Episode 286 The Power of Showing Up with Marcy Axelrod
Welcome to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer podcast. What if you could hang out with successful women lawyers? Ask them about growing their firms, managing resources like time, team, and systems, mastering money issues, and more. Then take an insight or two to help you build a wealth generating law firm. Each week, your host, Davina Frederick, takes an in-depth look at how to think like a CEO, attract clients who you love to serve and will pay you on time, and create a profitable, sustainable firm you love.
Intro:Davina is founder and CEO of Wealthy Woman Lawyer, and her goal is to give you the information you need to scale your law firm business from 6 to 7 figures in gross annual revenue so you can fully fund and still have time to enjoy the lifestyle of your dreams. Now here's Davina.
Davina:Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the wealthy woman lawyer podcast. I'm your host, Davina Frederick, and my guest today is Marcy Axelrod. Marcy is a best selling and award winning author, a TV contributor, a two time TEDx speaker, and a management consultant. Her approaches have been tested and proven through projects with some of the world's largest high-tech companies like HP, SAP, and Cisco. She has a background on Wall Street with Lehman Brothers and in Silicon Valley, and her work has been highly praised by professors at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, and Cornell.
Davina:Based on twenty plus years of research, Marcy's latest book, How We Choose to Show Up presents a three d nature's model of how humans are designed to show up to thrive. The resulting model is helping thousands of people connect more deeply with themselves, with others and with their experiences and adding meaning to their lives and helping companies around the world to innovate and grow. Showing Up integrates neuroscience, psychology, behavioral economics, evolutionary by and evolutionary biology with top consulting strategies and leading business practices to help people, companies, and societies succeed. So please join me in welcoming Marcy Axelrod to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer podcast. Oh, hi, Marcy.
Davina:It's so good to see you and have you here.
Marcy:Divina, what an honor to be here and to speak with your audience of female law practice owners and builders.
Davina:Yes. Yes. They're gonna be excited to hear what you have to say. So I have, already introduced you, but I would love it if you would tell us about yourself and your background and sort of how you serve your clients and how you came to do this work. So I know that's a complete compound sentence, but it all goes together.
Davina:Right?
Marcy:No. It it absolutely does. And I'll tell you, this work is actually two different, highly complimentary streams because I'm, yes, I'm an author. I'm the, like, choose to show up person. I've been studying, how people show up since I was age six, and I'll and I'll get to how how that started.
Marcy:But what it really led me to do professionally is become a strategy management consultant. So I spent twenty years, you know, ten ten of it with KPMG Consulting as a leader of their high-tech strategy practice. So working in Silicon Valley and all over the world with the leaders of kind of, at the time, the old school high-tech. So HP, SAP, storage tech, Symantec, Yahoo, etcetera. Yeah.
Marcy:So those two streams very much come together because how we show up and how we help our companies thrive, you know, those are the same things. And I think that you you recognize that. Right? As you told me just just now, it it isn't so much the law firm that we need to build. It's the individual who we need to help build themselves such that the law firm then kind of follows from who they are.
Davina:Right. Right. So I wanna talk I I wanna talk about showing up because there's the very literal definite definition of, you know, being physically present someplace. And I don't know if I think it was, Woody Allen who said something like, you know, of it of success is just showing up or something like that. Right?
Davina:But you're talking about showing up. Tell us what you mean by showing up.
Marcy:Yes. I will. And then if it's okay, I'm gonna get back to you why why showing up is my thing. Yeah. So showing up is very much not like, you kinda just check the weather and the time and, you know, you head on out.
Marcy:That's what I call just showing up. And that is what leads us to lay in bed at night and think like, oh my god. Like, I'm just exhausted. What did I do? Where is the meaning?
Marcy:Right? My life's path is diverged from what I envisioned. Or it can lead to a lot of, like, my god. I'm 50. How old?
Marcy:And where's my life? Right? Just showing up is not what what you want. Showing up is a belief set, a mindset. It's a way of living that reconnects us with how nature designed humans to thrive.
Marcy:That might sound like a big thing with the, the subtitle on the book is nature's playbook for creating a meaningful life in the world we want. And Mel Robbins up here at the top, she wrote, Marcy reveals a road map, the road map you need to live a a purpose driven life. So in essence, there's a model. You know? And, you know, when people see it, they say, oh my god.
