My Big Why

Written By Erika Chalkley

Why I do what I do

Honestly, when I look around and I see the state of the world, the mess of our politics, the impact of toxic capitalism on the quality of our lives and relationships, I always think “the reason we're in this mess, is because so many brilliant women’s talent, potential and healing gifts aren't being fully shared”.

I truly believe that if we're going to emerge into a new, more healthy, sane and sustainable future, it's going to be stewarded by women.

Big hearted, soulful women like you and me.

This is why I’ve dedicated myself to supporting women like you in entrepreneurship, artistry and leadership.

I see my role as resourcing a revolution, by support women to thrive as they usher in a new paradigm.

I help them build deeply nourishing lives, so that they can fully share their gifts and talents with the world - without depletion or burnout, or it costing them their health, wellbeing and relationships to do so.

The current model doesn’t work for women

Our current model of success and ambition is incredibly yang and masculine.

It doesn't work for a lot of women and it often doesn't bring our best.

I think that for a woman to really do her soul's work, to really contribute ‘the gift’ she's uniquely here to give, she needs to be deeply resourced and supported.

When I look around right now at the incredible women who are stepping up and into positions of leadership and cultural re-imagination work, too often I see women who are spread too thin - who are overextended, over-functioning and overworking.

We're often trying to emulate a version of success or ways of achieving great things that aren't of our nature.

When you're operating out of alignment with your nature, you can end up doing all the things - but you're not doing the thing - the thing that's your genius.

When you're doing the thing that's your genius, when you’re giving your gift, it's life-giving. Its regenerative, not self-extractive.

My aim with Your Right To Be is is to help women create deep, nourishing lives of rich resource, so they can do the leadership and creative work that's going to steward in a new version of society - and to do it in a way in a way that's life-giving to them - and to the collective.

Why is this so personal for me?

Over the years of self-reflection and healing, I’ve realised (like many of us) I grew up heavily influenced by “good girl” conditioning - needing to please other people, to be likeable, to not rock the boat - in order to feel safe in the world.

I learned to over-give, to prioritise other people's needs, to sacrifice my own wishes and desires. To be in auto-pilot, in service towards other people, rather than really in tune with myself.

So I spent a lot of my time growing up not really knowing who I was, shape-shifting, being all the things to all the people, but untethered from my gifts, purpose and sense of who I was.

As part of this I internalised the idea that success had to look a certain way, and that I needed to achieve particular “great things” in order to be worthy and valuable in the world.

This led to a lot of striving, a lot of insanely exhausting hard work, a lot of overextending myself to achieve what I thought was ‘success’.

So, I got great grades. I got a first class in my degree. I went on and did a master's degree. I got a great job. Built a respected and worthy career’.

There was always a feeling that when I got to the next achievement, hit the next goal … then I’d arrive, then I’d have made it, I’d be worthy. I could proclaim that I was successful, and maybe finally relax!

But no matter how much I achieved, it never quite added up - I never arrived - at the lifestyle I wanted, or the sense of fulfilment, or the meaning in life that I longed for.

It only leads to burnout.

What it did add up to was a lot of burnout.

I had several periods of burnout in my twenties. The came when I was 28. It’s so vivid to me - I was sat at my desk, two coffees into the morning, and my brain just stopped functioning, it was terrifying. I walked across the road to the walk-in GP service, burst into tears and ended up needing six months off work.

I often describe myself as a Type A personality in a highly sensitive person's body.

I have so much ambition, creativity and desire to contribute, but all my life it had been hijacked and pulled out of shape, forced into a direction that I thought it had to take.

This need to prove myself and achieve traditionally recognised markers of success was in direct opposition to my soft animal body, my sensitive nature, and the seasonal, cyclical being that I am. All my life I’d been overriding this softer, more intuitive part of myself in order to achieve ambitious goals.

Goals that upon reflection, weren’t even my own!!

We need to re-evaluate

I quit that job, and began re-assessing everything.

I started wondering for the first time - what does a successful life look and feel like, day-to-day, for me?

From the inside out.

A successful life that doesn't rely on me overworking.

That doesn't rely on people-pleasing or trying to be someone or something that I'm not.

And that doesn't come from neglecting my needs.

I started asking for the first time: what do I want my life to feel like as I live it, not when I reach the next milestone or accomplishment?

In order to ask and answer these questions required untangling some of the most pervasive cultural narratives and norms, ideas that we're indoctrinated with from birth - around what success looks like, what happiness looks like, and what we should want from our lives as women.

I had to let go of so much noise, to delve into what was actually meaningful and life-giving - for me.

A huge part of my own journey of re-imagining my life has been shaped by Buddhist practice - which I discovered in my mid-twenties, along with mindfulness and embodiment.

It’s been a long journey of rediscovering who I truly am, underneath all the layers of who the world told me I needed to be. Of moving away from trying to be someone I’m not and letting go of the persona I'd created and masks I wore.

It enabled me to rediscover my own body, my own experience, and who I am when I'm not believing the lie that I need to be somehow different to be ‘successful’ in life.

It helped me to get in touch with what I truly desire, what I truly value, what really brings me to life and how I wish to live this one life of mine.

Reimagining ambition and success: without struggle and sacrifice

I'm still a very ambitious person, but the ambition (mostly) comes from a different place now.

Rather than being so externally driven or needing to achieve something to prove myself, nowadays I'm ambitious about liberating my creative expression and really offering my unique gift to the world - a gift that I alone can contribute.

The more I am in coherence with who I truly am, the more my gift shines and the easier, more satisfying and pleasurable life becomes.

If that’s not success, I don’t know what is.

As well as redefining success and ambition for myself, this is also the path I walk alongside clients in Your Right To Be.

I think I lived all of this so that I would be well prepared to support other women on their own journeys of re-imagining their own lives and ambitions.

I want all of us to be able to contribute our full selves to this world, and to the future we want to create.

Which means no long leaving any parts of ourselves out, and letting go trying to be anything we're not. It means breaking all the old rules, and creating our own.

Creating Your Right To Be

This is that path that led me to create Your Right To Be and to shape my coaching programmes.

I work with women who want to contribute something significant and meaningful to a new vision of the future, and who also want to live a meaningful, deep and spacious life at the same time.

Women who are no longer prepared to sacrifice either their ambitions, or their health, happiness and wellbeing.

I don't think we have to choose. I believe we can do both - live deeply nourished and wildly successful, on our own terms, by being more of who we truly are and less of what the world told us we needed to be.

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Erika Chalkley
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Redefining Success for Ambitious Women: Beyond the Burnout Cycle
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