We want more peace or more clarity so we can have fulfillment in our lives. Life coach Michanda Lindsey wants all of us to see the beauty of oneness, the freedom of being enough, the power of presence, and the treasures found in stillness. In this episode, she joins Stephen Jaye to talk about the concept of spending time to look deep within ourselves so that we can head in the right direction. We can never control every outcome in our lives. Michanda shares how we could develop a sense of efficacy. If you’re a leader who wants results for organizational growth or an individual who wants to find clarity and get on the right path, then this episode is for you. So take a deep breath, listen within, and tune into this episode!
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Peace And Clarity Through Presence And Introspection With Michanda Lindsey
One narrative that we have in our current day culture that I find particularly suffocating is this narrative that you have to pick just one thing. I observed a lot of people that have also felt suffocated by this. That one thing has to be a clearly defined item from some previously conceived list of jobs. It plays into the whole question, “What do you do?” One of the reasons I tend to dislike that question is because it tends to put your identity into one of however many job description boxes you have, “I am an engineer and that’s the only thing about me.” My guest, Michanda Lindsey has a couple of different endeavors as well as her primary endeavor in coaching, which doesn’t necessarily fit into the box that we consider coaching. Michanda, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me, Stephen. I’m delighted to be here.
Thank you very much for joining us. One thing I’m wondering is you describe yourself as a coach because that’s how people wrap their brains around your services, but give us a little orientation into what your services are about.
I have a challenging time describing myself according to the labels that many people are so used to using. Because I know it helps in understanding, I relent and do use the title of coach. What I provide is a doorway for people to have a safe space to drop down into these parts, the heart, the soul, the spirit and beyond the head. We spend so much time in the head. My services are related to dropping down into this deeper part of who we are and helping people identify their own answers.
I love to tell people that your answer is already inside of you. You don’t have to travel to Mount Kilimanjaro to go find your answer. I offer executive coaching, meaning I simply work with executives and leaders, whether in the business world, corporate world, education, non-profit. I also do life coaching, so I help people with areas of their life. I do spiritual coaching. The funny piece is that people ask me, “What’s the difference?” I say, “It depends on which doorway someone enters because I provide the same thing.” I’m going to talk about slowing down, making space to look inside-out, and cultivating a knowing of who we are beyond the exterior.
When you talk about these life coaching and executive coaching, and how they’re all pretty much have the same theme, what’s the profile of the individual that would need your services in this broad category that we discuss as coaching work? It could be pretty much anything. If you love that show, Ted Lasso, he’s technically a coach too. It could mean a lot of things.
I got to catch up with that show. One of my sons was watching that show. I need to watch it. I haven’t watched it yet. You’re my next push to watch it. I would say, yes. What I mean when I say executive coaching, life coaching, spiritual coaching, they’re all the same in terms of I’m going to help people go deeper because there’s so much more. The ideal or profile clients, I don’t have one. I look for people who say they want more. Whatever that more maybe, “I want more peace. I want more clarity. I want more understanding.”
We are called to be the light, consciousness, presence, peace, joy, and connection wherever we are. Click To TweetSome people have an outer goal, “I want more fulfillment in my job. I want to reach a promotion. I want to reach a certain level.” I’ll say, “Yes, and.” The key to all of that is within us. It’s inside. Let’s talk about what’s going on in this space, especially for leaders. Leaders want results and the result you want for your team and your organization. I do change the word organization to organism. I say, “Whatever you want for your organism or your ecosystem starts within.”
I look for people who understand and are willing at least to make that shift, if they haven’t already, and to look at a deeper place within themselves, as opposed to looking at behavior alone. All behavior follows beliefs and those beliefs are deep within us. All of us have been hurt and have blind spots. We’re going to dive into those areas to help people access what I would call our own powerhouse. We each have this beautiful part of ourselves that knows. I’m looking for people who want to access that so that they can flourish and fly, as opposed to someone who just wants a short-term band-aid solution, and then wants to rely on that band-aid or that crutch continuously. I want people who are looking to be able to apply all of this, integrate it into their lives, and then they’re ready to put it into practice because this whole journey of life is a practice.