Marcy:Why wasn't this taught in school? Like, why didn't I learn this in first grade? You know, this is this is fundamentally shifting how I live, like, how I show up. So I've got a continuum, and we're really gonna laugh here because I'm at my significant other's apartment. So there's alcohol behind my I'm at his I'm standing at his bar.
Marcy:It's not how I show up. But, anyway, it's just a funny thing. There, we can there are three levels to showing up.
Davina:Yeah. I wanna talk about the show up continuum, you call it. So three different there's different ways that we show up. Right?
Marcy:Yes. And I'm gonna give you these slides. So there's level one. It's red. That's barely there.
Marcy:There's level two, which 80% of us do 80% of the time. That is just showing up. You gotta do it a good part of the time, but that should not be, what you strive for. And then there's level three, which is which truly showing up. Like, this is when, you know, you're like, that went well.
Marcy:Right? You were prepared. You were well slept. You were thinking about others. You were showing care.
Marcy:Your presence was deep. You felt a sense of flow. Like, that is truly showing up. It is very much a right brain hemispheric activity, and we can we can talk about that.
Davina:So we're talking about showing up is is an emotional state.
Marcy:Showing so I have a whole slide on this. It is number one, behavioral. Number two, intellectual and rational, right, with your frontal cortex. It is number three, tremendously embodied. And number four, it extends well outside of our body because our senses do.
Marcy:Right? I am looking at your face right now, and it's fundamentally changing
Davina:Mhmm.
Marcy:How I'm showing up. You just brought me from presentation mode, Davina, into a withness and a forness with you. Right? Most of us function to human to human, person to person. No.
Marcy:No. No. There's a lexicon of showing up that explains we're not to each other. We're with and we're for. Just like the roots of every tree, we've now understood.
Marcy:Right? In at the level of the growth at a minimum, but we think around the Earth, there there are fungi in the roots that connect every single tree. Right. Where it's the water on the planet. It doesn't matter if it's in the clouds, in the ocean, as vapor in the air.
Marcy:It's all moving around, and it's gonna be in all of those states in a very short time frame, and humans are the same way. So in our life, we have this misunderstanding because our language and our culture and a whole bunch of things mislead us to thinking that we as drops of water in the ocean are separate. Right? But if you take your spoon and put it in the ocean and say this is Davina and I have another spoon and this is Marcy, that'll be really secret. So showing up is a it's an embodied behave hero and in intellectual set of, understandings of the world and ways of being that reconnect us.
Marcy:I mean, this is nature. What I'm trying to do is infuse nature into behavior. It's the only way to save our planet. It's the only way not to be anxious, depressed, dare I say, given the epidemic of suicide, you know, in year old men, in vets, in teen girls. I mean, it's the only way to be healthy again is to get back to how nature designed humans.
Marcy:And just to make it simple, I'll show you a really simple chart because showing up is not this complicated. So I'm showing a kind of like a rainbow target chart here with red on the outside, then orange, then green. Those are our levels, but it shows three roles, self, situation member, societal member. So, Davina, as as owners of law firms, as podcast host, as human beings, as anything, as blades of grass, as laws, as anything, We're in three roles. Right?
Marcy:We are individualized selves, right, distinct from others. But the moment we come into contact with someone in the moment And it doesn't matter if if the person is in our mind or in photograph or in a on a social media post or right in front of us on this podcast. The moment we come into contact with someone, the chemistry of our body shifts, our heart rate shifts, our temperature like, so we are now members of something to that influences the other and creates an emergent re reality for each other. So we are each other's in environment. Okay?
Marcy:So that's that's the self role, the situation member role. But also, what what are we? We're, we're recording a podcast. It's gonna go out to eight plus billion people. Right.
Marcy:Right? So we're so much more than that. You are a coach of of businesses. You are a caring person. You are a daughter.
Marcy:You are maybe a sister, a mother, a spouse, whatever. So we're a member of so much more, be it a race, a community, an ethnicity, a team. So we're we're always in those three roles and so is everything. So is this podcast, so is every law practice, so is every client, and so is every individual law, and so is every negotiated agreement. Right?
Marcy:It's always part of, the individualized thing, what it is with reference to the moment that you engage with it because that's the situational contact point and a member of something larger. So the implications across time. Yeah. I'm gonna stop there. So this is what showing up is about.
