27. How To Embody Your Feminine Energy To Avoid Burnout
Are you feeling stuck in a cycle of burnout and exhaustion, both personally and professionally, despite your best efforts to get out of it? As ambitious women, we often find ourselves caught in a trap of constantly hustling and striving, only to feel like we're still not quite where we want to be. But what if we told you that the key to unlocking your full potential lies in embracing your feminine energy?
Finding balance between your intuition, creativity, and driven action can transform your life. By leaning into your feminine energy and creating more balance, you open yourself up to new opportunities and greater fulfillment in your career, and every area of your life.
Join us this week as we dive deep into the power of balancing masculine and feminine energy. You'll learn practical strategies for tapping into your intuition, letting go of control, and finding more ease and flow in your life and business. Get ready to redefine success on your own terms and become unapologetically Ambitious-Ish.
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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why balancing masculine and feminine energy is the key to avoiding burnout and exhaustion.
How to attract personal and professional opportunities with more ease by embracing your feminine side.
The transformative power of rest and stillness for accessing your intuition and creativity.
How to take aligned action from a place of calm and balance, rather than force and hustle.
The difference between empowered and disempowered masculine and feminine traits.
Why softening into your emotions can lead to deeper connection and fulfillment.
Practical strategies for incorporating more feminine energy into your life and business.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Kelle: If you’re listening right now, you know what ambition is. Maybe you’re questioning its cost and the trade-offs you’ve made and it all looks pretty good from the outside but how you feel living it, it feels miserable.
Nina: It’s like you’re cycling through these ups and downs, willing your way through it all, fingers crossed you don’t crash and burn and not really loving the way you’re showing up to it all.
Kelle: What if we told you the secret to unlocking your full potential at home, at work and in your relationships isn’t about working harder or doing more, but by leaning into your feminine energy?
Nina: If you’ve ever felt like you’re constantly hustling and still not quite where you want to be, you are in the right place.
Kelle: Today we’ll explore how finding balance between your natural intuition, creativity, and the driven action oriented side of you can transform not just your career, but your entire life.
Nina: Yes, this is what it’s all about being ambitious-ish. This is going to be such a good episode.
Kelle: Such a good one. Here we go. Let’s dive in.
Burnout? Check. Daily overwhelm? Check. Resentment rash, stress, and a complete lack of well-being? Check, check, check! You’re not alone. We’re your hosts, Kelle & Nina, and we are here to help you feel calm, balanced, and empowered so you can redefine success, make choices that feel authentic, and ACTUALLY enjoy the life you work so hard to create. You ready? Let’s go.
Kelle: Hey, I’m Kelle.
Nina: And I’m Nina. Today, we want to talk about the balance between masculine and feminine energy.
Kelle: Yeah. This is something that comes up a lot with our clients. It’s a big topic. It’s always coming up and it comes in our own lives as well.
Nina: Yeah, I’d say I’m very much living in my masculine energy. And over the past year or so, I’ve been really focused on leaning into more of my feminine edge, my feminine energy, and this has shifted a lot in my life.
Kelle: And this is one part of the magic of coaching with us. This episode today is one that we’ll refer back to often, I think, because finding the balance between your masculine and feminine energy is really what’s the core of being ambitious-ish.
Nina: Yeah, this is where Ambitious-Ish was born. From really taking a look at how our clients come to coaching and then how they shift and what they create when they leave. What happens here is we create safety and balance between our masculine or doing energy and our feminine or being energy.
Kelle: The results we’ve created in our own lives, the changes we see and feel. When we let ourselves relax into that feminine energy and create more balance in our lives, it can be unbelievable at first. For example, one of our clients, she’s an entrepreneur, she realized that when she came back from vacation, full on unplugged vacation, just a long weekend even, new clients were waiting for her.
Nina: Oh, this is so true.
Kelle: Yeah. She never used to rest or be still. She was always pushing and striving and the content she was putting out in the world and the way that she showed up to clients felt sort of pushy. When she started practicing leaning into her feminine energy, that being energy, she started attracting clients much more easily. She was showing up more authentically and more creatively, and this really spoke to her best clients.
Nina: Yeah. The best clients are the best clients, those are the ones we want. Finding this balance can create results in your bank account, sure, but also your relationships, your health, just your whole life.
Kelle: And what’s cool is this is scalable. This balance that we help you find, leads to less burnout and less exhaustion because you’re more aligned and aware. You’re taking better care of yourself and listening to your intuition, not the old stories that had you constantly stuck in that stress cycle.
Kelle: Yeah. And let’s be real, especially being entrepreneurs, you have to put the work in. Trust us.
Nina: But a lot of people make it harder on themselves than it has to be and Kelle and I know this personally. And it’s so transformational when you can learn to live in more flow and how that invites more opportunity to come to you.
Kelle: Okay. We’re not talking about sitting on a meditation pillow and meditating your way and manifesting a six or seven figure income.
Nina: Yeah, hell, no. What we’re saying is, when you ease up on things, more things come in.
Kelle: And for so many of you that are so aware and familiar with burnout and stressing out your adrenals, this becomes a superpower.
Nina: Yeah, this is how you can actually work smarter, not harder, feel more calm and live into more balance.
Kelle: Calm and balance, those are two results 99% of the clients that we work with want to create. They want more calm and balance in their lives so they don’t continue to miss out on their relationships or compromise their health and burn out at work.
Nina: Yeah, this balance opens us up to our intuition, that inner knowing, and to trust ourselves in that knowing as women first and as leaders.
Kelle: Because who runs the world really? Come on, us, the women, let’s be real. Period.
Nina: Exclamation point. And when you coach with us, starting off, you’re probably very much in your masculine energy. And what happens is you gently and slowly become more in touch with your feminine energy and expand that edge along the way and it’s really just mind blowing.
Kelle: And the success that you create isn’t ego driven. This isn’t big dick energy, if you will. We like to play with opposites sometimes. This is intuitive, authentic energy that allows you to show up unapologetically, proud and humble and unapologetic and badass.
Nina: Yes. How you build a life and business that’s more in flow is by balancing your feminine and masculine energy, where money and clients come to you easily without killing yourself to do so, where you surf the waves of stress and overwhelm more easily.
Kelle: It’s the two together that allows this because we all live in more of our masculine energy than our feminine. The world around us supports that. We’re rewarded for it, and so that’s where we stay and we rep this way of getting shit done.
Nina: Yeah. And that way starts to feel miserable and exhausting. Are you with us? This is when we become ambitious-ish.
Kelle: You don’t really know what to do. That’s where we meet a lot of the women that we work with. You’re going down, so to speak, and you don’t have the tools for a soft landing recovery and then to try approaching things differently the next time.
Nina: You’re trying to strategize your way through everything, working 18 hour days and getting frustrated and killing yourself, sacrificing your personal life, and you keep hitting a block. It’s painful. You’re trying to solve a puzzle.
Kelle: And of course, we need to problem solve. We’re leaders and managers, moms and wives, but it’s easier to problem solve when you can be creative about them and when you can call in what you want and need.
Nina: Yeah, it’s like I’m working so damn hard and not getting what I want, but look at her over there working four days a week and making her numbers look like cake, easy peasy.
Kelle: Totally. You sort of want to burn it all down, but that’s not really what you want to do. That’s your intuition whispering there. Can you hear it?
Nina: Yeah, but what really has to happen is, you need to find more balance between all of your doing and your lack of being.
Kelle: Yeah. So, our formula for success in our coaching practice is mindset plus skill set plus aligned action. And today we’re talking a little bit about all three.
Nina: Yeah. We can’t take aligned action, which is action from a place that’s in line with our core values and that’s created from a calm and balanced mindset, until we create this balance between masculine and feminine energy, this energetic work.
Kelle: Yeah. Our story shines here. I mean, Nina, remember our first business coach years ago? He had us building our website and funnels and running Facebook ads and we weren’t really getting any results, right?
Nina: This was so tough. I’m laughing now, but it was totally overwhelming, all of the tech and the lack of data we were getting, right, Kelle? Nothing was landing. It was just confusing, but we just kept trying and pushing. Do you remember?
Kelle: Yeah. It was chicken or the egg. It was, what comes first. We are definitely doing the second thing first and then trying to get clients. The trying energy too.
Nina: Yeah. And then we step back and if we’re being real we almost quit. But I think in that pause in that pullback, we both sort of delved into our own practices. We both love yoga and breathwork and meditation is huge for Kelle and I especially right now, and stillness. Which is where we opened up to so many answers and light bulbs, but we couldn’t stay on our cushions all day. We had to get out and take aligned action from this more balanced place.
Kelle: Yeah. Nina always talks about building her Zen den.
Nina: Yeah, someday.
Kelle: We realized we weren’t talking to the clients we actually wanted to work with. We redecided our niche. We doubled down and started super thinking about these kickass women, these ambitious-ish women. In the process, we realized we were really coaching ourselves. It became so easy.
Nina: And I think too, I gained so much respect and love for the women we work with because I started doing that for myself. And in delving into more of my own feminine energy, which includes compassion and care, I could help other women do the same and that’s where Ambitious-Ish was born.
Kelle: Yeah, instead of forcing our business to grow from an entirely masculine place and our masculine energy, we worked on the feminine side of our business in a more feminine approach and everything changed.
Nina: This is why we’re so passionate about Ambitious-Ish as a concept and a result to create in your life, a non-negotiable one, people.
Kelle: Yes, okay, let’s talk about what masculine and feminine energy is, the difference between the two.
Nina: We can be out of balance here at work, in our relationships and at home.
Kelle: Yeah, especially in our relationships. It’s not going to work if both people are in their masculine energy. There has to be some balance.
Nina: And we like to think that masculine and feminine energy have both empowered and disempowered traits. So, as we move and shift into that favorite version of ourselves, that point B, we’re aware of the different traits and transforming those disempowered masculine traits into empowered ones. And the disempowered feminine traits into the empowered ones.
Kelle: So, it’s a shift on both sides. Let’s go with our list of some examples from each side. So, we’d encourage you to write these down if you wish, or just listen and see where you identify.
Nina: Yeah, where you see yourself here, which boxes you can tick for yourself if you’re not where you’re nodding your head.
Kelle: And remember the big picture here. Masculine energy is the energy of doing and feminine energy is the energy of being.
Nina: Yeah. So here we go. Empowered, masculine energy looks like taking action, doing, being honest and accountable, having integrity, being stable, having boundaries, being confident, protective, being responsible, present, aware, structured. Empowered masculine energy holds space. It’s decisive. It has a clear purpose. It’s logical, focused, decisive. I love decisiveness. Intellectual, giving, achieving. There’s leadership here, rationality and ambition. This is empowered masculine energy.
Kelle: Now let’s look at the disempowered masculine energy. It’s overthinking, overdoing, being controlling, aggressive, demanding, being overly competitive, avoiding things or withdrawing, being unstable. Being overly confrontational, being very dominant and aggressively so. It’s micromanaging, being overbearing, being emotionless or heartless. So, these are the ones that we want to work on and turn into the more empowered form of masculine energy.
Nina: Yeah. So, if you’re nodding your head here or shaking your head, we’ve got you. You’re not alone. Now let’s talk about feminine and energy. So, remember, feminine and energy is all about being. So empowered feminine energy is all about flow, receiving, play, being childlike, being intuitive and reflective, expressive and empathetic, compassionate, connected with love, creative, magnetic, vulnerable and authentic, utilizing our senses, kind of embodied, or collaborative. It involves surrender, open and warm, soft and caring, trusting and resting.
Kelle: Okay, so good, I love all those. And now let’s look at the disempowered feminine energy. It’s operating from the space someone might seem as needy or codependent, insecure, overly emotional. This feeling of unworthiness or in a victim mindset. Feeling a lot of shame or guilt or shaming or guilting others, having weak boundaries, over-apologizing or overexplaining.
Nina: Overexplaining.
Kelle: Right, yeah. Holding back on their truth, manipulating, being naive, conforming for the sake of conforming or feeling powerless. Those are the disempowered, feminine energy.
Nina: My heart just hurts with that list. I can identify with a lot of those.
Kelle: 100%.
Nina: 100%. And my heart’s hurting right now. I have this ache in my chest. It’s really interesting. So where did you see yourself here, listeners? Were you ticking boxes? What about you, Kel, what comes up?
Kelle: Yeah. I mean, there’s so many on both sides and man, it just makes me really want to reflect and be a little bit more, how do we say it? Start with an I.
Nina: Intuitive and igloo, that’s an I. Intentional.
Kelle: Intentional. Thank you.
Nina: There you go. There we go.
Kelle: Okay, yay, Nina, not igloo, intentional.
Nina: Okay, oh my God. So, stepping into the empowered version of both masculine and feminine energies and finding balance there, that’s the gold. That’s the practice. There are few analogies out there to explain this balance, but some famous ones are yin and yang, Adam and Eve, Shakti and Shiva. It comes up again and again because these two energies work so well together. And in coaching we like to explain that masculine energy is like the riverbank and the feminine energy is the river itself. So, the masculine energy is creating structure so, the feminine energy can flow through. I kind of love that visual.
Kelle: Yeah, that’s cool. Another analogy I have heard is that masculine energy is a cup, and then the feminine energy is the water within the cup.
Nina: Oh, good one. Yeah.
Kelle: So, focusing on feminine energy isn’t about being someone who’s calm and relaxed all the time, and flowy. You can be fiery and direct, but it’s balance and you’ll know when you feel it.
Nina: Yeah. I think we live in our masculine energy a lot in business. And I think a lot of people do the same. I think when I was born, when we were young, I was living in more of my feminine energy, I was playful and curious and just childlike. But over time and with our own experiences through covert and overt trauma over the years, we find safety in more masculine energy. At least this is what happened to me. It became how I learned to control my environment and make sense of things and I moved through life in that energy. I needed the logic. I need to feel in control.
I tended to micromanage and was just focused and goal oriented. I was very much the leader and always doing, doing, doing and working, working, working. I wasn’t vulnerable. I didn’t cry. These were sort of my trademarks, my hallmarks and I kept all of that in a box. And I was considered strong and reliable. And of course I’m the oldest child in my family, by the way. Anyone else raising their hand here? This all makes a lot of sense looking back. And I remember in school, we would just memorize and prepare. And I learned how to work hard, but it all felt rote. It wasn’t fun. It was work.