There’s a lot right there that you just said. I’ve always talked quite a bit about this idea of short-term versus long-term thinking. This deeper dive within the self sounds a lot more long term than some of these band-aids that you’ve discussed. I also wonder when you talk about being too much in your head versus going deeper within yourself, and you can say your heart or other parts because it sounds like it goes beyond the heart and the feelings. It’s even deeper than that. What does it look like when someone is too much in their head?
We all know that experience. I tell my clients to run from anyone who tells you they’re a master. I’m not a master. I’m practicing and I share as I grow. Hopefully, we’re all growing and learning and so I’ll speak about me. Many clients understand this principle of when the thoughts are spinning and they’re just racing. You’re not present and practicing the presence of here and now. You’re thinking about, “What’s coming up next? What do I have to go do next? What’s my next meeting? What’s my next call?” While you’re having a conversation with someone.
While you’re driving, you don’t remember the last five blocks because you’re thinking about what else you need to do. You’re thinking about what you should’ve said in the last meeting. “Why I didn’t say this? I should’ve done that.” That’s all that head cerebral space. It also can be the headspace of, “What do people think about me? Am I coming off okay? Am I okay? Do I belong here? Am I enough? Can I make this happen? What about if someone’s better than me? Am I going to be left behind?” That’s spinning. That’s the accelerated voice. That’s the head.
Everyone or nearly every single person on this planet has an experience with something in regards to that. I feel like adolescence is a time where pretty much everyone is going to experience that because we’re all balls of anxiety at that point in our lives. We’re all wondering, “Am I wearing the right shoes? Am I going to the right places? Am I seeing the right things? Are people going to like me?”
That language of, “I need to figure it out. I got to figure this out and solve this. I need to fix this,” is another headspace language. There’s nothing wrong with solving issues that arise. I simply ask, “Do we spend time deep down within ourselves and listen to that quiet part of ourselves that gives us a cue?” It’s sometimes at that moment. Sometimes, it’s just taking time to be quiet and listen. Maybe it’s later while we’re walking the puppies or the dogs that all this can be answered. It rises to the surface for us. While we’re washing dishes or doing something mundane, that answer may rise up where I’m able to be like, “That’s the clarity or the component that I was looking for. That’s the connection that makes me feel like I’ve accessed something deeper than just the outer answer.”
That’s what I mean about the difference between the cerebral. It can be frenetic and fast. It can be an idea, “I need to analyze and figure it out.” We spend so much time trying to solve it. I say, “Make space down in the heart.” This is a shift for our culture, especially Western US culture, where we grew up in that “Just do it” age. Let’s get it done. It’s about the results. Go faster, go harder. No pain, no gain. What are you doing? What’s your next goal? What’s your next mountain? We’re so in that. For us to switch and say, “What do we care about? Is my head in service to what my inner essence and my inner heart are saying?”
I feel like that’s a source of alienation for a lot of people because I was reading more about Amazon’s labor practices. Those seem to be all about how fast you do this compared to all your peers. If you’re the slowest, you’re going to get talk to. Also, a little bit more of this obsession with performance metrics, performance ratings, performance all these things. It is ingrained into our culture.
It seems like it’s hard to go against the grain, but the whole conversation also reminds me of people who often say to me, “I get my best ideas when I’m in the shower.” In my case, I oftentimes get my best ideas when I’m riding a bicycle or driving across the State of Nebraska. It’s because your hands are too occupied for you to pick up these phones that we all have, that are constantly there to relieve us from the first microsecond of uncomfortable boredom we can possibly encounter. At that point in time, it gives us a chance to synthesize all the information that we already have in our heads.
I did a lot and I still do some service around schools and helping out with volunteering and board work. I remember because of that I’ve sat through numerous commencement speeches. One of the commencement speeches that stands out is a speaker who talked to the young Coloradan students and said, “When you go away and when you go to college, when you get that feeling that I’m lonely and I should be doing something. There’s just something wrong. I want to just distract myself.”
He said, “Instead of picking that up, remember and close your eyes, and picture these beautiful mountains, wherever you are. Just close your eyes and remember the mountains. It’s that quiet space, the uncomfortable part of a mountain, we’re climbing it or falling but we remember it’s still there. The stability is still in us.” I equate that to slow down so we can ground. Why are we here? All of us are breathing in oxygen on this one planet and this season together. Why are we here? What are we here for? To tap into a little inkling of that, to give us a bigger connection to, “Why I’m doing anything.”
