 Association, Austin Global. I'm your host, Phyllis Blythe, and joining me today is our guest, Michelle Waters, a leadership coach and author of the book called The Orange Line, A Woman's Guide to Integrating Career, Family, and Life. The title of today's show is The Interior Journey to a Life of Wholeness and Creativity. Michelle is going to take us on two journeys, hopefully ending up where we want to begin. That is deeply into our own creativity. So, welcome, Michelle. Thank you very much, Phyllis. It's an honor to be here with you. Oh, thank you. I think everybody can hear you're originally hailing from Australia. It's nice to have that accent. Thank you. Lovely, lovely to have you here. So, Michelle, can you tell us what this Orange Line is that your book is about? The Orange Line is a new career track, and it's about enjoying a robust, robust and whole life, integrating career, family, and life, and at the same time avoiding the pitfalls and downfalls of the feminine filter. Oh, what's the feminine filter? Well, how we came up with the book was a research project. We were concerned about the fact that women were not reaching the leadership ranks that we thought that women are capable of. And so, we interviewed 118 women and we wanted to see how they were going with integrating career and family. This study took us quite a while. It was about a year and we had, as you can imagine, a lot of data. So, we had to sift through all this data and find out those that were doing it well and categorize those that weren't and those that were living what we could see was a life that wasn't working in terms of integrating career and family. Had you been working on this work-life balance in your own life? I mean, what brought you to the point where you were going to write a whole book about it? Yes, it had always been an interest of mine. In fact, I'd done research before, previously, at a university and published a paper about, well, the paper's called Family Friendly Policies, Useful or Symbolic. So, that was a qualitative study as well. And it looked at the flexibility that's offered to working parents and then through the interviews and the focus groups that I did, we came up with a whole lot of reasons why people weren't using those policies. So, five different barriers within the organization. What is it that women do when they're constrained by the feminine filter? If we look at the stages, this is the way we categorized the group that we were interviewing because it was a whole age group from the cohort was really from 20 years old. The criteria was women had to have been to college and then we even went through to 60 and 60 plus. So, those stages showed us that there was different periods of a woman's life where she would make different choices. For instance, when she has a family, we found that often there was the choice of will I stay just all about career? Or will I find something that integrates both or will I opt out? And so, what we found there was that women would often opt out or they would damp their career down. And this was a problem because over time that affected their finances and their overall sense of purpose and things that they were really feeling committed to. So, we discovered that and then we also discovered and this was the creative process was there was something else happening which was this belief system about the ideal woman. And to be the ideal woman, we found that women were thinking they had to do it all, look good and be nice. So, with those kind of assumptions, as I said, we call it the feminine filter, there are some issues. There's a lot of issues. There's things like they think if they're going to do it all, I'm responsible for home and family. And my commitments about how much time I spend on something and then, you know, they sacrifice their own or acquiesce their own sense of well-being. And if they want to look and if they want to look good, then they're not prepared to take risks and they catastrophize things that might happen. And if we want to be nice all the time, then we lower our expectations and we avoid asking for what we want. But people can read the book and they can find out a lot more about that. So, do it, you know, do it all, look good and be nice and how do we get out of this bind? So, as I follow where we are right now, you're going to take us through two journeys today. This is your professional life journey going towards and entering the orange line. And I want to, you know, explore how do we get there and what's your methodology for that? Well, so, with those assumptions and the choices that women were making, we've got this, it's either all work or it's all family and what's in the middle. So, you know, we came up with this middle career track of women that were having it all but not doing it all or having this whole life. So, we can see there that it's illustrated. The green line is all about career. The orange line is more like a marathon where you run and then you stop and we use the go away method or example as the example in the book. So, you can walk for a bit. So, you can, you know, slow down and then over time, you can create some balance in your life without opting out, which is the red line. And we introduce the notion of health and spirit. And then we came up with the fact that, you know, that you can have more influence and position and power with, every time I see that word power, it's not power over, it's power with. So, we came up with that. These are the principles that we used. Do what's required. And we talk a lot about perfectionism and, you know, that's a real danger to women having a balanced life if they always have to be perfect. So, do what's required and do what's right. Do what's right in line with your values and do what's right in terms of the employer and be authentic. Just to pause for a minute though. They kind of go, instead of do it all, it's do what's required. And then instead of that looking good, that isn't even on the list. It's just do what's right and