Author: Jessica Thibodeau

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Patterns in the Workplace

Patterns in the Workplace

Systems are elegant and persistent. The patterns that we don’t resolve in one system—your family system for example—can quite quickly pop up in other systems of which you are a part. Systems are always in service of your growth, which means there will always be opportunities to resolve unconscious patterns that may have you stuck. 

One of the most common systems in which unresolved patterns show up is your professional life. What wasn’t resolved in the family often rears its head in some form in the workplace. Maybe you felt stuck in your older brother or sister’s shadow growing up, and now you don’t feel good enough to shine or be a leader. Your career offers you the perfect opportunity to finally see limiting patterns like this in a different light. The workplace also enables you to have new thoughts, feelings and actions around that same pattern with a totally different outcome as a result.

For example, no matter which job she took, Maya struggled with all her bosses. Whenever they seemed the least bit critical of her work, she would shut down. Eventually these episodes would add up and she would quit her position. As we worked together, she realized that each of her bosses had represented her mother, in whose eyes she could never do anything quite right. Once she saw the pattern, it made perfect sense to her. Next, we explored how a boss is different from a parent and how it’s part of a leader’s job to critique and develop those below them. “If you see your boss as your boss and not your mother,” I said, “How might you see his or her critical feedback of your work?”

The lightbulb went on. “Wow. They’re just trying to help me to become better at what I do!” she said. That led to another insight. Maybe her mother had also tried to be helpful, but it had just never landed that way. 

Sometimes one new insight, one new feeling can change everything, leading to a whole string of new healthy actions. If you’re having some issues show up at work, here are a few things to think about:

Tips to help at work:

1) Remember, how you are at work begins with who you are at home. Did you really think you parked your patterns at the door?

2) Your workplace is an incubator.  What you can’t work out at home gets a second chance to work out here.

3) Contemplate your feelings at work. Are you always mad at your boss? Ask yourself which parent they may represent. Always resentful of a certain colleague? Ask yourself who they remind you of in your family—perhaps one of your siblings?

4) When you see through a family pattern you’ve brought to work, try to gently thank your boss and colleagues for being patient with you and mention what you’ve resolved because of them. They will see you as a bigger person for it.

 Feeling stuck at work? Frustrated that you’re not getting ahead? Come and find out how old limiting patterns can be seen, acknowledged, released and risen above at our next Leadership DNA event! 

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Spring Forward

Spring Forward

 One of the biggest systems we’re all connected to is Nature. When March arrives and spring is just around the corner, I notice as nature awakens, something stirs in me too. I start to feel a tweak of creativity. Which means spring is a great time for me to explore any new adventure that’s calling. 

The same is true for you!

Are you feeling an itch for change? Feeling restless in your career? Hungering for a new relationship? Thinking about a makeover? Whatever has you stirred up, now is a wonderful time to expand your potential in relationships, career, finances, leadership, and health. And if you’re feeling a little guilty about your new desires and hunger for new horizons, remember: Life is about growth. It’s about acknowledging what is right now so that you can move to what’s possible.

We’ve spoken about acknowledging what is with a full heart and giving it its place—how it’s a vital part of identifying and putting unconscious habits and loyalties to rest. Acknowledging what is, without judgment, frees us to create a brand-new pattern and opens the doors for elevated emotions like joy, enthusiasm and excitement. And then those elevated emotions pull us past all our normal excuses for staying stuck, happily booting us in a new direction.

For example, Harry was a CEO who earned a 7-figure salary. But while his salary was great, most CEOs with his qualifications were making 8 figures. He found himself becoming increasingly restless in the face of those other CEOs’ compensation packages and yet felt unable to explore other better-compensated positions. Why? “I don’t want to be greedy,” he said. “I feel like I’m limiting myself and know I could be doing so much more. But there’s this feeling that if I try for another position that I’ll lose out somehow.”

When we explored his family system, we discovered that both his grandfather and father had been given opportunities to elevate their economic status at various times, and both had rejected the offers saying they had enough and didn’t want to be greedy at the cost of family time.

Ah ha! Harry was caught in an unconscious loyalty to the men in his system, thinking he could have more money or family time, but not both. Rightfully so, this old pattern didn’t sit well with him.

Equipped with this insight, Harry explored opportunities in the business world. To his surprise and delight, several opportunities offered both the 8 figures and the flexibility to have more family time. By being willing to look past old loyalties, he was able to shift from the old pattern that had served prior generations into a new pattern of possibility. 

As spring blossoms with new potentials and a new season approaches, what old habits are you willing to look at? What new horizons call you? Are you willing to expand and spring forward? 

 Tips to help bring in the new:

 1) The beautiful thing about spring is that it opens the heart to new possibilities. So, open your heart!

2) Remember: Only you declare and set your limitations.

3) Remember: Life is not an “either or” journey. Life is big! It’s all about “both and!”

4) Take a deep breath. Look at the world blossoming around you. Soak in that vision and know that you can have more. 