So learning wasn’t about being curious, it was about getting good grades. Does that land, Kel?
Kelle: Yeah.
Nina: This is absolutely where I cemented my work ethic and mine is different from yours. We all have our own beautiful version of what we call our work ethic. But I learned that if I worked hard, prepared my ass off and worked hard enough, I’d succeed and it worked and the same happened on the athletic field. I think a lot of competitive athletes and former athletes can relate that we lean into our masculine energy so much when we’re competitive. And this is when we can burn out of our sport, the same way we can burn out in our work.
I learned over time as an athlete how to lean into my feminine energy to create more balance on the field, and this showed up physically in my body too. I’d typically lose my period in season. And while that might make sense physiologically, we were all in killer shape. It always returned when the season ended and I wasn’t on the field. And if I’m being honest, working out and running, I was working out and running even more out of season than in. I just think I fell into more balance out of season with my being energy and that empowered feminine energy.
So, I think I kind of started to soften organically over time, but I think a big softening for me was when my sister Jen died. I was 24 and it really broke me open in an empowering way, but also in a way that I’d never felt before, that flood of emotion, overwhelming is an understatement. I don’t even know. I just had never felt so many feels. And I remember crying so hard some days, I literally thought I’d break. I was in so much beautiful pain. The support and friendship and love at that time was also overwhelming. It was a big milestone for me.
Her death absolutely changed me and there was a lot more of that to come. It was sort of an invitation for more vulnerability and connection, and I learned I couldn’t do everything on my own. I didn’t have to. It was a big shift there. But back to business, when it came to work, I leaned on my masculine energy on autopilot. It was knee jerk. Working in PR, I went right back to boxing my emotions and living in my right brain or masculine energy. That’s the only way I knew how to get shit done. And the more I tried to control things, the less control I had. Cue the burnout.
Kelle: Yeah, I think that makes sense. When you’re stressed, your brain doesn’t want to put the effort in to do things a different way. It wants the path of least resistance, which was very masculine for you. I mean, especially if you’re under a deadline, you’re going to get shit done the fastest way you know how because you’re in flight, flight freeze and fawn. And you need to meet that deadline for survival or so your brain is telling you. You’re not thinking on purpose unless you’re doing this work we do in coaching.
Nina: I was not.
Kelle: Yeah. And I think in business that disempowered, masculine energy, it shows up a lot. It’s the overthinking and the overdoing, being controlling and aggressive and demanding. We’ve all had managers or colleagues who show up this way, right?
Nina: Yeah, totally.
Kelle: This overdoing, especially telling yourself you have to post every day even though you’re not providing value and your messaging isn’t super clear, posting on social media. You’re not serving your audience. You’re sort of forcing people to be your client. And that’s why they’re not buying, by the way. And you’re overthinking every word you write or piece of feedback you give how you’re leading or not leading.
Nina: Yeah, there’s a lot of comparison here, comparisonitis.
Kelle: Yeah, totally. Our brains make up a lot of stories about our colleagues or competitors and all of these thoughts are really disempowering. This is that disempowered, masculine energy. There’s a lot of fear driving this energy. And at the end of the day, it’s fear of being vulnerable or, God forbid, making a mistake, of being seen as imperfect, which is human nature, by the way, of asking for help.
This is what keeps us stuck in a disempowered mindset and disempowered masculine energy, fear and scarcity. This is when we tend to burn out and question our ambitions. We’re here to tell you, you don’t need to quit that job to feel better in your life. So where is your edge right now? What’s your invitation? We are the coaches who can help you here to expand your edge and find more balance between your masculine and feminine energies. This is what Ambitious-Ish is all about. We’re going to take a step further next week, by the way, in episode 28 and talk about feminine leadership, so circle back.
Nina: Yeah, because this is our mission, this is our calling, to help our clients find this balance and be unapologetically ambitious-ish, to redefine what success means to them, work smarter, not harder, and actually enjoy the life they work so hard to create.
Kelle: If this episode resonated with you, you have to schedule a consultation with us. We’ll put a link in the show notes, but on these consults we meet you on Zoom for 60 minutes. We ask you some questions and gain an understanding of your challenges in your life right now. We want to make sure that coaching is the right vehicle to get you the results that you crave and create a life that you’re obsessed with.
Nina: And we also want to make sure we’re the right coaches for you, that we’re a want match as Kelle likes to say. We’ll get a feel for where you are today, what you want to create, and we’ll show you how our coaching will bridge the gap.
Kelle: And from there, we decide together, so you take all the awareness and golden value you get from the call with us and you can run with it or you can coach with us for six months. That’s two coaches for six months and it’s all about you.
Nina: Yes. So, check the link in the show notes or schedule on our website kelleandnina.com. We can’t wait to meet you.
Kelle: Yes, totally. Okay, that’s it for today. Thanks so much for being here.
Nina: Yeah. Thanks for being here. See you next time.
