Spiraling Upward

The 5 Co-Creative Powers for Women on the Rise

Wendy Wallbridge

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781351860727
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Dual Winner -- 2016 Nautilus Gold Award (Women) and Silver Award (Business & Leadership).

Women comprise 51 percent of the world's population, make up over half the workforce, and control 85 percent of consumer decisions. Never before have women been so degreed or so represented as decision makers in all areas of influence. Why, then, do we still feel as if success eludes us? Why do we sometimes struggle to keep our drive alive? The linear, heads-down, forward-at-all-cost approach to success that has been forged by men will never take us to the heart of fulfillment. Women are not designed for the straight and narrow path. But until now there hasn't been another choice. Pioneering corporate coach Wendy Wallbridge recognizes this unmet need of professional women for an alternative path to success. Spiraling Upward: The 5 Co-Creative Powers for Women on the Rise offers a cogent, step-by-step roadmap for professional women to unlock their power and achieve success on their own terms. The "Spiral Up" method teaches women to cultivate the five co-creative powers of energy, thoughts, feelings, speech, and action--the fundamentals of self-creation--in order to redefine success and re-author their lives. If you're ready to rise up and express your creativity, authenticity, voice, and power to effect the changes you want, Spiraling Upward will show you the way. Complete with easy-to-follow steps and exercises, as well as inspiring stories of successful women, this book offers a cogent road map for professional women looking to unlock their power and achieve success on their own terms.

Chapter 1
Why Spiral Up?

In order to become free . . . it is important to simultaneously let go and move forward.

— Angeles Arrien

Half a century ago, women began to master the masculine path to success. And it’s good that we did. This effort has afforded women in the West a level of financial freedom, privilege, and influence that would have been unimaginable just a few decades ago. American women comprise over half of management, professional and related positions in our workplaces and control trillions of dollars in the nation's economy, a figure which will continue to grow.

Never before in history have women been so degreed or so represented as decision makers in the economic and political sectors of the world. This is an exciting, even breathtaking, time to be a woman. So why are so many of us still sitting on the sidelines? Why are we rising only so far before we decide it’s just not worth it? What’s stopping us from unleashing our gifts in the world?

Twenty- five years of coaching professional women has taught me that while women have become masters at getting “A’s”— approval, accolades, applause, achievements, and acquisitions— we become disillusioned because no amount of external validation can give us the experience of wholehearted success. This proclivity toward the linear (or as I call it, horizontal) path of accomplishment, at all costs, is devoid of the central ingredient needed for us to feel fulfilled. Most women are not drawn to power for power’s sake. What matters more to us than ambition is meaning.

We can spend years, our whole career even, trying to convince others of our value or seeking fulfillment doing what someone else deems important. But one day that external motivation runs out. What used to excite us about our work no longer does, and we wonder what’s wrong with us. No matter the kudos we receive, until we are doing our soul’s work, we will never be fulfilled.

This is the critical crossroads. No longer able to tolerate a life that’s inauthentic, we arrive at a moment of truth. We can ignore the signs and push on. Or we can take the time to excavate our unique strengths, passions, and true nature in order to live from the core of who we are on behalf of all that we were meant to be.

If you have picked up this book, I believe that you are ready to rise to your full potential and live a richer, more meaningful life. The trouble is that our unique paths as women do not follow a straight line. Women are not meant to march on the masculine linear path to success. Our culture’s emphasis on productivity is a demanding taskmaster. It prioritizes perfection over wholeness and efficiency over love. But deep down we know that material and external success without personal fulfillment is failure. We are meant to live spherically, wholly, and to expand outward rather than one dimensionally.

This journey of courageous reinvention is seldom validated by our society; in fact, it can be easily trampled on and even sabotaged. So while we want to rise— become more visible, speak truth to power, come out of the shadows to become the protagonist in our own story— we often let our fears about what others think of us dictate what we do. In order to diverge from the officially sanctioned path to success, we must first believe in ourselves and sponsor our heartfelt dreams. And, let’s admit it, we’ve spent much of our life with our attention riveted on the surface of things, our exterior. To get where we want to go next, we’ll need to mine the treasure chest within.

At this moment in history, when our voices are so desperately needed, a new approach— one that mirrors the evolution and expansiveness of life— is essential if we are to realize our greatest joy and contributions. Spiraling Upward: The 5 Co-Creative Powers for Women on the Rise offers a new road map for women to claim our wholeness and power in order to make an impact on our workplace, family, community— or wherever we feel called. Spiraling Upward teaches us how to put our masculine strengths in service to our feminine— that is, in service to what really matters to us— enabling us to consciously create a heightened and irresistible destiny.

But why specifically is it critical for you to rise? What is at stake for you personally? If you are like so many of the women I meet, you are ready to live beyond the constraints of your current reality and express yourself in a way that feels creative, authentic, and connected to the greater whole. You want to wake up to who you are within the world. You know the consequences of recycling old patterns and suppressing your wild soul’s desires. And you know that you have gifts and talents that the world has never seen. If any of those reasons ring true, you have arrived at the right place.

Unlike rising to power in government or the corporate world (though those things may also be part of your path), rising to power in your self means coming into possession of your own gifts so that you can fulfill your potential and live your soul’s purpose. It means doing the inner work that’s needed to tap into the radiant and unlimited power you already hold. And when you do, nobody can take it away from you. And nothing can stop you.

It has been said that the teacher who is indeed wise does not ask that you enter the house of her wisdom, but rather leads you to your own. This book will guide you again and again to the wisest part of yourself and provide you with the tools and inspiration to become a powerfully conscious co-creator. You will learn what it really means to lead your life by becoming intentional in the five Co-Creative Powers of energy, thought, feelings, words, and actions— the fundamentals of self- creation.

In the chapters ahead, you’ll engage in a process— tested and proven— that is itself a spiral: a cyclical journey of self- inquiry, self- discovery, and application. You will gain tools for replacing self- doubt with self- agency and for expressing your creativity and power. And as you progress on the journey, you will move from the limited definition of yourself based on your ego (roles, beliefs, negative judgments) to a more integrated, heart- centered, unabashedly self- expressed woman who feels a sense of belonging in the world.

At this pivotal moment, you are being invited to live your true destiny— to re-author your inherited scripts and wholeheartedly believe in yourself, to make your voice heard, to offer your gifts and talents fully. You are being invited to Spiral Up! toward a new definition of power and leadership.

But first, let me tell you my story.

Leaving the Horizontal Path

I was twenty- four years old when my life spiraled out of control.

Up to that moment, I had been barreling along on the fast track. I had started a successful company with two physicians, and I was living in a beautiful mansion overlooking the San Francisco Bay. One of the doctors began courting me and filled my house with flowers while trying to convince me to marry him.

I was just barely out of college and had already surpassed every goal I’d ever imagined. But success came at a cost. Like most of the people I knew, I was caught up in the party lifestyle of the ‘80s, and had started drinking and doing “recreational” drugs. I was running on fumes and ego— until the morning I woke up and could not move.

I lay there in my beautiful house, stricken and terrified. Every muscle of my body seared with pain as I tried to lift myself up. I called out for my roommate in a voice that barely sounded like mine. I only hoped that she could hear me.

Within hours I was sitting in the examining room of a noted rheumatologist. A round of tests confirmed my boyfriend’s suspicion: I had lupus, a dangerous, unpredictable autoimmune blood disease that would eventually destroy my kidneys and require a transplant to save my life.

The physical pain was often severe— swollen joints, bone- wrenching fatigue, and inflammation of my organs— but the internal pain was greater still. The disease stripped away my ability to earn money, to prove myself, to stay in control so that I could make my life “perfect.” I had built my identity around being an overachiever. In truth, I prided myself on how— in partnership with the doctors in my business— we had pioneered ways to bring the concepts of the human potential movement into health care and business. I had thought of myself as cool, cutting- edge. Now I felt worthless— and lost— as I faced questions I’d never entertained before in my full- speed- ahead, goal-directed life: Where do I go from here? Where do I turn? Who am I?

In the years after my diagnosis, while my friends climbed the corporate ladder or traveled to far- off places, I immersed myself in attempts to heal from this life- threatening illness. A student of the New Age, I believed that you “create” your life, but combining that philosophy with my Catholic upbringing proved lethal: it left me thinking, “If my life isn’t the way I want it to be, then I have only myself to blame.” Besides following my doctor’s advice, I tried all kinds of alternative modalities to fix what must be wrong with me. I primal- screamed, tried rebirthing, bioenergetics, auditing, NLP, acupuncture, homeopathy, yoga, meditating, and journaling; I went into therapy, did twelve- step work, had monks om over me, and read rooms full of books, trying to discover my authentic self. While I grew and learned a lot, my internal “not enoughness” remained unchanged.

A turning point came when I realized the metaphor of my disease: an autoimmune disease in which my body misread its own tissue and attacked itself. Who had I become that I was a foreigner to myself?

