Healed visionary leadership
There’s the old adage that hurt people, hurt people. Whether conscious or subconscious, personal pain can manifest in obstructive ways and cause a ripple effect onto other people’s lives.
It is also true that healed people, heal people. And healing is a fundamental component of leadership. Healing includes qualities of self reflection, honesty, self nurturing, and communication. All these qualities aid and equipt solid, grounded, visionary leadership.
Leaders cannot do for others what they cannot do for themselves. And for leaders who are conscious with their light switched “on”, they in turn make others feel more comfortable shining their light too.
So, how do we bridge the gap between being stuck in hurt and being on our healing journey? There are four key phases:
Understand where your pain comes from
Become conscious of how your pain manifests
Reframe your perspective of pain
Accept that healing is a lifelong practice
1) Understand where pain comes from
Our lived experience
We all have different levels of trauma in our lives, as Peter Levine describes we all have, “frozen residue of energy that has not been resolved and discharged; this residue remains trapped in the nervous system where it can wreak havoc on our bodies and our spirits”. This trauma is individual as well as collective. It is acquired as part of our human journey and inherited as we come into this world. To heal is to first acknowledge that we have core wounding that informs how we live our lives.
Wounding is part of the human process and it shows up in how we lead, work and live. No matter how seemingly big or small a traumatic event may be, our perception of the experience through our younger self’s eyes can impact our belief systems, consciously or subconsciously.
It’s our belief systems that cause our pain. It’s our belief systems that get triggered. And it’s our belief systems that we must take a closer look at when understanding where our pain comes from.
Collective trauma
Resmaa Menakem, author of "My Grandmother's Hands", argues that trauma is deeply embedded in all of our bodies, and references how racism will continue until Americans learn to heal the generational anguish of white supremacy. We often disassociate personal healing with collective healing. This is a perfect example of how trauma is embedded into our personal and collective bodies. Trauma is more than the experiences we have faced as an individual, trauma can be felt as a collective from generations before us. Until we heal personally, we continue to recreate old patterns.
2) Become conscious of how your pain manifests
Personal experience fuels, colors, and propels activist work. But passion that is fueled by pain is hazardous - at best you will hit a wall and at worst unintentionally create more harm in the system.
Pain and hurt can be a powerful impetus to focus and create change. But here’s the truth, when we create from past pain, we inadvertently perpetuate pain throughout the system. When we experience trauma we fragment and freeze in the past. Left unattended, leaders can unintentionally create further fragmentation in the system, perpetuating the past into the future. This is how leaders inadvertently imprint their individual pain on the collective whole, causing unintended harm.
Earlier this month, I facilitated a session at a global gathering of human rights activists. During one of the sessions, an activist shared how she had been persecuted by her government, and loudly proclaimed, “I have two choices, either let them make me miserable or I make their life miserable. I choose the latter.” I shook my head.
This binary, zero sum, perspective is what perpetuates pain through the system. Pain begets pain. Every moment of pain - big or small is an invitation for personal and collective transformation, if we allow it.
When we attend to trauma, and move past victimhood, we allow ourselves to see the bigger picture - trauma impacts both the oppressed as well as the oppressor. When we acknowledge the wounding of all we can move towards true reconciliation and recompense. This is most notably demonstrated through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (TRC), a process of healing that uncovering truths of human rights violations during apartheid. TRC gathered evidence from both victims and perpetrators and did not prosecute individuals for past crimes. In doing so, it acknowledged pain on all sides and enabled collective healing for both the oppressed and oppressor.
3) Reframe your perspective of pain
Grief and trauma are an invitation for soul transformation. Trauma has the possibility to accelerate us along our path to discover and live into our highest and truest expression. As Viktor Frankl notes, “what is to give light must endure burning”.
What if instead of denying and shaming our pain, we viewed it as a gateway to our growth?
Could the pain and trauma be a powerful invitation to uplevel our consciousness so we feel more aligned to our higher self?
Of course, in the thick of it, we often can’t see the higher perspective, and that’s okay.
It is equally important to feel the depth of your emotions through each stage of your pain so you can authentically transition into the next stage of healing. Anger is an important and valuable emotion; in itself, it is not bad, it is important information. However, we get to choose whether we allow our anger to stew as unattended garbage, or convert it into compost to grow a new beginning.
The new way of leading calls for us to be human and real. Gone are days where we as leaders have to keep it all together in front of our colleagues, friends and family. Authenticity and vulnerability is what makes us human. These soft skills are what builds deeper connection, and in turn, makes us better leaders.
From here, we create from our integrated selves and are empowered into freedom. When we integrate our past into our present. And acknowledge, not deny, our trauma into our current selves, we create from wholeness and in turn create holistic solutions that attend to society’s collective mind, body, spirit, soul. As Otto Schramer shares, we allow ourselves to birth from presence, enabling a pathway for creative solutions. This is part of operating from a higher level of consciousness.
4) Accept that healing is a lifelong practice
As linear, binary thinkers, we tend to think of healing as something to do before we can lead, or something to be done completely on the side so we can get to the business of attending to our purpose. This is far from true. As Thomas Hübl, author and spiritual teacher shares, healing is not separate and a part of our purpose; we are here to heal, healing is central to our purpose.
Healing is continuous practice that we must have acceptance for. Our only responsibility as heart-led conscious leaders is to become clear on our wounds and understand where our blindspots are so we can address them. If you would like additional guidance during your healing journey, then I encourage you to book a free consultation with me so I can offer my support.
Right now, there’s an incredible need for our healing approach to be focused on all levels of the systems we see; individual and collective. We need visionary leaders who are taking radical responsibility to step up, own their healing journey, and play a bigger role in our world.
