I’ve had my own business for over 20 years and for the first five years I looked to male mentors who shared with me their ‘blue print’ for business ‘success’. These often consisted of financial results, profit, growth etc. But I just couldn’t really ‘connect’ with these things. Of course I wanted to make money, yes I wanted to be ‘Successful’ but I just couldn’t get to grips with the kind of ‘Identity’ I felt I had to adopt to tick all those boxes. It felt inauthentic and not really ‘me’.thewomen
So, I looked to my ‘Why’…
I wanted ‘Freedom’ to be myself and to do the work I wanted to do. I wanted to be my own ‘Authority’…my own boss, in control of my own destiny and to make a difference in the world.
However, three years after starting the business, I went through a series of life changing events. It instinctively knew my ‘survival’ now depended on me listening to my intuition, my ‘Inner Voice’ and having the courage to follow it, even though I had no idea where it was going to take me or where I would end up.
I realise now that I was on, what Joseph Campbell called ‘The Heroine’s Journey’, a journey of self-discovery and authentic leadership. The journey of the heroine takes us from the rejection of the feminine and embracing the masculine world, through to the underworld and our own ‘dark night of the soul’. It’s a powerful process of finding our ‘genius’ and becoming who we really are. Through this journey we discover where our ‘real’ power lies and our true calling.