Marcy:And when you understand it, believe me, you don't show up the same way.
Davina:So let me ask you this. This is, at the showing up at the highest level, you're highly plugged in and connected. Right? You're you whereas we often sort of see around us. We literally see around us people phoning you in, by call it.
Davina:Right? They're on their phones. They're scrolling. They're disengaged from what's going on around them and the people around them. Right?
Davina:Yeah. It can show up in our business and that we're going through routines and wrote and systems and all of this, and we're not connecting with the people that we're serving in our law firm or any kind of business. Right? So is tell me how that, we'll talk about how we do it, but tell me how that changes your experience in the world if you decide, if you choose, that you're going to show up in in a more connected way? Yeah.
Davina:Well,
Marcy:so the first thing, first of all, you'll have different thoughts. Your embodied experience will be different. You will notice more. You will make connections that you weren't originally going to make. I'm gonna explain this, and it's because we have two hemispheres of our brain.
Marcy:When you just show up, you're largely in this left get it done mode. When you truly show up, you are using a different attention system, and this is the one that feels care. The left side the get it done mode is is is to. I am to you. You are an object.
Marcy:You're just a picture on the screen, and I'm talking to you or at you. That would be like a version of performance mode. Right? Power over. I need to get this done.
Marcy:I wanna check the box.
Davina:You're gonna do what I say and get and then this will have this outcome and that kind
Marcy:of thing. Right. And it is largely a cognitive rational thing. It is it is largely or only in intermittent it is largely devoid of the human to human care. Let me explain this.
Marcy:When we lived out in the Savannah, right, there's a rabbit out there or something. Right? It's a rabbit. I don't care if it just had babies that are no. No.
Marcy:No. It's a rabbit. I'm gonna kill it. I'm gonna eat it. I'm gonna have power over it.
Marcy:There is no oh, look at how the fur reflects the sun. You know what I'm saying? There is and it doesn't it's you are sure of it. So even in the face of contradictory data, you aren't open to recognizing that. I know exactly what it is.
Marcy:I am right. I'm gonna get it done. There is no new thinking needed. There is no I wonder if the no. It's there's a there's I'm clear.
Marcy:I'm gonna get it. I'm gonna have power over. I'm gonna control it. And it's it's an object. There is no care.
Marcy:But while we were feeding ourselves, we also had to not be eaten by something else. So that's why we have two halves of our brain. And then not be eaten by something else is like, woah. Like, I need to survey the rest of what's going on. Is there a predator up there?
Marcy:Is there weather coming in? Do I need to alert the the tribe? Do I need to figure out where where is my cadre of kids that I'm responsible for. Right? So those are different things.
Marcy:It's the right hemisphere that comes online only when we're calm, only in the absence of stress, only in the absence of we have three more minutes, and then I need to move on to my 05:00 meeting. Right? Right? When we are able to be in that calm state, we notice things. That's why I was saying we we don't really see the truth of what's there when we're in this just get it done mode level two.
Marcy:K? Just just just showing up, which is what society conditions us to do all day long. And the reason we don't is because our brain is assuming. I know what she's gonna say. I've seen her before.
Marcy:I've been in the meeting 15 times. You know? I'm gonna assume that their lawyers are gonna come at us this way. So we are representing from our past, our whole set of experience and assumptions and learning what's gonna happen, and we're acting on that. The challenge is if we don't actually reset ourselves to be deeply attuned, and I choose attuning, not presence, and we can we can get get to why.
Marcy:If you're not attuned, you don't actually have an ability to notice that there's something novel going on. What did she really just explain more. Tell me more. And the moment you're able to access that noticing of something new, our questions come up. Help me to understand that.
Marcy:What did you mean? What would happen if this? And all of a sudden, the you're somewhere new, And that's when you're thinking about new things. And it's because your attention system and body are functioning in a different way. I'm gonna just show you how I how I depict this on the on the continuum, and it's the whole chapter is about the neuroscience.
Marcy:But so it's the same continuum, but under it, it shows how in the red, you're very self focused.
Davina:You're in the ventral
Marcy:medial prefrontal prefrontal cortex of your brain. That's the I, me, mine, ego, get it done mode. Right? As you move toward truly showing up, a depth of attuning and presence in your situation shows up. Then you're much more with the people.
