Are you being yourself at work?
A sentence uttered by Sandra Fillaudeau, founder of Conscious Cultures and the voice behind the brilliant French & English podcast Les Équilibristes, during the interview that I was conducting for a recent episode of the Valse Café (a live show on career changes) often comes to mind these past few days.
When I asked her what her career change had meant to her the most, Sandra replied, “I realized that I could finally be myself in the professional sphere”.
Aouch.
This sentence is very interesting to me because it sums up our often tortured relationship to the professional sphere. Why is it that we have this urge to forge a “professional” identity? I have seen this happen over and over again with many of my friends, my clients, and myself in my former professional life. A parallel identity that we take on for 8 hours every working day of the week. And that one day will become too heavy to assume: too restrictive, too far from your landmarks, your values, your natural zone, from what makes you YOU, qualities, charm, flaws and weaknesses included. You end up a dismantled soul under this professional armor. Out of alignment with yourself. And then it takes a lot of courage to reconcile your true self with you professional facade.
I observe that becoming self-employed often means that you get to free yourself from this trap and to be you, fully and naturally. This is one of the key axes of Aligned Entrepreneurship that I am vehemently promoting.
Ow about you? Do you manage to be yourself in the professional sphere? Sense of humor, and tastes in clothing included?! How about your key values?
This month, I felt like talking brain hemispheres with you. Yeap.
Let’s talk about the (b)right brain.
You’ve probably heard it before: “creative” people tend to use the right hemisphere of their brain more, while “rational” people use the left hemisphere. Personally, as the founder of a consulting and coaching company for entrepreneurs seeking alignment named “b.right brains” (be right / bright / right brain), this makes me happy. Is there a more exquisite pleasure than being right, bright AND creative?!
But reality seems to be much more complex and delightful, showing again the subtlety of our mind. Subtlety that I see every day during my Zoom sessions with a practicing Kundalini lawyer, an astrologer focused on logic, a highly intuitive conductor,…. All of them have in common that they are driven by a higher mission in their professional accomplishment.
Our very bright brain
A study from Drexel University in the United States, published in the journal NeuroImage in June 2020, carried out on a panel of guitarists in the middle of a jazz improvisation session, shows us that the distribution of roles between the brain hemispheres would be much more subtle. The right side would be linked to a “conscious” use of creativity, typically for new situations for which few factors are mastered, while the left side would be linked to an unconsciously creative use, almost in autopilot mode. A use made possible by … experience.
The balance of brain activity associated with creativity thus evolves over time thanks, among other things, to the degree of experience. We are therefore endowed with a real potential to be right, bright, experienced AND creative with multiple potentials!
How about you? When busy integrating new ideas for your company’s evolution, do you find yourself to be more of a “left-brain freestyle” or “right-brain street smart” type? Do you trust your experience (and your intuition!) or are you in instinctive survival mode?
This study seems to show that we all have the chance and the faculty to be intrinsically complex and beautifully multifaceted: we can be a logical designer, an intuitive researcher, a business owner driven by a sense of superior mission.
Exactly the kind of people that I love working alongside with!
Behind the scenes at B.right Brains
The Inside/Out Entrepreneur Group Coaching Program (March 15-July 13, 2021): Registration is now open (early bird rate available for registrations made before March 1st) This round is offered in French only. The September session will be offered both in French and in English.
You have an entrepreneurial dream that brings sense to your life and lights you up. This idea, this project, this business that you are carrying is an important part of your life path. So this time, you are going to see it through. You are going to realize it while realizing yourself. While sublimating yourself, without losing sight of you, your values and your goals.
Happy to work in French? Then you will find all the key information on this intensive group coaching program HERE.
Take care,