be authentic. Nothing about being nice or looking good. So, you have created a new set of values to follow in order to have this work-life balance and to achieve your own orange life path. And what we do in the book, we talk about, you know, the green star when we leave college and everything like, I'm going to be CEO. You know, we have such great ambitions. And then we come along with, you know, close to burnout or the baby arrives and all of a sudden, wow, you know, I can't do it all. And so it's very much every chapter in the book is helping you with six skills that we talk about, which is, you know, first of all, recognizing this feminine filter and then bringing yourself to the equation, developing self-awareness that is absolutely essential. And you can put that at the top if you like, building a support system and expanding your universe and getting comfortable within perfection. And that, you know, that's in terms of parenting as well. I mean, the chapter on called family matters, which is really important chapter. I did want to add a lot more to that about the needs of the child, because essentially, we need to be present when we are with the children. It's not about buying the more things, making up because we're working mums in other ways. It's about when we're with them being present to them emotionally, and affectionately, all those kind of things. That's what they really need. Then, you know, it's making sure that we have still some time for us and that we can, I suppose, be the best version of ourselves at work and at home. Okay. And then you were taking us on to your, where once we've arrived at our orange line life, I think you call it in the book? Yes. And that slide, just leave it for a minute, because it says, you know, this proposed whole life. So here we are. We've read the book. We've got the school skills. And now, we've got this wonderful balance where me, my purpose, my Medicare, we call it, is defined. And there I'm doing both. And it's all perfectly balanced. Well, there's more. And I realized there was more. I felt deeply in my soul, as we're writing the book, that I needed to express something else that was emerging within me. And that was the fact that to really find wholeness, we need to be still. And I just mentioned being present to the child, which wasn't really explained in the book. And in my own life, because I have family in Australia and endeavour as much as I can to integrate career, my husband here and my 98 year old mother in Australia and my children and my grandchildren now over there. So I just felt I needed to explore further. So let me just check in with you. So you were on a career path to create a whole life. And you still felt some gaps that weren't there. And you weren't, you know, when we were interviewing about the show, what we would talk about, I got the idea. I was going to ask you to introduce a creative life through the Orange Line. And you said, yes, that's what I wanted to do too. But I didn't feel so creative. When I got to the end of the Orange Line, I had, I felt like there was more that it wasn't really tapping into my creativity. And, and you were talking about you call the interior journey. Some of the things you talked about in terms of getting to the Orange Line in terms of self awareness and presence, you did, you did have some of those attributes, but it sounds like they weren't fully developed. So you want to take us on this journey from a whole life to wholeness. And why you think that's where you have been experiencing your most creativity and most creative life. Yes, I would love to take you on that journey. There was a number of things colliding in my life when I wrote the book. And I must give a lot of thanks to my co-authors as well, because I did have to go back to Australia when we were going to publish pretty quickly or pretty shortly after. And my stepfather passed away. My second grandchild was born. And my mother was going to be on her own for the first time in, you know, 30, 40 years, 35 years. So I was thinking a lot more about dealing with those kind of stresses in your life. And also, you know, producing, being productive and outcomes. And I learned that through my local parish that there was another opportunity to find stillness on the inside. And so I started to explore that. And I found that when I looked at some of the literature about even creativity, it talks about nothingness and the incompleteness and openness and allowing creativity. And so it was fascinating to me. And it was very foreign. I'd never meditated in my life before. I thought that's a different breed of people. It's not me because I have got that mind going the whole time. However, I started the practice and I kept at the practice. And it was very foreign and very unfamiliar. And, you know, when we've got so many distractions, when everything is scattered in total flux, and basically sometimes we live in fragments, I found the opportunity to find the sacred unchanging and this very beautiful place of knowing a God within or God within. And as I said, it was unfamiliar. And it meant that I had to be very still on the inside and enter into this silent land. It's what I like to call it in a very simple way. And then I started to look at who else had done this. I mean, is this what Rumi's talking about? There was a lot of teachers as well as, of course, you know, Jesus is a lot of saints talk about it. And over time, I've really looked at this deeply. And for a contemporary life, if we want to have a whole life, then the path of wholeness means we can carry that with us all the time, even in the chaos, even in the complexity. So the practice takes time. And for me, it is a real joy in my life. And it only, it's actually so simple. It's scary because for living in this contemporary world, we're used to something very complex, but it means we have to stop and we have to be silent. And in actual fact, it's the language of love. But we feel like we're wasting time if we stop, you know, hang