When it's time to (let your ego) die
By Laura Storm
I have planned for my own mini-death, a death of ego and a long wintering, in 2024. A phase of surrendering into not knowing, letting go, dissolving and nourishing roots and soil. For a while now I’ve felt it time to let go of all ego-attachments around my professional persona. The “thought-leader” and keynote speaker Laura Storm, an identity that has increased in intensity as the field has received an enormous amount of attention over the past three years (which is great news). I have sensed an increased frustration emerge when I give interviews or during conferences when I’m asked the same questions over and over again. “What is Regenerative Leadership? “Why do we need it?” and “What is the business case for regeneration?”
I completely understand the reasoning behind these types of questions but I need a break from being the one answering them. Otherwise, I fear that unfortunate conference organizers and podcast hosts would get angry answers like: “Take a look around – we are navigating an ecosystemic collapse, we are in midst of the 6th mass extinction, we have runaway climate change, we have eradicated 80% of our forests, lost 75% of our flying insect biomass and 69% of mammals. Not only that, but we homo sapiens are suffering too. We have never been as burned out, depressed, and suicidal as we are today, and you’re asking me about the business case??” (justified anger and frustration, but still, a break from it is needed).
Earlier this year an amazing journalist guessed that I was probably being asked the same questions over and over again and asked me what question I would like to be asked. I promptly answered: “I would like to talk about our relationship to death”, which surprised us both. Since then I’ve sat with this inquiry and know it’s time I give it more space for further presence and exploration. At the essence is a strong feeling that we need to get really comfortable with the energy of death. Our society will, in the decades to come, go through a phase of death and collapse, and we need to strengthen our personal capacity to navigate those realms. So six months ago I started to decline, without exception, every keynote, project and opportunity the first 8 months of 2024 regardless of how interesting it sounded. I only wanted to give energy to our community of dedicated journey travelers as that feels deeply meaningful. I craved space for surrendering into a void of nourishing darkness. A dark space of wintering where I could traverse the liminal space of not knowing, not doing, not performing and see what would emerge from that pregnant tension and potential discomfort.
For two decades now I’ve worked in various ways on holding space for a sustainable and regenerative transformation of our societies. Almost nine years ago I was forced into a long phase of darkness as I suffered a minor traumatic brain injury and went through a long dark tunnel of surrendering. A phase of dying as everything I had been and done was no more and I was stripped of my ability to act and do for a very long time. I speak about the painful and deeply uncomfortable process of surrendering into an inner space of silence and stillness in this Tedx from 2017.
What my involuntary mini-death nine years ago taught me was that when you let go completely and surrender your ego and stay with the uncomfortable tension of emergence, new potent life starts to make its way through the dark soil. Life that was suppressed and wasn’t given the nourishment needed to come through in your daily busyness finally has the space to evolve, sprout and flourish. After that phase 9 years ago I came out with much greater clarity around my own essence. I became free. And lately I’ve felt that new potent life is begging to be given the space to unfold and evolve. The seeds of a new chapter are simmering deep in my foundational soil asking to be nourished and given attention. To give it space something in me has to die. I can only describe it as a strong feeling that the themes of death, compost, darkness, and wintering are calling loudly for my attention.
My only known focus for 2024 is my passion project of holding space for my year-long journey dedicated to serving everyone aspiring to become regenerative change-activators. This space and community is truly life-giving as we collectively roll up our sleeves and blaze new regenerative trails together. I’m not the teacher on a pedestal giving all the answers – we explore them together, hold the questions together, while I offer the space and my version and insight into the essence of regenerative leadership and business. On our journey we too start with the energy of wintering, and in 2024 I’m excited to begin this journey with my own theme of the year. You can read more about the cyclical design of our journey here.
The cyclical design of the Regenerative Leadership Journey, where we start with a foundational, soil nourishing phase of deep wintering. Art by Anna Denardin.
The collective fear of darkness, death and wintering is the main barrier for regenerative transformation
In the first decade of my professional career in sustainability transformation I too beat the drum that for a transition to happen we needed new political frameworks, level playing fields, innovation and scaling of technologies, financial mechanisms and an appealing language to motivate the masses. I don’t disregard the importance of those elements but these are not the main barriers or obstacles of transformation. Our fear of death, darkness and wintering is. And with that our fear of letting go of what no longer serves, our hesitation to dare blaze new trails, and the lack of courage to step into a role where you’re the novice in new evolving landscapes. This is what 20 years of observation has taught me is truly getting in our way of true transformation.
For 20 years I’ve worked with political leaders, c-level executives and other “prominent” leaders from all over the world. In the past seven years alone I’ve given more than 500 talks and interviews about regeneration, and I sense the same fear again and again in most leaders. A fear of fully embracing a regenerative transition because it means they need to let go of most of what they have been taught is good business and leadership. They need to surrender to a landscape that doesn’t have a fixed toolbox, process-plans, checklists and business models and it scares the shit out of most executives. Actually, it scares the shit out of most humans as it’s so deeply ingrained in us that we need those to succeed and survive. So they avoid entering that space and cling on to avenues that offer neatly designed tools for measuring, controlling and executing. Tools they are comfortable with. What we end up with is more of the same, packaged slightly differently. When we repeat our ways of working, collaborating, executing, designing we will - as Lao Tzu said - end up where we’re heading, which is not a promising destination. It’s ironic how we always see the famous words by Einstein on corporate powerpoint slides: “no problem can be solved with the same level of consciousness that created it” yet that’s exactly what we continue to do. More of the same.
