Have you ever had the feeling of free falling into the unknown? Of being inextricably called towards something or someone, despite your mind warning, criticizing or judging your yearning? And, in spite of the megaphone of alarm bells and discouraging thoughts, you trusted yourself enough to follow the call, no matter what the outcome?

This is what revolutionaries do. This is how humans evolve.

To be a revolutionary is to be willing to listen to the voice of our heart and soul. And follow it, even when logic and reason attempt to derail us in order to protect our sense of safety or our self-images.

How do you discern when a voice is coming from fear? Or, when you're being moved by a revolutionary impulse to love, express your passion, and reclaim your freedom at any cost?

I'm learning to navigate this question by attuning more deeply to the wisdom of my body, spirit and understanding the map of my psyche.

My recent let go, surrender and innovative process

My decision to create my second business, Your Erotic Nature, was one of these leaps. Why would I potentially compromise my thriving career with Revealing Wisdom, as a business consultant and leadership coach, by talking about erotic nature and sex? What would people think? Would they misunderstand my intentions? Would I lose my credibility? Since that time, I have now folded Your Erotic Nature into a larger framework for conscious leaders focused on the Power Reclamation System.

After becoming a certified relationship and sexuality coach, I felt a hunger to do "the impossible" and integrate the power of erotic energy with business success and leadership. Not the sexual aspect of eroticism, but the creative energy of our life force. The power that infuses us with our passion, heart, and purpose for being alive and thriving.

My vision felt like an enormous stretch, and potential career suicide, but it was one of those heart and soul callings I couldn't deny, postpone, or refuse. I felt an aliveness — a knowing that something was trying to be revealed, and so I kept taking small steps in the dark.

In my own personal and entrepreneurial journey, the river of creativity and clarity can't be forced or controlled. For me, it has required an intentional refinement in the arts of discipline, patience, deep listening and surrender into the flow of my heart and soul. Letting go of a creation I spend months creating was a difficult choice. Once I let go, I was swiftly returned into the iterative process of listening, prototyping, creating and refining my vision.

Letting go of someone or something we've invested time and love into is a great feat. When I say no to something, that is not a full yes, I notice sneaky thoughts and tactics often try to bargain, rationalize or convince me to say yes, "It's good enough,” "You're expecting too much.” However, I'm increasingly shown that when I have the courage to trust my no, and grieve what I've decided to let go of, eventually new and more aligned opportunities and people appear. Sometimes days, months or years later, I discover what my no actually was making room for. This process requires discernment, trust and an alignment with the vision more than the fears of "What if?”

Whether we're a creator, an entrepreneur, devoted to a romantic partnership or dedicated to a personal development path, we will face cycles of uncertainty as things contract, grow, expand, and reshape into new alignment. Despite perceived obstacles, revolutionaries stay engaged. We swan dive into the unknown in the name of passion, love, and purpose.

One shadow side of the creative process is the reticence to take action, or start something new, when we don't know how all the details will resolve themselves. It's easy to become overwhelmed by the anxiety of uncertainty. It's easy to become paralyzed by fearful thoughts and habits of protection. Voices such as, "What if x happens?" "How will I do y?" or "Sure, I'll take action as soon as z happens.”

As for me, I'm fairly certain that if I had waited until I could "figure things out" behind closed doors, I would not have stumbled into this lucidity.

Before the clarity of my vision would reveal itself, I had to leap publicly and surrender into my revolutionary heart, instead of protect against potential risks of losing my credibility. These types of moments will test our self-trust and offer us opportunities to interrupt limiting thought patterns.

My entrepreneurial cycle of risk taking, surrender and creative clarity

Now, a year later, one baby step at a time, I'm beginning to see signs of how erotic nature and leadership can merge and support a hero/heroine's journey from separation into wholeness. This is what I want to introduce today.

Over the course of many months, I have dedicated time and energy creating a map called Erotic Architecture. It was intended as a guide to help you understand your erotic intelligence and reveals the shadows that keep you in patterns of shame, withholding, control and anxiety. It was almost ready for launch, but something in my heart and gut felt unsettled. It felt a little off course but I wasn't sure what I meant by that. Repeating thoughts whispered, "Don't stop here, keep going." I wanted to listen, but I also felt deflated, impatient and tremendously resistant. Yet, I knew it was true. I pressed pause on the momentum and eventually, I let it all go to listen again more deeply.

