How Love Activist Leadership Helped This Harvard Educated Coach & Facilitator Move Out of Forcing And Into Financial and Creative Flow
What breakthroughs could you create in your business if you finally surrendered to your heart, your soul, and your inner wisdom’s guidance?
We’re going to learn what happened when one Love Activist did this in today’s article and podcast of Love Activist Luminaries.
If you’re a heart-driven, soul-led solopreneur or founder leading a venture that aims to create positive social change and ecological well-being while also earning a good living, this conversation holds some potent gems.
The Background
In my first conversation with a Love Activist Luminary, I wanted to center someone who embodies Love Activist Leadership as well as start at the beginning of my journey of bringing it into the world.
While I had been experimenting with Love Activist Leadership in my life and business since about 2018 or 2019, it wasn’t until about 2021 or 2022 that I began talking about it with clients, as well as coaching and advising them on how they could integrate the principles of Love Activist Leadership into their lives and businesses.
And that’s why my first conversation was with Courtney Pinkerton. Not only was she the first client I shared the principles of Love Activist Business with, she also had some powerful shifts occur because of it.
In this conversation, Courtney shares some of the pivotal moments, positive shifts, and business breakthroughs that Love Activist Leadership has fostered for her.
Prefer to listen to this interview? Just press here for the podcast.
First, let me introduce you to Courtney.
She is a coach, a leader, and a facilitator. She spent 4 years studying at the intersection of spirituality and leadership at Harvard, and has dual master degrees from the Divinity and Kennedy Schools there. She's a certified Wayfinder coach, Enneagram mentor, and is trained in Positive Intelligence. She's the author of The Flourish Formula: An Overachiever's Guide to Slowing Down And Accomplishing More.
I hope you enjoy this conversation, and it sparks new insights for you on your entrepreneurial path.
All right, let's get to it.
Listen to our conversation here.
Jeni:
Welcome, Courtney.
Courtney:
Hello.
Jeni:
How do you remember love activism coming into the space between us?
Courtney:
The larger context that I remember is just the overwhelming sense of relief that I felt in finding you after almost 10 years in the entrepreneurial space, And having done a fair amount of programs around building a business, building a coaching practice, writing a book and making a book kind of the foundation for a business.
I learned something from all these different business or money training programs, but the sense, and I think this relates to love activism, the sense I had when I found you was just like, ah, a sense of synergy, of flow. And I think on some level it's because you were already willing to talk about love. I mean, cause that's the big shift, right?
I mean, it's often simplistically said, are we going to root in fear? Are we going to root in love?
To be willing to be a smart, passionate, creative business owner and to talk about love as motivation. It just was so…you were already embodying it.
It was a relief.
I think that sense of relief was also something I was feeling from you. Like it had been building in you.
To me, that's the beauty of relationships.
And I do feel like there are transformations that we can't go through ourselves without that container of relationship.
So I think I felt the relief from you, and that was mirroring my own relief.
And it was also mirroring and witnessing for me. Cause you were like, I see you as this. And that was deeply comforting. Because I think I'd always been a little uncomfortable with working in the private sector at all. So, to say oh, I can be a business owner and still be a love activist was exciting and reassuring and comforting.
Jeni:
I love hearing that and it means the world to me. There are so many things that sparkled for me as you were sharing. I’d love to start with the idea of relationship and co-leadership. I think we open up the space of true transformation through collaborative relationship.
Courtney:
I feel like the more spiritual inquiry I do, answers that I land on end up being kind of paradoxes, some sort of creative tension.
So on the one hand, absolutely co-leadership and reciprocity. It's not just one direction. And I feel like that old model is breaking down. I've heard musicians talk about they don't want to just be on the stage and the audience is kind of inert and they're the performer. Or teachers, you know, like the old model of like, I've got all the answers and I'm just depositing it into you the student. So I do feel like that old one-directional model needs to go by the wayside.
At the same time, there is a quality of leadership. I think a lot about creating soul-safe space for people. And because I work with high functioning people who tend to have a lot of capacity. And whether they're in a formal leadership role or not, they're often the one other people turn to. They're often holding a lot personally and professionally.