Something has to die if we want to stand a chance at truly blazing radical new ways that align with life. For us to hold space for such processes I believe we need to be really comfortable in the energy of the deep wintering, the energy of death, darkness and soil cultivation. We need to be ready to surrender to an ego-death.
This illustration is capturing the metamorphosis we’re currently navigating - from the Regenerative Leadership Journey. Art by Anna Denardin.
I can only hold space externally for what I’m willing to hold space for internally. If I could edit the brilliant quote by Buckminster Fuller that has kept me going for years I would have it say: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, you need to be willing to let everything go, to die, and build a new way that makes the old ways obsolete”. Accepting death as part of a life-giving paradigm is essential. Navigating the darkness of the liminal space scares many, so they turn away and continue doing what they have always done as fear of the new feels too overwhelming.
I think the inner cyclical phase of full surrender, death of what no longer serves and deep wintering is essential for us if we are serious about holding space for new life-affirming systems, structures, production models, cultures and ways of being. As within, so without.
The question that excites me the most right now is:
How can we cultivate a capacity to navigate dark times, and through that strengthen the collective carrying capacity in ways where we can hold potent space for the collapse of old ways that don't serve life, and create needed space for the emergence of new life, new ways?
Surrendering to the wisdom of inner and outer winters and letting the darkness reveal what many of us seems to have forgotten: that we are inherently regenerative beings, we understand life deep within yet are raised by a paradigm that has made us belief we are only worthy when we do, speak, act, produce, perform without the nourishing deep phase of wintering. The conscious mini-death of letting go of what no longer serves and creating space to listen deeply. Listen deeply to what are actually the right needed next steps not influenced by what you could or should or the offers and invitations in your inbox. If it’s not a full body yes, it’s a “no thank you” or else we deplete our life force energy and rob ourselves of what it is we’re truly here to serve. Coming in tune with life means to accept that the fertile soil needs the restorative winter. Not just the self-care mechanistic approach of a ‘nice little break’ that makes you more productive and efficient for the machine, but the deeper exploration of what messages, stories and wisdom the dark times have for us.
What can we hear when we slow down? The dark time of the year is a perfect time to turn inward and explore what’s there for us when we listen.
The Regenerative Leadership Journey starts in the energy of Wintering and this illustration captures one of our sessions. Art by Anna Denardin.
A year of traversing the life-giving mycelium underground
To lay the foundation for this life-giving year of navigating the new unknown I will be holding space for four sessions in December and January – the deepest time of darkness in the northern hemisphere – under the theme: Hope and Mystery of Dark times. These sessions will be held with my friend, the amazing wisdom-keeper, space holder and storyteller Carina Lyall. We will explore the themes of urgency, grief, surrender and rest through storytelling, myths, poems, solo reflection and group sharings. You are warmly welcome to join us and we start on December 13. Carina grew up in Labrador Canada as the daughter of an indigenous inuit father and a Danish mother who was the daughter of a Christian missionary. Carina and I both long for spaces that speak to what may feel uncomfortable at first yet is the very portal to accessing potent life-force energy.
So 2024 feels exciting and life-affirming as I consciously lean into my own mini-death. I deeply appreciate all the new consultants, speakers and coaches that have emerged in the field of regeneration that can take over and I happily pass on the torch while I winter. To me it is deeply meaningful that we see each other as co-creators, each fulfilling our role in the greater web of life. In 20th century business consciousness I should cash in on my first-mover position in the blue ocean of regenerative leadership and business and built a profitable global consultancy but it simply doesn’t light me up and energize me and I’m grateful that others are coming in to fill that role. I think my role in this lifetime is contributing to continually sensing into the new, emerging landscapes and host watering holes for change activators. We each play an important role in times of transition. Seeing it that way is wholeness to me.
The polarity of darkness is light and I don’t think we can have one without the other. In fact I believe the more comfortable we are in the dark landscapes of deep wintering, stillness, silence, darkness, the more we strengthen our capacity to bring in new life, new light, renewal. The more comfortable we get with surrendering our ego and all that we have built around it, the more we strengthen our access to our inner essence and the radical honesty and clarity that it offers. This excites me. I feel the excitement in every cell writing these words and that’s a clear sign that although this mini death may not make “business sense” it’s the right next phase on my journey through life.
I may have given my last keynote about regenerative leadership ever, or maybe I will come back full force with new excited energy when a phase of deep wintering have been honored. I truly don’t know and the not knowing and the glimmer of a new chapter is truly exciting.
See you on the other side.