Thank goodness, the Climate Change talks in Paris have actually ended in an agreement to reduce carbon emissions, supported by 195 countries. Many world leaders have now committed to doing what many of us have been doing for a very long time. It’s taken many, many years –and a few natural disasters—to finally contain our sperm-like impetus. Acting less like sperm and more like eggs, however, could solve the situation without effort.
I was speaking at an event for entrepreneurs recently in Madrid. The previous speaker kept telling the audience how “sperm strategy” would make them rich. It was funny, a little mischievous, and very compelling: get to the goal before anybody else, push and shove your way there, never relax, seek the shortest path, etc. It sounds exactly like most of our business mumbo-jumbo, doesn’t it?
Twitter is full of spermfully reflected uses of the allowed 140 characters, designed to catch our eye and drive us to a product, a person or an idea: “the secrets of…,” “How to conquer…,” “Why you need (this) to succeed.” A total explosion of sperm-tweets pushing us to find our egg and break into it as quickly as possible, every minute of the day. Exhausting quite frankly, and you can imagine that no real egg is going to spend a lot of time sitting around in there! It’s like gang-rape!
It’s overwhelming, excessive, over-anxious and far too thrusty. Sadly, we’re all playing the same game, and though we would never, in our wildest dreams or most decadent moments actually consider anything like actual rape, we do give off this vibe of excess enthusiasm that can be quite counter-productive. Is it any wonder we’re generating too much of everything? Too much carbon dioxide, too much plastic residue, too much production is regularly dumped to control prices, too much trash is growing in piles and puddles around us every day. Enough with the proactive sperm vibes!
Now visualize the egg. The first thing we notice is size. Sheer size. The enormity of the egg beside the tiny, little jumpy sperm hovering around it. The egg is just there. Doesn’t need to move, chase, try, scream or tweet. No need at all. It just waits for the right opportunity to come along. And it somehow always knows. The cost of choosing the wrong business partner to create a new business baby is simply not worth it. Too much investment, too many years spent growing arduously, too many hopes and expectations to fail. The egg doesn’t rush into a business deal of any sort. It sits and waits.
But it’s not an anxious wait – full of hopes and expectations. No. It’s serene and mysteriously calm in its movement. Like waves on the surface of a pond going nowhere. It can recognize the absence of a feeling, a very specific chemistry of infinite success and passion without which there can be no conception. The egg knows that it will die if the right guy never comes along. But the egg has no fear. It is not worried about what other eggs will think. It doesn’t need to leave a legacy. It doesn’t need an award. The egg lives to serve life, at whatever cost that life demands of it.
Think of the calm tranquility of life. The slow, love-full accumulation of energy inside that majestic miracle of organic potential. The silence and darkness surrounding that egg, protecting it from any possible harm. The mystery of its entire future, in perfect communion with whatever it is that moves our world forward. The egg surrenders to the mysteries of its destiny without judgment, expectation or criticism.
And when that perfect tiny mate finally appears, among thousands of wiggly little tricksters jumping over each other and kicking each other in the guts, the egg simply dissolves with pleasurable love. It opens just as little as needed to let him in. Only him. Always him. Forever him. There never was any other. It never felt this right. Only he feels like he was meant to be. Life takes off in a total explosion of growth and development that still surprises us with its magic, its wild strength, its very own agenda.
We need a lot more egg energy in our lives and businesses. It’s that dark, chaotic and mesmerizing Yin energy which Chinese philosophers described long before the war of the sexes began. We all have it. We all need it. We all recognize it as slow, serene, generous, self-confident and fully open to serve others. We’ve forgotten to give it space and respect its utter power… so impressed are we with the blind racing of millions of tiny, Yang-infused sperm.
Including the egg strategy in our lives is so simple we don’t know how to do it. Because there is nothing to do. It’s precisely about doing the opposite of doing! Stop talking. Stop tweeting. Stop thinking a million thoughts about how to get this or achieve that. Forget all that “make a difference” gibberish. Surrender. Meditate. Contemplate.
Go to your meetings and events without a sperm strategy. Forget your plans. Give up the careful games you want to play with others to get what you came for. Just sit there and breathe. Breathe in other people’s nervous energy. Breathe up your own fears, anxieties and worries. And as you notice them, they begin to disappear. They just dissolve as easily as they arose.
Create quietness around you two or three times a day. You don’t need to sperm-fight your way to total emptiness of the mind in a yoga pose that crushes your joints until you feel numb. No. A few minutes will do. Wherever and whenever you find them. Like the egg, you won’t even have to look for them. Somebody will be late for an appointment. Some electronic glitch will kill your phone battery. Some airplane crisis will ground you in an airport for a little longer than expected. But instead of opening your laptop or searching internet for sperm-friends to compete with, you can just sit there and take life in as it happens around you.
The egg strategy contains the mysteries of the feminine. It opens up to unpredictable encounters, unbelievable creativity, impassioned certainty about who you are and why you are hear. It helps us relieve the excess running, racing, thinking, doing, planning, trying, blah,blah,blah….
We are all made up of feminine, or Yin, and masculine, or Yang. But we’ve become terribly imbalanced on all individual and collective levels. We’re chronically exhausted with ourselves and others, trying to think of ways to recuperate our energy levels again. What a ridiculous hamster cycle.
Let go. Surrender. Trust. Trust yourself. Trust your destiny. Trust life. Our feminine energy is full of love, passion and abundance. All we need to do is let it come up to the surface to bathe us in everything we ever wanted but never dared to wish for.