This week includes International Women’s Day and provides a good reason to dig deep, and remember and honor hundreds of exceptional, dynamic, brave, nurturing, gracious, and kickass women who shaped my world and mentored my career achievements. There were some strong, supportive men in the mix who believed in me more than I believed in myself and kicked down some doors for me.
When it comes to this Substack adventure and building a community for gifted professionals and communicators, it has been mostly women who helped me dig deep and unpack the experiences, talents, achievements, flops, and pivot points of my life. The co-founder of this community is an amazing woman, Sia Papageorgiou, with a manifesto titled This Girl is on Fire.
My favorite mentor, a CEO, a woman, in a field of 98% men, taught me strategy with humor. When my performance needed a boost, she would ask “Where are we going? And why am I in a handbasket?” That’s when I learned intentions are more important than goals.
Only in recent years did I finally understand the path to deeper connections and transformations was made of thousands of yellow bricks. Each brick is all of the experiences, conversations, and relationships in a day. It takes work, time, and a proven system to unpack the data from 28,800 bricks… so far.
Understanding the yellow brick road was necessary to bring forth the community frameworks, writing topics, and intensely practical stories of thousands of professionals from more than 600 different industries or “callings”. This understanding made clear a life of work and building networks of trusted mentors, expert advisors, and like-minded communicators.
What are you going to write about today?
I’m glad that the question that starts my day is the same one that comes from readers: What are you going to write about today? My wish is for every subscriber to use their voice, email, or text messaging skills to start sharing their stories with me.
What I do better than anyone else is gather and share stories that transform and connect us, celebrate living each day fully, and provide hope or inspiration to someone grieving from great loss or feeling like they are trying to come up from a low point. My superpower is the experience and wisdom of a sherpa for professionals and communicators to climb to the highest point for you and to assure you the view at the top is worth the climb.
What I want to get from everyone within reach of my writing and voice is questions. I love questions and deeper questions. The connection we crave with other humans comes only through questions that invite us to ponder our circumstances and open a quiet, listening space for others to share personal learnings and failures.
More and more, I’m all about liberation. I want to liberate the Everyday Genius from the limitations of never fully understanding the power, magic, and life-enhancing aspects of natural traits such as intense curiosity, overthinking, and Supercommunicator tendencies.
For many decades, I thought goals were north stars and markers to guide daily decisions and long-game journeys. Recently, I’ve experienced the liberation of focusing on intentions rather than goals. Intentions are something you walk out with others because you share stories. Goals are personal, isolated, and often lack the teeth of accountability and truth.
Why build a community for gifted professionals and communicators? Why is our mission to gather and write deeper into the stories of our hero journey and the life experiences of others?
What are our intentions in showing up every week in Substack and building the community every day? These are mine and I hope to have you walk the path, not traveled by anyone else, and with me and others who resonate with the vibe and culture of professionals who thrive through communication and bring traits of giftedness into the questions and dialogue.
Put Yourself Out There and Post Often to Eliminate Procrastination and Perfectionism
The most important part of this communication is your feedback. I need to know what you are thinking, what interests you now, and what parts of your professional story you are willing to reveal so we can celebrate the human spirit.
Direct mail, text messaging, and phone calls still work. Sharing these articles with others and adding your comments is one way to express yourself. Your feedback just needs to be your truth. It needs to be your story. I’m a journalist and I can handle the truth. The more feedback I get, the more that liberates me from the old habits of perfectionism and procrastination.
These are my intentions, for now. They can evolve and transform with more feedback. Let me know if this resonates with you.
Write from a depth of experience and personal awe. Emphasize the joys and horrible struggles, plus surprises or moments when someone, unexpected, came forward to support you.
Obsess on connection. The human mind wants one thing—connection. Everything else is noise. Keep the conversation and writing touching one or more of these conversation points, all of the time: What’s this really about? How do we feel? Who are we?
Ask questions that invite others to unpack their stories, in a safe space and with more listening than talking. Ask permission to ask follow-up questions that get to the truth under layers of old stories we’ve made up, to feel better.
Allow for more curiosity and spontaneity by exploring the macro elements and nano facets of what comes in the feedback. Stay open and brave about following a story that interests me even though I don’t see the immediate connection to communication, professionalism, or giftedness traits.
Strive for delight. Let go of perfect and stop waiting for the right moment. Today is all we have and someday is not a day in the week. Share the opportunity to write, connect, and build this community with every subscriber, other Substack writers, and all who step out of the shadows to say what’s on their minds.
Emphasize learning, transformations, and what becoming looks like. We are human beings with an emphasis on being, living, always in growth mode. Everyone experiences many transitions, large and small, in their life; however, who you are is constant. I do not believe in changing who you are or life-changing experiences. I follow the brain science and principles of brain plasticity which shows how every internal and external feeling or function throughout life is rewiring and reorganizing the brain at speeds far faster than humans can yet measure. That’s why I’m not overly concerned or fearful about artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, or rapid technological advances. We, the humans, are still in charge of everything, starting with decisions that fill today.
We’re on a mission to feature stories about professionals who are initiating meaningful conversations with other gifted minds and storytellers – and who they serve.
If you enjoyed this article, the greatest compliment you can offer is to share this article with a few friends and encourage them to subscribe. Maybe it’ll start an important conversation. It’s super simple and your friends (and I) will thank you. You can make sure I keep writing and focusing on what matters to you by sending people to the main website. There you see how to collaborate and work with me, professionally (beyond free).
Learn more about Gifted Professionals and Communicators via:
👉 Our community: https://communicators.com/gifted-professionals-and-communicators-community/
👉 This Substack newsletter—please tell others about it
👉 Our blog (GPC Journal): https://communicators.com/certification-journal/