To continue to reinvent yourself is one of the greatest gifts we have. We get to decide what we make the things that happen to us mean about us. We decide what we hold on to, what we believe about ourselves, what we give our power to.
It’s the greatest gift we have. Perspective. The ability to choose who we are and what we’ll become.
And it’s one of the scariest at times. To change your mind. To decide that you are going to let go of all of the things you’ve been told about who you are, your family history, the expectations, judgments, ridicules and opinions others have placed on you. That you are going to free yourself from the chains of your circle of influence, your family, your history and your story – to step into the unknown and redefine yourself. To no longer have a past you are handcuffed by, only a future that you are creating.
It is hard. It may alienate some of the people closest to you. Most people are too afraid to let go of what they know, too afraid that if they let go of the people they’re attached to, they’ll be alone. Afraid of change, afraid of the unknown.
But great leadership requires greatness – and greatness requires that you constantly reinvent yourself, challenge yourself and grow your consciousness. You cannot be a great leader and not be constantly moving your consciousness forward.
You have to be willing to live in discomfort, to constantly be gripped in fear and move forward anyway, to push your leadership, keep growing your consciousness and constantly be looking inward, forward and for ever increasing depth.
It is a commitment to a purpose-driven life, a commitment to a deepening consciousness, a commitment to something greater than yourself.
Nothing about my story makes any sense. No one would believe the auto-biography if they read it. I come from, literally, nothing – a small town raised, out of control wild-child with no discipline, no moral grounding, no family ties, no parental influences, no role models, no mentors, no self-respect, no feminine wisdom. Mildly educated, without a compass to guide me, no influences to support me and no teachers to lead me. With a heart that was filled with rage, trauma and deep, sustained, emotional wounding. The greatest goal set for me to be a good secretary and get married.
I rarely look in the rear view mirror, life is always moving forward, evolving, and so are we, but even typing these words I can feel the shame, guilt and embarrassment about where I come from rising. I don’t know why. Maybe because I think it should look a certain way. Maybe because now it’s written I can’t unwrite it, now the whole world will know my shame, know my secret self. Now they’ll know how fragile and vulnerable I am and they’ll use it against me – business is a rough environment.
Maybe I just like the idea of being like everyone else sometimes. Sometimes I don’t want to be so different. I don’t want to talk about these things – I am compelled to write this blog and yet I hate that I write this blog. I don’t know why, but there it is. Shame.
I have no pedigreed background. No happy family history. No proud parents shuffling me off to a pre-paid college education. No solid moral fiber from mentors to guide me on my path. No support, no direction, no guidance, no hope.
Who am I to be a leader? Who am I to run a multi-million dollar company? Who am I to talk about these things, look at where I come from. Look at who I have been. Look at what I have done.
Alone, scared, traumatized, fearful and angry with nothing but this one, simple, thing that made all the difference to who I would become. The ability to choose for myself what I would make it mean about me.
Who am I to be a leader and run a multi-million dollar company? Who am I not to be?
It took years of dedication, commitment, perseverance, a willingness to look at the darkest most awful parts of myself, to try and fail, to risk and lose, to build steadily and with focus over a long period of time. To never quit. I had to teach myself discipline, teach myself self-love, teach myself commitment, teach myself to still my mind, teach myself to build integrity and morality, to learn how to manage my sabotage and direct my focus – to be in relationship with my power and steer it, rather than it steering me. It took a lot of stumbles.
To build it all, lose it all and then start again. And to not let the losses and the stumbles become what frames my decisions moving forward. Sometimes, when you’re pushing your consciousness forward, you’ll experience more loss, sometimes more loss than you think you can take. And you have to have the courage and the tenacity to stay the course, to not let those losses affect the purity of your heart, the steadiness of your commitment, your trust in life or your willingness to risk again.
I had to seek out sages and wisdom keepers to teach me what they knew. I read every book written on psychology, self-improvement, self-development, quantum physics, business, leadership, spirituality, religion, love, economics. Books saved my life, truly.
I learned how to address my emotional traumas in a healthy way, how to forgive myself and others, how to change the inner dialogue in my mind, how to transform those ingrained, brainwashed belief systems, how to find mentors I respected and would listen to.
How to let my anger go. How to cleanse my karma. And, finally, how to listen to my inner wisdom, feminine knowing and intuition and let it guide me, forward. When you come from a broken past, you can’t trust your intuition – nothing is safe. You have to heal that trauma first – to trust life again, to trust yourself again, to trust love again.
I decided who I was going to be. I decided to be self-directed. I decided to change my mind about who, what and how my experiences shaped me. What I made it all mean about myself. I chose to reinvent myself and to use the platform of where I had come from as the framework to catapult me to where I’m going.
Everyone has a story – no one better or worse than someone else’s. They are all just the cards we are given in this life. Our job is to do the most with what we have, to find the truest most authentic expression of ourselves, from wherever it is that we come from.
To constantly be moving our consciousness forward and to then share what we have learned to help others to do the same. When you get, give. When you learn, teach.
Krystine McInnes is CEO and Director of Athena Farms and Grown Here Farms. Stewarding purpose-driven, change-making projects with a focus on Planet, People, Profit and a commitment to Sustainable Business models.
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