Trained to Push, Designed to Pull
I pushed myself my entire life. Determined to be the Perfect One I thought I had to be. Even as a kid I had to get straight As, win piano and music competitions, do everything to the extreme best.
That push continued through college and into my professional world. I drove everyone else crazy, I know that now. Things just had to be, well, perfect. 90% was not even close to good enough.
I pushed hard for my ideas too. Didn’t listen too well when I was pushing, only sensed the push back that made me push harder. I won more than I lost. I just learned to push more and harder.
I pushed myself personally as well. Extreme sports and adrenaline were my happy place. Climbing big peaks, skiing steeps and deeps, dive mastering off the CA coast, flying a wing, doing 2 hardass aerobics classes every weekend day, lifting with the boys at Golds gym, riding horses around barrels and after cows at Mach 5.
I’m exhausted just thinking about it now. Never occurred to me then that I was pushing so hard as to resemble a death wish. Friends tried to tell me. I poopoohed them.
I was on a mission!
No Push Left
When you’re stuck in bed without the energy to get up, life changes.
It happened almost overnight. I went from being the Energizer Bunny to being the Ultimate Bed Sloth.
I’d always meditated, even as a little girl. Through adulthood I meditated to stop the constant voices of perfection, or rather lack of, that consumed my mind. It helped for a bit, and then I boomeranged back to the Energizer Bunny I so prided myself on.
The Bunny was buried now. So I laid in bed and pondered, let my mind wander. Gave myself the chance to learn to Be instead of Do, Do Do.
I didn’t learn quickly. It took me another ten years.
What I did learn transformed my life and my world.
Programmed to Push
The first time I recognized the Push I was in a deep meditation. Out in the Universe focusing on what I wanted with all the might I could muster. I’d been focusing for ten years on healing. I was better, but not back.
A friend had kicked me in the butt, telling me what I knew but didn’t want to admit. “Stop focusing on being sick. Stop talking about it. Stop Stop Stop.”
I kinda resented it. I knew we are what we think about, that we create through our focus.
So there I am, focusing on what I want with all my might. Pushing my healing at the Universe, willing it to respond.
SAY WHAT? PUSHING THE UNIVERSE?
That was the Universe pushing back.
Yup, I was pushing at it just as I’d pushed all my life. Like I have a snowball’s chance in hell of bending it to my will.
Talk about a comeuppance.
How many of us are doing the exact same thing? Pushing at everything, everywhere, all the time. Wondering why it’s so damn exhausting.
My mind couldn’t stop showing me a lifetime of Push. Still does it, even though I’ve learned. I obviously need a constant refresher course :)
We women are trained to Push to Do it All. We automatically pick up the slack, fix the kid’s problem, do the laundry at midnight, wipe the tears away. We do a full time job at home and then do another full time job at work.
Where we Push even harder. We save the team when someone drops the ball, pick up the work that others don’t want to do, Push to be better than the men around us. Push to get them to include us, Push like hell to get them to notice us, and our value.
We Push our ideas. Hard. We spend hours preparing every detail, every piece of evidence to counter the objections and comments we expect as Push back. Then we share every fact, cover every base, push volumes of information to be sure everyone understands, gets it.
Which again, isn’t helpful.
Push Was Never Ours
Why the hell I didn’t figure this out oh so long ago is beyond me. What a demonstration of the power of programming.
Why do we do it? It’s simple.
We’ve been programmed to Push in our personal lives. Since we were little girls.
We take that programming into our Professional world where the power game is played. We wear it like a badge of honor.
It’s not. Sure, it works in some scenarios. Or we think it does.
Behind our backs the bro club calls us pushy broads.
Guys respect push from other guys. Not so much from women. To them, we’re like the women in their personal lives who push at them to do things. From clean up your mess and take out the trash, to make more money, give me a better life, or find a better wife. Thanks mom.
That triggers anything but the response we want and deserve.
Even more? Push is not a natural skill for women. It’s certainly not a power skill that makes us masters of the professional game.
The Innate Power of Pull for Women
Womens’ minds are very different from mens’.
Pretty obvious, right? Yet we haven’t been taught the reality about how special women’s minds truly are.
Our mind’s design makes us uniquely qualified to Pull as men Push.
We pull families together, pull our kids out of trouble, pull a gathering together, pull the family strings, pull our weight, pull someone’s leg and pull it all together.
Our minds are designed to pull knowing out of the air around us. We call it intuition. It’s all too often dissed as woowoo.
Intuition is the result of our innovative design. It empowers us to just know things. To pull together seemingly random behaviors and events into a powerful knowing. To sense the intent behind emotions, actions, words and body language. Like reading the room, understanding our teams, knowing that the new guy is backstabbing us even as he smiles in our face.
Pull is one of our unique and oh so valuable gifts.
I wish I’d learned what I know now decades ago. I would have pulled off so many more wins professionally.
Feel the Difference
Once I found the power of my pull, I was able to, well, take a breath. To be comfortable in my own skin, my own thoughts, my true self.
I found I could step back and take it all in, in meetings and in one on one conversations. I found myself responding from a deep, calm knowing. A confidence that found me drawing others in, instead of pushing at them.
You can feel it in your energy. Take a minute and think about how you feel when you’re rushing out the door, juggling five projects to a deadline as your kids are calling about homework. How you feel when you step up to present your ideas.
Feel that push of energy in your heart or gut? That squaring of your shoulders and hint of going into battle?
Welcome to Push.
Take a minute and feel how masculine that energy is. How foreign it is to the real you.
Now, feel back to the moments when you are helping your friend with a personal problem, loving a child from tears to smiles, helping one of your team through a difficult situation.
Welcome to Pull.
Pull is one of our powers. We use it so naturally in our personal lives.
It’s time to leverage and enjoy Pull in our professional lives.
You inherently run these checks in your personal life. Now do it professionally. In meetings, with your teams, in one on ones with superiors and peers. Slow down and feel the room. Notice their responses, their body language. Listen to that inkling that tells you how everyone is feeling.
Then use the information you just know to pull their energy to your ideas, your plans, your suggestions and directions.
It may take a while to get the hang of it. We are so programmed to push, to fight.
This week, notice the push. Not to fix it. Just to feel it. Then notice the moments when you’re pulling naturally. Feel the difference. That’s you. The real you.
How would it feel to be the real you in your professional life?