Marcy:So it's the the words are noticing and then tuning in. And then once once you tune in, Divina, you start to feel with an actor. You feel with, here's the holy grail. Here's where your business really grows. Here's where everyone signs your your contracts.
Marcy:That's when you're enacting care, and they will feel it.
Davina:Yeah. That was the that was the piece I was gonna ask you about. Is it really when you're showing up at that highest level and you're attuned, you're connecting, people are going to respond to you differently because they're going to feel they're gonna feel it. They're gonna feel the shift and the difference. Is that correct?
Marcy:Absolutely. Now everyone's on the continuum all day long. So are we. So is our whole judicial system. So is the past history that created the judicial system.
Marcy:So are, like, everything, every blade of grass. Right? All of us are moving up and down that that continuum all day. That said, even if someone is in the lower kind of red part part where they're barely there and they're desperate or they're there's some something going on, even then, when you truly sit with them and show care, they will pick up your energy and it will shift them. And then the whole room shifts.
Marcy:Okay? And what you fear would happen is no longer about to happen because the fear dissipates. Right? There isn't pressure against unless you push. Showing up is about the inherent care and love that exists, that created all all of us and not to get too spiritual.
Marcy:But the point is when you look at how humans evolved, the core of it is goodness and, working with each other. Right? Like, you you can't kill a mastodon that's a single person with a stick. Right? You need a group of people in coordinated action, so the evolution of the human has built into us very much working, as an integrated system.
Davina:Right. So it's very interesting we're having this conversation today at this time and space because there's a lot of things going on in in The United States that's causing a lot of discord. And you have a lot of people who are seeing things happen to themselves and other people that they care about or people they don't even know what they care about. And they're they're feeling the anger, and they're wanting to push back against the thing. And Yeah.
Davina:And talk to me about how showing up as our more evolved self can change some of the things that we're seeing that are out of alignment with who we are as a person and we don't wanna see.
Marcy:Yeah. So when we show so the the part that we just said is is that, I mean, when when we show up with care, right, truly show up, which is I think how when you ask people what truly showing up means to them, a lot of them do have a very productive kind of a self focused oh, and I I'm sad to say it, but somewhat ego driven, separate self driven. Yeah.
Davina:You mentioned productivity, like productive. Right? So this is true for high achieving women, high achieving people. There's this productivity kind of thing. Is that what you're saying?
Marcy:There's a productivity bias. However, the way that it's defined can be healthy or not. When you go for the money and the fame and the, title and, that's when you you become part of the meaning crisis because you kind of wake up and say, what's this all for? You know, you don't feel a sense of of of fulfillment. When you show up with care, people feel it.
Marcy:And, ultimately, what we're moving toward at its core is a sense of safety, emotional safety so that people can then let their guard down and start to see you as a human being, not as the lawyer that's against them or someone trying to push them to negotiate for a different number than they really want or whatever it may be. Right? When they feel that you're with them human to human, they can move toward safety and then be vulnerable. And say, well, what would it mean for you if this happened? Or, you know, how can we envision with each other, you know, a better way to do this without also having that.
Marcy:Right? That's how it works. The safety that most of us don't feel. K. The world right now doesn't feel emotionally safe.
Marcy:And I don't Physically safe for some. Physically safe for some. Absolutely. In fact, my daughter on the way to school really called me out on something. She had a friend in the car got it.
Marcy:It was, like, last year. And, evidently, when I asked the friend is whether she was born in the other country. I won't mention which which one or but it's one that Trump's gonna export, unfortunately, or if she was born here. And I didn't think about this. And this must go back a a year, but we were listening to the news on the way to school.
Marcy:And she said, you know, mom, why did you ask this friend that that question? And now in the context of, you know, what's what's going on, I said, you know what? If that wasn't sensitive of me, I'm really, you know, I I apologize. And if you need to bring this up with her and I need to repair in some way, I I will. I thought it was in the context of mentioning, like, your father at come came over at age 10.
Marcy:Right? Anyway, yes. So right right now, people don't feel safe. I think a lot of people grow up with a lack of safety stemming from a lot of different things. Maybe in their home, even though it might be physically safe, they they didn't feel that they were accepted for exactly who they are.
Marcy:Maybe they were more, you know, they were supposed to be more into sports than they were. They were supposed to be better in school than they were. They were supposed to be as outgoing as their older brother. What whatever it may be, that then carries into the work world. And then you add to it that we're in jobs that most of us don't feel are linked to our reason for being or not aren't really linked to what our soul, is nourished by.
