Unleash Your Feminine Energy

I started my coaching business to help people. I wanted to share the life-changing information I had learned and used to tweak things I never thought I could tweak. Like waking up with anxiety every morning, constantly throwing myself under the bus to try to make everyone happy so that I could be happy, and starting to make choices that lit me up.

I had shit to do, stuff to say, and lives to help change!

I had already been running and loving my massage therapy practice for 26 years, but I wanted to get the word out about my new adventure in the best, fastest, and smartest ways possible. I heard about a handful of coaches who were killing it in the field, and one of them, in particular, was a business coach, so she seemed the logical person to learn from. She had what I wanted: a successful coaching practice supporting women to create lives they loved and not ones they constantly wanted to escape from. 

I followed her on social media, read her emails, and bought her course. She had protocols to follow, scripts to use, videos to watch, and PDFs to fill out. I thought, "Yes, I have the instructions and manual for how to do this, I'm set, let's fucking go!"

Except it didn't feel good. I had plugged in my details and was chugging away, but I wasn't getting the results I wanted. Some of her suggestions were way out of my comfort zone and not my personality. I'm all about stretching my comfort zone, but some ideas felt like I was being body-checked by a professional hockey player out of my comfort zone. I kept my nose to the ground, analysed my results, was disciplined, and followed her map. All the while praying it would get easier, more fun, more successful, and feel better. It didn't.

The more I followed the coach's suggestions, the more I felt like I was wearing a too-tight wool sweater, and I'm very allergic to wool. I felt like I was doing something wrong like I was the problem, and I just needed to try her way a little harder and then things would click.

I was exhausted, frustrated, and not in the headspace I wanted when I realised my bigger problem. I was hardcore in my masculine energy and had completely shoved aside my strong feminine energy. I wasn't having much fun, being playful or creative, and I sure as shit wasn't following my intuition. I was pushing and forcing instead of allowing and being open to cool things coming my way.

Ideally, we're a mixture of both and can call upon one or the other when we need more of it, depending on what the situation calls for. Both are essential, beautiful, strong, and get 'er done energy, but they go about it in different ways. Feminine energy has been looked upon as weak, submissive, emotional, ineffective, and given the stink face. It's anything but!

Let's look at both. Masculine energy encourages us to be:

• Protective
• Single-focused
• Purpose-driven
• Analytical
• Practical
• Logical
• Competitive
• Structured
• Disciplined
• Focused outside ourselves 

Whereas feminine energy encourages us to be:

• Compassionate
• Magnetic
• Open
• Creative
• Intuitive
• Sensitive
• Nurturing
• Trusting
• Empathetic
• Receptive

As I started out and wanted to do things the "right way," I was solidly operating from my masculine side. It was a forceful, pushing energy that I was operating from. It felt like a very inflexible way to start and grow a business that I was so excited to bring to the world. And I felt very out of balance. It's like when you're dehydrated, and your electrolytes are off. I felt wobbly and off inside.

There was little to no creativity, intuition, magnetism, openness, or trust in my actions. I was trying to check off boxes to do things the "right" way and impatiently waiting for clients to hire me. 

There was another fairy godmother of a coach, Simone Seol, on my radar. Her message was different from the first coach's. I interpreted Simone's message as listen to what feels fun and good to your body, have fun and play around with your content, trust yourself and your potential clients, and fuck all the other messages out there, including mine, if it goes against your intuition.

This was the affirming permission slip I needed to do things my way! I didn't do it if it didn't feel good, right, aligned, and in integrity with my core. I broke the rules! I burned the rule book and created my own, and it was so fucking liberating and freeing! I felt like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders, and no one was looking over my shoulder anymore, ready to crack a whip because I wasn't following the manual.

It's not breaking news that we've been eyeballs-deep in the patriarchy for millennia, which means we've been eyeballs-deep in masculine energy. This meant I would have some work to do to rewire and retrain my brain to undo all the messages I'd internalised. I'd be sitting at my computer deciding what to post and want to do something fun and aligned with me instead of cookie-cutter. I'd notice a twinge like I was literally being redirected back to the old way by a bossy sheepdog.

That's okay; that's my primitive brain trying to keep me "safe" by doing what most everyone else saw as the "right" way to promote a business. I just keep talking sweetly back to my brain when it warns me of "danger," and doing my somatic practices to release the discomfort around doing things my way instead of the standard way. Repeating the combo of talking to my brain and doing somatics allowed me to change my default pattern and bring more of my feminine qualities to marketing my business in a way that felt aligned with me.

I'm bringing more feminine energy to my work and marketing by:

• Writing social media posts and articles from a mindset and mental space of creativity, intuition, and trust instead of someone else's instructions. Those worked for them, and I'm discovering what works for me.
• Being goofy, silly, and having fun between recording podcasts and deciding on email topics.
• Keeping a notebook by my bed and an app on my phone to record ideas, sparks of inspiration, and things I want to share with my peeps.
• Asking myself questions I'd previously asked "experts" and listening for the answers.
• Trusting myself when my gut is guiding me.
• Being open to play, serendipity, magic, and fun to see where they lead.

Look back up at the list of masculine energy traits and get curious if you've been a tad heavy in any of those mindsets. I'll bet a year's worth of pizza you've been operating a lot from that energy because we all have. It's not your fault; it's how we've all been socialised. 

And if this way of being isn't serving you or feeling good anymore, it's your responsibility to take a kitten step in a slightly different direction. No one person is responsible for undoing countless generations' of habits and patterns or for dismantling the patriarchy. Whew, that's a major relief! 

I invite you to focus on your energy over the next few days. If it's heavily skewed to the masculine side, pick one trait from the feminine side and ask your beautiful brain how you can be just one per cent more of that. 

Keep it simple, and just take a kitten step.

You've got this, Sunshine!  

 Jenn Baron is a Certified Life Coach. She helps women see what's going on in their brains, decide if it's working for them, and share easy-to-implement tools that get them the results they want. Fast.

To learn more about how Jenn can help you, check out her site or IG.