Bloom Your Mind

Ep 21: You Are a Lion Heart

• Marie McDonald

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This episode explores the concept of lionhearted leadership and its three circles: leading yourself, leading others, and leading in the world. By falling in love with yourself, you can bring that love into your relationships and interactions with others, fostering acceptance and tolerance. This week, challenge yourself to step out of your comfort zone and bring your inner lion into the light, whether it's through self-care, speaking up in group conversations, or starting a community project.

What you'll learn in this episode:

  • Stepping out of comfort zones and the power of saying yes
  • Why loving oneself allows for more creativity and freedom 
  • Increased self-love leads to more understanding, compassion, empathy and tolerance
  • The 3 concentric circles of lionhearted leadership: leading yourself, leading others, and leading in the world

Awakening your lionhearted leadership can lead to personal growth, stronger connections, and a more compassionate world. By embracing your emotions, saying "yes" to new experiences, and leading with courage, you can positively impact not only our own life but also the lives of those around you. So, take the first step today and start awakening your inner lion.

Mentioned in this episode:
Ep #01: You're the One We Want
Ep #02: The Land Inside
Ep #18: The Tool That Changed Everything
Ep #20: Your Feelings are a Superpower

How to connect with Marie:

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Welcome to the Bloom Your Mind podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want, and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified coach, Marie McDonald. Let's get into it.

Well, hello, my friends, and welcome to episode number twenty-one of the Bloom Your Mind Podcast. Today, we are going to talk about how you can wake up your lion and be a lionheart in your own life, with people around you and in the world. So, I'm really excited to talk about that because I've been working with this concept and this set of ideas for five to ten years, and it is incredibly powerful when people take this on. I'm super excited to be here with you today.

But before that, I'm going to tell you a couple of stories because you know how I roll. So, the first one, y'all, I don't know if you have this experience when you're going to sleep or when you're in and out of sleep, where your brain just does some wild stuff. In those moments where you've been asleep and you're waking up, and it offers you some magical ideas, really creative ideas for projects you're doing or for things you want to do the next day or maybe during amazing things in that space in between sleeplessness and wakefulness. 

Well, that happens with children's brains too, and my son was going to sleep the other night. I was lying next to him, helping him go down, and I was kind of rubbing his back, and his breathing started to change. It started to slow down a little bit, and I thought he was on his way. And all of a sudden, he sits up. He says, "Mama," I said, "Yes." He says, "I got to tell you something." And I said, "Can you tell me tomorrow?" And he said, "One more thing, mama, before I go to sleep. Just want to tell you this one more thing." And I said, "Alright buddy, what you got?" And he said, "I've been thinking, mama, that feelings are like food."

I said, "Really? Tell me more." And he's a wise just thinking that some feelings are like really healthy food. Like salad and fruits and vegetables and nuts and beans and all of the healthy things that I eat. Because when I feel them, I get a lot of energy, and I kind of feel stronger like I could do anything, and they feel good, and they feel easy, and they're like healthy for me. They're good for me. And then they're also good for other people because when I have those feelings, I can tell the other people feel good too. I was like, "Alright, what about the other ones?" He said, "Well then, there are other feelings that are like candy. Like getting mad is like that. When I'm mad, it's really easy. It kind of happens really fast, kind of like when you're eating candy, and you just want to eat it really fast. So, I get mad, and it's really fast and really easy to feel mad, but then it's really bad for me because then I get in fights with other people, and it doesn't really feel good to me, and it lasts too long. And I don't like the way I feel later."

Well, I just happened to have made an episode about how feelings are your superpower, and he just happens to be on the cover of that episode, so it was quite magical that he just sat up in bed. I swear, I didn't talk to him about this stuff. I talked to him about this stuff all the time, but I didn't talk to him about that episode, right? And so, it's really cool that you just sat up in bed and had this Cliff Notes version of what feelings are. Said so beautifully well, from the lips of a six-year-old. 

So, if you haven't listened to that episode, Episode twenty really makes a difference for people understanding how feelings inhabit your body and how we tend to deal with them. And then you can go back to episode eighteen if you haven't listened to that yet for a tool that will change your life.

