Rebalancing Life and Leadership with Valerie Brown

Are you tired of the relentless pursuit of success and craving a deeper, more meaningful life? In this empowering episode of Women in the Arena, we sit down with Valerie Brown, the inspiring co-author of "Healing Our Way Home." Valerie's remarkable journey from attorney and lobbyist to a mentor for leaders offers profound insights into resilience, rebalancing life, and living with genuine compassion.

Valerie shares her transformative story of overcoming poverty to become a beacon of self-awareness and connection. This conversation is a must-listen for anyone seeking to cultivate a stronger sense of self, belonging, and understanding of our shared human experience.

Key Takeaways:

1. Resilience: Discover the essence of resilience and how to bounce back from life's challenges.
2. Life Rebalancing: Learn the art of rebalancing your life to prioritize what's truly important.
3. Compassionate Leadership: Understand how genuine compassion can transform your leadership style.
4. Self-Awareness: Explore the significance of self-awareness in personal and professional growth.
5. Connection and Belonging: Unravel the deeper quest for belonging and understanding in our shared human experience.

Why You Should Listen:

• Gain invaluable insights from Valerie Brown's transformation journey.
• Learn practical strategies for leading with compassion and resilience.
• Discover how to rebalance your life and prioritize your true values.
• Be inspired by Valerie's story of overcoming adversity and finding a deeper sense of connection.

Call to Action:
Tune in to this enlightening episode to join us on a journey of self-discovery and compassionate leadership. Don't miss the chance to be part of this transformative conversation with Valerie Brown.

https://valeriebrown.us/

Thank you for all of your support.

If you like what you hear, please go check out more episodes at https://womeninthearena.net/

Want to connect with me? You can click the "let's be friends" link and send me a message!

***Last thing- This is my WISH LIST of interviews:

• Joan Jett
• Dolly Parton
• Viola Davis
• Ina Garten

Maybe you can help a girl out...***

Go check out all of our episodes on our website at: https://womeninthearena.net/

If you'd like to connect, reach out to me at audra@womeninthearena.net

***One last thing...I have an interview wish list because a girl's gotta dream

• Viola Davis
• Dolly Parton
• Ina Garten
• Joan Jett

Maybe one of you can help me out!

Thank you all for supporting this show and all Women in the Arena!

Transcript

Audra: 0:31

Welcome in everyone and thank you once again for joining me this week. This week, I am joined by Valerie Brown, who is the co-author of the new book Healing Our Way Home. It's this really interesting, provocative story or a collection of stories, I should say about transformation. Valerie herself has transformed her entire life. She is a former attorney as well as lobbyist, and now she teaches leaders on how to be human-centric, lead with compassion and make sure that everybody's voice is included in the room. It is my pleasure and my honor to introduce to you Valerie. Valerie, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show.

Valerie: 1:19

Audra, it's a pleasure to be here.

Audra: 1:22

I'm very. We don't have much time today because your publicist keeps a tight clock, so I'll make us move quickly. What inspired you to write this book? First of all, I should back up and say what inspired you to write this book. First of all, I should back up and say what is Heal Our Way Home.

Valerie: 1:39

What is that? Hmm, that's a great place to begin. So we live in a beautiful and a needful body and a beautiful and needful planet, and the healing is ongoing, you know, of the planet, of our bodies, and so many of us think healing is only about from sickness to wellness. But healing is really a manifestation of living a life of resilience, rebalancing, prioritizing what's really important, because we can't do everything, and so when we look at our lives and we look at what really matters and we put those things ahead of the, you know, the others, we say yes to those things. That's healing, and we're already on our way home to ourselves.

Valerie: 2:44

So this idea of coming home, one of the things that the Surgeon General said in a stunning report a few years ago, even before COVID-19, was that in America, and actually I would say probably worldwide, that we're facing an epidemic of loneliness, where people lack a sense of connectedness, belonging, a sense that they have a home, a true home in themselves, which is the first place to have a sense of connectedness, to feel connected to your very self, our own emotions, our body and our mind, and then a sense of feeling home in the world, like we belong. I belong here, and that feeling of loneliness is really pervasive in our culture for many, many reasons, you know. Certainly the use of electronic devices, smartphones, creates a lot of sense of isolation. And I could go on, I won't, but I think you get the picture. So this is really what healing our way home is about.

