A heart led revolution

It isn't for everyone.

Over the last couple of years, and especially in the last six months, I’ve been approached by so many people waving the flag of “opportunity.”

It can be flattering. When you’re starting out in a new business, doing meaningful work, you glance up and hope they mean it, that they genuinely want a two-way relationship.

You get curious, excited, interested. It’s just like those first dates with an interested “other.” At first, you’re just feeling each other out. But then they move too soon and reveal their real interest. It usually goes something like this:

“I think we provide the services that your clients want and need.”

And there it is. The real reason they wanted a business date wasn’t because they had something to offer, but because I had something they wanted.

It’s taken me a long time to see this. It reminds me of those toxic early relationships I had as a teenager, when I was unsure of myself and always felt at a disadvantage. The gropey boy who insisted he could show me a good time. The old man who claimed I needed more experience, and he knew exactly how to help me get it.

Now, at 55, I’ve learned a few things about relationships:

• Relationships are best built on love, not neediness.

• Relationships are about what both parties contribute.

• Relationships are best when they are honest, transparent, and rooted in trust.

• I am enough.

Since March, I’ve lost four people I loved: two friends and two family members. I’ve fought through the trenches with developers, dragging broken code and broken promises like chains, learning tech skills I never imagined I would need. And in between, I’ve listened to one-liners designed to dazzle and distract, smoke screens to make me feel like I’m gaining something when really, I’m just gaining another burden.

Trust has always been a non-negotiable for me. My starting point is to offer trust, safe in the knowledge that where dishonesty or misalignment exists, it will eventually be revealed. All I need to do is stay grounded and clear.

Somewhere amidst the grief, a little ray of hope was born, my third granddaughter, Thea. With her arrival came a remembering. A reminder that I am whole, that I have nothing to lose, and that identity is meaningless compared to the love that exists within all of us. When we align with our true nature, ease follows.

It’s not that joint ventures don’t interest me. It’s that I now recognise I’ve been inviting in what I thought I was worthy of, not what I truly desired.

Every challenge in life feels like the first rodeo, but really, each is the same problem in a new disguise. The “I” of who I am is gifted the experience of life through thought. The only problem is that it looks more complicated than that.

What I’m choosing now is real partnership. Mutuality. Shared weight.

• We open doors for each other.

• We show up with integrity.

• We remain open and honest.

• We both contribute towards the good of the other.

Anything else is extraction. And extraction isn’t an interesting opportunity for me.

Really what I am saying is, I have spent the last decade feeling my way to alignment. I won’t compromise that. Neither will I take offence to your non negotiable’s. I mean, wouldn’t the world be a whole lot simpler if we gave ourselves and each other that One grace?

The last few months have enabled me to recognise where in my life and business, I am already in relationship with those with whom I’m in alignment. We don’t need everyone to resonate with our vision. What we really need is to find those humans who offer real and genuine connection, regardless of ours or their vision. Alignment doesn’t mean we need others to bend out of shape for us, or us for them. It means there is respect, support and acceptance of the other, otherwise known as unconditional positive regard.

Carl Rogers, conveyed that unconditional positive regard is an attitude of non-possessive caring that creates a safe, growth-promoting environment by conveying to the other person that their worth is inherent and not dependent on their behaviours or choices. This arises naturally when relationships are not entered to gain, but to give.

Our physiology is designed to show us the truth of what is and the truth of what we really want. It reverberates in every cell. It exposes beliefs as imposters through the nervous system, taking shape as insecurities and surfacing as our most dreaded emotions: shame, anxiety, resentment.

The same is true for every relationship.

We are built with an emotional satnav. It points us back to clarity, again and again. It highlights where we’ve misunderstood the data, where we’re not seeing clearly, and it gives us the chance to recalibrate.

Over the last 15 years, this has saved both my life and my closest relationships. In business, where I had so much still to learn, I forgot these rules momentarily.

Bessie was never built to be a vendor product. She isn’t another “add-on service” to pad out a PDF. She’s a revolution in how we understand stress and measure wellbeing. She predicts burnout, quantifies costs, and turns insight into strategy. That is invaluable. She is not for everyone. I very much doubt she’s for the mass market. She is for those leaders who want to lead a workforce from unconditional positive regard.

So I’ll leave you with this question:

Where in your life or business are you settling for transactions, instead of building relationships from the heart?