Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the Poweredge podcast, where power is refined, impact sharpens, and leaders move from success that performs to powerful legacy.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Hello and welcome. I'm your host, Elara Sage.
Our world right now is very much in a state of chaos.
And the truth is, is it's not going to subside anytime soon.
And what our world needs right now are leaders who understand stability. Leaders who embody stability, power and authority in themselves.
Chaos is something that comes through your business, regardless of really where that chaos in humanity is.
Political and government, global issues, as we already know, affect the markets, they affect your team members, they affect your clients.
And that chaos is felt by everybody.
So leaders have to be able to understand that chaos desperately needs stability to balance it, to harmonize it, because chaos itself creates confusion.
This is emotional confusion.
People are feeling things that they might not be fully aware that they're feeling.
They're triggered by events and experiences that are happening.
They could be feeling chaotic mentally.
They don't have the answers. They don't know how to solve these very large problems that exist right now on our planet.
And that confusion, whether it is emotional confusion or mental confusion or spiritual confusion about religions and beliefs, it compounds fear, it compounds emotion, it compounds unsafety.
It's a vicious cycle that feeds itself.
So leaders have to understand first and foremost how to maintain a sense of stability, state of being, of stability in themselves, as well as how to reestablish that stability when the emotional or mental chaos comes into the business.
So how do we do this?
The first step is always awareness.
And awareness really functions at its best when we are able to observe without judgment, without criticism, and actually without anything necessarily needing to be changed. It's as if you are up in the bleachers watching a game.
You can't impose yourself on that game. You can't change anything about what's happening of that game. You're simply witnessing and observing. Now, with a game, it's likely that you have an opinion and it's likely you have a side chosen, quote, unquote.
But the observer of that game, the ability to just watch it and see, preferably from a somewhat zoomed out perspective, being able to observe yourself, observe your teammates, observe your business from a state of neutrality, without emotion, without judgment, is clarity.
And clarity is leverage in leadership.
So what do you do right when you're feeling this instability in your business, and maybe you're feeling instability in yourself, the first thing is to pause.
And I really recommend taking some nice deep breaths down into your belly. This activates your parasympathetic. Nervous system breath is very powerful. It's used by the military, by the Navy seals, by the elites, because they understand how it radically shifts I our state of being biologically and psychologically as well. You cannot be in a state of clarity, of decision, and even of witness when you are yourself in a fight or flight or freeze and fawn response.
So pausing and breathing, even just a few breaths can make that moment. It grants you the breaking of reaction.
It stops that innate desire to take action from that emotional state.
So pausing, breathing, and then quote, unquote, stepping back. And this doesn't mean you actually are physically stepping back. But again, this is where we bring in the idea of the observer being able to, for one, if you are as a leader in an emotional state, being able to witness, observe your own emotion without that emotion overcoming you, taking control, so to speak, you can feel whatever you feel. There's nothing wrong with feeling. And quite frankly, we don't want to be suppressing emotion, but we do want to have authority over our emotion, to be able to feel it and not act from it.
So that's where we are witnessing. You are witnessing, you are feeling the emotion, but it is not the state through which you are taking action.
And then simultaneously, as I said, you, you step back, symbolically speaking, to observe your team, to observe your business.
Now this step back is one of the most powerful tools that leaders can learn to incorporate in times of chaos or times of confusion.
And that step back can be, just like I said, a moment of breath, a moment of perhaps walking into the other room, or simply a moment of pause.
Or if the experience warrants more than that, that step back can be you really going into another activity entirely.
Go do something you enjoy. Go do something outside of your business.
The reason this works is because sometimes when we are hyper focused, again, we are in a reactionary state in our nervous system.
So we don't actually have clarity and, and discernment.
We don't actually have all of the information. Because when we are in a reactionary state, your perspective is narrowed.
That is just how our nervous system and our brain functions for survival.
So the reactionary state doesn't need to be something dramatic.
Reactionary states can be very subtle.
That's why it's important when you don't have clarity, when perhaps you feel slightly unstable or there's a lot of instability in the business or in the room or in the project right now, this is what warrants moving out of it entirely and going doing something else that you enjoy, whether that's for 20 minutes or that's an entire day.
That will break that cycle in your nervous system and give you the opportunity to come back into a state of coherence between your body and your mind.
Again, this is physiologically proven. This is not just a great idea.
This is how we function.
So when you give yourself that break and you come back into a state of clarity and higher cognition, now, you, for one, you might just get the idea or have the perspective or have the insight. It's very, very common that when we grant ourselves this moment of spaciousness is what I call it, like you're giving room between yourself and the chaos, like a buffer, right? You're moving from perhaps being on the sidelines of the game all the way up into the bleachers for a quote, unquote, bird's eye view. That's what this idea of spaciousness grants you. Even when you're not directly thinking about the chaos or the issue or quote, unquote, the game. In this example, you go and you enjoy yourself. You go and you do something else, even if it's not enjoyable. It doesn't have to be something you enjoy. It's just very beneficial to do something like left field to the other direction, something else that has nothing to do with where this chaos is existing.
It's very common when we do that for insights to just drop in because you have granted yourself the ability to be responsive to those perspectives and those insights that were always there. But again, when we're in a reactionary state, our perspective is literally narrowed. So those insights or those ideas or those solutions can be there and we simply cannot see them.