As I began to delve into that question, I reflected on my early life. One summer night when I was sixteen years old, my mother totaled her car while drinking and almost died. In my disgust for my mom’s alcoholic behavior, I rejected everything I associated with her, including my own feminine side. I tried to become the person I thought my dad needed— quiet and productive, someone to counterbalance the chaos. Throughout school and college I strove to get good grades and excel at any task in front of me. I operated under the imperative that I needed to “get it right.” But that imperative was totally at odds with what my soul wanted: to have experiences, to make mistakes, to grow stronger from them, to be free.

Dealing with the relentless setbacks of my illness forced me to let go of my agenda. My honed ability to “make things happen” was useless when it came to finding peace in this situation. Something new was being invited forward in me. Lupus was a powerful force on the spiral path of my own evolution. In response to the brutality of my own self- derision, a deep compassion for others and myself was born.

Fourteen years after my diagnosis, the disease had progressed and my kidneys shut down. I required dialysis three times a week. At that point, the faith that I was developing in the way of the world— that there was a greater intelligence and that everything didn’t fall on my shoulders— became even more critical. Placed on a donor list for a kidney transplant, I kept telling myself that a match would be found. One night, after a year and a half of waiting, the phone rang at two in the morning. The transplant nurse told me that a young man in Kentucky had just died. His kidney was the perfect match for me.

Within six months of my surgery, I wasn’t only physically strong, I felt confident enough to take a leap of faith from my job and begin a coaching practice— and this, in 1992, before coaching had been established. Many of the high- achieving women who came to me reminded me of my old way of being, which I had learned from my dad.

I remember my father coming home exhausted every night. He worked from dawn till dusk building roads and highways. He knew everything about the straight path. “Wendy,” he would say to me, “you can’t always do what you want to do.” I almost died trying to follow his path. I wanted so much to get his approval. But I needed to build my own road to success, one that inspired and nourished me. And so, the Spiral Up! process was born.

The Spiral: The Shape of Transformation

The most widespread and successful shape in nature, the spiral is present in everything from the swirl of galaxies to the structure of our own DNA helix. It gathers its force from the synergy of seeming opposites— the way two opposing air flows make a hurricane swirl— and from the very path it traces. Not simply forging ahead, the spiral turns back repeatedly in a natural cycle of contraction and expansion, ebb and flow; not just climbing up, it levels off only to come around again in a sweep that is higher and wider each time.

In a similar way, we keep encountering the same challenges and situations, and yet each time is a new opportunity to release old patterns and respond in a more conscious way. We are always drawing to us life experiences to awaken, evolve, and elevate us. When something interrupts our life— whether it’s discontent or a full- blown crisis— we always have a choice: we can resist and begin the slow leak of our aliveness and spiral down, or we can transform to uplift.

We’ve all heard the term spiral down, but what does it mean in this context? There is a downward pull on us— just like rain or gravity— that starts in our minds. We’ve all experienced a moment, a day, or even longer where we lose our mojo, our confidence bottoms out, and everything appears as if through dark- colored glasses. Sometimes the feeling snowballs to encompass all the other reasons our life isn’t working.

This tendency toward the negative isn’t our fault. An undercurrent of worry and unease, and a sense we must guard against potential threats, got hardwired into our reptilian brain long ago to keep our ancestors alive. Our spirit, however, has a different agenda. It wants us to rise up and create lives of profound joy and positive influence. But unless we have an intimate experience of who we truly are, the ability to uplift can remain elusive. If we don’t learn how to Spiral Up!, by default we will be dragged down by the free-floating fear, doubt, and worry that threaten to rob us of the contentment that lies at our core.

Chapter 2
Choosing the Spiral Up! Path

The greater the contrast, the greater the potential. Great energy only comes from a correspondingly great tension between opposites.

—C. G. Jung

The Spiral Up! path is the activation of two opposite forces—our generative masculine and our receptive feminine. Engaging and integrating these two forces creates a dynamic balance that takes our lives to the next level. The sacred feminine—the principle of connection—allows us to be touched by life’s triumphs and difficulties and in the process reconnects us to the passion and intuition of our hearts. In response, our divine masculine enables us to take risks and act on behalf of our enlightened self.

Neither the masculine nor feminine is enough on its own: we can focus on a goal until we are bleary-eyed, but until we allow ourselves to receive it (to feel that we deserve it), it evades us; or we can feel worthy of our desire, but until we take steps to achieve it, we are left wistful and wanting. Through this marriage of opposites, we are introduced to a new way of living: when your dynami...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• 1 Why Spiral Up?
• 2 Choosing the Spiral Up Path
• THE FIRST TURNING
• THE SECOND TURNING
• THE THIRD TURNING
• Spiral On!
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• References
• Index
• About the Author