Anything that we truly experience that matters will ask us to keep our hearts wide open, and we may be hurt. Click To TweetWhy are we here? It’s so simple. It’s a quick question but you’re right, people can interpret that very differently. If I were going to a sales job and I’m selling cars, I can easily say, “Why am I here? I’m here to sell cars.” That’s a very surface level. You talked a lot about the presence. It sounds like that’s a major key to a formula for going beyond the surface level, “Why am I here? I’m here to sell cars.” It’s only then about the cars. Do the cars themselves bring you that satisfaction as opposed to some deeper purpose as to, “What made me want to come to this place and sell cars for a living.”
Regardless of where we may be. I quote a lot from Rumi, one of my favorite mystic poets and he says, “Wherever you stand, be the soul of that place.” I love that quote because it’s a reminder that wherever we are, we’re called to be the light, to be the consciousness, the presence, the peace, the joy, the connection, to know that there’s more happening than the surface. The surface is extremely distracting. It’s vivid, loud, seductive and calling our name. We spend so much time on the surface. In every situation, there’s more going on than what we can see. There’s the visible and then the invisible inside the inner visible. The invisible is what we want to make space to connect with and understand that there’s more.
What’s the key to being present? Being there in the moment you’re in, as opposed to thinking about what you did last, and what you’re doing next, thinking about the specifics of a performance metric or even the shape of a tree or something like that. What’s the key to being in that state of presence where you’re fully there, where you are the light?
You’re a light. You’re a consciousness. There’s more than we are when we can connect with that, whether it’s in a relationship because relationships occupy a lot of our bandwidth. If we’re not careful, we can get lost in the outer part of a relationship. We forget that the first relationship is our relationship with ourselves like, “What’s my relationship to myself? Do I know who I am?” That’s a question we can continually ask. That’s not a question I asked five years ago and I’m like, “I got my answer. I’m good now. I know who I am.” It’s a question that we ask continually because we’re evolving and growing. It’s not a one-and-done question.
How do we make that shift and come into this place? That’s an interesting question. I’ll talk about myself because I have a Master’s, a Doctorate and the outer. I was raised to care about the outer, to perform, to be the good girl and to do well. I could study a scenario or a situation like, “What do I need to do? These are the factors. Let me put those into play. Let me do that and I’ll give you that back.”
Many times, I would get this great pat on the head that kept me addicted to that because people loved it. “It feels so good. I got another pat on the head.” That feeling was addictive. I was addicted to the outer affirmations. I was addicted to outer adoration and acceptance. I had all these A’s, affirmation, adoration, acceptance, approval, all of those A’s. I lived in the land of the A’s and I was all about getting that.
As you can imagine when you’re seeking all of that, it made life super rocky because you can’t sustain it. You have these highs but they’re fleeting. They don’t last and you’re chasing the next one. You got to chase the next one and the next one. You’re never fully right here. You’re always thinking about, “What do I need to do so I can be somewhere else to get something else. I’m not fully right here.” I apply the same principle when I’m working with people related to equity and inclusion. It’s like, “We need to get to where my beliefs are.” That’s where my beliefs were about the outer mattered more than the inner.
To get to the inner, sometimes it takes a shakeup. I’ve had many shakeups. I can’t identify just one shakeup. I was probably about 25 and I was married. I was married in October and I had moved out by March. By summer, I was no longer officially married. It was all during a time where I was a public figure. I was a news anchor on TV. My wedding was on television so people were still congratulating me wherever I went. The pain of what I was dealing with on the inside finally got intense that I didn’t care who thought what.
I didn’t care what people said about me or what people may be gossiping about. I didn’t care about any of that. All I wanted was peace. I remember my first night in an apartment by myself. I had this experience where I said, “It’s so quiet. This is amazing.” When I would go outside and I walked the dog I had during that time, I would say, “Clouds are phenomenal. If you look at them, they’re constantly moving. These are the most interesting shapes. No shape is identical.” I would walk the dog down to the grass like, “Blades of grass. They all look the same but if you look closely, they’re each different. How amazing that they all grow at the same level. When you cut it, it grows almost around the same point but not quite. They cut it and it comes back. The grass is amazing.”