That's what perspective does, literally.
So going and doing something else or taking a pause, whatever this degree of spaciousness that you're granting yourself allows you to come back into that state of stability and bring the solution to that chaos.
But even without a solution, that moment of breaking that pattern where we so easily go into triggered states that are again, fight or flight or freeze or fawn, and if you're not aware of what that feels like in your body, you can do it without even knowing it.
And so when, again, when we experience we grant ourselves that spaciousness, we come back into stability.
And now we bring that stability, that emotional stability, that mental stability, back to the chaos.
And it's again, biological that when somebody has a regulated nervous system and they're in that energy of stability, they influence the people that are around them.
So you're not just bringing a solution back to your business, back to your teams. You're bringing an actual frequency of stability that their bodies can respond to biologically.
And the truth is, no matter if you've ever heard of this before or not, even if perhaps you're listening to this and you're going, hmm, is that even true?
Maybe this is something really out of the box for you.
This is what is required of leadership moving forward.
We need leaders who understand how to break chaos, how to break triggers, how to break situations that are compounding in confusion and emotion.
And regardless, again, of whether you believe or fully understand what I'm speaking to, I'm pretty sure everybody could agree that that's the type of leader that we need right now in humanity.
And that if the world is going to continue this chaos and potentially get more chaotic, then, yes, we need leaders who understand the state of being, of stability, what it feels like, how to access it, and how to bring it into their teams, their business.
So again, for yourself, understanding that if you recognize that there is a moment or perhaps a period of time that your company is going through that is chaotic, this is vital information to breaking that. Because no leader wants their business or their teams to be in a state of chaos.
Chaos can be powerful in the context of change, which is consistent and inevitable, can cause moments of chaos, which can actually cause growth and expansion.
However, if that chaos is left to its own accord, and again, as I mentioned, compounds confusion, emotion, that's not going to lead to growth and expansion.
So understanding that chaos really needs stability in order for the actual powerful aspects of chaos to be experienced and gained from.
So as a leader, you have to learn how to embody that stability in yourself and as well as cultivate structure and stability in the workplace.
And, you know, throughout this conversation, I've been mainly speaking to embodied stability, a state of being, meaning you are experiencing a sense of stability in yourself and you are able to bring that sense, that felt sense in into your business and your teams. Other ways that you can instill stability into your business is through any sort of structure.
Structure always creates a sense of stability. If people understand the calendar, the schedule, the things that are repetitive, the things that are always going to happen, like creating the familiar. And the repetitive in a state of chaos also gives that structure.
So anywhere that you can increase the familiar, anywhere that you can increase the repetitive, you know, the meeting that happens every Monday at 10, that's a repetitive process. That is a structure that everybody can then rely on, rely on that to be there, rely on that opportunity.
So I'm bringing in two senses of stability here. Both Internally as well as systematically, and want to just emphasize ever so slightly there, the familiarity.
Anything that is familiar, anything that is known, anything that is already understood, comfortable, these are the things that also enhance a sense of stability in the ecosystem of your business.
This that helps people to feel safe and stable even though there is chaos occurring, even though they feel internal chaos, emotionally, mentally, both.
So remember in your own personal process, to first pause and breathe, just three nice deep breaths down into your belly to help your nervous system to step back symbolically, either for just a brief moment, or to literally move away, go into another room, or go do something completely different to break the pattern of reactivity, to break the pattern of chaos. Being the driver of the seat of, driver of the wheel, driver of the ship, right? And bringing back that coherence of mind and body, the coherence that we experience in ourselves when we are emotionally aligned and intellectually optimized.
And then from an ecosystem perspective, noticing, where can you create more structure and repetition?
Where can you increase or enhance any sense of familiarity or known and comfort?
These are the attributes that are going to help a company and its team stay in states of flow. Because you can't be in flow.
Flow of creativity, flow of money, flow of resources. When you're in chaos, chaos is not directional flow, it's kind of like a tornado. It's swirling, right? Flow is directional. And that's really what you want for your teams and for your company and and truly for everybody that is involved, clients as well.
Flow increases efficiency, flow increases productivity, and flow increases fulfillment and joy in your team members, because it feels good.
It is all of everybody working in harmony and, you know, compounding their efforts to something that they are growing together, that they are creating together.
So remember, as the chaos increases, as a leader, it is your responsibility to also increase the stability in yourself as well as in the ecosystem of your business.
And I'm always here to support you. If this is something that you don't really understand how to do in yourself or you do feel quite often levels of instability in yourself, this is deeply subconscious, usually. And we can actually work with the subconscious mind to reprogram yourself so that you're not so reactive, so that you are able to access that stability easier and to hold it more, no matter what is happening around you.
And that is simply by working with your subconscious mind and neuroplasticity to rewire it.
I'm always here for you if you need me. Otherwise, as always, thank you so much for being a part of today's episode and I hope this has given you great deal of insight and and direct action that you can apply to yourself, your business, your legacy, and quite frankly, the world.
Much love.
[00:22:13] Speaker A: Thank you for listening to the PowerEdge podcast with host Alora Sage.
Connect with us on Instagram at the Power Edge or on YouTube @laurasage.