on, we've got to be productive, we've got to have outcomes. But really, in quietude and intimacy with God, we have everything. And there was, I found terrific happiness and freedom to lose myself from unknowing for 20 minutes a day, just to sit and unknow everything and still my mind. So now I can approach life very differently. And when it is busy, and I'm practicing the whole life and it's career and family and the whole balancing, I don't get so, I don't get so hassled. My anxiety has really gone down. And I'm thankful for that, because I was very driven. And now it's like, it's okay. It's all okay. And the fertile ground of creativity that is sparked from that is very, very encouraging. And that was not intended. But I realize that by creating a space for this, creativity emerges. And I call it a grace. It's like you don't have to try. It comes to you. And so speaking to my neighbors who actually are very creative. So once, you got a lot of awards for sound production with very famous artists. And he always takes time to pray. And in the book we had that because women were, they talked about mindfulness and meditation, which again is still focusing on something. And I'm talking about infused contemplation. It's completely different. So let me check in with you just to let people catch their breath and see, you know, just see if we can stay on the right journey. In fact, I thought we were, you were going to talk about the orange line journey and that that would be like a holonic experience that is stays in place and then continue and becomes part of the next, the interior journey, or maybe they're done in parallel, but that they are both, they both have their own integrity. And they're both places from which we can experience the creative life. And for the audience, we're not talking now about the kind of creativity where you show your art or your painting or your dance or your music, we're talking about a kind of creativity that rearranges your whole way of thinking that your, your, your spiritual DNA is something that comes to mind when you're talking about the source of creativity that comes from the not knowing from the lack of being driven from the being okay with a fractured life, that that in that space is, is creativity of, has a life of its own. And what I'm wondering is that you're describing not a holonic set of journeys, you're almost talking about not exactly opposite, but a journey that is perpendicular to the professional life journey. And what I want, and what, and to just give you another feedback, you talk completely about joy and delight when you're talking about the interior journey. And you, you, you're talking about goals and do, you know, even though you don't do it all, even doing just what's required sounded like a chore, but you're talking to me about outcomes of joy and true satisfaction that you're getting from the interior life. And I'm just wondering about how one can come to the intersection of both. And if you, you know, if you have a methodology and you're thinking about, are you talking about taking the 20 minute centering prayer, sit a day where the rest of your day is informed by it, but you're back to your orange line. How do you integrate the two journeys? It's not either or. Yeah, it can be both. You can, of course, you can hold both because we do have to work. Work is good. Where it work, everything that we bring to the world, our talent, whether it's, you know, an artist or whether it's head of CEO of a company, it doesn't matter. It's a map. This changes you on the inside, this kind of contemplative practice. So you carry it with you. And when things are chaotic, it's very easy just to turn inwardly and remember what's there and how to access that and bring that to the world with a different view. It's incredibly creative, but it's very hard to find the words to describe it. But it's not either or. It's about both and and it's a way of functioning and a way of finding wholeness within our life. And it's really a spiritual enlightenment that it's not like you reach the end. It's a lifetime. And there is so many traits like kindness, compassion, other things that are born out of this because we've spent the time going to the source because the kingdom of God is within us. We don't have to look outside to the external. So the orange line is a terrific way of integrating career, family and life. I'm very proud of the work we did. And it's great. It's got wonderful skills. This is another deeper approach to life that doesn't matter what age you are and what stage you're at. This week carries with us forever because it gives a completely different perspective. Thank you, Michelle. Thank you, Phyllis. Oh, it reminds me. I understood that Thich Nhat Hanh was interviewed about his meditation practice and he said he liked to do 20 to 30 minutes in the morning. He said, but if I have an especially busy day, I double it. Exactly. It's the opposite. Instead of cutting it half, he doubles it and then he shows up as a different person. So really appreciate your having written a whole book and spent a considerable amount of professional time working on the orange line. And then in this personal journey, you're teaching us to spend an equal amount of time on ourselves. And that that wholeness is the source of our own deepest creativity. If I could kind of put a point to what I'm hearing that I'm learning from you. So thank you so much. And for our listeners, we really are going to have to leave it there. You have been watching the creative life from the American Creativity Association, the Austin Global Chapter. And we are being hosted by Think Tech Hawaii. Today, I have been discussing the interior journey to a life of wholeness and creativity with our guest, Michelle Waters. So Michelle Mahalo for joining us. Mahalo to our viewers for tuning in. I'm Phyllis Blyse and we'll be back in two weeks for another edition of the creative life. Aloha. Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at think.kawaii.com. Mahalo.