[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 181, Harness the Power of Privilege of Agency. In this podcast episode, I go deep into what privilege of agency is and what it isn't. I share my own journey of how I developed this concept and how I've used it to make massively impactful changes in how I operate as an HSP in business and leadership. I discuss how it specifically relates to you as a highly sensitive who is also in business and leadership, and why this particular teaching is more important now than ever, all so that you will be able to step out of comparison traps and step into your purpose, be the change you want to see in the world, while also creating the personal success and freedom you desire. Let's get started.
[00:01:43] Welcome to today's training on claiming and celebrating success as a mark of highly sensitive leadership and as an act of V&V. So first of all, what is V&V. For some of you, this is an ACIBM, A Business Miracles Highly Sensitive Leadership Training term that now is second language to you. To others, V&V is a newer concept. So just an opportunity for us to revisit and remind the power of V&V stands for visibility and vulnerability, V&V energy, visibility and vulnerability. And particularly for us as highly sensitives, the willingness to be seen for who we really are.
So V&V is a concept that I connected into, and I'm just going to say it before Brené Brown wrote her book, and all because I recognized that it was something that I had difficulty with myself. And so as I started to bring it into teaching, seeing the value of V&V energy, particularly for highly sensitives to counteract the limiting thought pattern that most of us share of not being enough. For today, I want to focus on closing the gap and the value of claiming and celebrating success as part of closing the gap. And I'll speak more about that in just a moment.
So I've been doing a lot of reflecting, including reflecting all the way back to the last in-person training retreat that we had as a community before the global pandemic, which was fall 2019. And looking back on that training retreat, it's extremely prophetic in a lot of ways having no idea what was coming of course. But one of the things that I taught about at that training retreat was this concept of a marathon, really staying the course of a marathon and at that fall training retreat using marathon as a metaphor for really remaining engaged in the process of the real work, this internal for external transformation that we do here as part of Business Miracles. At that particular training retreat, it was in connection to relationship with money. Now here we are and I look back to what I was teaching on just as the pandemic was really taking hold across the globe, we remember just the total sense of disorientation.
As a community, that is where we began to focus in the teachings. And I began adding extra support in the form of daily activations and the support of what I was referring to as exceptional times round tables at that time. And one of the concepts that I introduced early on in the pandemic was the concept of the marathon. And I remember very specifically teaching for all of us to pay attention to the power of pacing because at that point in the pandemic, there was a massive adrenaline that was just surging through all of us, right? Which is a very common initial instinct to survive a massive impact of stress and trauma. And I brought forward the concept of pacing and the concept of a marathon to be able to remind us and support us to pace ourselves because we were in this for the long haul. And here we are and if this hasn't been one God forsaken marathon, I dunno what a marathon is and I'm never going to run one, which is exactly what I talked about at the fall 19 training retreat.
But man, have we all been through an emotional, mental psychological marathon. It's the final stretch of a marathon that's most challenging because this is when the delirium of fatigue sets in. And what happens when you're tired?
There is a sense that things are helpless, there's a sense that things are hopeless and it's right at that delirium of fatigue moment in running the marathon when you want to throw up your hands and quit. Now how does that show up when the marathon that you're running is your day-to-day experience? Well, it shows up in acting out. It shows up in sabotage, it shows up in lashing out as part of acting out. For us as highly sensitives, it's definitely going to most likely show up as our coping mechanism, pushing, hiding or combo plattering. Where we're desperately in the throes of that helplessness, of that hopelessness of just feeling so God forsaken tired that we are looking for some form of control.
So this is the moment to reflect. How is that showing up for you? To be very aware and pay attention. How is it showing up for your clients and your prospects? Let's take it one step further. How is it showing up for your team? How is it showing up in all of your relationships? Because ultimately, whether you have a business or work team, we all have a team. They're called spouses and partners and siblings and parents and children and friends and other connections.