Marcy:Right? And then we're supposed to show up and get certain things done, and every 90 days someone tells us how well we're we're doing. This is not how we're designed to thrive. Okay? Hierarchy and levels of quality exist in nature.
Marcy:Think about a tree. Right? There's a trunk, and then there's a branch, and then each branch is these little things coming off, right, and then leaves. However, the hierarchy is interlinked through generations. Right?
Marcy:And then there's roots so but in the workforce, you know, the kind of corporate tree and ladder thing, it isn't linked with DNA. It isn't linked with care. It isn't linked with nourishment. It isn't linked with help me help you be who you are meant to be on this planet, which is, I think, ideally how parents interact with with with kids. So all these things make it very hard.
Marcy:They push up against how nature has designed us to to thrive. So really what we need to be doing is communicating that care. We do it in words. We do it in how we sit. Two people across the table, one here and one here looking at each other, that's a confrontational,
Davina:Posture. Yeah.
Marcy:Posture. You know, one of the things I do at restaurants, and I'm often told, oh, you can't have your chair here. They sit my partner and I across from each other, and I take my chair and I sit next and I sit at a at a 90 degree angle, it makes like, all of these things really, really change things. So how you sit, how you breathe, the expression on your face. Are you leaning in?
Marcy:Like, are you truly showing care? Because that energy will come out and the people will show up to you differently. I I hope I've explained some of how that happens.
Davina:Yeah. I can see it when we're talking about in our work. And especially since this podcast is for women law firm owners, we have a lot of power within our organization to change how we show up as lawyers, how we show up as law firm owners, how we show up how we want our people within our organization to show up and serve our clients, how we're gonna show up and work with our our coworkers and and our employees. So I think that is that is a wonderful, way of sort of looking at it in terms of the impact we can have. I want to talk about the you you mentioned a couple things in your book that I really wanna dive into because I don't think they're common sort of terms.
Davina:One is, self grounding. Can you tell us what self grounding is and and how we can use that?
Marcy:Yeah. So, so grounding grounding is the skill for our self role. We have we have three. Right? Readiness is the skill for our sit situation member role, and then connected with intent to serve, is the skill for our societal role.
Marcy:So those are our our three roles. Grounding is knowing who you are and why. It's really helpful to know the why. So I'll give an an example. I have two TED talks.
Marcy:I'm a speaker. I use my presence on stage and and my voice, as a way to get the ideas in the book out in addition to because I don't really promote the book Beyond pod podcast. Why am I doing this? Right? Why didn't I just choose to do a bunch of ads on Amazon?
Marcy:So when I was six, I lost the ability to speak. Basically, we had just moved. My parents were busy. They were in new new jobs, and little Marcy at age six didn't get the attention any anymore that I was because mom and dad are busy. My sister kind of was maybe in her own world and didn't didn't care.
Marcy:So I instead of acting out, I kind of acted in. So my vocal cords started to lock and, didn't it didn't really improve until I was already at at college, you know, 18, 19. Uh-huh. So I am choosing the path that I am because what success meant to me, given that I couldn't speak, was that one day I'd get on a TED stage. And now I have two TED Talks.
Marcy:And the reason I was able to do that, you know, and send out 18 applications and get two yeses in three weeks. Like, the reason I was able to do that is because I understood where it came from. This you know? And there's so many gifts of the stuttering, and it's not over. You know?
Marcy:My throat still locks. My throat's been locked a number of times on this podcast. Anyway, knowing who you are and why enables you to say, you know, I don't need to feel like an imposter when this client and all their high powered team walks in because I know where this came from right back when I was whatever it was 12, you know, on that team. That's what it came from, but that doesn't define me. It didn't mean what I interpreted then, and it's not who who I am.
Marcy:So grounding and and I recommend I really believe that, therapy of some form is extremely helpful. No. I would not use an AI based therapist. No. They're awful.
Marcy:I I'll I'll just give one sentence about this. They respond in a way that that, meets our need in this very, clinical way and and it's very consistent. It isn't taught to do it eight out of 10 times. It's taught to do it 10 out of 10 times. But then you go and you meet a wonderful person or you're with your best friend, they don't perfectly respond.
