The Art of Being Bold at Work

Hello, everybody. Happy Monday. My name is Jean Nichols. I'm popping in just a couple minutes early to say hello. I'm also hopeful that my headphones are working today, but just in case they weren't, I took them out and put them back in because yesterday. Hi, Luke. How you doing today? I saw you pop in yesterday for my amazing me time post, and somehow I had accidentally shut my earphones off and I did this whole great report, like this whole great conversation on retreats from Bayfield, Wisconsin.

And I went to watch it later and realized that you only got the first, like, minute and a half. Hello, speak wonder. So today I think we're good. If you can hear me, let me know. But I am going to do a recorded video for the conversation around retreats that will go up this week because I felt so sad to have missed you. On me time. Happy, happy Monday. Speak wonder. How are you doing today? Erie, Pennsylvania. Amazing. Hi, Steph. How are we doing today? Hello, Jules. Nice to see you. I saw you yesterday for the one and a half minutes that I was there, and then I disappeared.

But I promise that I will still, still send the message around retreats. It's going to just come differently. Good morning. Good morning. I have my trusted advisor in the background. He's supervising our video for today. He's going to make sure everything goes correctly. Phoning in from Minneapolis today on this. You know, I'm just going to ask you, type in the chat, what is super special about this particular Monday? Does anyone have any guesses? And if you're watching it on replay, you'll probably have already known or experienced.

But if you have any ideas on why today is extra special, extra exciting, I'll give you a couple of seconds to try to type it out and see what we come up with. I also have one of my friendly crystal advisors here with me today. I'll explain why in a hot second. Yeah, speak wonder. It's an eclipse. It is also a new moon. So if you're into astrology at all, it's a solar eclipse. Exactly. So we had, a few weeks ago, we had a full moon quickly followed by a lunar eclipse. And if you're an energy person, a lunar eclipse is where the sun sits on top of the moon for a hot second or a few minutes.

And it's that divine masculine sun is a very masculine energy taking control of our light space, our energy space. And if you follow astrology quickly after we hit mercury in retrograde. So happy April. If you're walking into a bunch of things and today we hit the capstone of a whole two week energy blitz where we have a new moon and we have a solar eclipse where the moon is sitting on top of the sun. So we get all kinds of feminine energy. So if you're feeling a little extra today, extra wonky, extra spacey, anything, use that energy to just take a breath.

Depending on where you're at, maybe you flew somewhere to go see the solar eclipse. It's funny, all of the people that have driven and spent hours hi alec. Going to see the solar eclipse and it's a three minute event and I'm here for it. There's time building up to it and time bringing coming out of it as well. But it is definitely a monumental day. So wherever you are, embrace the energy of today. As you can see, I'm a little extra amped up about it. And in today, our conversation around being bold and authentic in the workplace, I wanted to bring in the topic of vulnerability and really allow that vulnerability to come to life by bringing our whole self to work.

Oh, you're welcome. Yeah, it's amazing. If you want to know more information about moons or solar eclipses, send me an note. Type it in the chat. I'll post in the comments today. Some information from an energetics perspective. Some of my hats I am a coach. I'm a consultant. I have a finance and technology background. I work with organizations, taking them through change, large scale change. I work with a lot of people one on one in teams to identify their strengths and bring them forward. And I coach a lot of people on how to bring their whole selves into the workplace and really into their lives.

Some of my other hats, I'm a reiki master and an energy worker. So I also do and facilitate breath work sessions and sound baths. So I am definitely a true gemini of high, low and opposite energies. But today, again, we're going to talk about how we can bring our whole self to work and being bold, being authentic, coming from a place of vulnerability. Now, if I share an honest story with you, it took me a really long time before I felt confident revealing some of my outside passions into my workplace.

I started energetically by saying I have a finance and technology background and it really felt uncomfortable for me to tell people that, oh, I might have a bag of crystals sitting at my desk when I work from home, because sometimes I play with them and I want to feel just a different level of energy. Science wise, it tells me that the measured energy of a crystal is higher than a human. So when I play with crystals it helps to lift my energy, similar to if I have a eucalyptus plant next to me or a flower.

The sense of these plants, energetically speaking, help us to raise and lift up our body's energy as well. Now, why I'm bringing that into our bold, authentic conversation is for a long time, I didn't tell people about that because it was a part of me that I felt conflicted about sharing. I didn't want my finance peers to think I was too out there because my work was and is really important and I wanted to maintain a certain credibility. And I feared my fear, my perception that if I started talking about the crystal bracelets that I was wearing or as jewelry, or that I hold on to a crystal of different types, depending on the energy that I'm looking to bring into a conversation, they would think I was crazy.

Now, you sitting on the phone or listening into this replay might be thinking I'm crazy. Also. I'm good with this now. But here's what's been really fascinating as I've started a new business focused on energy healing and crystals and sound baths, I have found that a lot of my clients in corporate America, specifically, I was working a long time with a finance team, got really curious about what else I did outside of my consulting work. And so gradually, they started following me on Instagram, and they'd start seeing, seeing my posts about sound bass that I was doing, and they got really curious and they would ask me a lot of questions about it.

And so I started to feel more comfortable and confident sharing with my corporate America world what I also did in my free time or in my passion world. Jules, I find the knowledge of crystals fascinating. You don't understand or know a lot about them. Maybe I'll do a special little video on crystals only, but feel free to reach out to me anytime. I'm a total geek, and I'm happy, happy to talk about them. But what is important about that is it's really oftentimes we show up at work and we have our work Persona.

