73. What’s Needed From You Now

Hi everyone. I’m Saralyn Hodgkin, and this is the podcast to practice your leadership.

Hi folks. What the fuck is going on in the world right now? My lord. As many of you have been, I too have been reflecting, curling up, trying to make sense of the world as I know it. And listening, receiving, blocking stuff out. Sometimes just stuff is just too much. Hey, geez louise. Um, I have had a significant amount of cashew ice cream,

salted caramel specifically, and Suzy Q Donuts. For anybody who knows Suzy Q Donuts, delicious. We all have our coping mechanisms.

But part of what I’m reflecting on here, folks, as I’m actively actually rubbing this amethyst stone, just trying to stay grounded. Um, part of what I’m reflecting on is, um, What, what we need to do. Now, when you, when you suggest something like that, it’s so blanketed, right? Like, my gosh, how many, there’s 200, 000 different answers to that.

To throwing that sentence out there. What do we need to do? We need to blah, blah, blah, and everybody’s got an answer, but part, part of, again, the lens, and if you’ve been listening to my podcast for, for a while, um, the framing here is in practicing my leadership, right? My, the development of my capital S self, my agency and practicing how I intend to be in the world and the behaviors that I bring forward through that intention, but that I actually bring forward into the world.

One of the things that I keep noodling on and, and, you know have a wondering about is, yeah, like, how do I need to be right now? And I mean we can get into conversations about how do we need to be politically? How do we need to be as citizens? How do we like that? Yeah. Yeah, but when I ground in and I focus on, On, on standing in the self first and foremost the question is like what do I need to do now?

Because there are some things that I’m grasping for that. I’m having a hard time grasping for like Hope Like there, there’s some things that I’m finding challenging, like potential, positivity. I’m having a hard time grasping for those things. And I do, I do find them, my goodness. I have a lot of positivity and hope that my house won’t smell like skunk anymore now that we’ve cleaned the dog.

But in terms of the more existential, how I live in this world at this time, what do I need to do? And so the offering here today is playing with the idea that the radical act that we can do at this time is twofold. One is to amplify your worth and two is to carve your path. And it sounds so simple, like it just sounds so like, yeah, of course.

But here’s the challenge, folks, is that we hear these simple things and they are not easy to do at this time. And there’s a lot of things out there that I cannot control. And there are a lot of things that are bringing up significant emotion in me. Maybe the same is for you. And so where I’m standing right now is what the fuck can I do?

That makes a difference. And I do an entire circular conversation with myself and where it lands every time is that the most radical act that I can actually invest myself into is amplifying my self worth and carving my own path. No matter what institutions, systems, people on comments, no matter what anybody says.

I can amplify my self worth and I can carve out my path. And we can’t take these two things for granted at this time. If your government doesn’t see you, the powers over you don’t, don’t recognize you. They’re not prioritizing you in any way. They’re marginalizing you further, whatever your reality is and your identities or the intersections of your realities.

The two things I know that we can all do and that the world requires of us at this time is to amplify our own self worth, feel into the love of ourselves in that self love and in the confidence of ourselves, amplify that self worth and carve our path, meaning reduce the noise out there. Be wary about what we consume.

Which then trickles into the stories we start to tell ourselves. Be careful of the algorithms that we dive right into as if those are the elements of truth. It’s like, no, no, no, I can, I can, I can reduce the noise. I can tune up my intuition and, and really invest in that muscle. Um, and I can come into places of making conscious choices along my path.

And I won’t always like the options. I won’t always like, uh, the noise that may come around those choices. But playing small and playing into the narratives of others is no longer, it is not an option. Full stop. And so while it’s really simple to talk about, amplify your self worth and carve your own path, it is really hard work and it’s work that is not paid for, recognized, uh, put on the front of magazines, um, talked about everywhere at all the tables that you sit at.

And yet, in order to get through challenging, complex, uncertain, what the fuck times, the act that we can invite ourselves into is to be sure to dial up, however we do that, dial up our self worth. And make sure we’re crafting conscious choices along how we are deploying our skills, our energy, where we’re creating a path for our own vocation, um, we can carve our path.

And I think that as I play with those two things, The, the, the meta of this is that we’re talking about coming from a place first and foremost of self love. And, that’s, it is from self that we garner love for ourselves first and foremost before we garner it from anybody else. And that’s the love that really, for me anyways, that sticks and helps me grow.

And also that place of self love, self worth, carving my own path allows me to figure out how I get through these complex times because the only way out is through it. So how the fuck do we go through it? Amplify our self worth, carve our own path, get to know, not get to know, deepen our knowing of who I am.

So other things you might want to do. You might want to draw out your identity map, revisit that, right? What are the different identities that I hold? And I define those identities for myself, not somebody else, right? Who am I? What are the identities I hold at this time? Number one, and number two, I think the other thing that we can do is, uh, craft the, pieces of our agency

that are important to us, even just like if you, if you draw a wheel, I, I, I do, I do this with a lot of people. If you draw a circle and you make it into a, you know, eight slice pizza, right? You draw that out. What are the labels for each of those eight slices that, that demonstrate to you or that clearly articulate to you what is important for your leadership?

For your agency, not leadership as a title, right? Leadership is your agency in the world. What are your top eight labels of each one of those wedges that says to you, this is what’s important to me of how I live, love and lead out in the world. It’s these eight things. I want to get to know, I want to deepen my knowing in what those are for me so that I can be more conscious.

to walk in the path of demonstrating modeling and practicing those eight things in my life as I show up because we’re being pulled in so many directions of who we are, who we’re not, what’s okay, what’s not okay, who’s allowed, who’s not allowed. It’s like, no, fuck, stop. What are my identities? What’s important to me and my agency and my leadership?

Tell myself stories and have rituals and practices that amplify my self worth, ensure that I have a place of resilience and a resiliency practice so that I can come into conscious choice of carving my own path, because the noise, the complexity, uh, of the times that we face, the, the narratives of, uh, who’s good, who’s bad, who’s not, um, who gets, who gets rights, who doesn’t, like it’s just so noisy out there, and while it’s a big, broader conversation,

what we need to do is come back into ourselves, deepen the knowing of who we are, and come into that radical act of self love, resilience, so that we can make conscious choices with who the heck we are. Folks, it is, it is not an easy time for lots of reasons, for lots of people. And, um, be in community, folks.

But even before that, be with yourself first and foremost. Practice the things that help you amplify and deepen your knowing of yourself. I’m with you. Grab an amethyst, get grounded, have some water, and maybe, uh, maybe the, the last point I’ll, I’ll share is find some joy, find some laughter. Um, uh, keep your dogs away from skunks for sure, but even when, even when skunk spray comes into your house, find ways to laugh about it, folks.

Ah, stay in the practice.

Thanks all. I’m Saralyn you can find me at holonleadership.org. I walk alongside you as you practice your leadership.