Marcy:So all of a sudden, the real world doesn't, like, shows up in this way that's that's, lesser than the, com computerized a AI way, and we don't want that. And and it it can almost create this kind of induction system where we're sucked into tech more because we don't have the fear with tech that we're gonna be let down. Interesting. So we won't feel the withdrawal. Like, we don't wanna interact with a person and feel withdrawal and feel afraid because they're not as good as what our body then viscerally got used to.
Davina:Well, I think that goes against your whole discussion of showing up and connectedness and all of that as well. Right? Because you really can't be connected in that way with an an artificial intelligence. I I wanna go back to the grounding because I I want to get clarity on that. So for me, when I hear the term grounding, I'm thinking again in a literal sense of grounding.
Davina:And, you know, everybody's heard of this practice. We go out, we stand on the earth barefooted, and we're grounding ourselves. And then there's also, you know, there's also techniques for grounding that we can do if we're, you know, we're, like, here, and then we can ground ourselves. Right? Which brings us back into our body.
Davina:When you're talking about self grounding in the context of this showing up, can you explain to me more clearly sort of what that is? You snowing yourself and knowing why.
Marcy:Yeah.
Davina:What is that? How is that if you're if you're confident in who you are as a a person and why you're here and what your purpose is, is that what you're talking about?
Marcy:It's yes. But it's much deeper than, Divina. So that let's let's let's focus on the self. There's a small s version of self, and there's a large s version of self. The smallest self is the ego based self.
Marcy:That's what we're always taught from day one we are. So we are a separate self, and if there's only one, part partner role, at the firm this year, either Joe gets it or I do and that's it. And it's a competitive world. Right? Both of us can't play with the same blue truck in the sandbox at the same time.
Marcy:Right?
Davina:Right.
Marcy:That's the self. And the mirror faces us, and it's about us. The more evolved self, what I call the the largest self, this is the the self that is at the core of most religions. This is what indigenous people have always known, And this is the self that feels that we are much more than just our body, that how we impact the world goes beyond our skin, it goes beyond our skull because we impact everybody. And I can explain this.
Marcy:Right? So there's just some some quick science, that I like to reference. Nicholas Christakis, who's at Yale now, he showed that the 20 people who we are with the most literally have a 45% greater chance of doing what we do. So if we go to the gym, if we drink a lot, if we, are very disciplined, if we maintain an early bedtime, whatever it may be, they are more likely to do what we do by virtue of being near us. And by by the way, it isn't just actions because what we do stems from how we feel and what we think.
Marcy:So it's think, feel, act. All the way. Those 20 people are then with another 20, so now we're up to 400 peep peep people. And, that next group out is 25% more likely to think, feel, and act what we do. So now it goes one step beyond that to your friend's friend's friends.
Marcy:Think think about your best friend's, partner's son. That person who you may never meet is 10% more likely to do what you do, to think, feel, and act the way that you do just by virtue of your showing up how you do, whether or not it's chosen, and it is what you would be be proud of. So the large s self understands truly what a human being is and the impact that we have as we move through the world. And it doesn't just have to be someone watching you. It can be what you choose to click on because that sends a reverberative force through the world because now whatever that is is more likely to be shown to billions of people because it just got an upvote.
Marcy:Right? So the largest self, when you walk in like that, you are less likely to feel lesser than, to feel better than, to feel I deserve, to feel I need to be seen as. Right? All of those those things are some of the most common prisons in which we live that lead us to just show up instead of to have a grounding in who we are. Right?
Marcy:So that we can then truly attune to what's going on in the moment. That's our sit our situation member role because we know that our impact for our from our societal role is just massive.
Davina:So it's be being truly who you wanna be and showing up authentically as that.
Marcy:Yeah. So authenticity and acceptance and permission are are built into the continuum because you're on you basically, you have to accept you are where you are. You can choose to be somewhere else like that. I'm gonna stand up straight. I'm gonna change how I breathe.
Marcy:And, Davina, I am really grateful to be able to learn from you and speak with you. Right? I just went from orange to green. And it's not even just what I said. It was honest.
Marcy:Like, it was heartfelt. Uh-huh. So we're and we have to give everybody permission to be where they are because that's where they are. And we will never really know why they are where they are. So let's not be angry with people.
