Emotions - Sarah Poet

The real reason women are quitting.

I found it was becoming more and more difficult, as I was a part of a team and physical community of people, to remain sovereign particularly in my emotional energy. When we are relational (and we naturally are), the human-relating stuff starts to seep into the crevices of our lives, and work isn’t just work – it’s intertwined and perhaps harder to compartmentalize.

As a woman, I watch myself have a certain habit that goes something like this: when I am invited to be a part of a thing (job, relationship, group goal), I first discern if it is aligned with my values and life direction, and then if it seems to be, I jump right in and give it my all. Key word – discern. I remember an old friend saying to me years ago after a breakup, “I think it’s all about discernment, Sarah.” She was saying – think more about it first. So I have gotten better over the years, but still, oftentimes, not long after this wholehearted “yes” to investing my time, energy, attention and heart into the genuine progress of said job, relationship or group goal, there is often a subsequent time of saying to myself, “Ah shit, I gave too much again.”

What would indicate that I gave too much as a woman? Personally, and I don’t think I’m alone, I experience that I’m not being met by others in the amount of care that I am putting into it. It might seem like I’m caring too much, or they don’t care as much as I do. Another way I experience this is when the value exchange isn’t reciprocal. Maybe I gave too much in a job contract and am finding myself thinking about it when I’m not technically working, taking me away from valuable family or creative time. Or, the last time I was in a love relationship I knew I’d given it too much of my attention (and other resources) when I became sick with covid and he said as if accidentally speaking out loud the passing thought that was going through his head, “Oh, I should bring you food.” And then he never showed up with the food nor mentioned it again. That was the moment I thought, “Oops, I’ve invested more than he’s willing to invest.” It all fell apart not long after, which is quite alright, because I don’t like to live in a net deficit. I desire reciprocity and mutual respect of one another’s resources in places where I invest my energy.

Emotional Over-giving:

But back to the “thinking about the job when I’m not technically working.” This one wasn’t a problem when I was solely running my own business. After a previous career in education and as a school leader, I’d worked to build my own coaching and consulting practice in masculine / feminine energetics (see my TEDx) but then for various reasons – including but not limited to desiring to live and serve within a progressive community, and wanting to raise my son with more stability and positive community influence – I negotiated a part time salary to help build an innovative new project. I got my first “job” in nearly six years.

Because we live and learn what we’re meant to teach, over the years I have developed and taught this system to women called Structure and Flow and my entrepreneurial work has begun to take shape more and more around redefining women’s #resources . I have taught this for years, but then I needed to really lean on this system for women’s resource allocation that I’d developed, as I found myself needing to categorize my time and not allow the various jobs and tasks to all blend together.

I’m pretty good at compartmentalizing tasks and duties, or giving my attention and focus to one thing at one time. For example, I am a single mother and devote time to my son in a certain way and when I’m with him, I’m fully with him. I have coaching clients and run a membership community, and again, when it is just my work there is this joy that I have with it and I never think to myself, “I’m thinking about a client too much.” I do my work, my clients reach out when they need me, and all is great in the exchange (which I worked a very long time to achieve, I will say). I’m actually very good at managing my own energy and boundaries when it’s just me and my business, but some kind of old wire tripped when I went back to a paycheck, and what an opportunity to observe and report from this angle!

Personally, I have redefined the value of my resources. People don’t just pay me for my time, as standard economics has implemented for some time. I define my valuable resources as my time, life force energy, attention, creative energy, my love and devotion, my intuition, my body, and my emotional wisdom. And that is what I charge for. Those are the things I’m considering when getting involved in an exchange, but that’s because I’ve literally redefined “value” for myself.

Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.

She said what? Charging for emotional energy? Yes.

My emotional energy is one of my most valuable resources. It is my intuition, wisdom, my body’s knowing, and emotional energy is the basis of creational energy.

To begin to redefine what “resources” are for us, and then also see the true value of them, we must be willing to look at “resources” and energy, and redefine them through a #masculine / #feminine lens. And when we do, it all starts to make more sense. This is what is underlying women quitting. Stick with me.

Masculine & Feminine Resources are based in Masculine & Feminine Energy:

It’s not a #gender thing, although it influenced #genderstereotypes . Masculine & Feminine are energies within each of us, and we call on them for different aspects of our lives.

I’ll break it down like this – there are feminine and masculine archetypes, and affiliated with those archetypes are certain qualities. Now, we must (must) take time to understand what is an *actual* archetypal quality of both masculine and feminine versus a societal projection of feminine and masculine. Most people, if you just say these words, are going to associate societal projections and stereotypes to this, but I don’t have time to unwind that here, so we’ll move forward with a few quick examples.

An archetype isn’t a person, it’s a flawless example (which people are not). The masculine archetype possesses qualities of singular focus, linear thought, task completion, decisiveness, consideration of all in the tribe, and makes sure everyone has their resources.

You might not associate masculine with those things and instead associate masculine with things like dominance, control, coercion, snagging all the resources, etc. That is patriarchal, or shadow masculine. Also called unconscious masculine. It’s what needs to be cleaned up on the planet.