Kelle: See you next time.
Nina: Hey everyone, if you want more live access to me and Kelle, you have to join our email list.
Kelle: Yes, we’ll come to your email box every Tuesday and Thursday.
Nina: You can ask us questions, get clarity and get coached.
Kelle: We offer monthly free email coaching when you’re on our list and you’re the first to know about trainings, events and other free coaching opportunities.
Nina: Just go to kelleandnina.com. That’s K E L L E and nina.com to sign up.
Kelle: Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of Ambitious-Ish.
Nina: If you’re ready to align your ambitions with your heart and feel more calm, balanced, and connected, visit https://www.kelleandnina.com/ for more information about how to work with us and make sure you get on our list.
Kelle: See you in the next episode!
Nina: It’s like you’re cycling through these ups and downs, willing your way through it all, fingers crossed you don’t crash and burn and not really loving the way you’re showing up to it all.
Kelle: What if we told you the secret to unlocking your full potential at home, at work and in your relationships isn’t about working harder or doing more, but by leaning into your feminine energy?
Nina: If you’ve ever felt like you’re constantly hustling and still not quite where you want to be, you are in the right place.
Kelle: Today we’ll explore how finding balance between your natural intuition, creativity, and the driven action oriented side of you can transform not just your career, but your entire life.
Nina: Yes, this is what it’s all about being ambitious-ish. This is going to be such a good episode.
Kelle: Such a good one. Here we go. Let’s dive in.
Burnout? Check. Daily overwhelm? Check. Resentment rash, stress, and a complete lack of well-being? Check, check, check! You’re not alone. We’re your hosts, Kelle & Nina, and we are here to help you feel calm, balanced, and empowered so you can redefine success, make choices that feel authentic, and ACTUALLY enjoy the life you work so hard to create. You ready? Let’s go.
Kelle: Hey, I’m Kelle.
Nina: And I’m Nina. Today, we want to talk about the balance between masculine and feminine energy.
Kelle: Yeah. This is something that comes up a lot with our clients. It’s a big topic. It’s always coming up and it comes in our own lives as well.
Nina: Yeah, I’d say I’m very much living in my masculine energy. And over the past year or so, I’ve been really focused on leaning into more of my feminine edge, my feminine energy, and this has shifted a lot in my life.
Kelle: And this is one part of the magic of coaching with us. This episode today is one that we’ll refer back to often, I think, because finding the balance between your masculine and feminine energy is really what’s the core of being ambitious-ish.
Nina: Yeah, this is where Ambitious-Ish was born. From really taking a look at how our clients come to coaching and then how they shift and what they create when they leave. What happens here is we create safety and balance between our masculine or doing energy and our feminine or being energy.
Kelle: The results we’ve created in our own lives, the changes we see and feel. When we let ourselves relax into that feminine energy and create more balance in our lives, it can be unbelievable at first. For example, one of our clients, she’s an entrepreneur, she realized that when she came back from vacation, full on unplugged vacation, just a long weekend even, new clients were waiting for her.
Nina: Oh, this is so true.
Kelle: Yeah. She never used to rest or be still. She was always pushing and striving and the content she was putting out in the world and the way that she showed up to clients felt sort of pushy. When she started practicing leaning into her feminine energy, that being energy, she started attracting clients much more easily. She was showing up more authentically and more creatively, and this really spoke to her best clients.
Nina: Yeah. The best clients are the best clients, those are the ones we want. Finding this balance can create results in your bank account, sure, but also your relationships, your health, just your whole life.
Kelle: And what’s cool is this is scalable. This balance that we help you find, leads to less burnout and less exhaustion because you’re more aligned and aware. You’re taking better care of yourself and listening to your intuition, not the old stories that had you constantly stuck in that stress cycle.
Kelle: Yeah. And let’s be real, especially being entrepreneurs, you have to put the work in. Trust us.
Nina: But a lot of people make it harder on themselves than it has to be and Kelle and I know this personally. And it’s so transformational when you can learn to live in more flow and how that invites more opportunity to come to you.
Kelle: Okay. We’re not talking about sitting on a meditation pillow and meditating your way and manifesting a six or seven figure income.
Nina: Yeah, hell, no. What we’re saying is, when you ease up on things, more things come in.
Kelle: And for so many of you that are so aware and familiar with burnout and stressing out your adrenals, this becomes a superpower.
Nina: Yeah, this is how you can actually work smarter, not harder, feel more calm and live into more balance.
Kelle: Calm and balance, those are two results 99% of the clients that we work with want to create. They want more calm and balance in their lives so they don’t continue to miss out on their relationships or compromise their health and burn out at work.
Nina: Yeah, this balance opens us up to our intuition, that inner knowing, and to trust ourselves in that knowing as women first and as leaders.
Kelle: Because who runs the world really? Come on, us, the women, let’s be real. Period.
