The School of Visibility | Empowering women to be seen and heard

Name change

Hi everyone,

In an attempt to bring our Facebook page in line with this website, Facebook is asking us to announce something to you which you’ve known for over a year and which we emailed you about at the time; the name of this business is The School of Visibility.

Nothing else is changing. Carry on. x

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We need women’s voices to restore the balance

The world is badly out of balance. It’s been tipped so far in favour of masculine values and ways of being (values that can be embodied and pursued by women and men) that the planet is on the brink of collapse, people are suffering epidemic levels of illness, there’s an ever growing divide between the rich and the poor, and oppressive systems which influence ways of thinking and being are maintaining an environment where a very small percentage of the population hold power at the expense of the rest.

The values I’m speaking of prioritise competition, push, and hierarchical ways of being above all else.

The enormous amount of damage caused is due to the lack of balance. By the fact that these patriarchal values have pushed ahead at the expense of circular being and thinking and doing, of rest and intuitive guidance, of collaboration and of community.

The … [Read More...]

What is patriarchal conditioning?

This is all about patriarchal conditioning and how it might be affecting you as a woman, particularly with regard to speaking up and being seen and heard in the world. NB: The topic of patriarchal conditioning could be a whole book or PhD in and of itself so consider this just a short introduction.

To begin to understand patriarchal conditioning, it’s easiest to think about social conditioning and the ways you’re affected by the society you live in.

Start with the community you grew up in. It had a set of rules and expectations about how you behave, show up for one another, who gets a say, who doesn’t, who’s valued and who’s not. Most children absorb all of that without anyone critiquing it for them, which means they simply take on those ideas as ‘normal’ and assume that’s just the way life is.

If you don’t ever take the … [Read More...]

Self care when speaking up

Self care is hugely important when you’re speaking up regularly in your business, your industry, in your domestic life, or at work. Without good self care practices, speaking up can be stressful, induce anxiety, and generally cause mental distress.

So here are five tips for self care when speaking up:

1. Make sure you’re supported

Support can look like a lot of different things.

Firstly, ensuring you have people around you who have your back no matter what, or people in your industry who are going through similar experiences, is critical. Having those relationships is going to make you happier anyway so this one is a bit of a no brainer. (Which incidentally, is why we offer live, mastermind rounds of A Visible Woman – so you can build those type of connections for life.)

Nutritionally – upping your game in this regard, provides you with so much support. The … [Read More...]

Patriarchy has stripped us of our confidence

To round out the discussion we’ve been having over the last couple of months around visibility and entrepreneurship, I’ve recently been speaking on the blog and during Tuesday morning chats, the necessity for creating a visibility strategy. I’ve spoken about:

This last topic – deepening your understanding of visibility – points to why it’s so necessary to have a visibility strategy. Understanding your own ