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Hello, Ellen here! From a young age, I've been on a path...
It’s like I’ve been drawn forward with calling…with a sense of clear determination. Now my path was definitely not straight…or easy, but it was one I always chose. I believe in radical self-responsibility. I believe we create our own destinies through our intentions and attentions – our beliefs, thoughts and emotions – our actions and reactions. From a young age, I witnessed how I could create my own reality, both positive and negative experiences, by how I chose to think and what values I let guide me.
I finally got here, but it took some intention
I am a regenerative leadership coach – here as a trusted partner and guide into living your highest potential, helping you build new capacities and the steady courage that will allow you to set and meet ambitious goals. As a foundation to my coaching, I’ve developed a framework, process and set of experiential learning practices based on my own life-long journey into freedom, growth and joy to empower female leaders in becoming the successful change-makers they are called to be. This is how I got here…
Throughout my entire life, I’ve cycled through a predictable pattern. I’d take time to intentionally center myself, get clear about who I wanted to be and what I wanted to feel at that time – and I’d set my attention on that. And you know what? Whatever I put my focus on would come to fruition in some shape or form – for real!
But, each time, after a while, life took over and I was back on auto-pilot. I would no longer be driving. When something, usually negative, would wake me up to the realization that the old vision was no longer serving me. I would, again, get centered and put my intention and attention on what I wanted then. And then I’d go live that out. Until one year, the earth seemed to shift under my feet.
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...after a particularly enduring sprint, my body and mind said, 'no more!’ The neurons in my brain zapped, I had a seizure...
The spark that lit the flame
I was completely immersed in my job, moving at the speed of light to accomplish as much progress as I possibly could, as quickly as I could. All of my attention was on work outcomes. Thoughts of my own personal development and destiny all but disappeared in this fury to achieve. One gray, chilly morning, I was walking into my office with earbuds in, half-listening to some podcast I can’t even recall, when three words jumped out at me, they weren’t even said in succession. Freedom. Growth. Joy.
As I heaved off my bag and took off my coat, I quickly grabbed a yellow sticky note and wrote down those three words and slapped it up on the side of my computer screen. Those words had reached out to me through my earbuds and found me – I knew, that is what I truly wanted: freedom, growth, and joy.
In the months ahead, I’d stop and look at that sticky note on the regular. I’d close my eyes and I’d feel what it felt like to be free, I’d breathe in and out feeling what growth felt like and I’d take another breath sensing into pure joy. It would take all of one minute, but it was powerful. I truly felt freedom, growth, and joy no matter what was actually going on at that moment or that day.
Many months later, in coach training, I found out I was practicing something called ‘embodiment’ and I was literally rewiring my brain with that regular practice – it’s one of the powerful tricks of the trade.
My abrupt wake-up call
After about three months of feeling into freedom, growth and joy, my world as I knew it began to unravel. It all started when a sudden debilitating neurological issue took me down at the end of October 2019.
While I loved what I did, I was always working at a fevered pace, for years on end, while raising two very small children. I was sprinting in a marathon (can you relate?), knowing that so much depended on me being able to accomplish more (eh, um…the looming climate crisis). Until one day, after a particularly enduring sprint, my body and mind said, ‘no more!’ The neurons in my brain zapped, I had a seizure, and my short-term memory took a three week break, leaving me without my rapid-fire, multi-tasking, super thinking abilities that made me, me. And…the MRI picked up an unrelated brain tumor growing around my optic nerve.
Everything was called into question
At that point in my life I was objectively doing really well – I felt successful, important, needed. But when my injury slowed me down for just a bit, I saw beneath the bustle, the hustle. I began to question: how was this ‘success’ serving me and my near and dear?
And then, what seemed like moments later, March of 2020 came and with it the global pandemic and the last-minute cancellation of my brain surgery. And then in May, George “Perry” Floyd was murdered a few miles from my home, my neighborhood was torched by white nationalists, and my community was grieving generations of unchecked systemic and institutional racism and oppression.
The year that followed was a challenging one for so many reasons. So many people suffered and the long-term suffering of Black, Indigenous, and people of color in America was laid bare. My city and the world awoke to the reckoning of deep racial injustices embedded across our society as we were living in lock down due to the COVID pandemic. And my own job shifted from growing, empowering and achieving to shutting down multiple businesses with nearly 100 employees, many of whom I called friends.
The awakening of living in the now
In the slowing down of COVID-times, the rapid shift of reality and the inability to use my rapidly-paced thinking mind, I was forced to live in the now. It opened me up to the fact that my life was not actually designed in my own best interest, that our society wasn’t designed in our own best interest. It became clear to me that our marginalization of people and the planet stemmed from our marginalizing ourselves.
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...I wanted to help others find their freedom, growth, and joy, so they could live their passions and tackle their dreams while feeling resourced and fulfilled.
