Are You Stuck in the Status Quo?

Written 22 July 2019 by Soo Balbi / Executive Leadership Coach & Facilitator

Human beings are creatures of habit, viewing and perceiving the world in conditioned ways and these habits can lead to rigid behavioural responses.

If your current approach to something isn’t working, it may be because you’re preferencing a viewpoint and are stuck in the status quo.

Understanding the model of Masculine and Feminine energies can help you to see your own preferences, and if you choose, gain more flexibility.

What are Masculine and Feminine Energies?

Masculine and Feminine are psychological energies within us, two perspectives any person can take which drive certain views and behaviours. They are also energetic expressions that exist in every aspect your reality.

The Feminine form is fullness and openness, whilst the Masculine form wants to get to the point and is seeking to empty itself as fast as possible. Every aspect of everything we have has the drive to empty itself and the drive to fill itself again. Breathing out and breathing in is a great example. This is the energetic movement of our experience in reality.

Though each of us has a Masculine and a Feminine component, here I'm not referring to the standard definition of male and female. Historically Masculine has been associated as male, and Feminine as female because as a culture we have groomed boys to be more Masculine and girls more Feminine. These energies however are not male or female, they are gender neutral. Females can be Masculine, and males can be Feminine.

I’m making a linguistic distinction so we can talk about these energies as aspects of experience and reality but let me be clear - they aren’t actually separate things. There isn’t a Feminine and a Masculine, they are simply energetic expressions.

Where Are You Sitting?

To identify these energies and what you’re preferencing right now, bring your awareness to your energetic felt-sense within.

Where are you sitting on this continuum right now?

Are you comfortable reading this article without needing to know where it’s going? Are you in a receptive space, happy and curious to just see where it leads? 

Or are you keen to get to the point. Do you want to clarify, understand and structure the information you’re reading here?

Most of us have learned to favour one side of this continuum more so than the other side. You may have grown up as I did in a Masculine-oriented household. I learnt to problem solve by applying Masculine action, by doing more, seeking to have and achieve more. Forget all that feeling stuff! We don’t need to talk about things, we just need to action the task and do what needs to be done in order to get an outcome.

The problem with fixating on the Masculine end of the continuum with all its logic and rationality, is that a blindness to the Feminine aspects of life occurs. This doesn’t make the Feminine energies vanish, they may just start to express themselves in less healthy ways.

For example, frustration may arise when people keep talking about their emotions or having ‘frivolous’ conversations. Achievement begins to feel empty and like it’s never enough. Melancholy emerges and maybe down the line leads to stress or depression. These Feminine or emotional responses may end up expressing themselves in that way, when they could express themselves as fullness, satisfaction and contentment.

Imagine Masculine and Feminine as your garden of life. If you water one side and neglect the other, the neglected side will create weeds and invite pests. It will start to manifest in less than healthy or desirable ways and will limit and impact your achieving what you want in life.

If you’re task driven in a very Masculine way, blind to the relationships involved in these tasks, you can become a taskmaster. You may begin managing and micromanaging everyone, leaving them with the sense you don’t trust them to do their job. Very quickly your productivity, collaboration, cooperation, your goals and success, the things that are touched by the relationships in your life become compromised.

It’s like having one foot on the accelerator and one foot on the brake but being too fixated on one perspective to notice what’s happening.

The Four Aspects of Masculine and Feminine Energies

Let’s briefly take a closer look at the model and break both sides of this polarity down into two parts.

The Feminine energy can be split into Static Feminine and Dynamic Feminine. These together make up the collective category of feminine energy.

Static Feminine: Static means still. Here we have qualities like compassion, care, mothering, love, holding, and enjoying, with a focus on relationship.

Dynamic Feminine: Dynamic feminine is movement directed feminine. This is chaos, spontaneity, erratic movement without point. Static feminine is I am where I am for the sake of being where I am. Dynamic Feminine is I’m moving wherever I’m moving for the sake of moving. Spontaneity versus motherly care.

The masculine can be broken down in the same way into Static Masculine and Dynamic Masculine.

Static Masculine: Static Masculine is ordering, structuring, systemising and processing things.

Dynamic Masculine: Dynamic Masculine is movement with a point, so driven, directed, goal driven,

These polarities are cycles of individuation, and re-integration, and we move through this cycle again and again throughout our lives. These energetic shifts are ebbs and flows of our growth and development.

How Do I Apply This?

Wherever you are now, you’re most likely going to be fixated on one of these polarities.

Let me give you some examples. Maybe you’re preferencing the Static Feminine. You don’t want to rock the boat, you just want to stay right where you are. Favouring this end of the polarity can keep you stuck in a holding pattern. The move would be to letting go of the sense of safety and comfort to step into the Dynamic Masculine.

If you’re preferencing the Dynamic Masculine, where you value willfulness, autonomy or control. Favouring this end of the continuum for too long can lead to excess and an inability to recognise other points of view. What might be healthy in that position would be let go, and empower other people with policies, procedures and systems, moving to the Static Masculine.

Whatever you are, if you're feeling stuck and want to move to a healthy integration point, relax and let go of your preference. That could mean: relaxing the wilfulness and control; relaxing the order and rigidity; relaxing the need to be connected and the fear of separation; or relaxing the need to be different and special and valuing a more chaotic space.

There’s no need to force yourself towards the other end of the polarity, you just need to let go of the force and value you’re applying to the current end. Doing this encourages the natural cycle of growth and development that we cycle through over and over at various stages of our lives.

What’s Next? 

Bring your awareness to your current preferences and play around with them. Gaining flexibility is a process which happen in gradual steps.

Of course, sometimes it’s easier said than done. Maybe you know some of this already but you’re not applying it in your life and feel stuck in the status quo.

If you’re tired of figuring it out on your own and want some help with the process, then contact me to discuss how I can help you move forward and get what you really want from life.