And the way I think about the co-leadership is like, we take turns where someone else is holding the space for you. And you don't have to do the emotional labor to make sure they're okay. And you can let your hair down and be a little messy. I think of it almost as like an energetic leadership and that creating the container, which is something that I have learned from and enjoyed receiving from you.
Jeni:
As love activists and as people who are in our own ways embodying and sharing with the world a social mission as well as an ecological mission to create positive change money can create mischief.
Courtney:
So true.
Jeni:
So from that context, if you think back to how you were relating to money before we met, what was, what was that like?
Courtney:
So, well, what's, what's ironic for me, or I don't know if that's the right word. But I had already done what to me felt like a ton of money work. And it was just like, are you kidding me?!?! Is there more?!?!
Because, when I started my business 10, 11, now 11, almost 11 or 12 years ago, I did not even think of it as a business.
I knew that I wanted to write, and that I wanted to talk about the Enneagram. And I knew I had three little kids and that my husband was stressed out because I had left my job. So making some money in a way that didn't hurt me and hopefully contributed to the good would be good. But I wasn't even thinking, "I'm starting a small business."
I think it was because I was coming out of the spiritual community space. You know, I have a masters of divinity. I had been leading an emerging church. And before that many years in the nonprofit social service area.
And so, yeah, I had really at that point been operating on a philosophy of, I'm going to live the best life I can and just let money do its thing over there. But I'm not really, I'm not including it. I'm not really thinking about it.
I had a ton of work to do to work with some of those old spiritual messages. A lot of work around receiving and self value. And then some more practical work of getting comfortable with a bookkeeping system. And the somatic side of things. How do we hold all the feelings in our bodies as we're looking at our numbers? So I had already done all of that. And you can probably hear the part of me that was like, " Why is it not all flowing the way I want it to?"
At that point when we met, I was having a lot of high highs. I was making money, but I was really wanting to figure out that sense of something nourishing and sustainable.
When I think about the biggest takeaways, I mean, we did a whole bunch of stuff together.
The awakening you helped me with of having a relationship with money as an energetic part of my life.
I'm really interested in energy and how our bodies are energy. And as an empath, I've had to learn a lot of energy hygiene and continue on that path of how do I ground every day? How do I have good, healthy boundaries? How do I connect below to earth and above to heavens?
I think that that lens of money as energy was helpful to me. It started to kind of open a capacity to interact.
The other thing that was really interesting to me that I hadn't realized until we worked together was...I remember actually…I'm looking at this tree right now. I remember we were talking, and I think maybe you asked me to come up with a symbol or something related to my relationship with money. And this gorgeous potted fig tree that I have in my, at that point, was just like, "Hello! Wake up!"
I think that I came to understand and maybe heal through our work together.
Before money was intellectual.
I started to have something that felt like a more natural relationship with it where I could say in the same way that nature...well, first of all, we are nature…but in the same way that there is abundance around...it's early spring, and so we're about to have these wild edibles around…so just in the way that there is sustenance around me in the natural world, and there's a sort of flow of nourishment that's available, and when I remember that I'm a part of something...I mean that sort of same sense of flow, money started to feel more like that. And that was a critical step.
Then there was one more that just happened more recently, but maybe I'll pause there.
Jeni:
Your story is a story that so many of us share of doing all different kinds of "work" around money. And for each of us, it's different and it's informed by our, our family, our lineage, the communities we grew up in. Who we are, what we look like, how people perceive us. There's just so much wrapped into money for each of us that creates this really interesting dynamic. And so we do a lot of different work.
What I'm hearing in your story is that it wasn't until I said, "Well, what if, what if money was actually..." Some people would say money is a neutral energy. I needed to say money is a positive energy. Money has a soul. Money is evolving. Just as we as humans, as individuals, and as a species are evolving, the earth is evolving, all living beings are evolving, the land is evolving, right? So it was when I shifted to that place that I could create a practice that really was coming from a place of empowerment.
And it's funny because I also have a little bit of a paradox here. Because actually, I am not motivated by money. I don't really care about money. And yet here we are, living in what I like to call these between times, where between, you know, we're at the end stages of this expression of capitalism, this paradigm of extraction and power over. And there is this growing wave of a new paradigm, which is about the possibilities of collective empowerment where perhaps money, no longer–in the way we know it–is necessary. But in the meantime, we're in the middle. And money matters.