All of a sudden, I wanted to look at the minutia and the details. It helped me look within me eventually to say, “How did I create such pain for myself by entering a relationship where I did not listen to the inner quiet voice that told me this was not for me?” I did it anyway because the outer world was saying, “But you planned all this. You have a wedding. It’s going to be on TV. You bought a big dress. It’s going to be outside in the gazebo.”
I asked all my shallow friends on purpose because I did want an answer. They all reminded me, “It’s just jitters.” I said, “Don’t feel. It’s just jitters.” I did not seek a person with depth because I was running from the truth. The truth was, “You’re going to need to deal with what you got yourself into something that’s not for you because you’re not listening.” That was my first big wake-up lesson of listening.
I feel like that version of the story has actually played out on a few other episodes that I’ve recorded earlier in the series. You have this deep inner feeling and people find different ways of running away from it. For some people, it’s excessive retail shopping. For others, it’s alcohol and drugs. For others, it’s staying excessively busy to the point where it’s like, “I’m doing this at 8:15, I’m doing this at 8:30. I’m doing this at 8:45,” which is the world I come from being originally from New York. It seems like it’s a race for a lot of people. You have this deep inner dissatisfaction feeling. Some people are able to run away from it for pretty much the rest of their lives.
Our culture makes it so easy to stay distracted. We can stay distracted in perpetuity if we wanted to. There’s always something there, especially with the advent of these phones. There’s always something that can be calling for us. We can always even feel needed like, “The world needs me.” I was taking my youngest son off to school and I was exhausted afterward. There are many stairs and so many boxes and pieces. I’m finally back in the Airbnb, resting. It’s not quite time for me to leave. I’m in that in-between state where I’m resting and the TV is on. They did a new version of Fantasy Island. It’s Mr. Roarke’s niece or something that is running Fantasy Island now.
It’s like Fuller House.
I’m tired to even turn the channel. I had turned it on because it was super quiet in this Airbnb. I was like, “I’m not sure if I’m ready for the quiet yet,” because I’m still a little sad that I let my youngest one off. I’m in and out at the message of this little crazy Fantasy Island that I’m half asleep and half-listening to this woman who steps to the door and she sees herself in a casket. When she comes back, she talks to the newest Mr. Roarke’s niece and tells her, “It’s because you’re doing so much for everybody else that you’re not making time for you.” She says back, “But they need me.” The answer is, “Do they really?”
We can live in this realm, whether people are running companies, whether it’s their family or their friends. That’s another seductive distraction from coming within saying, “Everybody else needs me so I’m taking care of everybody else. I’m available for everyone else.” What are we not doing? I have T-shirts and bumper stickers on that one too. Can I look in here and deal with what scares me? What am I afraid of? Where have I been hurt? I’m afraid of being hurt again. Even deeper than that. What do I want? Not what do I want superficially, but what do I want? What matters to me? What do I really care about?
This reminds me of a book that I read a few years ago. This is an old sociological book the year 1950 called The Lonely Crowd, which I read about the history of this. This book was actually taught and talked about quite a bit in the 1950s and ‘60s but somehow fell out of favor around the late ‘60s.
The basic premise of this book, I’m blanking on who the author was, was that there’s a difference between other direction and inner direction. The other direction is exactly those A words that you were talking about before, approval, acceptance and all those things. You’re looking for your whatever from outside, as opposed to from within, which is inner direction. Would you say that’s one of the things you help people with, it’s to achieve that inner direction?
Yes. I want them to recenter. It’s the transformation and the shifting from focusing on the outer and focusing on the thought realm. I say thoughts aren’t real but we treat them as though they’re real, and we hang on to one. We build a whole case around that thought. We look for evidence to keep that thought in play. On top of that, we have this beautiful ego, which is doing its part.