But I also told you that when I went to Hawaii, I was going to try to bring back some stories to make you laugh because I love doing that. And I wasn't super successful, but I did bring back a little anecdote that really stayed with me, stuck with me from that trip, and it's all about saying yes. So, there are two areas in my life. One was from this trip, and there's another area I want to tell you about where yes is bringing magical things. And I've said this on the podcast before; it's really important to know, you know, to find your nose, knowing your nose, saying no, finding where your yes is and where your no is. Both are just as important as the other. And what's super important is your reason for saying yes and your reason for saying no. So, what I've been experiencing is when I'm making decisions to say yes that are in line with my values and that are pushing past the things that are sort of limited ways of thinking, I've been having some magical things happen in my life. So, one of them, I will tell you in a moment, is about saying yes to other invitations.

But what happened in Maui is that I was walking through a bamboo forest with my family, my two children, six years old, ten years old, and my wonderful husband. We were walking through a bamboo forest, and I realized afterwards how lucky I am to have a family that tells me yes. I was like, "Everybody, come over here, I'll take them off the trail, lie down with me."

"They say, what? Like, yeah, come on, lie down on the ground with me," and they just do it. We all lay down on the ground in the dirt on our backs, with our heads together, and they're like, "What are we doing?" And I say, "Look up at the bamboo forest, how it sort of tunnels, right? Like looking through a tube or something, where it's really wide on the bottom with the trunks of the trees. And then, they all look as if from that perspective, they're meeting at the top. They're kind of coming towards each other. And it looks like you're looking down a tunnel." Then we're all quiet, and when you're quiet in a bamboo forest, the tree trunks click and clack, like they're clacking against each other. And the way that the leaves sound is so magical. We were all lying on the ground on our backs, listening to the clicking, clacking, and whooshing of the leaves. We start cracking up but the fact that we're a little bit off the trail, lying in the middle of the forest by ourselves, created this beautiful experience. Because I wasn't afraid to say, "You, come over here and lie on the ground with me," and they weren't afraid to say yes, right?

And that's happening in another place in my life, which is with my parents. I decided a little while ago, they're both retired. And rather than, like, resting in their retirement, they are doing incredible things. They also rest, they play a lot, make music and art, travel and have so much fun, but they're also doing great things in contribution to the world. So they have been asking my husband and me to join them in some of their play and in some of their work. And so I just decided to say yes because I want to be with them in this season of their lives where they're expressing their passions, not working anymore, and putting all this goodness in the world. We've been doing Western swing dance lessons with them, and it was amazing. We've been going on RV trips with them to National Parks. I don't know if I would ever have rented an RV, and it's been amazing to travel next to them in their Airstream and go see beautiful places side by side.

And then, my dad asked me to help him with the festivals that he puts on in our hometown, including Earth Day, bluegrass, and sustainability festivals, and I just said yes. The experience that it leads to is something I would never have had otherwise. He even asks me to come up on stage and sing with my husband, my mom, and him. I am an incredibly mediocre singer, and my voice is mediocre, but that's alright with me. I will say yes and get up on that stage and sing because the experience of doing that with them is more important than looking or sounding good. My mom also asked me to facilitate a retreat - a design thinking day - for her church in a couple of months, and I just said yes.

So, my offering to you around this thing that I've realized brings so much joy to my life is to think this week about what you can do, what you can say yes to, and how you can push past your hesitations that are based on being too busy or having too much to do. Don't worry about whether or not you'll be good at something or look or sound good. Recognize those moments when you can say yes to somebody else's invitation and surprise yourself with some magical experience that connects you to someone you love.

Additionally, think about how you can invite the people around you to join you in some experience you want to share with them. What do you want to ask other people to do with you? It's especially powerful to do that when you might get a no. You can practice making requests to people, inviting them to do cool things with you, and getting used to the fact that sometimes people say no, and it's not a big deal. The power of yes, my friends - it leads to amazing things. Alright.

But today, we are here to talk about your lionheart. You have a lionheart inside of you, and there are a lot of things in our world that try to quiet down that lionheart. So today, we're going to talk a little bit about how to awaken it. I want to talk about this in terms of three different spheres that we can influence, make choices within, and lead within. It's like concentric circles that I want you to picture, like a bullseye. You're there in the middle of the bullseye. There you are. And you're in the middle of those concentric circles. You're the middle one. So, you can think of that as you, the individual. You have an opportunity to be a lionheart in your own life with yourself, to bring your leadership, clear sight, and clear thinking to your own life and the way you think about yourself. And then, if you allow that circle to expand one ring out, it leads you from you to us. So, you have opportunities to lead in interactions with other people, conversations with small groups you're in, and communities you are part of. And then, if you go one more ring out to the third ring, that's the world. You have opportunities to be a lionheart and to lead in the world. So, let's start with you and your lionheart.

