Expansion First ⏭️ Planning Second

First off, thank you for the warm responses to my last post about the Female Founder Retreat and owning my role as a coach. It makes me feel so happy I can share something that tender with y’all! 

Ever since I got Long COVID, I’ve found a freaky ability to tune into energy states. It’s like I can monitor emotional broadcasts from others. I can find them and feel them in my body. 

I’m learning that being in the right energy, great things will come. 

And my coaching clients are reflecting that back. One of my clients wanted to prepare what he would say to an underperforming executive. We tried to nail the content of the talk, but we quickly realized it was falling short.

I prompted him with, “What do you actually want to say? Between us.”

Then he dropped into what felt the most true for him. His honest energy state was calm and matter-of-fact. And the content flowed like water when he inhabited the right energy.

Yo, I gotta try this!

So I played with it myself as I was planning an Asian Female Founder Alliance meeting (hit me up if you want more deets!). I sat with my partner in crime, fellow coach Amy Jin, to plan the first meeting. 

I had done some agenda prep on my plane ride back, but I couldn’t find the freaking notes. Looking back, I think that was by some higher design.

I decided instead to cultivate the right energy first and to allow the energy to guide the content. 

How did I do it? I spent a few minutes reflecting on what the energy was that I wanted to bring. I decided it was creativity and love. Then I went inwards and brought up that energy — I called in people that I loved and moments in time where I felt creative. I pulled that into my present moment and it felt as if all those memories washed over me, cleansing me of any doubts that wouldn’t serve me in the meeting, and making me feel fresh for whatever was to come.

This process requires deep trust. But I’ll say that coaching is almost entirely about cultivating the right mindset, since for most of my sessions we don’t know the content until we step into the meeting. 

So when I popped into that meeting with Amy, I felt the glow of creativity and love. 

I voiced it to her with a bit of shame, “I didn’t prepare this meeting like I normally do, I just, erm, got in the right energy state?” 🙄😬😅

Of course my awesome friend Amy was thrilled! 

And it’s nothing short of magical what played out next. We went from zero to a solid first draft with ease, laughter, and excitement. Where one of us had a question, the other had an answer. Where one was stumped, the other was full of ideas. 

When I was a founder, I managed my anxiety by over preparing. I remember a friend (who was an investor) told me that I was ready to fundraise weeks before I felt “prepared” enough. He told me I had set the bar too high for myself. 

I wish I had spent more time in that fundraise cultivating the right energy instead of tweaking my deck endlessly.

So how do we step into a lion-filled arena with the right energy to drive our magical outcome?

• Identify the energy state. A few choice states are calm, creative, clear, strong, and loving. Pick the one that matches what the situation requires. 

• Find the feeling of this energy. This is the trickiest part, especially if we’re in stressed states. My onramp to expansive energy states usually include calling up memories of when I felt similar states, calling in people who embody these states. From there I try to identify where this state lives in my body. There’s my physical timestamp. Then I find the emotional feeling, which is another timestamp. I map all these things in 4D to feel the energy in real time. 

• Trust the energy. Trust is earned, not given. I would experiment with feeling into energy well ahead of a challenging situation like a big investor meeting. Start by trying it with a team member in a low risk meeting. 

• Stay connected to it. As a meeting ebbs and flows, it’s important to stay in the moment with your energy. I sometimes write it down somewhere I can easily see it in a meeting as a visual reminder. Or I touch or tap the part of my body that holds the physical sensation of that energy (usually off camera or subtly if in person). 

 You can still prepare content for the meeting. If you need to do this, just ensure you prepare the energy of the meeting first, then let the content flow from this energetic place. Content without energy often falls flat, especially since most communication (up to 93%) is done outside of the content of your words. 

I find being in the right energy also makes me more flexible to whatever gets lobbed at me in the moment, where prepared content sometimes misses. 

Feeling into energy introduces a more magical element to my structured life. It invites spontaneity, possibility, and more laughter. I hope it brings magic to you!