The Feminine Super Power of ‘Receiving’ … Giving Up the Push for the Invitation

The year I left my corporate job in 2007, I named “The
year of receiving”… I always pick a mantra for the year based on the
quality that I really want to bring into my life and my self. While I had
always been great at making it happen, a skill very valued in the man-powered
corporate world, I knew that to thrive as a an entrepreneur and a visionary
leader I had to learn how to let things happen, I needed to activate my
feminine super power of Receiving.

Three years later, even after a full
year of learning it, I still find the Feminine Super Power of Receiving one of
the hardest to explain, which seems weird to me on one hand because it should
be as simple as saying, it’s just like accepting a present from someone. They
give you a gift, you say thank you. But that doesn’t seem to quite cut it. It’s
like my achiever brain doesn’t register something when I think about receiving
in the biggest context of that is how I live my life. “What do you mean
receive? Do I just sit here on my throne like Queen of Sheba letting my
subjects bring me gifts?” Not exactly. And then you couple that with my
social conditioning that it is better to give than to receive and then all
those frayed guilt synapses I’ve spent years rewiring start to sparkle just a bit.

So in the absence of being able to
appropriately explain the Feminine Super Power of Receiving to you, I did what any good
achiever does, I decided to do something about it. But unlike my former
achievement junkie self, I waited until I was ‘invited’ to do something about it.

After finishing my 40 day taking
care of ME practice on February 13th, that little but mighty voice inside my
head, who I have come to know and love as my intuition said to me… let’s try
Receiving again. At first my ego was a little bruised, “What do you mean?
I spent an entire year learning how to receive? Do you mean I have more to
learn?” An undeniable YES! was her answer, and now I sit here roughly 20
days since I began, and here is what I have learned…

You’ll spend less energy and you’ll receive more if you
wait for an “invitation” vs. pushing to make it happen.

Several months ago one of my dear
friends Catherine told me that she had proclaimed a new life rule (she does
this on occasion)… and this time her new life lens was ‘I wait to do anything
until I am invited.’ And I thought to myself, “Well that is nice, good for
you! And that is a non-apply to me.” It was like one of those moments when
you kind of get what someone is saying and on the other hand kind of don’t but
in either case, know you don’t really want to know more. Of course what I
realize now is that what she shared with me was just sheer brilliance, I was
just not ready to see it

Fast forward to two weekends ago,
early into my 40-day Receiving when I attended the Sister Giant conference in
Los Angeles put on by Marianne Williamson… an event mind you that I was
‘invited’ to come to another friend. I guess I should have seen the writing on
the wall.

This other friend is a master at the
invitation…
although I didn’t know it at the time because we’ve only know each other a few
months. When I say she is a master at the invitation what I mean is that she
let’s things come to her. Opportunities arise, she notices them, she says, Yes
or No, and then she moves into them. She’s lived her whole life this way she
tells me. And this time my achiever brain goes, “Huh, I think there is
something to this invitation thing!” Both she and Catherine expend
tremendously less energy than I do. No toil to ‘make it happen’ or ‘get it all
done’ or ‘be in the right place at the right time’ or ‘have the right plan’…
and yet they are both successful, they are both happy and the truth is that
they are more free to enjoy their lives than I am.

It’s not that they aimlessly float
around their lives waiting for someone to invite them to a party or tell them
what they want to do. They have a knowing and a focus on what they want. They
are women of action. And they accomplish great things – from raising daughters,
to writing best sellers, to choregraphing beautiful dances and changing
people’s consciousness – no small feats! But they do it with a grace and ease
that until now I know I have lacked, and that I believe that I have officially
not believed worked as well as my tactic of push, push, make it happen.

living by invitation only

I lived by invitation for the entire weekend at Sister Giant and the magic that happened for me was profound – I had experiences and met women that I never would have if I had been up to my old achiever ways… and it all unfolded for me.

I am currently still living by invitation which has continued to bring more magic… and questions… but I will save those for another blog.  For now, consider yourself the 40-day receiving practice and living by invitation only.