“Check your posture” has been a thing in our house with a young teenager. It’s easy to not be aware of your posture. But it is *oh* so important.
Our posture not only reflects how we show up in the world. Our posture – depending on how we hold ourselves – can either support us OR cause us a lot of physical pain and discomfort down the road.
As leaders and as organizations, it is important to check our posture.
For those in the nonprofit sector especially, it is all too normal and easy to hold a posture of need. We often are so cognizant of what we lack.
We need more money.
We need more staff.
We need better office space.
We need more time.
We need to do more.
We need more outcomes.
We need more donors.
Even as a small business owner, I get caught up in the trap of holding a posture of need as well.
I need more work.
I need more skills.
I need more support.
I need more exposure.
I need more training.
I need more experience.
I need to figure this out.
I’ve come to understand that postures of need are rooted in “competitive scarcity.”
And what we need are postures of “collective abundance.” (Terms coined by Daniel Christian Wahl in his book, Designing Regenerative Cultures.)
One posture puts us in the frame of victim.
The other puts us in the frame of power.
(That’s right. Power.)
What if we all owned our power?
What if we all affirmed our collective abundance?
What might happen if we shed the posture of need?
What if we wake up everyday affirming, “I have enough. I am not in lack. I have dignity. I have love to give and receive. I have wisdom and gifts to share with the world.”
And from that posture, TRUST THE RECIPROCITY OF THE UNIVERSE!
What gifts and resources might we recognize that we have ignored?
A posture of abundance eases us into a dance of togetherness.
A posture of need places us in a fight for survival.
As I go about my work, I’m setting the intention to remember that there is nothing more I truly need. To long for nothing more. To recognize and share the goodness, the completeness, and the abundance of what I already have.
I’m committed to checking my posture.
Join me?
Wishing you moments of insight, clarity, and courage,
Matteah