The Essential Feminine Company - Empowering Women to Create Successful Businesses and Lives

“If you have unfulfilled dreams, and visions of greater prosperity and success tucked in a corner of your mind, don’t keep them there any longer. Dare to bring them out and dust them off. Dare to begin thinking of the possibilities.” Catherine Ponder

So often we feel distant and far away from our dreams. The true art of living includes inviting your dreams and visions in to your day to day life. There is no need for separation. There is no need for these visions to feel far away. How do we dust them off and begin to dare to think of what might be possible. How do we move from the smallness of our every day thinking to the grandeur of the realm of all possibility?

•    Identify your greatest dreams and visions. Get to know them. Make them your friends. Be, act and live as though they are already a part of your life

•    Observe any small or limited thinking in your day. These are old habits to break out of. Replace them, one by one, as they come up with exciting, expanded, exhilarating new thinking.

As we begin to look closely at our dreams and to make them a part of our every day reality, they will no longer be dreams but they will become our reality.

For over 20 years, I have successfully mentored powerful women leaders from around the globe to create and expand innovative businesses that authentically reflect their core values. I have steadfastly based my work on my strong belief that our emerging world culture needs, and is now demanding, that women step into their rightful power and leadership roles. The imbalance in our world between the masculine and feminine principles is causing the anxiety, unrest and upheaval we see around us. Our world society is based on power and control, the masculine principle and the suppression of the feminine attributes we all possess.  Hope for the world lies in bringing forth the feminine principal and creating a balance of the masculine and feminine.

 In a recent ezine article, Sanjay Kali points out that “The rise of womanhood is closely attached with awakening the feminine in all of us. The lead in this direction has to come from the womenfolk. Only if you come together as one unified force can we think about the rise of a new era based on the feminine principle of life. You are the natural carrier of the feminine principle. Mother Nature has bestowed women with the feminine energy of love, compassion, nurturing and healing which leads to unification of every aspect of life whether at the individual level or at the larger level of the world.”    http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sanjay_Kali

This is the core of my personal self-discovery, research and work with women.   I am so excited to be getting information out to women on this subject. I realize that we often live from not knowing our feminine strengths or demeaning them. I look forward to the day that we own our strengths and special gifts so that the world will be different. I’ve been working on a new webinar “Creating and Living with Influence and Success from the Feminine Perspective” to help women discover their strengths. We are collaborative, caring, compassionate, and powerful. We now need to live and lead with these gifts. I am excited about the day that we will see feminine attributes in all forms of leadership and power. Trust me, the world will be a wonderful place. I have decided to give a complimentary webinar as a sneak preview to some of the work that I will be launching next year. Join me October 21 at 12 noon PDT for “Creating and Living with Influence and Success from the Feminine Perspective.” Email me at Maureen@maureensimon.com for log in information.

Life is fast and full for most of us! We go through the days like ships at sea without a compass, seemingly at the mercy of everything around us. That is when it is important to make a conscious decision to pause and realize that we are the ones responsible for our lives. We can take charge. We can find our compass, our direction, and make a difference in the world. Three steps we can take to achieve our direction are to quiet the mind, connect with the body, and evaluate whether or not we are expressing our gifts fully in the world. All three of these practical expressions can make a major difference in the quality of our lives!

The first step: Quieting The Mind

 • Set aside time in silence at least 3 days a week for 20 minutes where you can begin to get to know yourself, your needs, your desires and aspirations. Learn to identify and trust your intuition and inner voice. We all have an inner voice that guides and directs us. We just need to listen.

• Question: Can you think of one way this week that you could actually create a period of calm and stillness for yourself?

The second step: Connecting With The Body

• Learn to become more aware of your body’s needs.

• Listen more closely to the signs that your body gives you, i.e. where are there aches, sensations and areas of tightness? Is your body sending you a message? What might the message be?

• Explore these sensations through yoga or other movement you enjoy. Your body holds great information about its own healing needs and emotional state of being.

• Question: What 2 things would you need to do differently to begin to honor and care for your body in a new way?

By taking these two steps, you start to walk on a path of self-exploration. You begin to get a sense of who you are and how your life fits into the scheme of things. Each of us is unique and each of us has a unique contribution to make in the world. The world today needs the contributions that are born from the qualities and gifts embodied in women. We as women need to discover these gifts and bring them forth.

