[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 183, Embrace Your HSP Difference. Now, in this podcast episode, I read an excerpt from my book Different, where I vulnerably share my struggle to write this book. I came to realize I was guided to write it because I was meant to teach HSP's not just how to market and sell in their business differently, but how to step up and lead as a highly sensitive all to be able to create a greater impact while creating a greater income, but with a lot less effort, all to support us with being able to continue through these extraordinary times we are living in now. As part of this, I discuss Margaret Mahler's concept of hatching a process of separation, individuation, and differentiation, and specifically the four sub phases. In this process, I go into more detail on the differentiation phase and speak to how this specifically impacts highly sensitives and our unique journey in this world. As HSP's called to business and leadership, this is the stuff that makes all the difference for us as HSP's. So let's dive in and embrace it together.
[00:02:18] Different, the Highly Sensitive Leadership Revolution. We begin with the preface following along if you choose or hand on heart, allowing yourself to deeply listen. The invitation is hearing at least one thing that strikes your heart deeply in this moment. Even if you've read these pages previously.
I started writing this book in 2019. I came to the process kicking and screaming, swirling and the all too familiar, highly sensitive person conundrum of what's wrong with me, what is wrong with me?
I wondered, everyone wants to write a book yet I'm feeling like a death sentence has been placed on my head. No one is making me do this. This was only partly true. The true part was that no one was making me. The not so true part was that it didn't really feel like a choice, but more like a calling. I tugged and pulled my way through the writing process over the next 12 months, both loving and loathing the idea of writing a book about how to be successfully self-employed as a person who is highly sensitive. My reluctance was a mystery to me. I knew that through the process of being self-employed, I had personally transformed my life and healed so many of my untrained highly sensitive wounds. I also knew and believed deeply in the way I had helped the highly sensitive entrepreneurs I mentored for nearly a decade do the same.
So what was the problem? And then 2019 became 2020 and the reluctance suddenly made sense as the world turned upside down in March of that year with the global pandemic spreading faster than lightning and then racial tensions rising across the United States. Just a few months later, I realized I wasn't meant to teach only about how to be successfully self-employed as a highly sensitive I was meant to teach about how to lead as a highly sensitive. Now I understood why I was guided to write this book, though it might sound odd. I knew I had been training for the exceptional times of 2020 most of my life. I was an only child and my mother died when I was 14 years old. I lived through nine 11 just over a mile from ground zero. I went from being a public high school teacher who could barely pay her bills to starting a business in 2003 in the midst of personal bankruptcy and growing that business to seven figures within seven years.
I had also shifted gears in 2010 once I learned I was highly sensitive and I have maintained solid sustainable seven figure success while also honoring my highly sensitive needs for a decade and counting throughout the pandemic of 2020. I navigated living in the epicenter during the early weeks of COVID-19, while still leading a global community of highly sensitives to not only survive but continue to thrive through and beyond the times to experience business and life miracles in spite of what was happening around us. And I did all of this while being forced to live apart from my sweetheart husband for the first eight weeks of the pandemic because he served a vulnerable population as part of his position with the New York City Department of Mental Health at that time. Yes, using my highly sensitive abilities to support me in rising up in the face of challenges as well as to be of service to others has been my calling for a long time.
And yes, I have a sense that deep inside in your own way as a person who is also highly sensitive, that it's been your calling too. Whether it be as an entrepreneur in an organization with a specific group or in your life overall in your gut, you're meant to rise above the noise and the confused chaos of this world in whatever way it shows up for you to take charge, follow your intuition, and provide guidance to others with options for how everything is now meant to be done differently from the point of this pandemic forward. Because if we're being honest, the old way in which we were all operating wasn't working so well at all. Business marketing was about scarcity. Community organizing was about enabling and self-help. Healing was about coddling. Then as 2020 rolled into 2021, it became clear that those of us who are highly sensitive no longer have the privilege of time on our side to wade around in this old way of scarcity, enabling, and coddling.
A quickening has occurred. And we are being called to rise above seeing our highly sensitive nature as less than to rise above, waiting to be given permission from those who are not highly sensitive and to rise above the personal wounds of our past. We are being called to say once and for all. Yes, my way is different. Yes, I may be quieter than some. And yes, I feel things deeply yet is because of these that I'm meant to lead through these turbulent times and the world will be a better place because of it. I am no longer meant to or willing to take a backseat to those who are louder or bigger. I no longer believe even unconsciously that this means they are better. My time to lead from my highly sensitive strengths has come. Your eyes are on this page. You are hearing these words because you know that for you too.
