[00:00:02] Welcome to the Business Miracles podcast. I'm Heather Dominick, founder of www.businessmiracles.com and author of the book Different: The Highly Sensitive Leadership Revolution found at www.differentthebook.com. Since 2010, I've been training Highly Sensitive Entrepreneurs and Leaders from around the globe to work less while making more impact and income by doing things differently. I'm so glad you joined me. Listen in and get ready. Get ready for a shift in the way you view yourself, your work, your life. A business miracle.
[00:00:39] This is A Course in Business Miracles podcast episode 182, Staying Above The Fray. In this podcast episode, I discuss the importance of staying above the fray of socialized trends, especially as a highly sensitive person in business and leadership. I share how our social self is born as a response to pressure from the world around us, and how if we stay stuck in this comparison trap, we are privileging anxiety instead of choosing privilege of agency. Most importantly, listen deeply for what you can do instead. Here we go.
[00:01:24] We are focusing on staying above the fray of socialized trends. I'm going to break that down in regards to what that means and then what that means for you and your highly sensitive leadership training. But first, as a preface, we are a community of highly sensitives.
I'm just reminding you in case you have forgotten, or more importantly in case you want to forget. So what I mean by that is we all know that we're highly sensitive and yet many of us continue to have a tug pull with what it means to be highly sensitive. And we have those moments in our lives, in our work where we don't want to be highly sensitive and we find ourselves falling back into those labeled patterns that being highly sensitive means that there's something wrong with you or means that you can't do what other people can do. Yet, one of the things that I've really been diving into is that there is more and more research now available on neuro sensitivity. This research goes way beyond the work that Dr. Elaine Aaron did as the pioneer who made highly sensitive public and more available to the layman person. The research that is continuing to come forward on neuro sensitivity emphasizes and demonstrates how truly those of us who are highly sensitive literally experience the world differently from a biological and a physiological level. The impact is physical, not just emotional.
So I'm giving you that important reminder again for the part of the mind, the ego mind that wants to go missing or wants to be convinced, “I'm not really highly sensitive.” One of the things that the neuro sensitivity research is showing is if you are highly sensitive, it is not going away. It isn't something that you grow out of. So the work that we do here is how to be able to manage it and not only manage it, but utilize it in a way that really allows us to show up, be in our business, be in our careers, be in life, be in the world from a place of highly sensitive strength.
So with that in mind, staying above the fray of socialized trends. So first of all, what does it mean in regards to the fray? This can best be understood by connecting it to anxiety. We can just be reminded that what can tend to throw us into our coping cycle is a trigger, which then tosses us into anxiety, which leads to fear, lack of safety, and boom, we're in our coping mechanisms, pushing, hiding, combo plattering.
Where we want to look is at resistance and the cascading of emotions when we're in resistance, we go from shadows to coping cycle to resistance to back into anxiety, and that cascading of emotions as I have taught numerous times can happen in a nanosecond. So then let's look at socialized. Socialized connects to the way that I teach it here of social self versus essential self. I first learned the concept of social self from author and life coach Martha Beck, and the concept of social self was not new to me, but I really appreciated the way that she framed it. The way that she basically says is that the social self is the part of you that developed in response to pressures from the people around you, including everyone from your family to your first love to the pope.
So seeing this concept of the social self through the lens of what it means to be a highly sensitive person and even more so through the lens of what it means to be a highly sensitive entrepreneur and leader. As many of you know, I'm a big fan of definitions. I love the dictionary. So according to Miriam Webster, the definition of social is relating to society or its organization, and the definition of essential is absolutely necessary, extremely important. So then what do we mean by socialized trends? One of the most commonly understood, in terms of socialized trends, is beauty and fashion.
Socialized trends get developed in beauty and fashion and particularly have an impact on those of us who happen to be women. So for example, we can all take a moment and reflect back on the time that we've been here on earth so far, and we can remember and recall that there were certain times when it was a socialized trend to have curly hair. Then there was certain times where it was the socialized trend to have straight hair. There's been the socialized trend of having a curvy figure like Marilyn Monroe. There's been the socialized trend of having a Twiggy figure, like the model literally nicknamed Twiggy. There's a socialized trend of having no eyebrows. Then there's a socialized trend of having very thick eyebrows. We can also look at the socialized trend of nutrition and health. I'm sure we can all remember when it was very, very common to make sure that you were looking for anything that was fat free.
Then suddenly what we started to hear is fat is good for you. Then there was a moment when everyone was eating meat and then suddenly it was like, Nope. The best thing that you could possibly do is be vegan. There was the socialized trend of being dairy free. There was a socialized trend of making sure that you drank soy milk. Then there's a socialized trend. Now oat milk is on the market. There's a socialized trend of education. Education used to be all about competition. That competition was healthy. Competition was the way to encourage young people to learn most effectively. Then suddenly it was about inclusion and everyone was receiving participation trophies. There was the education trend where it was all about reading, writing, and arithmetic. Then suddenly it was the socialized trend of science, technology, engineering, and math. There's been the education socialized trend of hard skills as the way to learn, and then there's a socialized trend of soft skills as the way to learn.