My purpose arose from silence
Twelve months after COVID began, my own job officially ended after the closures. My thinking brain was back – tumor still intact – and I interviewed for a few jobs. But my heart wasn’t in it. I knew I needed time to heal, to hear myself think, to set my new path for what the ‘now me’ really wanted. Begin my cycle again, right? I set aside five days and went into the woods alone – a hermitage – to connect with my source.
Always trying my hardest, always giving it my all, always thinking about what is best for everyone around me and the mission of my organization – isn’t that the way it should be? But my heart was telling me to take a break. To be still and listen. I’ve always been a doer. What would it be like to just be? After days of journaling, meditating, walking, and sleeping, I found my answer. My heart had spoken.
When I emerged from the hermitage I had resolved to take a break from my current career, step fully into the unknown and follow my long-time passion and dream to work for myself. I was ready to use my skills and experience to build the capacity of purpose-driven, female change-makers and get trained to be a professional coach. I wanted to help others find their freedom, growth, and joy, so they could live their passions and tackle their dreams while feeling resourced and fulfilled.
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...working with me, you'll actually be rewiring your brain to possess the resiliency, resourcefulness and creativity to be the transformative change-makers that you’ve been called here to be.
The leap
I officially shifted my focus of how I can best contribute to addressing climate change. My new mission was to empower female leaders working on climate and energy – those I’ve worked along-side for years. The women that give life their all, want to feel fully alive, and make a positive difference in the world. I combined my MBA and years of CFO/COO/CHRO experience with my own personal journey into wholeness and transformation to become a regenerative leadership development coach, supporting others on their own path into living their highest potential. To transform the world, you must begin with yourself.
Should I risk the leap!?
When I declared my intent to my nearest and dearest, I have to admit, my old sneaky friend, self-doubt, came to visit. Should I really do this? Could I really bring this idea to life – enough to support my family? Those were my exact thoughts as I was packing up my office when I came across my 2020 Planner. An audible laugh escaped my lips – ha, 2020 Planner! Who could have planned for that year!? Tears welled in my eyes. I flipped through the pages and what caught my eye, but my sticky note that read: Freedom. Growth. Joy. The tears fell now. I had done it. With my new commitment to coach and empower female leaders, I felt free. Boy had I grown that year! And my new chosen path was based in joy, joy, joy!
How my insides became my outsides
Self-doubt took a hike. I had found freedom, growth, and joy. I felt the power of self-actualization. I created the reality I was longing for by getting clear on my intention and then setting my attention on it. Now, if I followed my normal pattern, I’d live this out, eventually go on autopilot until another negative event struck to wake me up. After all, that’s my trigger to realize that I am no longer choosing and start again, right!? Well, ya know what? This time, I was going to keep choosing!
This time I used my experience in building systems, structures and processes to distill my journey into something I call The Path – a journey into living your highest potential to serve as a framework and set of practices to support my own personal growth and the growth of my clients. It is a reunion with presence, your own body-based wisdom, and your higher self, so you can stay focused on what matters most.
Living my purpose - helping others doing good, do great!
This might sound like fluff, but by working with me, you’ll actually be rewiring your brain to possess the resiliency, resourcefulness and creativity to be the transformative change-makers that you’ve been called here to be. We can set ambitious goals and achieve them from a place of calm, confidence and courage. It’s where leadership development meets self-actualization – and it works.
- COACHING: I offer regenerative leadership coaching that is one-part healing, two parts goal achievement and 100% the highest expression of you. In 1:1 coaching sessions you’ll begin to see larger contexts, new possibilities for action, and have clarity and freedom of choice. You’ll find yourself to be a resourceful, resilient, and authentic leader, ready to take on any challenge.
- STRATEGIC ADVISORY SERVICES: I am also offering my three favorite advisory services: 1) As a former COO/CFO/CHRO and experienced executive strategic advisor, I’m ready to tackle any challenge with you; 2) I can guide you through a goal-setting & mapping process and provide just the right amount of structure to help you stay on track; 3) and I’m your experienced heart-centered philanthropic advisor to help you decide how to invest in climate solutions that matter most to you.
What's your story? Better yet, what do you want it to be?
Now that you’ve heard my story, I’d love to hear yours. Book an discovery call or shoot me a message. Together we can transform ourselves to transform the world by living at our highest potential.
Wishing you freedom, growth & joy,
Looking for fulfillment? Download my FREE eBook, The Path – A Journey into living your highest potential
*By signing up, you’ll join my newsletter where I share inspiring and helpful content and offers. I never sell your info and you can easily unsubscribe at any time.
LEARN
EXPERIENCE
ADDRESS
- ellen@freedom-growth-joy.com
- 3544 37th Ave S
- Minneapols, MN 55406
True freedom comes to those who choose it.
Land acknowledgement: I live on traditional, ancestral & contemporary lands of the Dakota people near Bdote, the confluence of the Minnesota & Mississippi Rivers.
