Photo by Rikki’s Refuge

Heroine Animal Allies: We all need allies in our life and, as you step into the business jungle, power animals are on your side. These spiritual allies show up with messages to support you along your heroine’s journey, guiding you to be courageous, confident, crafty, outspoken, elegant, speedy, or alert to opportunity. Each month, a power animal visits the Heroine Animal Allies column to offer you guidance on succeeding with the greatest degree of ease and grace. Here is a power message for you from the Skunk…

Calling on skunk medicine for help in knowing when to use OFFENSE as a DEFENSE (and also knowing how to not be offended when someone is on the defensive). This is another example of a visionary leadership skill that comes in handy for messenger entrepreneurs AND for anyone on the playing field of dating! It also applies equally to the field of marketing, and selling your message in a powerful way.

Using Offense as a Defense – Part of what you have to do when you are dating or messaging is you have to be exquisitely clear on exactly what you want – and who you want to share your time and expertise and life force with. You are GOING TO OFFEND – so get that clear right away – trying to make everybody happy all the time is a sure recipe for personal and professional disaster.

In fact the best messengers take such a strong stand for who they are and what they are here to express in the world that they often offend A LOT of people. They also ATTRACT a lot of people that are in alignment with the viewpoint that they have to offer. If you can’t take a stand and you have issues with offending others you will need some help to get over that if you want to succeed as an entrepreneur!

This past Sunday I had a “date” – meeting is more like it – with a French Moroccan man who I met in a dating site called Plenty of Fish. Our interactions with each other started out online and then proceeded to texting after a phone call. In our back and forth flirting I suggested perhaps he might want to give me some French lessons, so he started sending lots of texts in French. It was sweet and fun and we texted for almost a week.

Finally, we decided to connect at a bookstore and have coffee. He was late (got lost and went to a Starbucks instead of the bookstore) and when he did arrive was VERY eager. He leaned over the table to share with me that he really appreciated “older” women who were young at heart (ok I’ll admit that comment didn’t really excite me – I don’t consider myself an “older” woman, first of all, and second of all I was only about five years older than him).

Then he asked me to go for a walk outside, and at the top of the hill behind the movie theatre he asked me if I wanted to kiss him. Really? I have spent 17 minutes talking in a bookstore with this person! I politely declined.

About 45 minutes later, I received a text from him which said, “I wasn’t very impressed with you at all and this is my last text.” For whatever reason – I will speculate it was as a defense because he didn’t like being rejected – he chose to be offensive.

Here’s where I want you to receive the lesson yourself about not being offended when someone turns defensive on you – or conversely when someone is so offended by your message that they “counter attack” by being offensive themselves.

Consider it a magnificently BEAUTIFUL way of knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are:

A) Standing for something

B) Clear in your messaging

C) Confident and powerful in expressing your view

D) Getting clarity right away about who is NOT a fit, so you don’t waste any of your energy going after them

E) Expanding your capacity to signal with your message to those who are a fit and worth of your time and focus

The messages from the Skunk have supporting me in honing my own visionary leadership skills and, in turn, I am passing them on to you.

What messages do you see for yourself in the skunk?

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December 2013 Issue