Marcy:Let's live in compassion. Showing up is a is a system of compassion, of of permission, of acceptance. There's two keywords that I haven't mentioned, and then I'm gonna stop and let let you raise other questions. Mutuality and reciprocity. Can you see how they're built into how nature designed all all of the world to show up?
Davina:Right. Right. Absolutely. And I and I think that's the part where, I think we can never control how somebody else is showing up or their behavior unless we are influencing in them in some way. Right?
Davina:So, like, it's not our change. It's not our power to change. We could show up as who we are, and that may affect things that are around us. But we can't we don't have the power to say, I want this person to be this way or that way. Right?
Davina:So so I think the, looking at our own power to live as who we want to be, right, as an authentic spiritual human being in a body, physical body, right, being that person and say, this is how I want to show up. And by showing up this way, it's going to have it's gonna bring into the world, like you talk about in your book, it's gonna bring about more of a world that I want to see. Right.
Marcy:That's yeah. That's exactly right.
Davina:So let me ask you about the two the situational readiness and the societal
Marcy:Altelligence.
Davina:Altelligence. We have a new word there. So tell us tell us about those two. Well, I we don't have a whole lot of time, but I wanna make sure we get these in for people.
Marcy:I will. I will. Yeah. And, I mean, if you picture a a figure eight, self is on one side. You go the the moment of your lived experience is your situation that's in the middle, and then society's on the other side.
Marcy:And if you picture or figure it, you're going around and going around. And you can ask yourself, what's the real point of inception of of the self? Is it society, or is there something inherent in, like, me as a solo thing? And, well, when you think about it, you go to school and you're kind of taught everything about how society works and then the decisions we make to go to a certain school or to choose a profession or to become an attorney. Well, maybe it's because society tells us it's a good thing to do.
Marcy:So who we are is defined by society so much more than we think. And there's actually a lot of, debate going back hundreds of years philosophically about what came first and what determines what. Does the individual design the society or does the society design the person? And however it happens, the moment of truth is how you show up to that moment, those three seconds. That's what we call the that's what we viscerally experience as the moment now.
Marcy:It just passed. Right? That is where we come into contact with how the self behaves, feels, thinks, and its impact on society. And, so that's that's our touch point. So the skill for the moment, right, our situation member role is readiness.
Marcy:It's a very simple word. Readiness is embodied. It is spiritual. It is a cognitive process. Like, a lot of people think, okay.
Marcy:You take your checklist. You plan. You prepare. Yes and yes. You think about what do I want to have happen.
Marcy:Right? What you really also need to do is be prepared for the emergent truth of what will what does happen. Because to a certain extent, you're always improvising. You can choose how you wanna show up all day long, but at the point of truth, it's an improv dance. So you have to ready yourself, right, for whatever emerges.
Marcy:And this is where what helps you is being grounded in who you are. So that in that moment of truth, you're flowing with the in integrity, with the full foundation of goodness that you can bring and skill and expertise.
Davina:And this is something we do this is something we do
Marcy:We have to practice
Davina:being in touch. We have to practice so that we are ready. So we have to practice our, how do we wanna show up and and our who is our authentic self, and what do we wanna bring into the world, and what do we want? We have to practice those behaviors. So that's our go to instead of maybe old patterns that we're our go to.
Marcy:Yes. Yes. And that's what showing up talks about. I think it's in chapter one or maybe it's even in the what I call the the I don't think I call the introduction. I think I call the introduction chapter one so people read it.
Marcy:But I talk about showing up as a practice, like meditation or sprinting or, you know, whatever. Right? Uh-huh. You know, piano. One of the main things is, you know, gets at our societal role.
Marcy:We are not separate. Thinking that we are each separate beings is wrong. The fact that society and our language teach us that, I mean, this is a lethal mistake. It is killing us. It is making us sick.
Marcy:It is killing our earths. We are not separate from each other. Just like drops of water in the ocean, you can pick them up, but they're not like, they are of a a whole, just like all the water on on the planet, which is why I like that that example. Is it vapor? Is it a cloud?
Marcy:Is it ocean? Is it in is it about to be poured into my plant? It's all of a whole. Right? So our societal role, the skill there, I've made up a word, alltelligence, and what it means is connectedness with intent to serve.
Marcy:What I'm doing is I'm counteracting, what we're all taught is good, which is being intelligent. Right. Means that all all the skills and knowledge that we need are inside of us. That's not right. But they're also not outside of us.
