, I received a call from a senior executive producer with VoiceAmerica, a leader in Internet broadcasting, inviting me to host a weekly sixty-minute talk radio program. During the final stages of completing my proposal, I reinforced my intention to express love, clarity, and energy. The result? Out of all the proposals submitted, I was one of three hosts invited to launch a new show on their new EmPOWERment channel in January.

I am often asked whether my board’s gremlin energies are stirred up by big opportunities. Yes, when they choose to be gripped by fear, because that is what fear does to us. What do I do when that happens? I do what I encourage my clients to do. As with so many of the things I coach, the only way I know it works so well is that I have the opportunity to practice it myself with regularity:

Pay attention and breathe.
Engage with love, respect, curiosity, compassion, and gratitude.
Reassure and redirect.
Repeat as necessary.

The way to develop a stronger rapport with your board members and help them build more constructive working relationships with each other is to pay attention and get curious (two of the 14 tools for declaring your independence from stress shared in my 7/21/12, 7/25/12 and 7/28/12 three-part blog post on fostering flow).

To help support you in optimizing your equanimity in each moment, we’ll take a look at the nature of discernment, reason, and intuition in the next post.

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About djwlifecoach

I am retired from 40+ years of helping individuals and teams build lives and organizations they love. One of the great joys of my retirement from professional practice is having greater bandwidth to donate my professional and creative talents to support and promote animal and social welfare charities. During my 30 years as an organization transformation consultant, I served as a senior partner in four of the world’s largest, most prestigious global professional services firms. In 2005, I took a five-year sabbatical to find healing and peace because non-stop work had taken its toll. My recovery from burnout led to finding my purpose guiding others on their journeys. As a board-certified coach, author, consultant, radio host, Reiki Master and EFT/tapping practitioner, I share hope, possibilities and empowerment with the world. 111419 DJW Sid CH Pet Corner Photo ShootI help clients achieve rapid, extraordinary, sustainable results by connecting who they are with what they do, a connection often lost through stress and the sheer busy-ness of daily life. Courageous self-awareness and unconditional self-love lead to honest choices based on priorities that nurture you and those around you on a journey to wholeness. Decades in coaching, consulting, change management, organization development, human resources and mixed media artistic expression honed my business sense, professionalism, creativity, intuition, leadership and communication skills. The result? Practical tools that help you become more insightful, creative, committed, productive and fulfilled. Even the most dedicated and hard-working individuals can shift from frustration to a sense of futility when their values, passion, work, and lives become disconnected. One of the problems with not taking care of our health is that the effects of ignoring it are often slow to show up. We continue to juggle family responsibilities, work and finances until we lose ourselves, waking up one day 50 pounds heavier in body and soul—no good to ourselves or anyone else. I love working with people who are ready to take life-changing action to make their dreams a reality. At each moment, you have inside you all the wisdom you seek to choose your life and your way of showing up. Limiting thoughts, beliefs and feelings can block you from moving forward. An absence of love and concern for yourself can result in negative head talk that holds you back with discouraging messages about who you are and what you can do. By listening and caring deeply, I guide you in connecting with your own inner wisdom. We identify the way you’d like to live. We determine what’s blocking you and release you from the hold those blocks have over you—unleashing the positive energy that will fuel you forward. Together we develop a plan to move you closer to your heart’s desire. My books, blog, radio show and signature coaching programs help individuals and organizations harness the transformative energy of love to turn unexplored possibilities into fulfilling realities and step into their greatness. What’s love got to do with it? Everything! My book, Choose Your Energy: Change Your Life! (Hay House/ Balboa Press 2013) shares my story and the stories of 10 of my clients along with my signature Discovery Framework. For fun, I love reading, sewing, knitting, yin yoga, afternoon tea, opera and movies. I live in Williamsburg, Virginia with my spouse, Wilson Abney, and the cat who runs our life, Maisy Jane.

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