The first and most important, yet hardest, thing is to be a leader within yourself. The most important way to do that is to love yourself more every single day. Falling in love with yourself is the bravest thing you can do because the brain is wired not to. There are so many ways that our brains are specifically designed to cultivate the opposite of self-love. We are wired to look for danger and keep ourselves out of harm's way.Our brains think that danger is being rejected by our social circles or the people around us. So, they keep pointing out the ways that we might be wrong, different, not enough, or the ways that we don't belong. Every time I go into a new social circle or situation, my brain wants to offer me all the ways that I don't belong in it. That's what it is designed to do. We can expect that our brains will offer us all the ways that we're wrong, different, not enough, or don't belong. But we can pause and know that our brain is trying to protect us and set those thoughts aside.

When we do that work, we become an example of someone who is okay in their own skin. When we fall in love with ourselves, it is contagious and lets other people fall in love with themselves too. What's amazing about that is when we love ourselves, we are more accepting of other people, less judgmental, and contribute more to the world, conversations, relationships, and interactions. It's the hardest work to do, the bravest thing you can do, and the thing that will lead to the highest contribution you can make to the world because you will stop dimming down your voice. The first way that you can be a lion heart is to fall in love with yourself.

The other day, I was at an event, and a woman came up to me because I was there at a community event sharing my podcast and coaching. She came up in a suit and said, "I need your help. I need you to help me." I asked, "What's going on?" She said, "You know, no one will hire me. I have been applying for jobs for over a year, and no one will hire me. And I'm in a relationship, and I'm desperately in love with a man who's married to somebody else and who is never going to leave her for me. I got a divorce because my husband stopped trying, and we are just...he just stopped trying.

The more we talked, the more I got a sense of what was going on, and I said, "Hey, do you want to hear what I see?" She nodded her head, and I said, "You're wanting the world to love you, but you haven't fallen in love with yourself yet." Our eyes filled up with tears all the way to the edges of our eyelids until they became so full that one of them spilled over the edge and rolled down her cheek in that way where it just drops so fast to the ground. You know? Like it was being held inside there for a long time waiting to come out. She nodded and said, "I think you're right."

I said, "When you do that work to fall in love with yourself, the world's going to follow you. The world around you will love you too." She said, "I think I can do that," and I said, "I think you can do it." When we do the work of falling in love with ourselves, we become part of the solution. We become part of the change that the world needs. The world becomes less divisive, more tolerant, and more compassionate. But we have to be a lion heart and do the work of falling in love with ourselves first. Alright. And that's it. You can stop there or expand into the next part of the circle, which, if you really fall in love with yourself, will happen organically and naturally anyway. But if you expand it to the next circle and take on opportunities to lead, be a leader, be a lion heart, in that next circle that goes from me to you to us, this is what it means.

There are so many moments when we decide to agree with a group, to agree with the predominant opinion of a group. For that same reason I was talking about earlier, because we don't want to stand out from a crowd, as our brains are designed to keep us safe. Our brains think that if we share a dissenting opinion, an opinion that is different than the predominant opinion of a group, it's not safe. We have the possibility of being rejected. And that is true. The fallacy is that being rejected doesn't mean we're not safe. So, it's just super important to see the moments when we're going along with the way that a group is thinking, behaving, or talking, and just notice when there's something inside us that doesn't agree with it.

A couple of examples here, ways you can be a lionheart. I'm bringing this up because I think we often think about ourselves as being leaders or not leaders. When we think about leadership with that big L, that's like leading a company or leading a movement or having a career with a C-level title or whatever. But that's one form of leadership. We have opportunities for leadership every single day, all day long. One of them is the one I just described where you can lead yourself. And the next one, in the realm of us, is that the world presents opportunities all day long, every day, to lead in interactions with other people.

First, you have an opportunity when you are in a group of people who oftentimes groups of people do something called flocking, where they gather together and find connections to one another, through counter identifying, through finding fault with another individual or group of people. It is very destructive. It is very polarizing. But there's a part of our brains as human beings that it really satisfies. It gives us like a little dopamine hit to be more connected to each other. And the thing that's connecting us is that we are talking trash about someone or something else.

Any moment that that's happening in a group, you can just pause and notice that nagging feeling inside of yourself. Something's not right here. I would like it if someone was talking this way about me, and I definitely would not like it if a group of people were talking this way about me. And also, is it actually helpful for us to think of ourselves as right and this other person as wrong? We as right and this other political party is wrong, ourselves as right and this other movement as wrong. Or would it be more helpful if we just consider them both as having merit? Would it be helpful if we didn't consider it black or white?

