Oh so much to say on this topic!
First I want to say that I am someone who hosts live transformational experiences for a living. Led by me (a woman) for women. I love transformational work. Transformation is creating a new awareness that permanently shifts the way you show up in your life.
Tony Robbins, a pioneer of self-empowerment, also leads ‘transformational experiences’. He was recently caught on video in an interaction with a woman who challenged him after he apparently declared that the women who are part of the #MeToo movement are perpetuating their own victimhood.
You can watch the video here:
His team originally had the video taken down and thankfully it’s been preserved.
Now I believe everyone can make a mistake, which I believe he did in this scenario. I’m not here to crucify someone for a mistake. He has apparently just issued an apology (I only read excerpts from it – it seemed very ‘light’ to me), and I hope he will learn from this experience.
What is represented in this video is so important for those of us who are retreat leaders, coaches, healers, and advocates for a more conscious world.
Tony’s approach to coaching, which he demonstrated in this video, has no doubt worked to free countless human beings from their victimhood stories. I’ve never been to one of his seminars, but I know many who have with positive outcomes.
His coaching approach is also distinctly masculine.
(Not to mention his complete lack of understanding of the #MeToo movement and why it is actually so transformational and NOT victim-y).
This confrontational style of coaching, designed to trigger someone into surrender, can work. I’ve learned it and used it to a degree. We must confront new Truths that feel edgy and unpopular to truly free ourselves from our victim story. (We’ve all had some form of a victim story). We have to go there and accept total responsibility for our lives and the outcomes. And this often requires someone to be a stand for us to look at another interpretation than the one we’re in.
It helps to have the tough love and powerful strength of someone who is unwavering to allow us to feel safe enough to let our beliefs fall apart and get built back up again in a way that serves us.
In the past, this has often come in the form of a man like Tony Robbins.
But we’re in a new world of transformation, with new leaders and more nurturing forms of accessing our truth… through love, desire, support, passion.
This is a distinctly feminine energy that is creating transformation in tribes around the world as we speak. I’m in Georgia leading a retreat right now with a powerful group of women who are supporting one another in letting go of anything that does not align with who they truly are. They stand for one another fiercely. They are not airy fairy or flowy or ungrounded. They are powerfully feminine.
And they get it.
They get that the #MeToo that Tony *thinks* he is referring to in the video (you did this to me and I’m going to remain an angry victim), is not what #MeToo is at all.
They get transformation at a whole other level than the leaders like Tony, who paved the way for us, seem to be getting it. Tony wasn’t getting it because of the engrained patriarchy that he is clearly not immune to. (Be sure to watch the video for the part about the ‘powerful man’ who could not hire the beautiful woman even though she was the most qualified for the job because it was too dangerous to have her around… hello… what??)
In order for transformation to happen, we have to own it. All of it. The good, the bad, the ugly so to speak. We must be willing to see all sides of the truth and be with it for what it is in order to transform it. It doesn’t have to take long. We don’t need to wallow in it or get stuck in that stage of the process, but we must see it and make it real.
On an individual level, we can do this privately, in small groups, or with a witness.
I have a #MeToo story. I was five. I was left with an unsafe person who had no business taking care of me. I didn’t understand it or recognize the impact it had on me. As an adult, I can see that he had his own wounding that caused him to do what he did. And that I was born into an inherited energy of pretending things that happened weren’t true.
To heal I had to let myself be with what happened. I had to feel the pain and sadness of it. I had to share it with others and not die so that it was no longer stored in my body as shame. I had to grieve the years of missed opportunities and what could have been had I not carried all that shame for so long. I had to see all of what it was for me. And only then could I let it go.
And then I could see the beauty and the gift in how it’s made me who I am today. I could have compassion for him, who carried his own shame. I could see how and why my soul chose to be in that experience. I am not a victim.
The same steps of transformation required of an individual are also required of a collective society. We must be willing to speak and see and hear and be with our truths before we can release them and create something new. Period.
This is what #MeToo is.
It is the stage of being so clear that the new possibility for society that we desire is important enough to us (to women and many men) that we are willing to surrender and walk through the discomfort of sharing that which has been hidden in order to fully see and own our truth.
We women know this and get this. It’s a great release, or clearing, happening. And on the other side of it, there will be room for new and fresh ways of leading and succeeding in society that society can hardly imagine (if you’re here reading my work you probably CAN imagine it… yes!)
And this is where Tony Robbins comes in. He is all for the empowerment of humanity, including women, as long as it doesn’t disrupt his status and privilege as a white male leader. And what emerges on the other side of #MeToo will.
We women have been having to learn how to be masculine to play in the realm of business for a long time. It can be uncomfortable and hard to work outside of our naturalness. As feminine leadership gains power, men will be in this same position. It would MAKE TOTAL SENSE for some men in power to want to suppress this movement, even unconsciously.
I am sure Tony would not consciously want to shut it down. I do believe that. He’s served countless people over the years and I am sure has a commitment to the greater good. But a subconscious mind faced with a new energy that doesn’t fit with the world it knows how to control will try to shut it down.
I have compassion for that.
And it shows the power of what is happening right now if our self-help guru is in such resistance.
Which brings me to the title of this article: “The Future is Female and Tony Robbins is No Longer Relevant.”
I was reading a discussion on a friend’s Facebook wall about the quote “The Future is Female,” asking if it was spot on or missed the mark.
The bulk of the women leaders committed to consciousness who commented felt the statement misses the mark, and I agree. Many said instead that the future is FEMININE. Or balanced, non-binary, inclusive, etc. They get it.
What’s happening right now is that we’re simply tipping the scales back to restore balance. We are healing our history-making sexual abuse against women OK, sweeping it under the rug, and pretending it doesn’t exist, in households around the world.
I cannot tell you how many women I’ve worked with for whom this is their story. It’s staggering.
I’d like to think we are also going to fully own our history of racism by actually telling the truth about that as white people as well.
So much of what we see on the news lately is representative of this turn of the tide THAT IS HAPPENING. It is happening. I hold that it is happening in the face of countless news stories that would say otherwise. It is happening. We are healing.
And the leaders who will midwife this shift are going to hold a strong embodiment of the feminine. Not only female and not only feminine. But embracing the qualities of the feminine that can help let down the resistance to this shift and make it safe for the masculine to let go a bit. I call these feminine traits RICH. (Hey, I am an entrepreneur who supports women in making great money from these natural skills!) Right-brained, Intuitive, Connected, and Heart-centered. RICH.
These are the skills my male manager in my corporate engineering job told me I should ‘tone down’ to get ahead in the Fortune 20 company I worked in at the time.
They are needed, and they are valuable. If we use Tony Robbins as a representation of a man in a power position… Tony knows it and it’s a bit unnerving. Because the old ways are becoming irrelevant as our society evolves.
I have compassion. I’ve also had to reinvent. I’ve chosen to let go of so many of the tools and skills I learned from my white male coaches about how to market and how to posture, etc., etc. And I love those men, they are awesome! But many of the tools are irrelevant for where I am going. And admitting that and choose to use MY ways of leading was freaking hard for me, as a woman conditioned as I was. So I have compassion for what this shift might mean for a man.
What’s been your experience of the #MeToo movement and the shifts that have been happening in society right now?
What was your take on the Tony Robbins video (and his apology which I’m curious about)?
Where do you think feminine leadership is heading and how it includes or doesn’t include men? I’d love to hear!