Heart Leadership

I realize that the way we are in the world is deeply interconnected to our own experiences.

I know it sounds like an evident and quit boring truth, that I already feel my self-judgment arising even as I write those first lines. But there is something deeper in this concept that I would like to explore for myself. There is one specific angle that I would like to contemplate a bit more. The one about the leadership.

What does it even mean to me?

How am I walking my own definition of leadership? What are my lived experiences, what does my body still holds in its memory about it and what is the deeper truth that animates my own path while sitting with this self-inquiry?

...

Simply put, for me leadership is being in alignment with its own truth while enabling space for everyone else to reconnect to a deep inner knowledge.

The sum of our authentic individual truths and its manifestations in the world is what is needed to cocreate a meaningful future that we all desire collectively.

Everyone is a leader. And it is required for everyone to exercise its unique form of leadership in the most authentic way.

Truly. And fully.

The sooner we realize this, the sooner we can unleash the most prominent human creativity and potential to respond adequately to our ongoing collective reality and its pretty shitty challenges.

There are many important elements to this statement, and I could probably write for pages about each of the words in there. But I would like to slow down a bit on the very first part.

Being in alignment with its own truth.

What does this mean? What is truth even? Is this inner wisdom based on my experiences or on my sensed reality in the present moment? How do I know the difference? Or maybe it’s the same thing? Or does it even matter?

...

When I was a kid, I had a very natural tendency to lead.

I didn’t need a status, recognition or whatsoever. It was not about that. I was just me being me. It was just about taking initiative in doing whatever I wanted and what I truly believed in. Somehow, without any specific desire or a need for it, I was always ending up in the high ranks of respect of my peers.

I had many friends. Some feared me. Some was inspired. I was never understanding where it was coming from and why. I guess it was just a part of me and I was going with it as it is with no specific attachment to it.

I guess what was making it work for me back then was my capacity to name my most authentic truth and make sure that all of my actions are in alignment with that truth. Meanwhile, it was also about accepting unconditionally the truth of everyone else around me, no matter how fucked up it sounded to me.

I was indeed being a leader with an open heart and open mind without even knowing it. I was still shitting in my pants, but I was a leader.

But of course, I forgot all of that since those times when I was a kid. You know, life happened, few very shitty traumas, few failed attempts to change the world, deep journey of disconnection from the self and others, addictions, few burnouts and … few enlightenments on the path.

So, what happened?

...

Over last year, since my roots have started to burn in the ongoing hell/war in Ukraine, I was kind of pulled to reconnect with my ancestors, with their joys and pains, with my wider tribe, with the energies and entities that have created me and have programmed me since my conception.

Where am I coming from? Who are they? How are we interconnected? What is the relationship between my soul and my genetic package? How do they dance together?

...

My grandfather was a leader.

But not a heart-driven one. He was the head of everything. He was the mind. The entitled one. The deeply wounded one. The respect around him was mostly terror induced that truly inspired.

I always knew it was coming from a right place, from his heart. He meant well. He just didn’t know better. But my heart was not able to compute and to process the pain it was inducing in my entire family system and our wider community even if it seemed to come from a sense of true love.

I think I started quiet young to be very resentful and afraid of leadership in general. More specifically, afraid from the pain it seems to create for others when one exercises its power in relationship to the world.

My grandfather was my closest example of a “leader” while I was growing up.

Somehow, already then, I have created a strong link in my system: leadership = others suffer.

...

I come from two different worlds.

My mother line is self-realization driven people. It’s all about power. Whatever it meant to them back then, but mostly it’s about success, security, and stability. Big achievements. Perfectionism. Performance. Respect. Impact. Influence. Notoriety.

My father comes from the forest.

His ancestry line is mainly about the connection with the whole, with the nature, with the community. It’s about authenticity and humbleness. It’s not about leadership. It’s not about power. They literally didn’t give a shit about that stuff. It was about love and compassion.

It’s simple. It’s silent. Its deep and mysterious. It’s a moment-to-moment kind of way.

I will not go in nitty-gritty details of strengths and weakness of both, because obviously none of them was perfect and both have a deeper truth to it, an expression of something meaningful, essential, unique and beautiful, yet sometimes quit disturbing.

In sum, on one hand, I’ve got power without love and on another I’ve got the love without power.

An interesting mix, but apparently it could be very challenging to combine, integrate and master in the same body. The split between those two parts of me was literally forged to the deepest layers of my soul and remained always present in me and manifesting fully in all the spheres of my life.

I did have short experiences of both dancing harmoniously together, it was beautiful. It felt true. I felt in power, and I felt in love. It felt right. It felt like more of me.

But it has never lasted long enough.

