Busted: I was playing small and hiding out

In 1996, I received one of the most crucial insights that accelerated my growth and success.

It was simply this: I realised that I was living a shadow life. I was playing small and hiding out.

I was running the Alternatives programme at St James’s in Piccadilly. I was sourcing, promoting and hosting many of the top names in the world of personal growth for a London audience. I worked with people like: Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, Marianne Williamson, Susan Jeffers, Ram Dass, Julia Cameron, Eckhart Tolle and Neale Donald Walsh.

Standing up in front of 700 people to introduce the speakers didn’t look like hiding out.

And yet, it was no longer fulfilling me. I felt like I was outgrowing the dream I’d had. That was scary.

This one insight came from hearing Julia Cameron talk about living a shadow life.

A shadow life, she explained, is in the vicinity of our own calling. We are living a life that may be close to, even parallel to the one our soul wants us living. But instead of believing in our ourselves and our own talent, we are very harsh and self-critical. So we more readily believe in and support the talents and leadership of others. We are not backing ourselves. We are playing safe, not being bold and not really risking.

Busted!

She was describing my inner world!

I was doing some speaking and coaching, but I was more comfortable promoting other speakers than promoting my own speaking. I was happier reading other people’s books than writing the book I knew was in me. I wasn’t taking myself seriously.

And her prescription?

To be bold, even audacious, on our own behalf. To nurture ourselves and our own talent. To trust and nurture something brilliant in ourselves.?

I was terrified but I did start to become bolder and braver. I had to face my own vicious inner critic that told me I had nothing to offer, I was just being selfish and that it would all end in tears and miserable failure.

I invested in promoting myself more as a speaker and coach and began to get more traction.

I did start writing my own book, and within a year I had a contract with a publisher

I had needed to be kind to myself rather than harsh. And to make a commitment to myself, to my own life, to believing in myself and my own talents and sharing the messages I felt I was here to share.

I didn’t have the language then, but I was being invited to come out of the shadows and to lead with my own Signature Leadership Work. I did have a deep sense that there might be work that wanted to exist in the world through me and from me. And it turned out that this work, the idea of The Work We Were Born To Do, would help thousands of people around the world.

My Methodist upbringing led me to believe that good people should be humble and then meant staying small, and I shouldn’t be proud of myself, and that to put myself in the spotlight was just selfish and showing off, even sinful.

But I embarked on a new path of quitting hiding, I began to show up and my life gradually expanded and became so much richer, through my intention to enrich the lives of others. Showing up is powerful, when you are willing to keep doing it over and again, and especially when you don’t feel like it!

Three decades on, its turned out OK.

So now I have developed the Lead With Your Signature Leadership Work programme for you when you know in your heart that you are hiding out and playing smaller than you truly are. Its for you when you are experienced and yet you know you have a clear sense that you have some new work that wants to exist in the world through as well as from you.

Click here to find out how the programme can get you to show up in your authenticity to serve the people who need you

https://iamnickwilliams.com/lead-with-your-signature-leadership-work/

Let’s arrange to have a conversation – just e mail me on [email protected]