Here's what happened for me with this process...

In early August, after ditching the Erotic Architecture, I spent a day in the mountains immersed in a visioning and creative process. I began my strategic designing out on the deck of my friend's home. One by one, I placed orange and green post-it notes on the floor to ceiling glass windows. Each one representing concepts, theories, and topics, perhaps seemingly separate, but actually intricately interwoven. I isolated various aspects of the human journey that create empowerment and those that create separation, self-doubt, controlling tendencies, anxiety, and restlessness.

I fell into a trance of listening, meditating and tracking waves of emotions and sensations as they coursed through my body. As the sun was setting, I lay on my back staring at the colorful mosaic of post-it notes on the glass. Tired and wondering if I was wasting my time (a common critical voice I hear when I'm wandering in the unknown), I closed my eyes and put my hand on my heart while the final rays of the sun warmed my face. Thirty minutes later, a lightning bolt of clarity cut through my self-doubt and I burst into tears. In that moment I discovered, in a way I'd never fully seen before, that my entire life has been an apprenticeship to power, and the journey from separation to wholeness.

I have immersed myself in the study of human suffering — from the inside-out. I've investigated how my sense of wholeness has been fragmented through striving to be better or fixed the point of adrenal fatigue and burn out. I've tracked patterns of loss, fear, inner criticism, perceived rejection, unworthiness, self-doubt and heartbreak. I hunted for a conditioned compulsion to adhere to other's needs and expectations of me, over my own inner authority.

I have studied how power sources, such as fear and love, are exchanged or repressed in human relationships and societal systems, causing integrated and un-integrated expressions of power. And, I continue to assess the role I play in it all.

Since that day in August, among the Aspen trees, I've been on a wild writing frenzy ablaze with passion and devotion. This whole process has been an integrative healing journey for me. As a result of synthesizing, and digging deeper into my own patterns related to power, I've come to embrace more parts of myself; especially the aspects that I've held as broken or not enough. As a result, despite the challenges of human life, I feel more wholehearted and restful in my being and imperfections.

My work as a business consultant and integrative leadership coach is constantly evolving. What I'm sharing today is the next iteration. It begins with the framework of becoming a revolutionary and embodied leader. This is a shifting paradigm from power-over to power-with.

Power-over is a global phenomenon of destructive and un-integrated forms of power. Power-over models are based on dominance and they are prominent in various aspects of our culture, such as politics, certain religious institutions, global corporations, or other hierarchical structures that seek to create conformity through shame and fear.

Power-with is a consensual and integrated expression of power. Power-with is founded upon a commitment to conscious leadership through self-awareness, personal responsibility and inner authority. When engaging in power-with, we’re attuned to the way our decisions impact the whole. We listen to a larger field of wisdom to guide our choices.

Signature influences of power-with, reside in the art of love, presence, listening, befriending our shadow, embracing the unknown, accessing the wisdom of our intuition and body, patience, cultivating magic, and seeing beyond illusions — many of which have been forced underground and out of the collective currency of relating to ourselves and one another.

As we expand our capacity to feel empathy, love, and responsibility for our own fear-based reactivity and patterns of control, we become more integrated with our power.

To learn more you can read my personal story of listening to my heart and trusting what felt insane to reveal more passion and purpose: Revolutionary Leadership: From Power-Over To Power-With.

Coming soon — I will introduce what has taken shape, from the mosaic of post-it notes on the windows in the mountains that day. It's called, The Power Reclamation System. Power reclamation is a journey of hunting and tracking for areas in which we have unconsciously lost power. Are you aware of when you innocently give your power away in response to fear, social pressures or internalized beliefs about scarcity and lack?

Many of us know, deep in our hearts, that to embody the force that we were born to become, we need to call all of ourselves back into the wholeness of our being. Yet, we’re rarely given an easy roadmap to reclaim and integrate our lost power. 

The Power Reclamation System is a dynamic, non-linear discovery process designed to welcome exiled parts of our power, presence and inner authority back home.

My passion to personally, and collectively normalize core wounds and embrace the inner power and the wholeness of our wild, sovereign selves. Stay tuned for more...

Your stories and questions are welcome here. If you prefer to send a question anonymously, you can do so via the form included on Ask Anne-Marie. Or chime in on Instagram, @anne.marie.marron.