I was always ending being caught up in some sort of trauma or put face-to-face with one of many denied and deeply wounded parts of my being. It was always creating some sort of suffering for myself. I was bouncing over and over between love and power in so many different cycles, combinations, and forms.

I experienced many facets of separateness between both.

In me and around me.

I deeply knew I was both. I knew I can’t get rid of any of it. But it was hard for me to cultivate an awareness and the inner resources to be able to show up in the world as all of this. Complete. Both. With my power and with my love.

Even if I never stopped trying. And I probably never will. It is still very hard and somehow it gets even harder.

I still don’t know how to do this properly and if I am even on the right path.

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Who are those people who can combine both in a coherent and an inspiring way? Who is dancing this power love dance harmoniously?

Do they even exist?

Of course, they do!

There are obviously plenty of people who are using both love and power in many ways and forms. Actually, I think all of us do in our own way. I am personally inspired by many heart-driven leaders around me daily.

But there is a question of the frequency familiarity and the deep recognition of its true essence by our own nervous system.

Combinations of power, love and other interconnected mechanisms in our system are unique to our own soul blueprint. It’s more subtle. We do not resonate and harmonize with everyone on this level. We don’t really get it fully. We don’t really see it for what it is truly in everyone.

Only with certain people. Only few.

We feel the strong connection, the understanding without the words, the communication through time and space, the dancing of our deeper energetic signatures and patterns.

It’s something else. It’s inexplicable. It’s only experienced.

...

After a deeper exploration of my roots, I found an example of someone in my family using both. I did have with him this deeper connection. His love power inner formula was actually very close to what I was sensing in my own system as a kid.

He was my uncle. My mother’s brother. He lived far, I didn’t get to know him much, but he was always a supporting presence in the family for me and a strong example of how to be in a world with both, with love and with power. How to be a heart leader.

I deeply felt that he knew how to do this. He was a way better version of his father in that field. His leadership was less confusing and more compassionate.

When I was 12, my uncle was killed by Ukrainian mafia because he was too committed to create a better future reality for his community and his country. His ideas were not welcomed by those who were benefiting from the ongoing corruption on a national level.

So, he needed to shut up and fuck-off or else.

He did not choose to shut up or to fuck-off.

...

I remember the shock it was on the entire family system. Crazy shit followed.

I remember the pain. The confusion. The injustice. The numbness.

This has probably shaped my teenager fragile psyche in a new pattern.

Now, my fear of heart leadership took new colours.

The only example I’ve got of someone vibrating something that felt familiar to me back then about the love and power leadership, was dead. He was killed, mainly because he wanted to make the world a better place. Because he was passionate and committed. Because he was too kindly naïf about the bigger game, he engaged himself into, because he was too stubborn.

Because he trusted his path and his own truth too much.

...

Many things have happened since, and honestly, I was not really thinking or being interested in leadership at all after that. I was resenting it profoundly. I didn’t want it in me. Not like that.

As a result, I became invisible. I dove slowly into addictions to help me numb and to separate myself from some inner parts that were inducing a deep fear and unease in me. I did use the small parts of that leadership power to survive (and it served me well), the rest of it I have buried in the most unexpected parts of my system with no expectation to be found any time soon.

I have chosen to forget. I have chosen the silence over the truth. I have chosen to hide and to numb. I was deeply suppressing in me anything related to the power or leadership.

I obviously become very sensitive and curious about bigger systemic patterns of my reality and about how power and leadership truly work in this world. But I didn’t feel a strong desire to be on a battlefield myself.

I wanted to know about it, but I didn’t want to fight about it.

I guess I was able to stay in a delusion about it for a while. And I did…well, until my first real job.

You know, you can only run from it for a certain time, they say, it always ends catching up your ass.

One way or other, you’ll remember.

One way or other it will put you on your knees and will force you to look into the eyes of your own deepest truth.

It will make to surrender to your own self, even if you don’t like it, don’t feel like it, or don’t seem to willingly choose it.

The cleverness of this entire process is truly majestic and somehow deeply terrifying.

....

I got passionate about my first job fast. Like, really into it.

All in, heart, mind, energy, time.

Every conscious and unconscious part of me was in the game.

Full on.

I felt a sense of a deeper meaning and an illusion of contributing to something bigger than myself. I felt in the right place and in the right time. I felt home. I was in my truth and in my service. I loved what I was doing. I was moved higher and faster by inexplicable force of creativity in every project I was involved in.

I was in the flow.

The soil in my work environment seemed perfect for my roots to open a bit more. And they did.

The dead bodies in the forbidden closet of my unconsciousness wanted to get out now. And of course, the denied leadership part of me and my visceral fear around it came back as well. In its full form. I could not hide anymore.

So, I faced it.

...