Here's who I am, and we want to maintain a brand and credibility. But what I find and what I've been coaching a lot of people on over the last few years, specifically as it's become more relevant and as mental health has become more prominent in the workplace, is when we put up the walls and the barriers of who we are in one area of our life versus who we are in the rest of our life. It actually creates a lot of an internal struggle or challenge because we're only really bringing part of ourselves to what we have to offer.

Now, if I look at my personality inventories, I know that there are some people that are higher in what's called in strengths, finder language, a relator. And those are individuals that take a lot of time to build trust with other people before they can peel back the layer of an onion and reveal the next layer of who they are. That takes trust. It takes building relationships. And sometimes in the workplace, we don't always have that yet. It takes a lot of time for those individuals. And maybe it's like some of you, it's maybe you have like the five people that are your besties and you've known them probably since grade school, high school, college, earlier in your career.

And those are the small group of people that know you really, really well and that you, if you need someone, you call them, versus investing effort into building a deep relationship with someone new. Not that you don't want to. It's just, for you, it takes time. And so when you think about bringing more of your whole self to work and sharing more of your passions, like your crystal babies or your fur friends that are your supervisors for the day, it really offers an opportunity for us to stretch and grow.

But what I've also discovered is it creates more of that connection of humanness. I'm going to ask for those of you that are on the call today. I would love for you if you're playing this on replay or if you're on the call right now and have access to your keyboard, meaning you're not driving somewhere, moving some sort of object that requires two hands. Tell me about or share. If you've ever experienced a leader be vulnerable and how that made you feel. So simply pause there. You can take time.

Answer now, answer on a replay. But with leaders that I've been working with recently, vulnerability has been a very important topic of our conversation because what it allows them to show and share is their humanness. And when I asked several leaders that I've worked with tell me about a leader who is vulnerable, how did they make you feel? Words that they shared with me were comfortable. They felt that they could be more open and honest. For some people, it was actually hard for their leader to be vulnerable.

They didn't understand it because they had never experienced it before. And because we have such a mindset that at work we need to have this certain Persona, it caused them to be a little uncertain, like, why is this leader sharing this? But over a period of time, what happened is these leaders became more relatable because if you think about yourself in the workplace and becoming more authentic in the workplace, it takes time. But whatever level you're at, let's pretend all of us are a vice president.

Some of you might be, others of you might not. But let's pretend you're a vice president and you're looking at everything from your lens way up here, right? Did you forget that there is a point in your career that you are down here looking up? So as we're working our way to whatever the next iteration of our work selves will be, whether it's a sideways move, a lateral move in a job, maybe it's jumping in or launching into a new career. Maybe it's moving from finance, like I was, into consulting or into marketing or owning a small business.

Whatever that path is for you, there's always the opportunity to remember that we started somewhere differently than where we are now. And when we can remember what that is, it gives us a little bit more humanness to be vulnerable, to say, oh, yeah, I remember what it was like when I went through that experience. And now you can be more relatable. Now you can have more human connection, but it requires us to have the courage to go there. Jules shared, my boss asked me my opinion if he should do something about another section of the office.

Yeah. So being vulnerable bosses don't always have all the answers. But when they can be curious and share that and bring other people in, it helps everyone feel more valued and important. And it also reiterates the fact that we're all human. Speak, wonder. Yes, you experienced a leader. Being vulnerable builds connection and authenticity. Exactly. So when we think about being our bold selves and authentic selves at work, how might we layer in a little more vulnerability? How might we allow ourselves the opportunity to remember where we were in our journeys, how far we've come, and use that as a way for us to connect with other individuals, use this as a way for us to open up and say, similar to what I shared in previous conversations, what work energizes me, what work de energizes me and why.

Vulnerable action. Being able to bring in our whole selves into the workplace that says, yeah, outside of here, I play with these things. Hollow crystals. What do you know about them? Or, hey, did you know that it's a full moon or a new moon and it's a solar eclipse? Like, how cool is this fun fact? This won't happen again. I believe for another, it's either 14 or 17 years. So today's our day to really experience and explore that energy. So my ask of you, my challenge for you, my pondering thought for you, how might you or what might be one way you can exhibit vulnerability at work to create a new or expanded human connection?

Today, tomorrow, this week? And if you manage people, or you're a people manager, people leader, how might you share one thing and then open up the door for someone else to share too? Because when we can be more vulnerable, we can bring our whole selves to work. We can be more authentic in the workplace. We actually have a greater capacity to solve more problems. We have a greater capacity to communicate better when we have issues that need to help us work forward because we have a greater understanding of the whole self, greater understanding of each perspective, and a greater opening of our own minds.

Because sometimes we get on these narrow paths and only think one way. So I would love to hear more from you. I will chat, post some information in the comments today about the solar eclipse and the new moon and offer some questions. Today and tomorrow are really great days to do some own personal reflection, whether it's in the workplace or as your whole self. So I'll post some of that content in there as well. If you're in Minnesota, because we're having some cloudy skies, I think we're only going to see 20% of the eclipse, which probably means that our cloudy skies are just going to get a little darker.

But if you are in a time zone where the eclipse is coming your way, make sure to grab your protective eyewear and maybe post some photos in our comments so we can all experience what you see for today's solar eclipse. Again, my name is Jean Nichols. I love Mondays. I love being here with all of you. And I will be here again on Sunday at 1130, sorry, Sunday at 1230 for some me time next weekend. And stay tuned for other great conversations that are happening today that you can dial into. Make sure your settings allow you to get notifications when someone's going live.

It's the best way to just keep it in the forefront of your mind to take a little me time for you. Every 15 minutes we go live. It's 1% of your day, 1%. So how might you invest 1% more in yourself? Have a great day. I hope to see you soon. Enjoy the solar.