189 Honoring Your Capacity as a Sensitive Leader
Quiet Messenger: Redefining leadership & messaging for introverts & sensitive souls
Release Date: 08/11/2021
208. Don’t Underestimate the Power of Quiet Leaders with Ashley Looker
Quiet Messenger: Redefining leadership & messaging for introverts & sensitive souls
We have a tendency to underestimate quiet leaders. Or we assume anyone successful ISN’T a quiet leader. This hit home for me when my friend said she wanted to come to my Gathering of Quiet Leaders. As an Empowerment Coach, Mindfulness Teacher and Journaling Expert for ambitious over-achieving humans, Ashley’s got 11,000+ followers for each of her biz and podcast accounts on IG. Her voice is definitely getting heard, and she’s no beginner. Listen to our co-hosted convo to reorient and peel away layers of internalized bias. AND if you’ve got a more mature business and want to be...
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207. Soulful Creating & Transmitting the Energy of an Offering with Ahava Shira
Quiet Messenger: Redefining leadership & messaging for introverts & sensitive souls
When we choose to take our work deeper and bring others into it, some inquiries arise: How do we create offerings that forward our message and mission, that are thought leadership, personified? How do we share in ways that help people feel our offering and that light our fire and keep it burning? And when what we’re creating is so potent and felt, how do we convey it CLEARLY? Recording this episode with my friend — author, memoirist, caregiver for her husband with Parkinson's and creative midwife for other writers and caregivers — became a transmission of energy, of feeling. We’ll...
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206. Drawing on Our Ancestors for Courage & Leadership
Quiet Messenger: Redefining leadership & messaging for introverts & sensitive souls
We are made up of those who came before us, and the story of our lineage (which doesn’t have to be blood relatives) may hold clues for how we want to show up. Ancestral work can be a way to understand our own voices and can be healing for us and our leadership, helping us show up as fuller, more rooted versions of ourselves. For quiet leaders, ancestral work can create a pathway back to our own power, to feel safe to be ourselves in ways we haven’t before, to take up more space and to speak quietly but clearly. In episode 206 of Quiet Messenger, I’ll help you investigate the...
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205. Stepping Out of Your Creative Cave & Sharing
Quiet Messenger: Redefining leadership & messaging for introverts & sensitive souls
The final step in rekindling your work is to SHARE it. To be leaders and create ripple effects, we can’t stay in our creative caves. Our work needs to live out in the world in order to do its magic. But this step doesn’t just “happen” when you’re someone who may rarely feel ANY nudges to share publicly. Episode 205 of Quiet Messenger is dedicated to helping you step out of your creative cave...without disconnecting from your creativity (or yourself). In this episode, I talk about… Two questions to ask yourself in order to share your leadership if you’re...
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204. Express the Soul of Your Work (Rebranding & Photoshoot)
Quiet Messenger: Redefining leadership & messaging for introverts & sensitive souls
After a season of following the sparks of inspiration, my creative fire was rekindled. I was finally ready to create again. Exploring what this work artistically and creatively wanted to become turned into a many-month process. We often get advice but wonder how to apply it, especially as quiet leaders that don’t see that many leaders out there like us. Episode 204 of Quiet Messenger is packed with the how. I share exactly what I did – thought processes, exercises, and all! In this episode, I talk about… Why I had to burn things down before I got the spark of what to create How I...
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203. Rekindle Pt 2: Follow the Sparks
Quiet Messenger: Redefining leadership & messaging for introverts & sensitive souls
If we don’t want to do business + leadership the way it’s always been done, we can’t keep using the same tools. Traditional planning aims for what you already know. But what if we want to end up somewhere different…and we don’t yet know what that looks like? Here’s what happened on my biz sabbatical when I let following the sparks of inspiration be my method of “planning.” In this episode, I share… How I infused excitement and fire back into my work, without “trying” to Why following your yeses is a counter-culture act of rebellion How to lean into the...
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202. Rekindle Pt 1: Stability Before Creativity
Quiet Messenger: Redefining leadership & messaging for introverts & sensitive souls
Think of a plant that’s been in a pot that’s too small for too long. It’s grown as much as it can in that container. When you give that plant a bigger pot, its roots grow deeper and spread out to take up more space. Until finally you start to see fresh growth above the soil. I was like that rootbound plant that had outgrown its pot. And going on sabbatical gave me all that fresh soil. But before I could rekindle my work and feel creative flow again, I needed to expand my root system. In this episode, I share… The four pillars that led to stability for me (and maybe you)...