If I know I am enough, I can begin to make space that everyone is enough, and there’s no need to play small or make someone else small to feel big. Click To TweetOften it’s a little inaccurate, often very inaccurate and it protected us. It says, “No, don’t do this. Remember what happened last time. It’s going to happen again.” It creates an inflated story and we buy it. We’re like, “That’s going to happen again.” We forget that part of living in this vulnerability. We’re helping people to accept the unknown, to accept our vulnerability, and to accept that anything we truly experience that matters is going to ask us to keep our heart and ourselves wide open, and we may be hurt
All those things, we close off quite frequently to avoid pain, discomfort and rejection.
To fully live and then to develop the sense of efficacy that I’m never able to control the outcome. I used to be a controller too. My kids remind me when I come back and whenever I’m stressed. Stress enters and I haven’t slept. The old wiring pops back in and I hear my voice sounding like a drill sergeant, “I want this picked up. I want this put-away.” That’s my cue that I need to go into my room, light a candle, recenter and breathe to remind myself, “What’s agitating you right now is you want an outcome.” Remember that whenever you’re focusing on an outcome, this part of you wants to try to utilize its skills to manipulate the outcome.
That’s never sustainable. It’s not going to provide peace. Slow down, let’s breathe and stop resisting. Shoulders come down, breathe, accept what is, listen, and remember that I am okay and inside of me is every answer at every moment. I have nothing to fear. It’s all okay. It makes sense that I may feel scared now. It makes sense that I may want to resist this based on what I’ve gone through. It makes sense that I want to try to go back to that groove because that’s what I was raised in. Yet, I have this beautiful choice and I know enough now.
It’s not ostracizing yourself for having fallen into some of these traps as some people will tend to do, and create a whole another self-ostracism cycle like, “How could I have fallen into this trap? How could I have fallen into this trap yet again? How could I have backslid yet again?” I had a period where earlier in 2021, I had cut down my screen time on my phone to under two hours a day quite consistently. I had a backslide on that. I’m trying now to say, “I’m not going to beat myself up,” except there’s a reason that I have this fear. There’s a reason I went into this, but now I need to recenter myself and get right around what I need to be feeling. Allowing myself to be vulnerable, and allowing those answers I have inside myself to come out once I stopped distracting myself constantly.”
I am a believer and a proponent in making space for more gentleness. We have a lot of abrasiveness in this culture. I was raised in an atmosphere where my weapon of choice was sarcasm. I participated in a lot of violence through sarcasm. I tell a story of how our family was in Mexico when my kids were much younger. I had given them permission from early on because I want to create a new experience or a new ecosystem, “If you catch me saying something sarcastic, you get to call me on it.” I bring it to awareness because it’s not something I want to be duplicated. It’s not something I want to continue and I don’t want to make excuses for it.
We were in the car and we were headed to the beach. One of my sons says, “Are we going to the beach?” Instead of me saying, “Yes,” I said, “Why do you think we have our beach clothes on?” My son was like, “Mom, you did it.” Both of them tag team and they’re like, “She could’ve just said yes. All she needed to say was yes. Instead, she said, ‘Why do you think we’re going to the beach?’ That wasn’t needed because that is hurtful to say that. All you need to say to someone is, ‘Yes, we’re going to the beach.’”
I use that example because it’s so vivid in my memory. They are way older than that now. The community of having people there for me who love me, and they weren’t berating me but they were also calling me on it and saying, “Mom, that was an example of it and here’s what it could look like.” It’s the replacement picture that’s key. The gentleness is so huge because when we judge anyone, it’s rooted in where we judge ourselves. To lose that judging of ourselves, we need that deep nourishing, compassion, kindness and gentleness.
It’s the love from me to me. Do I know how to do that? I may know how to love and give to others. Do I know how to give to me and receive from me? It’s that relationship. Can I love and get from me to me with gentleness and not judgment? When a baby’s starting to walk, do we say, “What’s wrong with you, baby? Why did you fall down? How dare you fall down? You better be walking by now.” We’re gentle like, “Look at the baby. You fell, it’s okay. Get back up.” We’re not like, “How dare you to fall? What’s wrong with you? I thought you’re walking already.” It’s the gentleness.
Gentleness is important. Now, that my audience has gotten a pretty good idea of the types of things you preach in your coaching service, how would anyone be able to get ahold of you? What’s your web address or is there any other way that people would inquire of coaching around becoming more present in life?