Several years ago in a blog entitled “Are Women In The US Really Leading?”, I commented on a global survey ranking women in the area of gender equality that was compiled by “The White House Project”.  The survey stated that “The United States ranks 22nd out of 115 countries.”  The report utilized 4 measurement standards: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.  We came in first for Health and Survival, and third for Economic Opportunity.  But, we received our lowest score for Political Empowerment, coming in 66th. 

I wondered about our progress since that time and went looking for an updated report.  I discovered a thought provoking and heart touching blog written by Mary C. Wilson for “The White House Project Blog”, entitled A False Divide Between Head and Heart: What I Learned From Robert McNamara.  It is well worth reading in its entirety.

As for the report, she states in her blog, “Women are still vastly underrepresented in the halls of power. As the soon-to-be-released “White House Project Report: Benchmarking Women’s Leadership” has found, women are far from parity in every sector, from business and politics to sports and religion. Projections show that it will take decades to reach even a critical mass in many of these arenas; and the women who do make it into positions of power often do so at great sacrifice.”

 Do we have decades?

 Becoming leaders takes courage and determination and most of all a willingness to step forward.  It can not and will not be done for us.  Though, each of us must take that step for ourselves, we need not do it alone.

 

 

“An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding; and it is not to be found in a foreign land, but in the heart itself.” Robert Louis Stevenson I guess I’ve always been pretty clear about why I’m here. My journey began years back at seventeen years of age when I chose to study human services and community organization. My heart has always been with people. My dream has always been to be a part of maximizing human potential in every possible way. I have dedicated my life to this aim. However, each day and each year of my life sure as to what the best way for me to achieve this aim would be. But I always kept the question alive. I am convinced that the answer does lie in our heart, not in a foreign land, and it’s our personal responsibility to embark upon that exploration. As I’ve written many times, I believe each of us is here for a very specific purpose that no one else could fulfill. Some days the clarity of that purpose feels very far away, but we owe it to ourselves to stay conscious and inquisitive. You are a very special part of a whole. Without you, things would be very different. “What is your aim?” “Can you look in your heart and trust that the answer is to be found there?”

Maureen Simon

Maureen@maureensimon.com

www.maureensimon.com

www.theessentialfeminine.com

“Women’s innate people skills will be a valuable commodity in almost every sector of the twenty-first-century economy.  Peter Drucker and many other respected business analysts have come to regard people as a company’s most crucial resource. “The organization of the future,” Drucker says, “must be non-bureaucratic and based on the concept of human capital.”

 With their people skills, their language abilities, their drive to network, and their faculty for contextual thinking, women will be extremely valuable human capital in almost any business setting.  No segment of the marketplace, however, requires people skills more constantly than the service occupations.”

-Helen Fisher, The First Sex

I believe the first step in towards women becoming “extremely valuable human capital in almost any business setting” is first and foremost for us to realize the essential value that we hold in both business and the world. Our gifts and talents must be realized first through a personal inventory. Once we are clear about how the feminine lives in our own lives we can begin to reach out and educate ourselves so that we can better understand the natural gifts of the feminine and how they can become more alive in business and the world.

 Start today—-what do you uniquely contribute to business, your community and the world as a woman? What feminine gifts do your sisters naturally hold?

 When we personally awaken and claim our gifts, talents and attributes we will begin to see the feminine truly valued in the world.

 Maureen Simon

 

Maureen J. Simon Consulting

(415) 381-5115
maureen@maureensimon.com
www.maureensimon.com

“Designing Business & Lives”

“ I had been raised to assume all power was outside myself, but they (men) had been raised to place power almost nowhere but within themselves.  Often, they were suffering, too.  Just as the fantasy of no control was the enemy of my self-esteem, the fantasy of total control was the enemy of theirs.  For both of us, the goal should have been a point of balance in between: a back-and-forth between the self and others, uniqueness and unity, the planned and the accidental, our internal selves and the universe.  As wise women and men in every culture tell us:  the art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us.”

Gloria Steinem  “Revolution From Within”

When we think about our influence and our sense of self, the idea of power becomes a central theme.  Women have been a part of cultures that place power over her, as opposed to power with or next to her, for far too long.  We need to realize that only if we recognize and claim it will our personal power becomes truly enlivened in our lives.  This sense of strength manifests through our competence, our voice and our excitement towards living.  Use your past experiences to guide your strength going forward.  Never be victim to the challenging days that have passed but as Gloria says, use them to your benefit and advantage today. 

Maureen Simon

www.maureensimon.com

http://globaldialoguecenter.blogs.com/women/