The Power of the Shadow

On this eclipse, I remember how much we refuse to see.

We spend our entire lives sitting with the same problems only because we don't have the bravery to explore places we haven't yet been. We grow old, but our insecurities are remain largely untouched by time.

Avoidance, it seems, is an eerie fountain of youth.

We say we're leading, but we're really just pathologically achieving--trying to overwork, overthink and overfunction through feelings we tell ourselves we're not strong enough to feel.

But my work invites you into a mature conversation with yourself: Evolved. Wise.

Powerful.

The truth about your nervous system is it was built across millions of years of evolution for the precise task of feeling hard feelings. True power is forged in the fire of hard feelings.

As today's moon swallows the sun, something shifts. And I see, with even more wisdom, that our work is not to flee the darkness but to face it. The relief you seek is in the darkness you keep avoiding. It's that simple.

Honestly.

• You still haven't started that project because you say you're too busy. But in the shadows, the truth waits: You procrastinate because you're afraid to fail. Look there.
• You say you haven't launched that business because you're not ready. But the shadows hold a more honest story: You don't start because you're afraid of being humiliated. Start there.
• You're still mad that your partner/coworker/person on social media disagreed with you and you say it's because they're wrong. The shadows know something else: You need their validation to make up for the fact that you don't actually believe yourself. Right there.

My husband, the nuclear engineer, often speaks in a language I do not understand. Today, before the eclipse, this man comes to me speaking about the iron core of the earth and the impossibility of gravity. He also mentions, with a passing comment in front of an open refrigerator, that dark is the absence of light.

I am, at first unimpressed--as if he has said the opposite of up is down. Who cares. But now, with the pickles in his hand, he goes on to elaborate that light is a real force--talking about photons this and electromagnetic radiation that--whereas dark, he casually notes, is just the absence of all of it.

Light is real and darkness is nothing.

And it strikes me, as I dig around my purse to find my ISO glasses, that maybe we will soon be ready to take all the parts sustained by darkness--the fear, the shame, and the loss--and see them for what they really are: Nothing.

MORE UPDATES on ENERGY RISING

The world's response to Energy Rising has continued to blow me away. I believe Energy Rising is powerfully resonating, not so much because of what it teaches but because of how it reminds you of how powerful you already are.

MEDIA UPDATES:

• We had a great time talking Energy Rising at the San Diego Women's Week conference on Women and Leadership. It was a profoundly moving experience to watch as an idea in your head becomes a book in people's hands. Watching hundreds of people in a single room resonate with the energy of Energy Rising was one for the books! And the book signing was out of this world!

- I've had some extraordinary conversation about the neuroscience of leadership with amazing podcasts hosts like:

• Enrique Rubio (he/him) on Hacking HR where we talked about emotional power at work and toxic masculinity: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cz6xmk1MJZq/
• Jessi Hempel on Hello Monday
• Noa Ries at Kahilla

The work on leadership and emotional power has received strong coverage:

• Harvard Business Review: The Anxious Micromanager. https://hbr.org/2023/09/the-anxious-micromanager
• Fortune: How to Deal with Uncertainty https://fortune.com/well/2023/08/29/how-to-deal-with-uncertainty/
• Forbes : 3 Ways To Deal With Bad Boss Energy In Your Career; September 2023. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2023/09/23/3-ways-to-deal-with-bad-boss-energy-in-your-career/?sh=4f75494425bc

For your copy of Energy Rising, check it out here: https://bit.ly/Energy_Rising