I work a lot with the principle that everything we’re talking about fits under that umbrella of the flow, as opposed to things that are fixed. I offer flow courses that sometimes I run group ones that you can find online. I also do a flow certification program for people who want to become certified in understanding these principles of the flow and share in whatever their vocation might be.
We’ve talked about this. We all have so many things we do. Coaching is one side, I’m a producer- filmmaker, with my husband on another side. We do so much whether it’s one-on-one or group, course or certification. I’m not as active on social media. You can find me on LinkedIn, Michanda Lindsey. You can find me on Facebook, @MichandaLindsey. You can find me on Instagram @MichandaLindsey. Coincidentally, my website is Michanda Lindsey.
That’s MichandaLindsey.com. I also want to get a chance to touch into some of these other things you do because one of the things I’ve been saying to a lot of people is we are not just one thing. No human being is just their job. Your job title is not who you are and you have some other endeavors. You mentioned being a producer with your husband. Tell us a little bit about that endeavor.
It’s exciting. We are a very eclectic group of people. After the newscasting, I went into a lot of ministries. I am an ordained minister. I don’t practice in a formal ministry setting anymore. My ministry has evolved the way I have. I care less about what people believe and the minutia. I care about them knowing that we’re connected to one another. We’re connected to more than just what our eyes can see and there’s more. That’s all I want people to make space for. Is there more than what my eyes can see? That’s a big part of how I incorporate what would loosely be called ministry for me. What I believe is the oneness component.
The film, because my husband has a legal side and he has the artistic side. We do everything in between. He was a little frustrated that even though he’s done a lot of work in the classics, he was not being cast in many classical plays. It was like this African-American man, people weren’t able to visualize him. He’s a phenomenal actor. He’s won many awards here locally. He’s also done work on film and television. We’ve chosen to live in Denver to raise our children because people always say, “Why don’t you go to the East Coast or the West Coast?” We’re like, “We love raising our kids here.”
He says, “I’m going to write a film where I don’t need to wait for permission from someone else.” He just started writing. He writes poetry and I call him my Renaissance Man because he’s got an athletic side, an artist side, a poet side. He writes and draws. I’m his biggest fan. He wrote a screenplay and the screenplay is called. BLACKFACE: The Story of Nobody. You can find that on our website, BlackFaceMovie.com.
The inspiration behind it was the real-life actor Bert Williams who lived back in the 1910s or before then, but he was known at that time as a minstrel performer. He’s a Black man living in New York, putting on Blackface every night, and performing this minstrel work. He was part of the Ziegfeld Follies after club supper show. He wanted to do serious drama almost in the same way that my husband here wanted to show that I can also do serious drama as an African-American man. These roles that traditionally were not tasked with people of color in mind, we’re seeing that change and evolve now which is lovely.
You don't have to travel to Mount Kilimanjaro to find the answer that is already inside you. Click To TweetThe Hamilton and all that.
We’re seeing an explosion of how we can change the paradigm about that, which is so awesome. He wrote this story that was inspired by Bert Williams, but it’s Bert Waters as the man who is Black performing in the Blackface each night, who does get the opportunity to perform Shakespeare’s Hamlet. However, he needs to go deeper and find his true worth because it’s not just about what I can perform on stage, but I need to go deeper and know who I am, and that’s his journey.
I love how oftentimes things that don’t seem related to each other at all are often connected. You said about how he decided, “I’m going to stop waiting for permission and start doing what I want to do.” It’s the struggle that a lot of people that maybe have an idea that they want to pursue and are thinking about their current situations at work are also under as well.
It relates to this whole idea of, are you directed outwardly or inward? Are you waiting for someone else’s approval, acceptance, and all those A words you said before? Are you getting your approval from within? This is what happens whenever you start building anything yourself, whether it be a movie, a community group or your own business. You’re pretty much providing your own approval with some level of verification around market research and those different levels of verification.
You’re providing your own approval. It sounds like to provide your own approval, you need to make some version of this transformation. You’re taking a deep breath, looking deeper within, figuring out what it is that you really want, and taking care of yourself first even with all those people that need you.