So, I also have become a powerful warier, strong fearless superwoman, without realizing how or why I did it.

I become a leader without wanting it or seeking it.

I simply followed with open heart and open mind what was already unfolding anyways.

Somehow, life made me ‘’important’’ way sooner than I expected in my job environment. With way more responsibilities and liabilities that I desired or was ready for. With way more pain in the entire process than I hoped.

I deeply knew that I could not be a leader like my grandfather was. I cannot imagine the world with the leadership without heart and without love. This is out of options.

But how to do differently without being paralyzed by fear, I had a very little idea about.

Even if I tried. Very hard tried.

Two severe burnouts kind of tried.

But I failed over and over to get this power + love formula working for me. I had no idea where to find people to teach me that. I had no idea what was wrong with me. Why keep doing the job I loved and truly believed in was making me sick, confused and emotionally destroyed?

I was smart enough to seek support and help.

Everywhere I could.

I did plenty various stuff and processes trying to figure this out.

I got really into understanding how my own system works and my personal detailed psychoanalysis of the endless sea of the nonsense of my own mind.

And, in the moments when I was losing last bits of hope in me, I saw this random post from the random man on LinkedIn about conscious leadership, about his professional path over the last 30 years as an engineer, about his depression, his deep inner transformation, about his own confusion between power and love. About what he did with it. About how he walks his path now.

I cried like a baby while reading this on my way home from work in a crowded metro.

With this random post from someone I don’t even know, I felt truly seen and understood. I felt accepted unconditionally for who I am without even meeting him. I felt that soul connection that we cannot really explain in words.

I felt that somehow, we have already understood each other.

Very rapidly after that, he became my personal mentor and a friend who was guiding me on how to incarnate the most beautiful version of the world I knew in my heart was possible in my daily work, with my team and my network, in my wider business ecosystem, in my big important life-changing project.

He was teaching me how to access my authentic stream of leadership and balance better this love + power dynamic.

He had the head of my mother and the heart of my father.

I was so excited to work with him and be able to learn from him. He gave me hope again, he helped me to listen this quiet voice of my inner truth and inspired me to choose to commit to it fully day after day.

To become the heart leader. To be in a world as I am. No matter how hard it gets. No matter what I risked losing.

You can’t run from the inner calling they say. Just keep listening. Just keep going.

He was doing it. He was in the embodiment process of it. At least that how it seemed to me back then.

He was already dancing with those two forces in such a touching way. He was strong yet vulnerable. He made me believe in myself more. He made me see who I truly was and helped me to stop running from it.

It was the first time after my uncle that I felt such a resonance and coherence with someone specifically on this aspect of leadership style and love + power formula.

His path, deep motivations and struggles sounded so familiar to me. I was able to truly see him, and I felt seen by him.

While working with him over a course of couple of months, I reached new horizons and skies in my job and my career. The scope of my responsibilities expanded exponentially, and the impact of my actions as well.

My sense of passion, dedication and commitment followed. It became big fast. Very big and very important. Political big, there is no way back kind of importance.

The new kind of game has already started in my professional life, I was just unaware of it yet.

My heart-driven leadership was already tested at its core, deeply engaged in its own hero journey. I was already in the battlefield with big guys and there was not an easy way to get out.

I entered this game completely innocent and naïf of how much our world is still profoundly fucked, wounded and unjust.

I had the faith. I trusted the process.

The punches were real and fucking painful. It was already very serious. I thought I can take it on, I thought I was strong enough.

....

Oops.

What? How did that happen?

Oh OK, they have just eaten me alive.

Again.

The system is fucked, and we are forever prisoners in it.

Is it for real?

Fuck it.

Fuck the leadership. Fuck the system. Fuck sustainability. Fuck politics. Fuck the capitalism. Fuck the world. Fuck the gods.

I give up. I can’t take it anymore.

What is the fucking point anyways?

...

Ok. I get it now. I step back. I failed again.

Game over.

...

This was a time during my second burnout, and I finally decided to fuck off for good.

I have put the superwoman suit in the closet.

The business ego battlefield for big important guys finally was not my cup of tea. Not my game.

My inner truth refused to play the game under their very questionable rules.

My personal integrity won.

I will not surrender to something that does not make sense to me and who I truly am.

This is not where and how I wanted to serve the humanity with my love + power leadership.

I knew that deeply.

But I had not known what’s next and how to be now.

I needed to take time to think and to heal. I needed to learn how to do nothing. I needed to let the pieces slowly come back together for me to make any sense of my new reality.

I took the leap.

I offered that gift of time and space to myself.

I cut the strings.

All of them.

Cold turkey style.

I have chosen to lose everything.

I left the job of my dreams. I left the entire field of my practice. I left the success and the prestige. I left the comfort, and I left my passion. I left all of it.

