True Power – Who am I?

Nicola Jones
UK Solicitor, Bermuda Barrister, Hamilton, Bermuda
nicolabda@hotmail.com

Good question! I didn’t have a clue until a few years ago, when I began a quest that becomes more compelling with each passing day, each new experience, each new idea. The more I learn and experience, the more I realise I don’t know. It’s scary. It’s exciting. Do I want my old life back? No! I love my life.

I never thought I’d hear myself say these words three years ago. I was reading a book about finding the life you love or some such title. I read, ‘Does your work excite you?’

‘What a ridiculous question!’ I thought. ‘Of course it doesn’t. Other than for those lucky arty types, does anybody’s?’ I stuck this little message above my desk… ‘if only’.

It triggered something. I became very interested in learning about myself, in general, and, in particular, about myself as a woman. I realised that I was not alone in undervaluing myself and having low self-esteem.

It’s important to understand the difference between personal power and the prevailing concept of power, the sense of ‘power over,’ ‘hierarchical power’ or ‘dominance power.’ Personal power is the only kind of authentic power. It gives meaning to life; it’s creative, positive, exciting and energizing. It creates happiness, lessens stress, improves self-esteem and gives us more power over our lives. It is non-manipulative. Above all, it moves us closer to who we really are, what we are really here to do, and it gives us the tools to create the life we want. What has it got to do with the law? Let me share with you some stories about two events I participated in this year.

Having it all

I designed and organised a conference for women called ‘Wealth, Health and Happiness – Having It All’. It took place over two days, in February 2003, in Bermuda. It was essentially about self-empowerment.

Back to the main question: ‘Why a forum for women?’ Personally speaking, I feel more comfortable among other women. There are no worries about how I look, about coming across as a ‘know-it-all’ in the company of men, being overpowering, whether I sound interesting enough or can find the right topic of conversation. Yes, I can worry about all those things, and I’m sure I’m not alone.

Leading entrepreneur, Julie Palen, CEO of hi-tech business, Internoded Inc, of Massachusetts, USA, told me she finds that women are stronger when they are in the company of other women. ‘Mixed with men, women polarise towards underplaying their strengths or overplaying them. Amongst other women, we tend to be more honest,’ she told me at this year’s gathering of an organisation known as Leading Women of the World.

At Wealth, Health and Happiness, we were fortunate to have the expertise of international family wealth adviser, Leslie Dashew, of the Human Side of Enterprise, Aspen, Colorado, USA. Leslie opened the conference by telling us about the stages of her life, as daughter, as wife, as a woman starting up her own business and as a single mother. She even talked about how her sex education talk with her widowed father had come about. Through her openness, by sharing her private life, she provided the example - and the leadership - for others’ personal and meaningful conversations to take place.

Leslie closed the conference, inspiringly, by seating us in a circle and asking each participant to highlight one lesson we would take with us from this occasion. My lesson was the encouragement and validation I received from the participants, speakers and those who organised the conference with me.

Others said, ‘I shall take responsibility for my own emotions and not blame anyone else’; ‘I have missed having women in my life’; ‘I want to encourage women to fulfil their possibilities’; and ‘ I’ll take the time to do what I love’. The participants identified with one another as women, indifferent to race, age and calling. We addressed our health and the impact of the media on our self-esteem. We spoke of our finances, our values and how to communicate more effectively. We raised issues relating to workplace and careers and moved into the contemplative realm with visualisation and chi (qi) gong. As Julie Holland, an eating disorder therapist said, ‘We can have it all, if we individually define what “all” means for us.’ Would a mixed gender conference have created this space? I don’t think so.

Empowerment

The second of my transformational events was the second International Bar Association’s World Women’s Lawyers conference in London in June/July. I spoke on the panel ‘Economic Empowerment of Women’. I had learned from Leslie, at Wealth, Health & Happiness, and from a leadership conference I had just attended, that to speak from one’s heart is the most compelling way in matters of personal relevance.

At this conference of lawyers, I told my own story of personal disempowerment and how I am getting my power back. Never having done this in front of any group, let alone 300 or so women lawyers, I was quite immobilized with fear the week before the event. I gave myself a little lecture the night before the event which saved me. ‘Get your sense of humour back,’ I told myself. ‘Failure and humiliation are not the end of the world.’

The inner fulfilment of having touched individuals in my audience was worth every moment of the hot and cold sweats of the previous week. Many told me that they identified with my story. I learned that, as women first and lawyers second, many of us have a need to share our experiences, our disappointments, expectations, desires, passions, challenges, successes and our lack of fulfilment. We need validation that those questions and issues, to which we have given no voice, are appropriate questions to be asking and that we are not alone in having them. We need to have and to create spaces where we have this support to grow in confidence and authenticity.

Would I have given this talk to a mixed audience? Absolutely not.

Creating the right environment

Creating the ambience for meaningful and intimate conversation requires extraordinary skill and awareness. Leslie brought these valuable qualities and her extensive experience to Wealth, Health & Happiness and in the process we all became more aware and more truly powerful.

What are some of the qualities that create this space?

• Safety - I need to trust those I’m with and feel free of humiliation and criticism. This requires those present to be non-judgmental, compassionate and to really listen.
• Authenticity and honesty.
• Openness and inquisitiveness.
• Awareness of inner and outer environment.
• Courage.
• Commitment to improvement or change.

When we identify common experiences and feelings, we’ll see the patterns, the repeated experiences, the same hitherto unspoken questions and dissatisfaction. We’ll begin to value ourselves more as we realise that we’re not quite as odd as we think. We’ll start to become aware of our potential. I want to create ways to facilitate opportunities that bring out your best and your uniqueness. Take a moment to imagine what you would do if you could create the life you really want.

Don’t be hard on yourself, with ‘If only’s’ and ‘I should’s’. If it were that obvious, we’d all be bouncing around with joy and I don’t think we’re there. We need to learn about the forces at work in our systems, our families, society, the workplace, amongst other women and in mixed company.

Consider educational psychologist Carol Gilligan’s landmark work, In a Different Voice (1982). She demonstrated that women are not less morally mature. Nooooo … Yet this is what research up to this point had shown. Her research showed that the deficiency was not in women but in the theory by which women had been assessed. She reported that women think of morality in terms of ‘the activity of care’ and their moral development involves growth in ‘the understanding of responsibility and relationships’. Quite differently, men’s moral development involves growth in the ‘the understanding of rights and rules’. Consider the implications of these psychological differences in our legal system grounded as it is in a system of patriarchy that by its nature values ‘male’ over ‘female’ values.

I’ll leave you with this quote from Susan Estrich in Sex and Power, who says,

‘…how easy it has become for men and women simply to ignore the persistence of dramatic inequality; to pretend that discrimination doesn’t exist; that the absence of women at the top is simply a pipeline problem that will solve itself; or the consequences of women’s decisions to be mothers. Three quarters of women and 97 % of men in the America Bar Association study think that discrimination is no longer a major obstacle for women in the legal profession. Being unconscious of discrimination that is practiced UNCONSCIOUSLY confirms it not eradicates it.’

I hope to expand on the implications of and the ways to develop true power in future editions of the Women in Law Newsletter.

Congratulations to Women in Law for making this space for us to connect.

‘You are the storyteller of your own life and you can create your own legend or not.’ Isabel Allende

Nicola writes, facilitates, coaches and teaches in the fields of law and wealth management. She has practised as a UK solicitor and as a barrister in Bermuda for over 16 years spending most of this time working with entrepreneurs and wealthy families. Nicola can be contacted at naj@northrock.bm and at +44(0) 7963 014 044.