Courtney:
Totally. It is a paradox and there's so much creative tension there.
Jeni:
When I moved into this place of sacred relationship and a creative relationship with the soul of money, I just started to experiment. You and I are 3/5s in Human Design. We see what's not working and then we like to experiment to find what feels good, what works and what we believe will be beneficial for others. And then we share that.
And I think a key component that we each learned in our own journeys was the energy of nourishing ourselves in a way where money was becoming an energy of self care.
I wanna ask permission, if I can jog your memory.
Courtney:
Yes.
Jeni:
The cenote and the flow of money and how you had this moment of realization of the flow needed to return.
Courtney:
Yeah. I mean, I get like a shiver as you say that.
So for anyone who doesn't know what a cenote is. They are these beautiful bluegreen pools that are essentially like cave springs or pools. And there's many in Mexico. In the Yucatan, especially.
Somehow that image came as part of the process of us working together.
And also the mantra which was "reverse the flow."
I heard that money has been going in one direction often, historically. Extractive resources out of the earth. Extractive labor practices. And of course these are still happening. And then being kind of crystallized and gathered up along unjust social structures, often colluding with white supremacy and global systems of privilege in terms of which countries are "more developed," and all of that.
This mantra of "reverse the flow," that money wants to go in the other direction resourcing the earth, resourcing those that have been marginalized and feeling that flow through me.
If you were to see my screensaver, I still have a beautiful cenote on there. And so it has been a real anchor.
I feel it in my body. I have a certain kind of reservoir in my lower belly and pelvis area and there's this sense of potential, and reciprocity giving and receiving.
Also it's interesting when I'm feeling kind of in alignment and excited about creating something, I feel it in that part of my body, too.
The thing I was going to talk about that has happened more recently that feels related to what we're talking about is...In all of that work I had done previously, there was still, whether we want to think of it as like a type three Enneagram, you know, the performer achiever, I was gripping. I was pushing. I was frustrated.
What has happened recently is I just let myself lay it all down.
You can't skip the step of knowing what you want.
You helped me get very clear: I want this renewing income. I have a number that feels super juicy and nourishing for me, for my family.
So I didn't skip that step, which I might have wanted to do previously. Or be uncomfortable with it and give it all away, which would have been maybe the earlier phase.
But then at a certain point, I just had to stop trying and really go through that surrender.
I have the clarity, and I can't quite see how these pieces all come together. And the way I used to do it isn't working. And just lay it all down.
It helped me reconnect to my heart. Because I just felt the truth of, on the one hand, intellectually, I get that I need to participate in bringing income in for our family. And that while my husband and I are fairly simple, even in our simplicity we need beauty, and places to live, and organic food, and all of that. And then we have these three teenagers. Our nest is very full. And they have a lot of needs.
But even as high as my love for my children, I mean, that's a pretty tall calling. I had to surrender... I don't know how to put all these pieces together. To be true to myself. To be true to the work that's called out of me. To be honest about my need for income, living in this betwixt and between time as you're describing.
Ironically, when I laid it all down somehow, it has brought all this liquidity and money into my life in a really easeful way.
Also, the other things I'm working on, because I'm not feeling pressured to make them you know super lucrative right away are also happening.
So what I said to myself was, I'm just not motivated by money and that's okay. I'm going to stop fighting that. And stop feeling like I should be some other person who is.
When I laid it out down, I guess I got reconnected to my heart. And then possibilities that weren't coming from that pushing striving place in me, I could see them. They were right in front of me.
So yes, yes, yes to the cenote. Yes to reverse the flow.
And yes, to this being part of your work in the in between times. Because I mean, it's kind of a ridiculous number of steps and it's not like I'm done, you know, like it's like, cause it all keeps changing. It's so necessary and so rare in my experience to have these safe spaces to be helped in developing a conscious relationship.
Jeni:
The essence of what you've shared, which is the surrender and that balance between being ambitious and at the same time discerning when we have gone far enough and create space for what can come through next.
Courtney:
Well, and what's so funny is it feels so expansive.
