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Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008Girlphyte Magazine recently interviewed Charlene on the principles women can help women build the best life possible. Read on for female insight on confidence and empowerment!
Q: Confidence and self-worth are elusive goals for so many women. You’ve achieved so much. Where did you find your courage?
A: When we choose to act with courage we open the floodgates to our authenticity. Megan Raphael and Jennifer Byron said this when they wrote the book “The Courage Code” – a collection of stories on women who have rediscovered their self-worth and confidence. We build upon these ideas as a result of our soul journey and life experience – they are not necessarily skills we are born with. When we stop choosing our course of action out of a sense of obligation or desire to keep everyone else in balance, we no longer need to compromise ourselves by diminishing our own value. Out this simple act of self-love, we are healed and empowered. Embracing our own authenticity is about self-celebration, whether in the form of choosing a new career, writing poetry, or learning to dance when we are in our 60’s. Authenticity builds upon the awareness of our own unique gifts. One of my own life lessons was to learn to love myself, develop my voice, and teach others to do the same, so I gave up my left-brain corporate and research world in favor of teaching women to rediscover who they are at a fundamental level. So, my own brand of courage comes from demonstrating that which I need to claim and solidify.
Q: How does the Goddess principle inform a woman’s work ethic?
A: The Goddess is a powerful metaphor of a woman’s self-image. Sometimes identifying with female deity makes women radiate with awareness that they are part of a huge, cosmic equation, but mostly, it’s about opening our hearts as fully as possible. To stop denying our human experiences as a way to evolve our collective consciousness. Culture and society has devalued that for so long, it’s time for a Goddess revival. When we begin to know the feminine principle, we begin to understand the path to human evolution. Part of this is about practicing the power of intuition, patience, a reverence for nature, and the knowledge of the holy unity of all things – all fabulous and natural capabilities of women.
Q: As you share these principles with women, what is the most startling transformative moment for women?
A: They realize that they want to marry traditional masculine ideas of rule, reason, passion for order, structure, science, control and left brain with a feminine perspective on matters. They understand that a balanced life, and self-actualization, comes from a balanced point of view, meaning that we must be aware of both sides of who we are. They realize that validation from having a strictly male value set on success and careers is no longer necessary.
Q: Women are such effective communicators, contributors and connectors yet continue to be undervalued in the workplace. What is the key to changing the environment? Or can we only change ourselves?
A: Because women learned the corporate work tradition from men, they thought loosing their emotional depth, intuition, and seeing the gestalt improved performance. This is the first assumption to unseat when we desire change. A woman’s brain works differently than a man’s. Generally, we have 33% more neuronal fibers in the corpus callosum, the dense fibers that link the two hemispheres of the brain. Women have more connecting neurons between the left and right brain, so we tend to use both sides more than men when problem solving. In the workplace, women have been conditioned to think like men – believing that compartmentalizing problems and lineal thinking is the only way to manage people and complexity. To change the environment, first learn about your eyes, ears, brains, and all the amazing gender-based facts of who you are. Be empowered by how you are wired. Harness that, celebrate it, and know you are not a mini-man. Congratulate yourself on your inherent capabilities and bask in your own wonder. When you do that, circumstances and people will change around you.
Q: Your work with the homeless reflects the depth of your belief in the ability of your approach to reinvent women’s lives no matter how desperate their circumstances. What is the most important thing you say or do when connecting with these women the first time? Have they surprised you?
A: I teach them their reality changes when they believe in the power of the mind. Defining their expectations of life, relationships or job success is first about moving forward into the present moment and shedding guilt, fear and self-doubt. We can’t succeed at anything if we have no room for personal growth because it’s often taken up with a victim mentality and unforgiveness. Emmet Fox, a 1940’s Unity Minister said that without clarity of knowing what you want and feeling the passion for it in the mind first, the universe can’t get a clear message on manifesting your reality. So, I teach the homeless about mental equivalents and affirmations because these are concepts easy to grasp and it helps begin to develop new automatic programs in the mind. Overall, they are incredibly motivated to change. That’s been a real myth buster.
Q: What is your legacy to women? How do you wish to be remembered?
A: My vision is to get as many women as possible to understand that they are individual sparks of Divine power. A woman is a whole image of creation, not a sub-set. There is nothing blemished, sinful, or unworthy about being a woman. When women finally claim they are part of the universal I AM, which means they are timeless and unlimited, they will know they can’t be anything else. If am a teacher that walks this planet and can successfully communicate those ideas to both men and women, I will cross over to the other side with a kick in my step.
© The Goddess Network, Inc. and Charlene M. Proctor, Ph.D. 2007. All Rights Reserved. See http://www.thegoddessnetwork.com/connect.php?page=eshow for more empowering thoughts! Register for The E-Show, a series of enlightening lectures!