So in this reflecting, I have also brought myself back to one of my favorite fables that I've definitely used in teaching multiple times, the fox and the icy pond. And the fable goes that a fox was crossing an ice covered, pond. Noticed, let's say something yummy on the other side of the pond that the fox very much wanted. What do fox eat? I don't know. But whatever foxes eat there, it was on the other side of the pond and the fox very much wanted this yummy, yummy thing, let's say a Snickers. And so he's walking across the pond and he is very gingerly and tenderly walking across the ice covered pond and he's almost to the other side. And just as he's almost to the other side, almost to the Snickers bar, he turns around and he looks back and that's when he falls through.
The fable stands for, that as we are patiently pacing ourselves through a process to get to what we want and where we want to be. We get to a place where we just feel like we can't go any further and that's when we stop. And that's when it feels like the bottom falls out and what we want is never going to happen, when meanwhile that Snickers is just a couple more ginger steps to the other side of the pond. All to say that this place right here, right now is the place to more critically pay attention more than ever. Right when we feel like this is never going to end, right when we feel like we're never going to really have what it is that we want.
Also, as part of my reflection, I was remembering back to a training course that I took years ago just when I had discovered that I was actually in the process of discovering that I was highly sensitive and I joined this coach training, this training program. It was like a coaching and training program, not training you as a coach, but training you in your business. Very 80 percenter. And so I was in this program, it was run by Dan Sullivan and most of the other members were male and had very traditional male businesses like running a multi plumbing company. And I remember at one point sitting next to this guy in his business was that he made tarps that you put in your basement so that they don't flood. And he had built a seven figure business on this. And I was like, as a New Yorker, I was like, I never even knew these things existed.
What are you talking about that you built a seven figure business selling basement tarps? That's insane. And meanwhile, I'd walk around with my name tag and the umbrella of my company just said, EnergyRICH, the umbrella name of my company. And I remember one guy was like, “Oh, EnergyRICH huh? Sustainable energy.” And I was like, “Kind of”. They would've no idea. They had no idea what I did. Anyway, I walked away from that training program with three real big takeaways and one is I want to share with you today. And the big takeaway in Dan Sullivan's teaching was about how to ensure that you get what you want, that you're able to create what you want. In his term, it was all income based, yet this concept applies across the board. And this has always stayed with me, and that is to get what you most want, celebrate how far you've come.
Now, one of the reasons this has really stayed with me is because I know that personally, especially at that time, it was something that I truly had difficulty with and it is absolutely a repeated trend that I have seen over the last 10 years of coaching and mentoring, highly sensitives, the resistance to celebrating what's already been created. Now, why would we have such difficulty with this as highly sensitives? Well, in my practical practice, research of mentoring and coaching, highly sensitives for over a decade now, I have determined it's two primary reasons. One, there's a limiting belief that if I celebrate how far I've come, that somehow is going to negate or demotivate me to actually get to the next place or phase of what it is that I want.
And the second reason is the perpetuation of the not enough highly sensitive syndrome. We're actually so comfortable holding on to the misery of feeling not enough that it is such an effort to celebrate what we've done. Yet I sat in that room with seven figure business owners who made seven figures by selling tarps to go in a basement and they all easily were able to know that to get what they wanted next to celebrate how far they've come, which is why it's so imperative that we create V&V success as a core practice, as a mark of highly sensitive leadership. It is the thing that will sustain you in that moment of delirium, fatigue when running any marathon. The marathon of creating whatever it is that you want in your work, your business, your life, the marathon of ongoing transformation.
So we're going to start with giving deliberate attention to celebrating how far we've come. We're going to complete this sentence, this two part sentence. So write this down. I am celebrating this highly sensitive leader success, fill in the blank. This is important to me because, fill in the blank. And I'll say that again. I am celebrating this highly sensitive leader success, fill in the blank. This is important to me because fill in the blank. Now, what's important about the language that I just provided for all of us is highly sensitive leader success, so it's your mark of success.
You get to choose what it is that you celebrate, not in comparison to the other 80%, not in comparison to someone in your family, yours. And it's important to you because, and that's that ownership. And this is the way we go from feeling hopeless to hopeful. It's the way we stay the course. It's a way we finish or continue to run the marathon, and it's the way we're able to cross the pond and get the Snickers. Take a breath in and let it out.
[00:20:40] 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!