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201. My Year-Long Sabbatical to Unhook From Biz Culture & Rekindle My Work
Quiet Messenger: Redefining leadership & messaging for introverts & sensitive souls
Do you ever feel resistance to sharing and super OVER the way things are done? Uninspired and out of alignment with your work? Funky that your business hasn’t caught up to your values? In the past decade, I’ve learned this is usually a cue that I’ve outgrown my current business. In this episode, I share… A framework for rekindling fire in our work The practical - what I put in place to go on sabbatical How a brief hiatus from my business turned into a year-long sabbatical My vulnerable story of what led to breakdown & need for sabbatical How removing pressure on my...
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200. Redefining Consistency - 200 Episodes…in Eight Years
Quiet Messenger: Redefining leadership & messaging for introverts & sensitive souls
Many of us view being consistent and reliable as a badge of honor. It’s natural and inevitable in the productivity culture we live in. But what if we redefined consistency? What if we recognized that consistency isn’t a rigid thing? That it’s about continuing to show up and giving yourself what you need to do that. AND what showing up looks like might be fluid. Especially if you’re highly sensitive or neurodivergent and struggle to keep up. That’s what I’ve learned from doing 200 episodes of my podcast...and taking almost 8 years to do it. In episode 200, we...
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199. The Highly Sensitive ADHDer - Neurodivergence in Quiet Leaders
Quiet Messenger: Redefining leadership & messaging for introverts & sensitive souls
This is for you if you’re neurodivergent, suspect you are, love someone who is, or are simply ADHD-curious. For years, I suspected I was neurodivergent, that my brain worked differently than others. BUT I thought of ADHDers as bold, rash, outspoken and disorganized risk takers with overflowing energy. I, on the other hand, was a careful, shy, sensitive overthinker who ran out of steam by the afternoon. It didn’t seem possible to match up the view I had of ADHD with how I saw myself as an HSP (highly sensitive person). Until I read about masking. Kat and I talk about: Busting...
info_outlineAs a sensitive leader, I can lead a 90-minute coaching call for my Messenger Mastermind and be energetically DONE.
Even though it was a fantastic, connected session that brought tears and aha moments to my clients and enlivened, inspired, and fulfilled me.
I’m intense. Focused. In that hour and a half, I was fully present and gave my 100%. I left nothing on the table.
And after, I need to recharge.
In the past, I felt shame for that, for seemingly having a “lower” capacity than other leaders.
If you’re thinking, “me too,” it’s time for a reframe.
It’s not that you don’t have the capacity. It’s that your capacity goes deep rather than wide.
And you know what happens if you don’t honor your deep capacity, if you pretend you also have the capacity to go wide and just push through?
You get stuck circling the burnout / recovery loop. (Trust me, I know.)
The good news is that, if your capacity runs deep, you don’t also need to force yourself to go wide.
You don’t have to deplete yourself by engaging with thousands of followers for hours every day or be “popular” to make money as a coach or to make an impact in people’s lives.
You just need to reach the right people. And be able to communicate the core of your work and mission so your messaging calls in those people.
So then, how do you begin to go about honoring your true capacity? That’s what Episode 189 is all about.
Listen in.
I talk about:
- How to determine your client load sweet spot & what to charge to get out of the burnout cycle
- 4 key questions to ask to go from measuring yourself against mainstream biz advice (which keeps you depleted) to honoring your true capacity
- The necessary daily habit that most of us highly sensitive folks aren’t making time for
- My personal practices over the past decade that have built a business that works for me as a sensitive leader
Deeper support from me:
- What’s your Messenger Archetype? Take the quiz.
- Grab your free Message Clarity Kit.
- The Quiet Messenger Mastermind is an intimate circle of women leaders and deep feelers who like cozy spaces for connection, growth and processing and who want to feel solid, confident & consistent in their messaging to grow a movement that matters ~ both to the world and to their business’ bottom line.
Links:
- Naomi Osaka: ‘It’s O.K. Not to be O.K.’
Warmth,
Adria