Audra: 4:05

Well, as you were speaking, I was thinking of the words that you were using, of re-examining, re-prioritizing, really considering where we are. That describes most of my audience. That is actually the reason. One of the reasons why I created this show is because I was there doing the very same thing and looking for connection. I didn't realize that I was lonely because I didn't know what I was longing for. I didn't know what. I was lonely because I didn't know what I was longing for. I didn't know what I was missing, and what I was missing was a sense of self, and that is the feedback that I had been, that I have received from my audience, that that's what they were also missing as well. And you, you just very poignantly focus on that and went. You know what? This is not just you. It's not just you, audra, it's not just your audience, it's everybody.

Valerie: 5:32

Is that what inspired you to get together with your two, part of the motivation to write the book? So a little bit about my personal background. You know, as you described, I began, as you know, like before I knew who I was. I passed the New Jersey bar exam in 1983. Like I had no idea, like who am I, what am I? I just did it, and mainly because I was on the run. You know, I was running from poverty, running from violence.

Valerie: 6:00

I grew up in Brooklyn and Brooklyn was not the swanky place it is today. It was a place people wanted to like leave, and so I was all about like making money and getting out of Brooklyn and I'm, you know, I'm not proud of that. That was, you know, quite crass. And so I was very much on the run. I was on the run from myself, on the run from a sense of purpose or my own identity, and really hyper-focused on achievement, on being the quote-unquote successful lawyer. All the while, like many of the people in your audience, I was feeling something's not right here. Something's not right.

Valerie: 6:53

And one day I was in my brother's apartment in New York and we were just sitting around. He opened the New York Times, the newspaper and there was a photograph of Thich Nhat Hanh, this Vietnamese Zen master, master of mindfulness meditation. He happened to be giving a talk at the Riverside Church, which was just down the street from where we lived, and so my brother, trevor, knew absolutely nothing about Buddhism, he knew absolutely nothing about Thich Nhat Hanh, but he knew a lot about me. I had become the type A hyper-aggressive lawyer and he said why don't you go down and listen to this guy?

Valerie: 7:44

And I did, and I walked out of there, I have to say, skeptical, because I thought, wow, everything he was saying was about love and compassion and I thought, if he's right, what have I done? And so there was a lot of skepticism, but a nerve was touched and I realized something was there in what this man had said. So I started practicing meditation, actually as a closet meditator, because at that time, in 1995, it was not acceptable, not acceptable as a Black person, not acceptable as a lawyer. And so I hid it and by day I'd be in my business suit, you know, lobbying in the halls of Congress, and at night and on weekends I'd be practicing meditation. And, of course, over time, this led to a kind of identity crisis.

Audra: 9:03

And, of course, over time, this led to a kind of identity crisis. In fact, people would say stories of transformation included in this book, and yours is just one of them.

Valerie: 9:13

Yes, mine is one of them and I tell in greater detail about the transformation, what happened.

Audra: 9:24

And you are now an ordained minister, correct?

Valerie: 9:29

I'm a Buddhist Dharma teacher and I'm also a Quaker. I'm a member of the Religious Society of Friends.

Audra: 9:37

How do those two coexist in the same space. I mean, those seem completely opposite, but there's got to be some synergy there. I just don't see it immediately.

Valerie: 9:50

Yeah, People often say that, but they're really quite. They're really quite connected, as are most things in life. So the coming to become a member of the religious society of friends was also like a mistake, kind of stumbling upon it. One day I went to a retreat way out in New Mexico in a 25,000 acre ranch and the woman leading the retreat happened to be from the Philadelphia area where I lived, and she was a Quaker. And so we got talking and she said, oh, you live in Philadelphia, that's the epicenter of Quakerism.

Valerie: 10:37

And when she began to talk about Quakerism I could see the connection between the Quakers' testimony or beliefs in equality and simplicity and peace. All of these aligned so beautifully with Buddhist faith and practice. So I became curious and I started to attend these Quaker meetings and what I found was a lot of overlap. And, just as an example, the Quaker testimony on equality very much aligns with the Buddhist philosophy and Buddhist teachings on equality and equanimity and non-discrimination. So there are many, many parts of alignment, though at face glance it might seem like these are polar opposites.

Audra: 11:31

They do. It makes me curious as to go and read about each one of these, because these are subjects I would never even consider because they just seem so out there. Seem so out there, but you are a person that is now more at home in your own body, you're more comfortable in your own skin, and you're teaching other leaders to lead from that place of compassion and empathy and seeing people as people rather than assets or employees. What has been some of the greatest results in your teachings of that style of leadership?