Nina: Exclamation point. And when you coach with us, starting off, you’re probably very much in your masculine energy. And what happens is you gently and slowly become more in touch with your feminine energy and expand that edge along the way and it’s really just mind blowing.
Kelle: And the success that you create isn’t ego driven. This isn’t big dick energy, if you will. We like to play with opposites sometimes. This is intuitive, authentic energy that allows you to show up unapologetically, proud and humble and unapologetic and badass.
Nina: Yes. How you build a life and business that’s more in flow is by balancing your feminine and masculine energy, where money and clients come to you easily without killing yourself to do so, where you surf the waves of stress and overwhelm more easily.
Kelle: It’s the two together that allows this because we all live in more of our masculine energy than our feminine. The world around us supports that. We’re rewarded for it, and so that’s where we stay and we rep this way of getting shit done.
Nina: Yeah. And that way starts to feel miserable and exhausting. Are you with us? This is when we become ambitious-ish.
Kelle: You don’t really know what to do. That’s where we meet a lot of the women that we work with. You’re going down, so to speak, and you don’t have the tools for a soft landing recovery and then to try approaching things differently the next time.
Nina: You’re trying to strategize your way through everything, working 18 hour days and getting frustrated and killing yourself, sacrificing your personal life, and you keep hitting a block. It’s painful. You’re trying to solve a puzzle.
Kelle: And of course, we need to problem solve. We’re leaders and managers, moms and wives, but it’s easier to problem solve when you can be creative about them and when you can call in what you want and need.
Nina: Yeah, it’s like I’m working so damn hard and not getting what I want, but look at her over there working four days a week and making her numbers look like cake, easy peasy.
Kelle: Totally. You sort of want to burn it all down, but that’s not really what you want to do. That’s your intuition whispering there. Can you hear it?
Nina: Yeah, but what really has to happen is, you need to find more balance between all of your doing and your lack of being.
Kelle: Yeah. So, our formula for success in our coaching practice is mindset plus skill set plus aligned action. And today we’re talking a little bit about all three.
Nina: Yeah. We can’t take aligned action, which is action from a place that’s in line with our core values and that’s created from a calm and balanced mindset, until we create this balance between masculine and feminine energy, this energetic work.
Kelle: Yeah. Our story shines here. I mean, Nina, remember our first business coach years ago? He had us building our website and funnels and running Facebook ads and we weren’t really getting any results, right?
Nina: This was so tough. I’m laughing now, but it was totally overwhelming, all of the tech and the lack of data we were getting, right, Kelle? Nothing was landing. It was just confusing, but we just kept trying and pushing. Do you remember?
Kelle: Yeah. It was chicken or the egg. It was, what comes first. We are definitely doing the second thing first and then trying to get clients. The trying energy too.
Nina: Yeah. And then we step back and if we’re being real we almost quit. But I think in that pause in that pullback, we both sort of delved into our own practices. We both love yoga and breathwork and meditation is huge for Kelle and I especially right now, and stillness. Which is where we opened up to so many answers and light bulbs, but we couldn’t stay on our cushions all day. We had to get out and take aligned action from this more balanced place.
Kelle: Yeah. Nina always talks about building her Zen den.
Nina: Yeah, someday.
Kelle: We realized we weren’t talking to the clients we actually wanted to work with. We redecided our niche. We doubled down and started super thinking about these kickass women, these ambitious-ish women. In the process, we realized we were really coaching ourselves. It became so easy.
Nina: And I think too, I gained so much respect and love for the women we work with because I started doing that for myself. And in delving into more of my own feminine energy, which includes compassion and care, I could help other women do the same and that’s where Ambitious-Ish was born.
Kelle: Yeah, instead of forcing our business to grow from an entirely masculine place and our masculine energy, we worked on the feminine side of our business in a more feminine approach and everything changed.
Nina: This is why we’re so passionate about Ambitious-Ish as a concept and a result to create in your life, a non-negotiable one, people.
Kelle: Yes, okay, let’s talk about what masculine and feminine energy is, the difference between the two.
Nina: We can be out of balance here at work, in our relationships and at home.
Kelle: Yeah, especially in our relationships. It’s not going to work if both people are in their masculine energy. There has to be some balance.
Nina: And we like to think that masculine and feminine energy have both empowered and disempowered traits. So, as we move and shift into that favorite version of ourselves, that point B, we’re aware of the different traits and transforming those disempowered masculine traits into empowered ones. And the disempowered feminine traits into the empowered ones.
Kelle: So, it’s a shift on both sides. Let’s go with our list of some examples from each side. So, we’d encourage you to write these down if you wish, or just listen and see where you identify.
Nina: Yeah, where you see yourself here, which boxes you can tick for yourself if you’re not where you’re nodding your head.
Kelle: And remember the big picture here. Masculine energy is the energy of doing and feminine energy is the energy of being.