I was operating out of a sense of maybe what my business had looked like. And like I've talked about, there's been lots of hills and valleys. But it never works out to go backwards. And I was sort of caught up in that story or that vision of what it would need to look like to be as lucrative as I need it to be, wanted to be.
So it was kind of like an expansion.
Permission to be myself.
Then an expansion of the possibilities of how I can co-create goodness and be receiving money.
Jeni:
So now I would like to shift. How do you feel you are showing up in your life, your leadership, your business as a love activist?
Courtney:
Part of what I was going through the last year and a half or so, cause I celebrated this decade of having a coaching business and, you know, sometimes anniversaries and birthdays and things are kind of powerful, like a reckoning. I was feeling cooped in or siloed in the personal growth zone.
I think it was this love activist in me. And it felt like a tiger in a cage like, "I want…" it was just like, "Arrr!” Very uncomfortable. And it, it felt like the activist that I had been more in my 20s, and doing more kind of direct service and all of that like wanted back out.
Simultaneously, I had been hearing a very clear invitation toward climate action. And I had been like diving into all these trainings and really getting at times overwhelmed and anxious and depressed as I allowed myself to really look and really feel the reality of where we're at with human induced climate change and ecological crisis. And I think I had been holding that at bay a little bit. And I was afraid it was going to really overwhelm me to look at it deeply and feel it.
So I started to feel an invitation to what could be my part.
And I thought, okay, I've devoted my life to the inner life. That's what I've done so far. And also always been this person who's interested in social change and how to make the world better. And, and so really centering on resilience and the need for each of us to have very practical skills and capacities that allow us to be present in the world, day by day, moment by moment as it is, and with all the changing.
So I joined the Climate Coaching Alliance, which has been a wonderful place to connect with people.
I think at the 10th anniversary I realized I wanted to play with other people with different skills. So I have connected with two other coaches. One is a retired ecology professor. And the other has years of work in corporate communications and marketing. And we're each leveraging what we've got to put together this new workshop that is on inner resilience and the inner development goals. And we're talking about it in terms of climate resilience through the lens of science, spirituality, and storytelling.
The last thing I'll say is, I cannot even describe how much fun it was to keep getting invited to bring out that spirituality part of me more and more, kind of maybe like you and love, saying the word love and being a love activist.
I think I've been like code switching and talking about spirituality in terms of inner work or Enneagram work or well-being or mental fitness. And those are all true. But there's something about talking about it in terms of spirituality and soulfulness.
So holding that question of imagining a room full of sustainability professionals, green hearted humans, grandparents, activists, and others who are just like at the edge of these questions around climate, and my part being how can spirituality help resource our climate action? Which is such a huge question.
I can't tell you the delight I had in pulling out theological frames and how we need to shift from this focus on belief and this like stranglehold of belief and intellectual ascent to what do we belove? And how we can do that in communities of people many of whom may not identify in any way as being spiritual or certainly not religious.
I'm having a lot of fun and it looks like it's actually coming together. And we have a beautiful host here in Asheville and looks like it's happening in May. So that is what is cooking.
Jeni:
I can't wait to see how this grows, evolves, and flourishes for you all.
Courtney:
Thank you.
Jeni:
Do you have a place where folks can learn about it?
Courtney:
Probably the easiest thing is to go to my website courtneypinkerton.com. You can find me on LinkedIn. And this collaboration is called Overstory, and we have a LinkedIn business page.
Jeni:
So I would love for you to share a parting gift or blessing or message.
Courtney:
In terms of a gift, I am also co-creating a podcast called Inner Ecology. And it is very much a conversational space around everything we were just talking about. How does the inner and the outer, how do they connect? And could our own healing of our inner life be part of the solution for ecological healing, and vice versa. That is also coming this spring or summer at the latest.
I love your idea of a blessing. The only blessing coming to mind is a simple one, but it's something that we say before we eat in our family. And I love it. So it's…
We thank the creator for the harvest of the earth. We thank the earth for its food. We thank the food for its gift of life. And to the one who prepared it, we give our gratitude.
Jeni:
Thank you, Courtney, for coming to this conversation with your heart open. I honor you and I celebrate all that you are doing.
Courtney:
Thank you, Jeni. I'm very grateful to you.
Love this! What a wonderful conversation. Thank you for sharing it!