Valerie: 12:18

Really appreciate that question, audra. So I would say there are a couple of things. The first for anyone in the workplace or for anyone in life, focus is incredibly important. If we're going to lead a life that's meaningful and purposeful in any way, or just to get stuff done, we need to be able to focus. We need to be able to sift through the myriad of eye candy and distractions. We live with continuous partial attention, you know, with our attention being moved from thing to thing to thing to thing, and so to be able to gather our attention and say, no, this is really important. I'm going to give my effort, my my attention to this. That's huge. Focus is considered the new IQ today and in the business world it's a power skill. I'm about ready to lead a 11-month cohort of women in big law meaning in big international law firms, and the program that I'm going to be teaching them is on how to focus. So that's one skill.

Valerie: 13:51

The next skill that we talk about in the book as well is listening, and this is another skill I'll be teaching in this program.

Valerie: 14:02

Listening is hugely underrated, right, and it's undervalued and overlooked, and typically we're listening for rebuttal, we're listening for disagreement as opposed to listening to make a connection or to understand another person.

Valerie: 14:21

If you really want to shift and transform your life business life or home life it is learning how to listen, and I think that was one of the greatest things that I learned as a lobbyist. I shifted my way of listening to an adversary from trying to convince the person that they are wrong to trying to understand their point of view. That shift alone changed the whole dynamics of the relationship. Shift alone changed the whole dynamics of the relationship. I had greater ability to influence and then to build trust and so to be able to listen to another person, not motivated by some asset, but motivated by true understanding, to really want to understand this other person's point of view, whether that's a child or whether that is a CEO. People feel that Maya Angelou had this wonderful saying that people forget what you said, they forget what you did, but they never forget how you made them feel. And people can feel that they can feel when they're being listened to.

Audra: 15:46

So the focus and the listening sounds like they are two components of the cure to loneliness.

Valerie: 15:55

Absolutely, absolutely. And these are skills that have been compromised because we live in such a digital world. We walk around with our heads down, our bodies hunched over, you know, and the sense of connectedness. Many of us live alone, you know, our nightly companion are, you know, netflix, and so it's very much a tragedy. I live in that world myself as a single person, you know. I have to make a conscious effort to catch myself over and over again. So I'm not talking about something in a rarefied place. I'm talking about what I, as a practice, I take on every day.

Audra: 16:47

Valerie, I wish we had way more time, because I could talk to you for hours about this, because I am fascinated by the work that you do. But I want to give you an opportunity to do two things. One I want to give a moment with you and the audience alone, so you can have an intimate moment directly with them, so you can leave them with a final thought that they can take with them throughout the day.

Valerie: 17:12

Yeah, I really appreciate that.

Valerie: 17:15

One of the things that I love to share with your audience is a small meditation, and in the Plum Village tradition we call this Agatha, g-a-t-h Agatha.

Valerie: 17:30

It's a way of grounding and centering ourselves, and we can use this when we're in the midst of craziness, when we're very busy.

Valerie: 17:41

We don't have to wait until things calm down, so we begin just by coming home to ourselves, so feeling of feet on the ground and aligning the body, so stacking the head over the shoulders and the shoulders over the hips and the knees over the feet, and feeling the length and the depth of the body, the back and the sides of the body, and from collarbone to collarbone, so feeling our whole dignity, and then taking a deep breath in, and from collarbone to collarbone, so feeling our whole dignity, and then taking a deep breath in and to a count of three, slowly releasing the out-breath, so breathing in, and then slowly, on a count of three, releasing the out-breath and maybe twice more like that, breathing in and slowly releasing the out-breath, and here's the gatha, and you can repeat this to yourself I am home, I have arrived, I am home, I have arrived, I am home, I have arrived, I am solid, I am free.

Valerie: 19:15

I am solid, I am free In the here and in the now. In the here and in the now, in the ultimate I dwell, in the ultimate I dwell. So thank you.

Audra: 19:43

That was beautiful. Thank you, I'm going to rewind that back and I think I might record it for myself to take it throughout the day. So, thank you. Where can we reach you?

Valerie: 20:00

We want more information about you and where can we access the new book? Thank you, you can reach me on my website, which is valeriebrownus. That's valeriebrownus. I'd love to hear from those in your audience. My sweet spot is working with women, and particularly women of color, and I would be delighted to hear from your audience. The book is Healing Our Way Home and the subtitle is Black Buddhist Teachings on Ancestors' Joy and Liberation, and it's available everywhere and from Parallax Press. That's Parallax Press.

Audra: 20:41

I will make sure all of that information is in the show notes. Please reach out to her. Please go and research this. She is a delight and I think that this would be nothing but additive to your lives. Valerie, thank you so much for being here with me today. I truly appreciate it.

Valerie: 20:58

Audra, it's been a delight and a pleasure.

Audra: 21:00

Thank you, thank you and thank you to all of you for listening, and we'll see you again next time.