5) Create one new thought, one new feeling and one new action. What will they be? The sky is the limit! 

Take your next step! Find and blossom into your potential! To find out more, please visit us at judywilkins-smith.com.

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Celebrating Our Leaders and Looking at Our Own Leadership DNA

Celebrating Our Leaders and Looking at Our Own Leadership DNA

As we take the time to celebrate our leaders of the past, it is worth exploring our own leadership style and its origins.  Who we are as leaders often begins at home.  Often, our leadership style is shaped in collusion with or reaction to the way we were raised.  

When working systemically with leaders, we take the time to explore both their professional and personal lives.  There is a reason for that.  Family patterns tend to bleed into leadership styles.  For example, when you encounter a leader who habitually hires dominant gatekeepers, or executive assistants, it may be worth exploring which parent this might represent. Who is keeping them ‘safe?’ 

Leadership DNA is yet another form of a multi-generational inheritance of thoughts, feelings, and actions that we encounter in systemic work.  If dad is a commanding presence in the workplace, that can make it easier for junior to exhibit similar traits or get lost in his shadow.  We also notice that sometimes when a parent has failed, the child, now a leader, may hire a string of “parents” and keep trying to save them in the hopes that if this latest “parent” succeeds and takes their full place, the “child/leader” can finally take his or her own place.  

Take a moment to notice where you find yourself struggling or excelling as a leader?  Did someone else in your family have difficulties in a position of leadership?  Are you the first one to lead differently?  Exploring your Leadership DNA, one thought, feeling and action at a time, is a good step towards becoming a strong balanced leader.  Visionary leaders know or learn how to acknowledge ‘what is’ and then pivot to ‘what’s possible’.  One new thought, one new feeling, and one new action can create a visionary leader who is always willing to grow and invite others around them to do so too.

To find our more about Leadership DNA, including our Leadership DNA event in April, please visit our website at www.judywilkins-smith.com.

QUOTES:

  1. What kind of leader are you and when did that begin?
  2. If you are a leader who carries everything, no one else learns.
  3. If you get too big, others get too small.
  4. The best leaders continue to learn and invite others to do so too.
  5. Visionary leaders love what they do and the people around them.
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Love Is in The Air, Or Is It?

Love is in the Air or Is It?

Valentine’s Day is approaching, and love should be in the air, but for many of us it is exactly the opposite.  Those wonderful relationships that last a lifetime seem to elude us.  We can’t figure out what the problem is, but with a little insight, open eyes, and a willingness to explore, we may just find that we are repeating the relationship patterns of at least one of our parents.  We call this an unconscious loyalty.

As I’ve said so many times, you don’t just inherit your physical DNA, there are many other kinds of patterns you inherit too, patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviors that I call Emotional DNA.  Repeating patterns in your relationships are one such example.  Quite unconsciously we tend to base our behaviors on the models that precede us.  It is not unusual to find generations of men and women in the same family who struggle to maintain a lasting relationship.

For example, Mary is terrified of getting married, fearing that she will lose everything.  She even fears that she may die.  When we look at her history, we notice that both her mother and grandmother lost fortunes to the men they married.  One was institutionalized and died there.  She is terrified that this will be her fate too.  George is afraid that if he marries a woman, he may kill her.  This sounds extreme until you explore his history and discover that his grandmother died in childbirth and grandfather never forgave himself. 

These are two extreme patterns but if you look at the nature of your own relationships the chances are that you may find at least one multi-generational pattern lurking there somewhere.  Look at the history of relationships in your own family system, if you don’t have access to that then your own history of relationships will do.  Notice the limiting things you think, feel, and do around relationships.  Then, look and see if this is a repeating pattern from a prior generation.  Who’s fears, annoyances, dislikes, and withdrawals do you carry into your relationships?  

What might happen if you had one new inspiring thought and feeling and took a new action around relationships?  How might that change things for you?  Do you realize that will change your Relationship DNA for you and those who come after you?  Might love, at last, be in the air for you this Valentine’s Day?

To explore and understand your professional and personal relationships and move beyond the places where you are stuck please visit us at judywilkins-smith.com.

QUOTES:

  1. Love is a choice, not a reaction.
  2. Where did your patterns of relationships come from?
  3. Remember, relationships are key to your success.
  4. Are your relationships transactional or transformational?
  5. If you withdraw, the only one you are hurting is you.  Everyone else moves on.
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Designing Financial Patterns for the New Year

Financial Patterns in the New Year

The subject of money has been hidden, not talked about, or flat out excluded from family discussions since the Stone Ages.  Traditionally, fathers brought in money and mothers made sure there was food on the table.  It’s been something of a mystery for each one of us to figure out for ourselves.

Times have changed.  Money patterns, perhaps not so much.  Your financial patterns may have originated generations ago as a result of a need to survive or the ability to thrive.  The way that your predecessors reacted to money may affected you without you even knowing it.  

A quick way to notice the financial patterns in your own life is to write down what you think about money, what you tell yourself about money, what it is allowed or not allowed to mean in your world, and where that comes from.  