Nina: Yeah. So here we go. Empowered, masculine energy looks like taking action, doing, being honest and accountable, having integrity, being stable, having boundaries, being confident, protective, being responsible, present, aware, structured. Empowered masculine energy holds space. It’s decisive. It has a clear purpose. It’s logical, focused, decisive. I love decisiveness. Intellectual, giving, achieving. There’s leadership here, rationality and ambition. This is empowered masculine energy.
Kelle: Now let’s look at the disempowered masculine energy. It’s overthinking, overdoing, being controlling, aggressive, demanding, being overly competitive, avoiding things or withdrawing, being unstable. Being overly confrontational, being very dominant and aggressively so. It’s micromanaging, being overbearing, being emotionless or heartless. So, these are the ones that we want to work on and turn into the more empowered form of masculine energy.
Nina: Yeah. So, if you’re nodding your head here or shaking your head, we’ve got you. You’re not alone. Now let’s talk about feminine and energy. So, remember, feminine and energy is all about being. So empowered feminine energy is all about flow, receiving, play, being childlike, being intuitive and reflective, expressive and empathetic, compassionate, connected with love, creative, magnetic, vulnerable and authentic, utilizing our senses, kind of embodied, or collaborative. It involves surrender, open and warm, soft and caring, trusting and resting.
Kelle: Okay, so good, I love all those. And now let’s look at the disempowered feminine energy. It’s operating from the space someone might seem as needy or codependent, insecure, overly emotional. This feeling of unworthiness or in a victim mindset. Feeling a lot of shame or guilt or shaming or guilting others, having weak boundaries, over-apologizing or overexplaining.
Nina: Overexplaining.
Kelle: Right, yeah. Holding back on their truth, manipulating, being naive, conforming for the sake of conforming or feeling powerless. Those are the disempowered, feminine energy.
Nina: My heart just hurts with that list. I can identify with a lot of those.
Kelle: 100%.
Nina: 100%. And my heart’s hurting right now. I have this ache in my chest. It’s really interesting. So where did you see yourself here, listeners? Were you ticking boxes? What about you, Kel, what comes up?
Kelle: Yeah. I mean, there’s so many on both sides and man, it just makes me really want to reflect and be a little bit more, how do we say it? Start with an I.
Nina: Intuitive and igloo, that’s an I. Intentional.
Kelle: Intentional. Thank you.
Nina: There you go. There we go.
Kelle: Okay, yay, Nina, not igloo, intentional.
Nina: Okay, oh my God. So, stepping into the empowered version of both masculine and feminine energies and finding balance there, that’s the gold. That’s the practice. There are few analogies out there to explain this balance, but some famous ones are yin and yang, Adam and Eve, Shakti and Shiva. It comes up again and again because these two energies work so well together. And in coaching we like to explain that masculine energy is like the riverbank and the feminine energy is the river itself. So, the masculine energy is creating structure so, the feminine energy can flow through. I kind of love that visual.
Kelle: Yeah, that’s cool. Another analogy I have heard is that masculine energy is a cup, and then the feminine energy is the water within the cup.
Nina: Oh, good one. Yeah.
Kelle: So, focusing on feminine energy isn’t about being someone who’s calm and relaxed all the time, and flowy. You can be fiery and direct, but it’s balance and you’ll know when you feel it.
Nina: Yeah. I think we live in our masculine energy a lot in business. And I think a lot of people do the same. I think when I was born, when we were young, I was living in more of my feminine energy, I was playful and curious and just childlike. But over time and with our own experiences through covert and overt trauma over the years, we find safety in more masculine energy. At least this is what happened to me. It became how I learned to control my environment and make sense of things and I moved through life in that energy. I needed the logic. I need to feel in control.
I tended to micromanage and was just focused and goal oriented. I was very much the leader and always doing, doing, doing and working, working, working. I wasn’t vulnerable. I didn’t cry. These were sort of my trademarks, my hallmarks and I kept all of that in a box. And I was considered strong and reliable. And of course I’m the oldest child in my family, by the way. Anyone else raising their hand here? This all makes a lot of sense looking back. And I remember in school, we would just memorize and prepare. And I learned how to work hard, but it all felt rote. It wasn’t fun. It was work.
So learning wasn’t about being curious, it was about getting good grades. Does that land, Kel?
Kelle: Yeah.
Nina: This is absolutely where I cemented my work ethic and mine is different from yours. We all have our own beautiful version of what we call our work ethic. But I learned that if I worked hard, prepared my ass off and worked hard enough, I’d succeed and it worked and the same happened on the athletic field. I think a lot of competitive athletes and former athletes can relate that we lean into our masculine energy so much when we’re competitive. And this is when we can burn out of our sport, the same way we can burn out in our work.
I learned over time as an athlete how to lean into my feminine energy to create more balance on the field, and this showed up physically in my body too. I’d typically lose my period in season. And while that might make sense physiologically, we were all in killer shape. It always returned when the season ended and I wasn’t on the field. And if I’m being honest, working out and running, I was working out and running even more out of season than in. I just think I fell into more balance out of season with my being energy and that empowered feminine energy.
