the 7 temptations of a born leader - Part 2
In my last message we talked about how born leaders (people with giant hearts and a gut-level drive to transform the world for the better) can overcome the temptation to despair and the temptation to take themselves too seriously.
Now, let's talk about how to overcome these:
3) The temptation to purity
When you're a sensitive and loving person, it's easy to fall prey to the notion that your intentions need to be totally "pure" of selfish motivation before you can take action to make the world better.
Over 2000 years of patriarchal religious teachings have pushed the very lopsided idea that it's possible to only embody one side of our nature, the polarity of "pure, good."
It's not:
-- just look at the Catholic Church. There we see millennia of espousing "purity" alongside millennia of secretive abuse. Similar woeful dysfunction can be found in all other religious dogmas that seek to "get rid of" basic human drives like sex and power.
Whenever we try to banish the "lower" part of ourselves it never actually goes away, it just comes out in a distorted, sideways, tragic fashion, often at the expense of the most vulnerable.
As human beings, we're never pure, we're never "good"; we're something much better than that: we're whole.
Our wholeness includes both our animal drives to enhance our own status, AND our altruistic wishes.
Heck, we even tend to get a kick of pleasure when we do "selfless" things for others, so even our altruism has selfish motivation built in!
The antidote to the temptation to be only "pure and good" rests in embracing the tantric, alchemical perspective that it's possible to simultaneously improve your own freedom, joy, and power while showing others how to do the same.
We can do this by learning how to:
a) dissolve our attachment to disempowering beliefs received from misguided external authorities (religion, family, mass media) and...
b) re-create our lives in the vision of our own inner authority, the infinite Self inside us that speaks through intuition, dreams and divination.
In WEALTH, we get in touch with our true power as leaders by doing this process of solve et coagula (dissolve and re-create) as a community.
4) The temptation to modesty
I often think about the great scholar Edward Said, who have a long prestigious career said something along the lines of:
"I wake up every morning feeling I have to prove myself all over again."
Ugh, yuck. That's a horrible, false feeling. Clearly he didn't need to "prove himself" all over again - everyone else knew he was a rockstar except he wouldn't let himself know it.
This temptation isn't about external modesty - it's about internal modesty.
Often, born leaders have so much modesty within themselves that they won't allow themselves to internalize and enjoy knowledge of their own value.
In this category I also think of folks like Anthony Bourdain - he, too, had a brilliant career, he inspired many people -- and clearly he wasn't enjoying his own value in his heart, because he killed himself.
The antidote to this over-abundant internal modesty?
Get highly suspicious of any voice in your head that tells you that you have to put off feeling fantastic about yourself until a later date, until you've "proved yourself" more.
That voice is full of nonsense. It has its own agenda, which entails maintaining an illusory sense of separation between you and divine fulfillment.
You don't have to go around bragging about your accomplishments to others, but you do need to find a way to let them warm you and delight you inside.
There's never a need to put off feeling fulfilled until tomorrow.
5) The temptation to stay small
By "staying small" I mean perpetually seeking to shrink the sensational impact that you have on other people out of a too-acute sense of politeness.
You don't need to protect us from feeling your power and your truth.
Shielding the people around you from feeling your depth, your electricity, your wildness doesn't do them any real favors....
... it just keeps them from having to confront the lies that they use to shrink themselves.
The challenge with this temptation comes from the fact that for thousands of years, offending the people around us meant risking exile and death.
So the major antidote to this temptation resides in deciding that you'd rather risk exile than continue to appease people by pretending to be less than you are, by watering down your message and making it "palatable."
What might you say, what might you do, if you deleted your fear of people disliking you?
What if getting disliked by a handful of old pals was the price of expanding your impact in the world, would you be willing to do it?
You can let today be the day that you stop playing codependent games and start letting everyone feel the genuine intensity and strength that you have within you.
You'll probably find that this does indeed rock your social boat quite a bit, and you'll also find that years down the line the same people who grouse at you about it will be sending you sincere thank-you letters for the way you modeled real courage to them.
best,
Carolyn Elliott
author of Existential Kink: unmask your shadow and embrace your power
P.S. Stay tuned for my next message where I dive into the remaining two temptations of born leaders. And if you're interested in having world-class support with your process of growth, the WEALTH community opens for application and registration again on May 18th.
More details to come ;)
Image: “Loop” by Seamless