There was a socialized trend that you must learn through kinesthetics and then a socialized trend of everything is to be learned digitally. We also have socialized trends when it comes to marketing, marketing, socialized, trend of flyers. How beautiful could your flyer possibly be? Then there was the socialized trend of radio and television. You made it if you were able to get on the radio or get a spot on television. Then there was the socialized trend of telemarketing. How many people can you call in the least amount of time? Then there was a socialized trend of .com. Make sure that you had the most beautiful website, the most comprehensive website. Then there was a socialized trend of social media. Then we have socialized trends of beliefs and prejudice and stereotypes. There's a socialized trend. Let's all remember there was a time when women were known as witches, so much so that you could possibly be hanged or burned at the stake. There was also the socialized trend that black people aren't human. There's a socialized trend that cities are dangerous and there's a socialized trend that immigrants are evil. Let's all take a breath in and let it out.
Staying above the fray of socialized trends. My point being, if you are allowing your business to be dictated by socialized trends, if you are allowing your work, your career to be dictated by socialized trends. If you are allowing your life to be dictated by socialized trends as a person who is highly sensitive, you are setting yourself up to be in a constant state of anxiety. You are setting yourself up to be in constant motion with the coping cycle and constant tug of war with resistance. Now, this connects to privilege of agency. When you choose, and I emphasize the word choose, to give in to the fray of socialized trends, you are privileging anxiety.
You are choosing to lead your business and your life through anxiety. Now, let's take a moment to look at that as a socialized trend. Now, this is how most people actually choose to relate and to connect. The more drama happening, the better. Some people don't know how to talk to another person without gossiping. For those of us who are highly sensitive, we actually, and again, the research shows this from a position of neuro sensitivity, we register gossip as if it is literally physically painful to our body and system. As if we have just eaten a piece of tinfoil.
It is literally painful for our highly sensitive nervous system to digest. When we're in the social self, when we are giving into the fray of socialized trends, then we find ourselves sucked into the negative experience of comparison, comparing ourselves to others who are like you or not like you. Comparing yourself to others' expectations of you comparing yourself to your past self and your future self, all completely unhelpful.
Comparison is an act of giving into the fray of socialized trends. I have never heard from one person, especially a person who's highly sensitive, that this fills you up positively and motivates you to do good work. I've never heard that. But you also have the choice to choose your essential self, which requires privilege of agency versus privileging anxiety. Through privilege of agency, you have the opportunity to take comparison and use it to creatively adapt for yourself, use it to creatively receive support for yourself, use it to creatively, literally create for yourself. But it does require a privilege of agency over a privilege of anxiety. Where we then have to ask the question or at least have a moment of recognition, is when it comes to that feeling of anxiety, where is your comfort level?
Meaning it's familiar and as always, we have a choice to make. I'm either going to stay in anxiety, I'm going to stay in my shadows. I'm going to stay in my coping, I'm going to stay in resistance, or I'm going to choose grace and grit. I'm going to call on community. I'm going to call on core practices. I'm going to call on consistency and I'm going to choose to stay above the fray of socialized trends. Now, what's required to be able to do this is you need to know who you are, who you are, not who someone else expects you to be or not who you've made yourself into for someone else or not who you feel like you have to be in order to create business success. Knowing who you are and then knowing how you're here to serve and knowing who you are here to serve and making all decisions from this place, using socialized trends as tools, as an opportunity to decide for yourself not to allow yourself to be determined.
So back to privilege of agency. This is not the time in our world to be giving in to the fray of socialized trends, the fear, the anxiety, the divisiveness, and it is not the time to flake out. It is the time to choose to recognize we are in a new world now, my friends, if you're waiting for it to be over, it's going to be a long wait. So we lean in, we learn how to stay above the fray of socialized trends. We learn how to use privilege of agency in order to be able to create asking for support as needed, but creating the way that will allow for that experience of effortlessness and abundance that we're all meant to be experiencing right now. Not just you and me but you and me and all the people who are impacted by knowing you. That's the work we are here to do. Let's take a breath in and let it out.
[00:18:41] Thank you for being a part of this Business Miracles podcast episode and for beginning to dip your toe into the journey of highly sensitive leadership training. If you are ready to truly use your sensitivities as strengths in all parts of your work and life, I invite you to connect for a one on one chat. You will experience being deeply listened to and together we'll get a sense of whether the Highly Sensitive Leadership Training Programs are the best next step for you and your highly sensitive journey at this time. Just go to www.claritycall.com to schedule a conversation. We so look forward to connecting with you. Talk to you soon!