So, I think I kind of started to soften organically over time, but I think a big softening for me was when my sister Jen died. I was 24 and it really broke me open in an empowering way, but also in a way that I’d never felt before, that flood of emotion, overwhelming is an understatement. I don’t even know. I just had never felt so many feels. And I remember crying so hard some days, I literally thought I’d break. I was in so much beautiful pain. The support and friendship and love at that time was also overwhelming. It was a big milestone for me.
Her death absolutely changed me and there was a lot more of that to come. It was sort of an invitation for more vulnerability and connection, and I learned I couldn’t do everything on my own. I didn’t have to. It was a big shift there. But back to business, when it came to work, I leaned on my masculine energy on autopilot. It was knee jerk. Working in PR, I went right back to boxing my emotions and living in my right brain or masculine energy. That’s the only way I knew how to get shit done. And the more I tried to control things, the less control I had. Cue the burnout.
Kelle: Yeah, I think that makes sense. When you’re stressed, your brain doesn’t want to put the effort in to do things a different way. It wants the path of least resistance, which was very masculine for you. I mean, especially if you’re under a deadline, you’re going to get shit done the fastest way you know how because you’re in flight, flight freeze and fawn. And you need to meet that deadline for survival or so your brain is telling you. You’re not thinking on purpose unless you’re doing this work we do in coaching.
Nina: I was not.
Kelle: Yeah. And I think in business that disempowered, masculine energy, it shows up a lot. It’s the overthinking and the overdoing, being controlling and aggressive and demanding. We’ve all had managers or colleagues who show up this way, right?
Nina: Yeah, totally.
Kelle: This overdoing, especially telling yourself you have to post every day even though you’re not providing value and your messaging isn’t super clear, posting on social media. You’re not serving your audience. You’re sort of forcing people to be your client. And that’s why they’re not buying, by the way. And you’re overthinking every word you write or piece of feedback you give how you’re leading or not leading.
Nina: Yeah, there’s a lot of comparison here, comparisonitis.
Kelle: Yeah, totally. Our brains make up a lot of stories about our colleagues or competitors and all of these thoughts are really disempowering. This is that disempowered, masculine energy. There’s a lot of fear driving this energy. And at the end of the day, it’s fear of being vulnerable or, God forbid, making a mistake, of being seen as imperfect, which is human nature, by the way, of asking for help.
This is what keeps us stuck in a disempowered mindset and disempowered masculine energy, fear and scarcity. This is when we tend to burn out and question our ambitions. We’re here to tell you, you don’t need to quit that job to feel better in your life. So where is your edge right now? What’s your invitation? We are the coaches who can help you here to expand your edge and find more balance between your masculine and feminine energies. This is what Ambitious-Ish is all about. We’re going to take a step further next week, by the way, in episode 28 and talk about feminine leadership, so circle back.
Nina: Yeah, because this is our mission, this is our calling, to help our clients find this balance and be unapologetically ambitious-ish, to redefine what success means to them, work smarter, not harder, and actually enjoy the life they work so hard to create.
Kelle: If this episode resonated with you, you have to schedule a consultation with us. We’ll put a link in the show notes, but on these consults we meet you on Zoom for 60 minutes. We ask you some questions and gain an understanding of your challenges in your life right now. We want to make sure that coaching is the right vehicle to get you the results that you crave and create a life that you’re obsessed with.
Nina: And we also want to make sure we’re the right coaches for you, that we’re a want match as Kelle likes to say. We’ll get a feel for where you are today, what you want to create, and we’ll show you how our coaching will bridge the gap.
Kelle: And from there, we decide together, so you take all the awareness and golden value you get from the call with us and you can run with it or you can coach with us for six months. That’s two coaches for six months and it’s all about you.
Nina: Yes. So, check the link in the show notes or schedule on our website kelleandnina.com. We can’t wait to meet you.
Kelle: Yes, totally. Okay, that’s it for today. Thanks so much for being here.
Nina: Yeah. Thanks for being here. See you next time.
Kelle: See you next time.
Nina: Hey everyone, if you want more live access to me and Kelle, you have to join our email list.
Kelle: Yes, we’ll come to your email box every Tuesday and Thursday.
Nina: You can ask us questions, get clarity and get coached.
Kelle: We offer monthly free email coaching when you’re on our list and you’re the first to know about trainings, events and other free coaching opportunities.
Nina: Just go to kelleandnina.com. That’s K E L L E and nina.com to sign up.
Kelle: Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of Ambitious-Ish.
Nina: If you’re ready to align your ambitions with your heart and feel more calm, balanced, and connected, visit https://www.kelleandnina.com/ for more information about how to work with us and make sure you get on our list.
Kelle: See you in the next episode!
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