Marcy:They aren't in all the books and movies and social posts and no. That's not right. They're in the wholeness of everything. So what we so the lexicon of showing up moves us from me to we. It moves us from to to within for.
Marcy:It moves into intelligence to intelligence. So that's why I use that word.
Davina:Yeah. Yeah. That, go and going back to the connectedness, how do you answer somebody who says, I'm not connected to this person
Marcy:Mhmm.
Davina:Because there's no way I'm I ever wanna be connected to this type of person or this person who thinks this way or for that. I I refuse to be connected. What do you how do you address that with them so that they understand what you're saying? You're not saying a shared set of beliefs or whatever. You're talking about really on an elemental level and a humanness.
Davina:Right?
Marcy:Nature. I'm talking about nature.
Davina:Yeah. Connected with nature and earth and all that.
Marcy:Yeah. We all coevolve together. So I have two answers. If someone says I'm never gonna do this, great. Done.
Marcy:Let them be anxious. Let them be frustrated. Let them be lonely. It done. Done.
Marcy:Someone has to be open to recognizing that you can feel connected in a very visceral, real, like, concrete way with the more. This is experienced when people go out into nature. Literally, even just listening to nature sounds for ten minutes makes people feel an integration with with with life outside of their physical structure. Dacker Keltner at the Greater Good Science Center at the University of Berkeley did an experiment with, he took people, into an old growth, forest. And after something like thirty minutes, they were more likely to be helpful.
Marcy:Like, you know, he would drop his paperclips or things. It's like a typical, like, psychology study. And all of a sudden, everybody bends down and picks some money. Interesting. But it isn't just basic things.
Marcy:They're more you you think different thoughts when you are in a state where you can be open. So the question is and when I say open, I mean, to perceiving. There's so much more that's out there, and we miss 99 per percent of it.
Davina:Yeah. Than just what's going on up here, the voices in our
Marcy:head. Right. Even even Einstein said, do not let the intellect be our god. It is blind to ends and means. Meaning, it's the heart.
Marcy:It's it's it's our entire perceiving system, which doesn't simply stop with touch, taste, smell. The fact that you can you can perceive my emotion through this screen between, Boulder and Long Island. I mean, doesn't that explain that we there's so much more that we can know
Davina:if Right.
Marcy:In and if we're open.
Davina:Right. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. I hate that we're running out of time because I could probably talk continue to talk with you for a while about this topic.
Davina:But, before we end, just tell us where we can get your book and how we can connect with you using the interwebs, on social media or wherever.
Marcy:Yes. Yes. And then I'm also gonna quickly mention how people can shift into this open state. So I'm @choosetoshowup.com. The book, How We Choose to Show Up, it's on Amazon.
Marcy:I'm on LinkedIn, Marcy Axelrod. In terms of, like, quick easy ways to to perceive more and get into this caring state such that you can perform better and such that people feel drawn to you. Really easy things. Pause before you walk in to be with someone. Breathe.
Marcy:Feel yourself relax, and try to feel the inherent goodness that's out there. Feel it like, try to receive it. When you have twenty minutes or so, there is a very well proven technique called the wheel of awareness by doctor Dan Siegel. He's the he's the kind of leader of the whole field of medicine called interpersonal neurobiology. And just the name of that explains, right, what it is.
Marcy:So it basically has you simply sensing your sensing systems then turning that out toward others and then turning it back so that you receive from them. So from the person you can't stand. Give them compassion and then feel it coming back, and you will not show up to them the same way again, and they will feel the difference. It might take them 10 times to actually behave in different way toward you, but they'll feel it. And now you're on a new path.
Davina:And then we'll confuse them, and and that's great if we confuse them for a little bit. Alright. Marcy, thanks so much for being here and discussing this. This is wonderful, and I know that it's gonna give a lot of people, what they need right now to maybe shift direction in their lives and, influencing the other people around them to see more of what they want in the world. And I thank you so much.
Davina:I've enjoyed our conversation immensely.
Marcy:Oh, Davina. Well, thank you so much. I really hope that people have found it, helpful. And you'll definitely grow your business faster if you if you truly show up.
Intro:If you're ready to create more of what you truly desire in your business and your life, then you'll want to visit us at wealthywomanlawyer.com to learn more about how we help our clients create wealth generating law firms with ease.
