Beautiful Leadership is a new paradigm of leadership. This paradigm values creation from the soul while paying attention to the details of what you put out into the world, as well as your own inner work. This way, you lead from a clear and authentic place while illustrating that everything is connected. Beautiful leadership listens to the wisdom of our ancestors and leaves something for future generations. It invites us to embrace the complexity of life while recognizing that we are all leaders at this time.
When I started my jewelry label in 2005, I was working with my intuition. I hadn’t studied jewelry design or been to art or business school. In fact, I studied politics. In those days there was no movement around ethical fashion, and you couldn’t even Google the term. However, in the years to come, I was part of propelling that. All I knew was I wanted to create jewelry that would be kept for life, connecting us deeper to our inner world. Jewelry made in conditions fair to those who made it. I was in India spending time with family when I set off to create my supply chain, and after that, launched the label. What guided me was a deep sense of knowing, and an understanding that we needed better practices in our businesses that understood the need for creating beauty.
This beauty is not a surface aspect, it’s about engaging in what is truly meaningful in life, and asking along the way – is this the most beautiful way of doing this? Will it benefit people? Does it honor the people coming into contact with it? Is it regenerative in its relationship with nature? Does it understand our interconnection?
The times that we live in are asking us to dig deep into who we really are and to be a part of creating a beautiful future, living a life and creating businesses of intentionality. The old paradigm of leadership taught us that we must control and dominate everything. There are certain rules that must be followed. You have to be certain. This is part of a story that has kept power held in certain places and allowed success to come at the cost of others.
What I have come to understand about beautiful leadership, is that the focus on the inner work is key. You need a clear vision of the business you want to bring into the world, be willing to understand yourself, and you have to rewire your patterns in order to live out your trauma through your work.
After years of working in sustainable fashion and running my jewelry label, I burned out. I hadn’t been taking care of myself and although I had a beautiful vision, I wasn’t able to sustain my energy. The burnout forced me to stop when I just couldn’t push through anymore and go from one thing to the next. It gave me the gift of space to get to know myself again, and forced me to turn to practices like meditation, yoga, journaling, and deep rest to feel inspired and energized again.
I learnt it is so easy to run a business from our childhood patterns and play out fear or try and prove something. By transforming these subconscious patterns and developing self-awareness, you create a stronger relationship with your intuition. This intelligence can guide you in your own inner life, as well as how to show up in your business and make decisions that are beneficial to all.
Intuition has been undervalued in our society, yet it’s now being understood as a vital part of who we are and how we operate. Many successful social entrepreneurs credit their intuitive intelligence for what they have been able to achieve. It gives you a leading edge, as you are not just following rules or examples of how things have been done before, but you are able to truly listen to the wisdom within and act from that place, allowing you to see what you might not have noticed before. This action then brings a more vibrant creativity to your work and life
This past year of the pandemic has shown us we can’t rely on life’s predictability. We have to remain fluid and able to innovate and sense new ways of doing things. We need to embody our full potential. We need to be beautiful leaders.
Here are the Keys to Beautiful Leadership:
Re-defining Worth & Leadership
Awakening your true worth so you may understand your unique pathway, soft power and what being a leader means to you.
Shadows, Trauma & Liberation
Understanding the conditioning trapping you into limited beliefs, how to break free and to find your hidden gifts.
Embodiment & Biohacking
Exploring how ancient wisdom, movement and new technology can bring health, wellbeing and possibility into your life.
Vision, Intuition & Edgewalking
Learning to move between worlds, to bring new seeds into form and to trust your vision and the insights you receive.
Sacred Activism & Decolonization
Exploring how your way of life can contribute to the collective healing of this planet from finding your way of activism, to decolonizing the self.
Creativity, Cultural Futurism & Flow Consciousness
Embodying a reciprocal and receptive relationship with how we co-create the future and weave with the tapestry of life.
Collaboration & Community
Unlearning needing to protect, hoard and hide – opening into a way of being that is collaborative and community-led by nature.
Rituals, Practices & Tools
Discovering beautiful, powerful rituals and practices connecting you to your soul, and opening up a richer, more abundant and playful relationship with life itself.