The feminine archetype in its healthy expression will possess qualities such as nurturance, caretaking, emotional consideration, lovingly willing to open and to give, is very heart centered, has a wisdom based on a full-spectrum seeing (as compared to the singular focus of the masculine), is communal and relational.

The unconscious, shadow, unhealthy feminine would be emotionally manipulative, withholding, seeking to snag the man’s resources, or the harsh feminism of trying to take the power back.

We pay for masculine qualities, but expect the feminine to give for free:

If you hear nothing else from this article, hear this: in value exchanges, both economic and relational, our society as it stands most often will pay for what is valued as masculine energy, and it wants feminine energy for free.

And this is why #women are #quitting – because they are tired of the world just expecting the exhaustion of what is inherently feminine to be normal and for the taking.

When you work in a “job,” you’re typically trading #performance and time for a paycheck. Performance is output, people assume that output leads to profit. All of this is masculine energy also because it’s outward, always moving, always pushing. And if you’re always in “yang,” then you’re not taking enough time to rest, and you’re not going to get to the really good creativity. #Creativity and productivity are not the same thing, they do not at all come from the same areas of the brain or impulse. Creativity has an impulse and needs to be nurtured, production can be rote.

So that means, most companies who are trying to innovate probably want us to feel something. When we can feel, we can be lit up, we can invest our love and devotion, we can care about what we are doing, and we can create better solutions for the world. You’ll notice that what I just referenced is feminine.

But people typically don’t pay for creational downtime, for time to gestate the ideas, to have an emotional reaction to something. Some are innovating in this way, but many are still pushing for productivity and output as a measure of profit, and passing this pressure onto employees.

Women are going to have emotional reactions to work, because we are relational beings and we are always considering the whole. It is the nature of the feminine, and women have feminine energy because we are women, and the world is having a massive awakening in feminine consciousness right now. If you’re missing this, your head is under a patriarchal rock.

This awakening is also an unidentified reason women are quitting. They are #remembering something, and realizing they don’t fit into the status quo, but don’t have the exact words for it. The more a woman remembers the truth of authentic feminine and masculine, the less she will be able to fit into what has been the norm. Thank God. Because she will quit, and she will start something new that does work differently, and she will be on the front lines of innovation.

Redefining value at work to keep women:

We want to care and invest our emotional energy, and many times, it isn’t wanted or appreciated. Correction: it is wanted if someone needs to vent #emotions at work to someone who is naturally empathic. It is wanted for free. But what happens when a woman has an intuition inside of a work project, or wants to bring an innovative agenda item to a meeting, or try something collaboratively that has traditionally been between male decision makers in a room? Can that be heard? Or not? If not, she’ll be quitting.

It is not fun or fair for a feminine-essenced being to have to stuff her #intuition or inner knowing (also called emotional energy) because only masculine traits are valued. It is not fun for her to emotionally labor, on her own time while she’s trying to have an easy going dinner with her kids, how she’s not listened to at work or how she truly senses what is needed, but her wisdom isn’t valued. That is deadening. She has life force, she has energy that she wants to give. She wants to devote it toward something that matters.

Will you redefine “value” in order to keep the women? Will you better listen to the women in your organization? Will you trust her to know the fullness of what she can bring to work, and know that your company will be better off for it? I hope so. When you do, all KINDS of creational energy will flow for your projects! All of that feminine emotional energy remember, is creational, and it wants to go somewhere!

Decision makers are welcome to reach out to me, as I consult with companies to identify and help heal the exact places causing unrest. Many people don’t know how to identify what is blocking the operational systems in an organization because they don’t yet have this language or concept. It’s not taboo to talk openly about masculine and feminine, about where it applies to gender and how it impacts us. Companies who are willing to do this will innovate first and go the farthest in the future world we’re creating. Visit https://www.sarahpoet.com/reconciliation today to learn more and book a consultation with me.

#embodiedbreath #masculinefeminine #quietquitting #greatresignation #emotionallabor #emotionalenergy #creativity #innovation #newparadigm

Emotional labor never motivated any man to change.

conscious, and yet, that actually gives energy toward a “fallen masculine.” He doesn’t have to be stronger if you’re giving him your energy as is.

I learned about the term “emotional labor” a few years ago, but I don’t think I authentically understood it until I studied the energetics of it in my own life.

The extent to which this is an issue in our culture continues to astound me.

I’m kind of all about energetic sovereignty, my own path of masculine / feminine union, wholeness, and energy optimization. I have this whole planner system about women’s time and energy optimization and I use it daily to track where my energy goes. (It’s called Structure & Flow and you can learn more here, but then come back so you don’t miss this key info.)

I know where my time goes. I know where my life force goes. I know how I optimize my energy with superfoods and energy practices, meditation and time allocation. And I know I do not choose to give away or waste my time, which I used to do a lot. In correlation to giving away my time and energy, I wasn’t thriving.

A woman’s greatest resources are her inherent resources – her life force energy, time, attention, mental and emotional capacity, and her body… you know, everything the patriarchy took for granted or expected she give away.

