Voices of Inclusion

October, 2024

Are you interested in living a more peaceful existence? Are you interested in learning why sustained peace and joy and love are so elusive? Are you interested in knowing who you are and fulfilling your true potential on this earth? If you answered "yes" to any of those questions, then you must meet my friend and colleague, Kristen Maki - Whole-Life Leadership . Our paths crossed a few years ago, and it turns out we are on similar paths - as women, as coaches, as changemakers...as people who "woke up" to our life's circumstances and decided that something needed to change. Kristen is a resonant voice of inclusion in my life, and I'm so happy to share some key insights I got from our conversation (below), and the full video of our conversation here. Please share and comment to join in our conversation. If you'd like to be part of the Voices of Inclusion series, please contact me here on LinkedIn or at [email protected].

Takeaway #1: We are allowed to reinvent ourselves professionally and continuously adapt our services and offerings to reflect our own growth and expanding interests.

I am a CTI faculty, which is the Co-Active Training Institute, and this is my second career. Previous to that, I was an optometrist for 16 years and when I fell into coaching, and I literally fell into it, it felt like it was the career that I was meant to have.

Part of the piece that I want to share related to who I coach and how my brand is currently evolving as it relates to the topic that we're going to be talking about, inclusion: I've gone through a few iterations of the brand, started off with working with burnt-out healthcare professionals because that's what I was. Then it evolved to something called Whole Life Leadership which is my current website and more recently, as a result of my own work around anti-racism and anti-oppression which I again fell into or it found me in around 2016-2017, I'm rebranding and I'm calling it Emergent Wellbeing Coaching. Where the well-being of one is linked to the well-being of all and that includes all people, species, and planet because I really believe that part of how we relate to ourselves and each other is related to how we've been conditioned, related to capitalism and colonization where we've been taught to exploit our own inner resources and others' resources.?

The work that I do is really at the one-on-one place of people learning how to create a regenerative relationship with themselves, how to recognize where they've internalized the messages of how to relate to ourselves and how to relate to others. I bring in a systemic and social analysis into my coaching. This is a topic that I'm deeply passionate about and a lifelong learner around myself.

Takeaway #2: Often, other people’s perceptions of us are not the same way we view ourselves—and that can teach us about how we present ourselves and our impact on others (which is often unintended).

The big thing that actually has hit me in the heart is when I get feedback that I'm polished and put together. This impact of perfectionism, which I've definitely grown out of, but I feel opposite to that because I feel so unpolished. I’m a work in progress and I want to be seen more for my humility than for this exterior. I'm also just really frigging irreverent and down to earth.

It's interesting because it's often the first impressions. How feedback will come is once they see my vulnerability, they're like, oh, I thought this of you. I find people will put me a bit on a pedestal of knowledge or expertise. And I don't want to be on that.?

That's the feedback that I get from people too, is the clarity that I bring or the way that I articulate things has them see me in a certain light. It's so funny because I don't see myself that way. Like I feel like I stumble on my words.?

Takeaway #3: We can think critically about which societal norms we want to hold as true in our lives and which we don’t want to believe in. It’s good to question everything we believe and everything we think we know.

I feel like my whole life was a commitment to a societal definition of success and that included marriage and a certain way to operate in marriage, too. It also included the career of healthcare, optometry, even like the financial success related to that. I often share in the classroom that my now ex-husband and I, 16 years into our marriage, 16 years into our business together, three kids, by societal standards we've probably ticked off all the measures of success. We got there and it was an empty success for both of us. We literally felt like we were in survival mode building all of that for the 16 years, poked our head, metaphorically, above water and had room to breathe. We looked at each other and we're like, who are you? Who am I? How did we get here? And I don't believe in any of that anymore. I believe on so many different levels that we are not meant to be workhorses.?

We are not meant to be valued by productivity, what we own, the money in our bank account. Even just coming back to trauma and nervous system resilience, like the definition of nervous system resilience is easy activation of the nervous system and easy deactivation. So we're meant to mobilize and act. We're meant to rest and regenerate, right? But we're not taught anything about rest and regeneration. I believe in a much more simple life. I also even right now, and it's something I'm struggling with and feel the pull towards, but I don't even believe in owning anything, owning land, owning property.?

It feels like I'm going to get myself into financial trouble down the road if I don't subscribe to these things we've been told we should have with mortgages. I've had to question everything that I did believe and everything I thought I knew. I just constantly, as I settle into something that feels like, oh, this is true for me. I constantly feel that pull in the brush against, but like, oh, no, you're not going to survive in the world with us.

Thanks for reading! We love hearing from you, and whenever you share your questions and insights, we update our Voices of Inclusion to keep the learning alive.

If you are interested in being part of this series, please email us at [email protected].

See you in November!