When you have been disappointed enough times you learn to live in a perpetual state of expectation of the same. You learn to armour yourself with the expectation of more of the same so you can buffer yourself against the pain of another. When all you have known is the hustle. When your mantra has always been ‘I work really hard for all that I achieve, nothing has ever been handed to me’, ‘I can’t rely on anyone else’. What you are doing is anchoring the struggle in your life. It is time to drop the struggle. You will see it with the way you engage with pleasure, abundance or more. You don’t re ..read more

Unconscious Bias is a natural part of being human. If we had to think everything through, everything would take so much time and we would probably not get anything done. So the mind stores patterns or categories for us to match things we see so we can quickly come to conclusions and make decisions. Although bias can express itself as racism and sexism, it is not always the cause. In this case then white people or men are not the problem nor the enemy but their actions which are as a result of their unconscious bias. Malcolm Gladwell in one of his books, possibly Blink talks about a test that h ..read more

The danger of the myth of meritocracy Meritocracy is the belief that, in a given system, success is an indicator of personal deservingness is a myth that we all would love to believe is the reality. It gives us comfort that if we meet the criteria then we are guaranteed success. On the other hand those who did not make it did not meet the criteria. The problem is that this myth does not take into account the systemic barriers that people with marginalised identities face that makes this simple ‘fair’ criteria unreachable. What buying into this myth does is victim blaming. It puts the shame of ..read more

Working while foreign I don’t think we realise how difficult it is, for a second language Black person to thrive in a Eurocentric workplace, which no offence, is the culture or South Africa’s corporate. I’m not saying that should change. I am saying that Black people who did not receive education from multiracial schools should cut themselves some slack if they are struggling in this environment. Just learning another language is not easy, it takes a child about 7 years to speak at a basic level. Many black people will probably have their first academic class in 100% English in their first yea ..read more

Permission to be visionary. In the book: ‘The influence effect’ the authors found in their research that women often find it challenging to have a big vision and felt more comfortable implementing someone’s vision, rather than selling their own. One of the reasons for this, they found; was that women said they struggled to see themselves as big. This was uncomfortable to hear but also made sense when considering the barriers that women face in the workplace and the socialisation or orientation of women from birth to seek to live a life of service to others.I don’t know how many times I’ve hear ..read more

The shame of brilliance I have noticed that the women who have recognised, (not yet owned) their power, their light, their brilliance, have the challenge of shame. The shame that their light shines too bright, their breaks come too easy. While they watch almost in envy their loved ones, their tribe struggle to achieve what they find so easy. So they shrink, they apologise, they find ways to struggle too. They walk around with an invisible apology on their face. They slow themselves down, they work less on their craft, they turn down their volume. They focus all their energy on shinning the sp ..read more

In service to your birth song The was once a social media post making the rounds that claimed that when a child is conceived, women of the Namibian Himba tribe would pray and meditate until the hear the song of that child. This song would follow the person from conception until death. The veracity of the claim is still in question. True or not I love that concept. The idea that we come to earth with a song. With a mission to accomplish encoded in a song. This an idea I choose to entertain. One of the challenges that often come up in coaching conversations with Black women is an aversion to pr ..read more

You don’t have to brave the wilderness. Alone that is. The African worldview always taught that it takes a village. Parenting is a community project. No king rules alone, the concept of a dictatorship that is now branded as an African thing is not how we do things. Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu. We always knew that it took a village. Western mythology sold us the lone hero, the ‘self made man’ who came saw and conquered. We bought it. Work hard they said, stay disciplined. Be so good they can’t deny you. We bought it and for a while it seemed to work. We became hyper independent and self reliant ..read more

Permission to be visionary. In the book: ‘The influence effect’ the authors found in their research that women often find it challenging to have a big vision and felt more comfortable implementing someone’s vision, rather than selling their own. One of the reasons for this, they found; was that women said they struggled to see themselves as big. This was uncomfortable to hear but also made sense when considering the barriers that women face in the workplace and the socialisation or orientation of women from birth to seek to live a life of service to others.I don’t know how many times I’ve hea ..read more

Mine too We live in an age where celebrities and successful people are no longer super human. Social media have brought accessibility to successful people in a way that humanises them and often in the most unflattering of ways. We realise that just like ourselves, they make bad decisions, get played, have their boundaries crossed, sell themselves cheap, get rejected etc. Instead of gloating about their fallibility, we should be inspired. We should use that information to realise that we don’t have to have it all together to have our dreams come true. To dispel the lie that only when you are f ..read more