Stepping onto a Bigger Stage
For many years, I suffered from an acute case of Shrinking Violet Syndrome or S.V.S.. I was more comfortable sneaking around the edges of life, dodging acknowledgement rather than standing center stage, visible and at ease.
For eight years I directed children’s music and theater programs. Our performances were always followed by loud, enthusiastic applause with numerous curtain calls. I loved sending my wonderful performers into the spotlight for another bow. But when it came my turn to accept applause, I all but hid.
My mother enjoyed attending these productions. She surprised me after a show one day by pulling out an old cassette player and saying, “Listen to this!” I heard clapping. One by one, members of the troupe took center stage to receive the audience’s appreciation with poise and pleasure. No shrinking violets here! When the applause turned to me, the crowd went wild. Why, she wanted to know, wasn’t I willing to accept this acknowledgement for my accomplishments? A point well-made and squirmingly received. I share this story to illustrate my extreme resistance to stepping onto a broader stage to manifest bigger goals for a larger audience.
During my last three years as director of a local children’s theater, I was also building my energy kinesiology and coaching practice. I had been making do with a string of tiny offices while dreaming of a wonderful kinesiology center. I even sat down with my father, a consummate industrial planner, to create a detailed 10-year plan with that end in mind.
A year later, I was relocating my office, yet again. When my Brain Gym® student and colleague, Bonnie Hershey, mentioned that she would love to share an office with me, I was thrilled. We began looking for a space that we could each use on alternate days. Nothing surfaced. It occurred to us that perhaps we had been thinking too small. Perhaps, just a year and a half into my 10-year plan, it was time to create the kinesiology center.
We intensified our search. One day, while co-teaching a Brain Gym workshop, I demonstrated goal-setting through a role-play. I described my dream office “with windows and light and trees!” and mimed raising three windows with a great flourish, to let in fresh air. When class was over, I mentioned to Bonnie that I was going to check out one more unit in a down-in-the-heels office building we had already visited and nixed.
This office suite of four rooms sat at the end of a dingy hallway. I entered a large room filled with grey office cubicles and wires, but I only saw “windows and light and trees!” The room was alive with beautiful afternoon sunlight that shone through dark green hemlock branches and danced on the walls.
This was it! 900-plus square feet of perfection. Bonnie agreed. On April 7th, 1995, The Kinesiology Connection was born. For 23 years, this lovely center for learning and personal transformation drew hundreds of enthusiastic students and clients. The building renovated and now houses the businesses of many fine alternative health practitioners. Though I left The Kinesiology Connection in 2001 to move to New Hampshire, my amazing business partnership with Bonnie continues to evolve in exciting ways.
I can feel in my bones it’s time to take another leap to a bigger stage with a larger audience. Again, I am laying plans. But this time I trust the process, knowing, as Marianne Williamson says, that “playing small does not serve the world.”
At this time, with the world as it is, we are all being called forth to share our joyous, creative, inspired best with our planetary community.
Celebrating that bigger stage!
Eliza
Creatives’ Coach Eliza Bergeson is the author of The Yes! in Success: How To Be The Star You Are And Live The Life You Love.
She works her magic with creative individuals—entrepreneurs, speakers, writers, visual and performing artists; people who are ready to transform bright vision into gratifying outcomes in their businesses and their lives. If that sounds like you, visit her site, www.elizabergeson.com, for more FREE success-building resources.
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