Be the CEO of your life.
—Robin Sharma
I haven’t always been faithful in saying “Hell no!” to the things that brought me suffering and pain. It took me eleven years of banging my head against a stone wall before I learned some important, high-tuition lessons about life and leadership.
Like many wild women, I have stepped in leg traps. Eaten poisoned bait. Injured my instincts. Clearcut my life. Polluted my creative river.[1] All in the name of saving the Earth. I have found that our successes don’t make us wise; rather, our failures do.
I believe we are burned out, overwhelmed, and tired of saving the world because the world doesn’t need saving. We do. The truth is that everything we learned about leadership and activism requiring sacrifice, suffering, and hard work, is a lie.
At forty years old, I had the ideal job: changing the world, restoring Nature, and impacting thousands of women. I was at the top of the executive ladder, co-CEO of an emerging international environmental and social justice organization. Growth was exponential. I should have been counting my blessings. Instead, I hated waking up in the morning. I had spent years climbing the nonprofit executive ladder as a director, chief operations officer (twice), co-Executive Director, and co-CEO. It should have been profoundly rewarding. Instead, I was reforesting the Tropics while clearcutting my life.
Despite making a good living and a global impact, one day I finally just walked out. I never went back. I resigned my title and became a better leader and human being. Here’s why and what I learned along the way:
- Leadership and activism do not require sacrifice, suffering, and hard work.
- We must first become the change before we can lead the change.
- Nature and the world don’t need saving. We do. o Joy is the only meaningful life GPS.
I had worked hard professionally to make the world a better place. Out of commitment to my causes, I sacrificed important things along the way: my health, my relationships, my peace of mind, and the joy of living. I failed to realize that to “save the world” we must first save our own souls. To restore the outer world and Nature, we must first attend to our inner Nature.
Like many others, I was taught that doing good and changing the world is challenging work, takes effort, and requires sacrifices. Suffering was just part of the job description. Before the age of forty, I was burned out, overwhelmed, and stressed, but afraid to admit the truth of my inner life, let alone make an outer change. I was an activist addict.
One day I looked my bloodshot eyes in the mirror and asked,
What if life isn’t meant to be this hard? What if life isn’t about fighting and struggling all the time? What’s the worst that could happen if I quit? Took a sabbatical? What if I slowed down, rested, rooted deeply in joy, and then tried to change the world? What will happen to our society, and the Earth, if we keep leading in the way that birthed capitalism and the corporate world?
To read more about how I became the CEO of my life, purchase my book Joy as the Compass: Freeing Yourself from the Seven Activist Addictions. You can find it on Bookshop.org and Amazon.
[1] . Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992). As an environmental activist, I wanted to ground the seven activist addictions in language that connects our souls to Nature. Phrases such as stepping in leg traps, eating poisoned bait, and polluting our creative rivers, are all part of Dr. Estés great contribution to women’s studies. I apply them throughout this book and to the nonprofit world as a way of expanding Dr. Estés’ Wild Woman conversation.