And you could start to notice that nagging feeling inside. And you could be a lion heart. You could be a leader in that moment. And it doesn't have to be poly positive. It doesn't have to be like everybody, let's stop talking about this. It can just be a slight tilt to the conversation. Where you change direction, you change topics, you lovingly or jokingly just shift the direction of the conversation. Or another thing to do is just offer a perspective about maybe a different way of looking at whatever the group is talking about, where you show maybe a different side of what a person might have been thinking or feeling or what the strength of a of a different type of organization or group or political party might what they might care about. Right?

Being a lion heart can happen in any moment. And when you take the opportunity to hear the voice inside you, that little nagging voice that says something right here. And you take the opportunity to shift the direction of the group conversation. That is, you are being a lion heart and it feels really good and it's really good for the world. Because our tendency as social creatures is to share the opinion of the group. And if we're following the opinion of the group, we might get led to places that aren't in alignment with our values. 

So just bring some awareness. Is there any moment where you can bring your lion heart to a group conversation where you can wake up that lie in heart.

And I'm going to move on to our last circle, which is the world. And the way to be a lion heart in the world is to offer opportunities for others to be a leader or a lion heart too. So that's that third circle where you move from loving yourself, falling in love with yourself out into the second circle where you're actually using that love for yourself to create more love in the world by helping to direct conversations and thinking and discussions and concepts and all of the energy that we have when we're together towards love and compassion and tolerance and connectedness and understanding rather than divisiveness. 

One other way that you can be a lion heart in that second circle of interacting with other people is just by expressing to other people, the wonderful things that you see in them. I have a whole episode about this. Either episode one or two, one of the very first ones about I think it might be number one about how your subjectivity is objectively intended and how when you walk around the world and share the beautiful things that you witness in others, it actually changes. Changes that moment, changes the lives of other people often. So that's another way that you can be a lion heart in the world is by using your voice to create good, just ripples of goodness as you walk around in the world.

And then the third and last circle that I want to talk about today is how to be a lion heart in the world. So, if the first ring is being a lion heart by falling in love with yourself, And the second ring is being a lion heart by bringing that love for yourself into the world so that it creates more love and tolerance and acceptance in the world around you. Then the third is to create opportunities. For other people to lead as well. So that might be by starting an organization that is focused on doing good in the world. And inviting other people, creating an opportunity for other people to find employment in an organization that's really healthy and doing good in the world. That also might mean starting a women's circle once a week of a few friends that just come together in your backyard and find community and support one another. Or it could be by writing a book or starting a podcast or putting things out into the world that other people can benefit from.

I try to do all three of these things every day. I feel myself pushing myself. To not be comfortable, to show up, to wake up my lion and do scary things, like put ideas out there in the world. In some days, it feels easy and some days, it feels hard. But I know in pushing myself, to wake up that lion's voice inside me I'm becoming the person that I want to be. I'm pushing myself to evolve and to become more loving, more compassion and to contribute more every day. Sometimes it's scary, but I know that that fear or that self-doubt is not a reason to stop. 

 So those are the three circles of lionhearted leadership, leading yourself, leading us and leading in the world. And none of these circles are any better than the other ones. But you can just notice where you might be holding yourself back Where are you staying comfortable and quiet? Where are you trying to stay safe by not speaking your mind? By allowing your brain to tell you that you don't belong instead of doing the harder work, the braver work of knowing that you do belong.

How might you bring your lion heart to the spaces where it's most needed this week? Is it in that first circle by waking up and exercising a little bit every day? Or by saying no to the stuff that you're doing for other people when you're doing it to people, please, instead of because you really want to. Or maybe it's in bringing your line to that second circle of us and speaking up when you notice a group of people collectively trash talking another person or another way of being or thinking. Or you could bring your lion into that third circle out into the world. Start a book or a community event or a women's circle or some other thing that invites others to come along with you.

It's all optional, but this week I invite you to step a little out of your comfort zone. In a way that brings your lion into the light. And I always invite you to text me about it, direct message me about it, tell me about it. 

And one more time, I'll say that if you just work on loving yourself a little bit more, falling a little bit more in love with yourself this week, that is the most, lion hearted thing that you can do, and it's contagious. 

Alright. From my lion heart to yours, that's what I've got for you this week, and I will see you. 

Thanks for hanging out with me friends. If you like today's episode and you want more of them, please take two minutes right now to subscribe and give me a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Then send this episode to a friend. See you next time.