We all have a dream. These things that come up, we’ll blame it on, “I don’t know enough people who can help me or I don’t know how to do it. I’m not sure.” All these, “I don’t, I’m not,” as opposed to, “Let’s just see.” We’re afraid of, “It may not work out,” and that’s life. Life is not about it working out. It’s about unfolding. What do I learn as I go? We can begin to change that measurement of success as it needs to be smoothly accomplished without a flaw, as opposed to it’s the wonder, the discovery, the journey, how I change and what I learned about myself as I’m going through these steps.
The piece that also is propelling us in this film is another area of the passion of our lives, which is equity and inclusion. I leave out the D-word whenever possible because the root of diversity is divide. I understand it’s a word that we use a lot, so I’ll go with it when it’s needed. If I can change it, I would change it to equity and inclusion, and leave out diversity. However, whether we’re talking about DI, EDI or whatever, all of that has to do with what we’ve learned. As humanity, we are still learning how to live, respect, honor and incorporate difference.
We have humanity fought, oppressed and smothered difference whenever we had an opportunity, whether that was dynasties after dynasties, whether that was this part of the country against another part of the country, whether it was related to gender, religion or race. Now, living in the world where we are and raising sons of color, young men of color, we want them to know, “Inside of you is this powerhouse and this goal that you are unlimited.” We also are grieved by needing to have a conversation with them, “This is how you come home at night. This is how you survive in a world that may reduce you to very limited, narrow and damaging constructs.” Those constructs have led to the death of many.
Those preconceptions.
Even with this film and other work that both of us do, we’re wanting people to stop and say, “Is everything I was taught about people who are different from me true? How about I slow it down and remember that if I know I am enough, I can begin to make space that everyone is enough? There’s no need to shrink back. There’s also no need to play small or make someone else small, and a false attempt for me to feel big. That I could speak that all of us are enough.
When I approach equity and inclusion workshops, I’m not talking about, “Let me teach you some new terms and some new techniques.” I’m talking about, “How do we deal with the inner heart of knowing who I am?” Making space for where I played small and making space for, “What did I digest that was given to me that often, subconsciously and sometimes consciously, I had put others and reduce them into something smaller than who they are as well?”
Our culture makes it so easy to stay distracted. Click To TweetThat’s an intense statement but it’s something that’s inflicting a lot of people, just anything that encourages people to play small as opposed to playing big. I’ll probably fill three more whole episodes listing out every single one of our attitudes, our psychological tendencies and institutions that are doing that, which is intense. I want to say that’s probably a great last message to end it all on so that everyone out there knows that whatever you’re doing that forces yourself to play small or forces other people to play small is the area we need to work on.
I would like to say, Michanda, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you to all for being here and being present. If you’ve been present, thank you doubly. Some people listen to podcasts while doing fifteen other things as well. If you’re present, a double thank you to you. I encourage you to stay tuned to Action’s Antidotes for more episodes with people who are following their passions, which usually come from within what they really wanted, to begin with.
Thank you, Stephen.
Thank you.
Important Links:
- Michanda Lindsey
- The Lonely Crowd
- Michanda Lindsey – LinkedIn
- @MichandaLindsey – Facebook
- @MichandaLindsey – Instagram
- BlackFaceMovie.com
About Michanda Lindsey
Michanda Lindsey believes that each of us is already magnificent, whole and that the answers to our deepest questions are already within us. Under the umbrella of Presence and Transformation, Michanda provides Executive Coaching, Life Coaching and Spiritual Coaching. She works with individuals and groups of all backgrounds in person and virtually, and offers The Flow coaching certification program, as well as Equity and Inclusion trainIng. Michanda supports her clients in making the powerful shift of living inside out instead of outside in. By guiding people to connect more deeply to their inner heart, Michanda leads them to their own reservoir of power so that they can create and access more peace, purpose and connection to themselves, others and life as a whole.
Passionate about the arts and committed to bring light to the complexity, vulnerability, and majesty of humanity, Michanda is also serving as a Producer for the upcoming film BLACKFACE: the story of nobody. Altogether her eclectic background as a Presence and Transformation coach, a former television news anchor and reporter, and a present-day priest, yogi, wife, mother, and film producer, leads to one underlying river of hope. Michanda desires for all of us to know the beauty of oneness, the freedom of being enough, the power of presence and the treasures found in stillness.