Leading as a highly sensitive is a call you are meant to answer. However that is supposed to look for you, you know are different. And that this difference is no longer something you're meant to hide. It is time to stop feeling confused and believing you need to fit into the way it has always been done. You're intuitive. And now this intuition is meant to be your primary guide. It is time to stop pretending your intuition is less valuable than logic. You're a deep feeler and that these feelings are meant to inform you. It is time to stop being overwhelmed by the emotions of others and instead use them as motivation to act your empathic. And that communicating with empathy is a superpower the world needs right now. It is time to stop ignoring what you know must be said. You know you're a deep believer in justice and this is the stand that must be taken.
It's time to stop taking the backseat. And let me tell you this, you are not the only one, which is why in mid 2021 it became clear that the time for the highly sensitive leadership revolution had come. And it also became clear I was not meant to write this book alone. Everything I've ever created as a teacher and trainer has been in service to the highly sensitive entrepreneurs and leaders I mentor in the Business Miracles community. So of course it's their experience that is at the heart of this revolution and it's their stories that are meant to be the heart of this book. Our message, you're Not alone. Read on to discover how you are meant to join us. Breath in and let it out. What did you hear? What stood out to you in that writing.
We are here to hatch the highly sensitive leadership revolution by hatching yourself. Hatching. Hatching is a concept by psychologist Margaret Mahler, a child development specialist from the 1950s, focusing specifically on the process of separation and individuation. As part of that process of separation and individuation, differentiation, or hatching according to Margaret, Mahler occurs when the child first gains awareness that he or she is separate from the mother. Drawing from the egg metaphor, Mahler used the term hatching to describe the baby's emergence out of what Mahler believed to be the self-absorption of early infancy. Separation and individuation - the process is broken down into four sub phases. The four sub phases - differentiation, practicing, rapprochement and on the road to object constancy. Object constancy, the ability to retain a bond with another person even if you find yourself upset, angry, or disappointed by their actions. Our focus for today of these four phases is differentiation, hatching.
Also from Mahler's theory the purpose of individuation. The purpose of differentiation is to bring about the wholeness in the individual. And wholeness suggests that one is able to fulfill one's destiny and vocation. Wholeness allows the individual to be authentic in the world, thereby avoiding using only the persona or the mask of people pleasing. So let's take a moment and talk about why this was so controversial, this concept, this theory that Mahler introduced. Why it was groundbreaking at the time. At that time in the 1950s, most parents did not believe that their child was actually an individual. It was common to understand and therefore suppose that a child was by nature an extension of the parent, which leads to why many of us as highly sensitives missed the opportunity of hatching, of individuation, of differentiation the first time around. With no malice intended whatsoever. Many parents are not equipped to actually support a child in their differentiation. Maybe to some degree, especially if that child is very similar to the parent. But what happens when you are highly sensitive? What happens when you are the 20%? What happens when you are highly sensitive but your parents or parents are not? And what happens when you happen to be the only sibling in a household who's highly sensitive?
Well, for most of us, we learned to cope with that, and that's where pushing or hiding or combo plattering came about as a way to cope with being different. We weren't supported intentionally in that process to enhance our differences, to expand upon our differences. Again, to no one's fault. It's easier as a parent and it's definitely easier as a teacher to treat all the children the same. Yet now our time has come to individuate, differentiate to hatch later in life is a rebirth. It is a self-made decision. It is a self-actualize action. It is revolutionary as in most do not do it. And it is absolutely empowering and freedom inspiring.
The most important area of growth and focus right now at this time, is around the reflection of what inspires you and whether you have what inspires you active in your life at this time or not. In order to truly connect with what inspires you, you must be able to truly connect with who you honestly and essentially are not who somebody else wants you to be. Not who you're pretending to be, not who you've been socialized to be who you are unapologetically.
Now you tell me, is it easier to build a business from a place of inspiration? Yes. It's Is it easier to be in your relationships from a place of inspiration? Yes. It's, is it easier to navigate the unexpected intensities of the world through these exceptional times from a place of inspiration? Yes. It's, and whose responsibility is it to activate that inspiration? Is it the world? Is it the governments? Is it your parents? Is it your friends? Is it your families? Is it this community? Is it me? No, it's you. It's you. And that is the purpose of hatching. Breath in and let it out. Beautiful.
[00:20:11] 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!