I simply disappeared from my professional network. I consciously sabotaged the curse of my apparently very promising and exciting professional career.

I left people I loved. I left my tribe.

I was heart broken. It was worst that my most painful breakups. It was very deep. I was very painful.

I had no idea what to do.

...

It’s a beautiful day of September 2021.

I am recovering from my professional breakup and the second burnout. Today, I am fully immersed in the creative flow; I am bringing into life what feels the most essential to me.

I can feel it. I am excited. I am happy.

I am ‘’working’’ for the first time for many months.

It feels right. My business project idea is so clear in my awareness right now.

My dreams are possible.

It makes sense, it’s beautiful.

I am writing it all down.

A couple of months passed since I left everything behind. I am full on with my new inquiries into what is life all about and the learning process of doing nothing while being open to everything, I slowly felt again this familiar push of inspiration arising, this creativity flow coming back as a powerful river in my inner system. I feel more energized, more connected to my truth. My inspiration and my inner truth are more coherent. I can sense it.

I have more clarity and courage now to continue walking on this very weird path of self-evolution.

I want to work on my future project. I still have no idea what it is. But, I want to start something new, something meaningful, something more like me. Something I truly believe in. Something that does not make me sick. I know it’s possible. I’ve seen it. I can sense it.

My faith is back.

My trust is back.

I feel the whisper of life in me again.

I am here and now.

I want to embody my authentic love power in the world.

I want to learn how to be a heart leader and in coherence with all the parts of me!

And it seems like I finally found the way to do that. It feels right.

Yes, I am doing it.

Bravo Kat. Tap-tap on the shoulder.

...

Because life has a very mysterious ways and timing of unfolding sometimes, literally the same day while I was celebrating this rebirth of my sense of inner purpose, I received a very disturbing news that have put all my motivation and enthusiasm under the ground with speed of the light for another couple of months.

My mentor, my friend, the one who made me believe in myself, the one who inspired me to continue walking the path no matter what, died.

He just died like that.

To be more precise, he committed a suicide.

I crushed.

What a fuck? Is this some kind of joke?

Why?

I had no idea how to grief this.

I also had no idea how to continue work on my project after this.

I don’t want to be killed by the system like my uncle was and I don’t want to kill myself like my mentor did. I want another way out. I don’t want anything to do with power like that.

But who are my other examples? Who do I have to look after? To get inspired from. Where are those people?

How do I become who I truly am, without compromising my own survival?

Is it even possible?

Maybe I am just a coward.

Maybe I will never truly get it.

Maybe I am destined to hit my head against the wall for some reason for a bit longer.

The interconnections with all that stuff are too complicated in my system right now. It’s deep.

This new pain arising in my body makes me again very confused and lost. I just fucking don’t get it!

Was it all fake?

Was I in the biggest illusion of my life about my inner truth, my purpose and my life path? Was it all just a dream? Was my job a big joke all those years? Was I being completely stupid to believe that we can do it differently, that we are able to combine power with love in a more coherent way. That we can change the system and that we can cocreate a better world together if we just chose to do so.

Am I completely blind to the actual truth of life and the depths people’s cruelty?

Maybe it is all shit. Always was and always will be. Nothing matters. Nothing changes. The universe it just fucking absurd, but not in a funny way.

...

Many months have passed. I have lost and found my inner truth couple of times since.

Some questions have been answered, some are still part of my current path. As I walk, new questions are arising as well.

Finally, in every single now, everything changes, and nothing does at the same time.

Another weird paradox of this fucked up reality.

Maybe that’s OK too. Maybe this is also a part of the process.

...

No matter what I still trust.

No matter what I will continue to seek the guidance and to listen to my inner truth.

I know in my heart, in every cell of my body that it’s still possible.

It’s not too late.

I know I am not random.

I know I am not broken.

I know I am not crazy.

I know I will, one way or other, find a way to embody my own unique love power. I will continue the personal inquiry of what does heart leadership means to me and how my essence wants to experiment with this concept next.

During this path I want to remember more where I come from, I want to reconnect and appropriately acknowledge those who walked before me.

I don’t want to judge or blame anymore.

I want to bow my head down as a sign of respect and recognition for everything they have done, even if I don’t always get it.

Even if it’s very painful and confusing.

Somehow, I know that my ancestors and my wider community have provided me already with all the necessary resources to become what I am supposed to be.

As it is.

Complete.

As I already am.

There is nowhere else to look for it.

It’s all in my roots already.

It is already all present in me and very much alive in my body.

Even if I don’t yet see it, I already know it.

I can sense it.

I can hear the whispers of it.

I can trust it.

I can learn dancing and singing with it again.