In Jennifer’s family, there is a pattern of feast and famine.  Sometimes money comes and sometimes it goes.  In her family circle, that is just the way money is.  Jack, on the other hand, believes that education is far more important than money, while Jim grew up with savings books and envelopes.  Let’s look at each one.

Jennifer comes from a line in which money was made and then lost in the Great Depression.  That began a pattern of win and lose that they have never quite escaped.  Jack comes from a family with multiple highly educated members who frown upon wealth and celebrate education.  Jim’s father and mother taught him from very young to separate his money out into different places.  Some to save, some to spend, and some to invest.

In each case, you can see quite clearly that either an event or a family pattern has impacted the way that each current member of the family system acts and interacts with money.  The outcome of each seems somewhat predictable until these latest members begin to examine the financial patterns they have inherited and decides to do something quite different.  

By identifying the pattern in play and exploring it for both its gifts and limitations, they are free to choose what they will take with them and what they will set down with gratitude – acknowledging that both have a place and source of wisdom upon which to base their own new financial patterns.

We are at the beginning of a new year.  This is a great time to examine your system’s Money DNA and to choose whether you will repeat the patterns in play or change them for something different.  Go back to those things you wrote down earlier and see if you can see if you can spot a new pattern that is trying to emerge through you.  Perhaps you are the new wealth in the family, perhaps for the first time finances will be discussed in your immediate family circle, and money, too, will be allowed to take a happier place in your family system.

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New Possibilities

New Possibilities

Happy New Year everybody! Let’s consciously make it a great year!

We have 365 wonderful days available for creating new possibilities this year! That’s 365 daily chances to rewire your brain and life. By the end of this year, things could look a whole lot different – and it doesn’t have to be difficult!

As 2021 ended, I found myself walking as I so often do and looking for the gifts in what had been a challenging but growth producing year and discovered a lot! There was so much gratitude for a new treatment given to a family member with a serious condition. I had been surrounded by creative and generous geniuses who walked with me this year, helping me to move this work forward. My book was finally written with the help of an incredible editor/mentor, and it found its home with Sounds True thanks to an amazing literary agent and the wonderful creative person who linked us all. 

Then I started wondering what more I wanted in 2022. One of my favorite questions to ask myself is, “What more is possible?”. That simple question opens my heart and takes me past excuses and limitations.  It’s the seat of my deepest heartfelt desires and I don’t worry about the how. I simply feel and envision the want and the pull, and I allow that to build without censoring it.  

You’ve all had this type of experience. You want a favorite dish – you can almost taste it – and you make it happen. 

Often at the time I am envisioning what I want, all the unconscious loyalties and reasons I can’t have it decide to show up and present themselves proudly. It’s my job to pay attention and notice why they are showing up for me. You see they are not simply excuses; they are also clues to what needs to be seen and resolved for me to step forward. I must also have a strong enough want to overcome the pull of the unconscious loyalties.  Only then can I move forward. 

For those of you who have studied some of the greatest films or accomplishments in the world, you will notice that everything did not go smoothly. In fact, many of them were utter disasters up until they were roaring successes. The trick was that the people involved had a strong enough sense of the outcome to overcome the pull of the establishment that said, “You can’t.”  

This year take the time to invest and believe in your own dream. Thank your ancestors and all your unconscious loyalties, then look ahead to the future and keep walking. Use the doubts as your guides, watch your thoughts, feelings and actions and keep moving in the direction of your dream until you hold it in your hands. One new thought one new feeling and one new action at a time. 

I can’t wait to hear what this year brings you all!

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Year’s End Reflections

Year’s End Reflections

December is a time to both celebrate and reflect.  All too often, we cannot hear praise and we forget to celebrate our accomplishments, focusing instead on perceived deficiencies and/or gaps in our achievement.  These are two meta-patterns in systemic work.  Globally, most of us are raised to focus on what is wrong with us and not to hear what is right.  Incredibly, the entire world could have a completely different future if we just opened our hearts to the praise and took a little time to acknowledge our accomplishments.  

Important questions to ask yourself:  Do you know how to receive praise, and can you use it wisely to build a superpower?  Can you take ownership of your accomplishments and be proud of yourself?  The wise man uses both to create resilience and direction. 

Notice who in your family could or couldn’t receive praise and what that cost them in their lives and careers.  Who in your family could or couldn’t acknowledge their accomplishments and what did that cost them?

Systemically, our thoughts words and feelings, and those of our predecessors, create our reality.  For prior generations, accepting praise and acknowledging accomplishments may have been dangerous or caused exclusions.  Now, being able to receive praise for good work and being able to verbalize our capabilities are both regarded as skill sets – times have changed, and it is helpful when patterns in the system also evolve. 

Simply ask yourself, “Am I repeating limiting patterns from the past or am I creating new directions and possibilities?”  Reflecting on the year that has been, are you going to mine for gold or coal?  The choice is yours.