You see, the world is *used to* expecting a woman’s energy, and I’m going to make a generalization here, that men are used to asking for, even demanding, women’s energy and receiving it. It’s historic, habitual, and mostly unconscious.

But we know women are used to over-giving. And conversely, men are used to expecting a woman to continue to give. I invite you to be aware of this in your life and see what you notice. Where do you give your energy because it’s expected, but it doesn’t actually feel good to you? Maybe it’s sex, or picking up the phone when your brother is in crisis, or wanting your husband to be more emotionally aware.

This week alone, I encountered this twice, where men were wanting my emotional energy instead of going deep into their own process, which is what I call emotional labor. Twice this week! And I don’t even have a lot of active male social relationships anymore because I’m so aware of where my energy goes and I’ve stopped investing my time and efforts into elevating masculine consciousness. It’s not mine to do.

I actually had super messy energetics with men for a long time that looked really conscious in disguise. I would invest a lot of time and energy (two of my greatest resources) toward helping male friends and even acquaintances elevate their consciousness. In 2018, I invested time and wisdom writing articles for a men’s group, never getting paid, until I realized that I was only outputting energy and there wasn’t reciprocation or even deep appreciation. I have historically championed men and masculinity so much that I was sometimes investing more energy into motivating men than men were investing in themselves. (Okay, this happened a lot.)

Why would I do this? Well, it’s the same reason we all do it.

We’re hoping, as women, that if we put our energy into men, that men will elevate. We love them and we’re hoping that they’ll be motivated into their masculinity if we put energy into leading him there. We hope that they will see their potential, take us deeper, be able to lead us.

But this never works. Doing this emotional labor for a man actually never works to elevate the man – which is our heart’s hope and intention.

Now that I understand energy, conscious feminine & masculine, and sovereign energetics much more deeply, I can see that a woman investing her energy into a man who is emotionally collapsed, or doing what’s called “emotionally laboring” for a man, actually never motivates him.

If a man is “collapsed,” or isn’t realizing an aspect of his personal power, consciousness, or masculinity, and he looks to a woman to assuage his feelings, and she gives it, this is called emotional labor. Or, if you care more than your man cares. Or, if you’re giving energy, feeling depleted, and not getting anything in return. The historic and perpetual depletion in women is often caused by emotional labor. You’re giving your energy, time, and valuable resources in a way where you’re trying to do his emotional or evolutionary work for him.

Back to why this never works.

A man who is asking for this kind of energy from a woman almost always has an active mother wound (I can’t think of another reason why he’d do this). He yearns for access to the deep energetics of the sacred feminine, and the Mother of creation. It’s his work to do to find this relationship with the divine, and when he does, his masculinity will elevate in the presence of that relationship. A man with an integrated relationship to the Divine Feminine or Holy Mother will not need a woman to emotionally labor for him. Because he’s met by the eternal feminine.

But most men don’t yet know this. And leading a man to this place is really never a woman’s to do. Actually her refusal to try to get him to go there potentially his greatest motivator to actually to there.

So what does a woman do to stop emotionally laboring?

She needs to stop giving him the energy of the mother, the metaphorical “mother’s breast” of nurturance, and the emotional energy.
She needs to be aware of where her time & energy go, track it, and value it more. A modern woman serious about her evolution doesn’t have time to waste on trying to convince a man of anything.
She needs to expand her relationship with the divine masculine, the eternal masculine, the Holy Father. (This is big work and requires great devotion.)
When she has this energy integrated, she’ll be running the masculine current through her body and energy system. She will feel much more whole and complete in herself and through her relationship to the divine. This is where it gets juicy, because this is where she actually starts to *activate the man.*
When a woman is in sovereign energetics (all of the above), she doesn’t need to ask a man to be anything for her, or do anything for her. She’s cleaned up her own distortions of what she needs from men, and she’s essentially good to go. So with this amazing integration in her system, she can hold a new energetic and invite him to participate in relating differently. If she is not speaking to the collapsed places in him, he will notice that she is no longer giving that her effort. When she does this consciousness work, he will automatically begin to activate and elevate. He will notice what she positively responds to, and this is enough that he will begin to change his behavior. This is the law of energetics and it must happen.

You don’t have to do anything *for* a man to get him to change. You have to follow your path, and he will naturally activate. Or, he won’t, and then you will move on.

Women have been orienting toward men and asking men to become more conscious, and yet, that actually gives energy toward a “fallen masculine.” He doesn’t have to be stronger if you’re giving him your energy as is.

I was recently explaining this to a client, and she said, “Oh no! The women have to activate the men?!” She was essentially saying, “We have to do more emotional labor?!”

I said, “No, actually, this is far less work. This is hands off. This is cultivating your evolution and sovereign energy, giving his distortion less or no attention whatsoever, and then watching for how he starts to notice and activate into an energetic match to you. Then give him attention when you see more of what you know he’s capable of. Less attention and emotional labor for the collapsed energy, and all of the natural attraction and affirmation when you see him naturally activating.”

So actually being more sovereign in your energy, and activating him in this new way, is *less work* than emotional laboring ever was.

With much, much greater results.

There are two ways to learn more about this & receive my direct support: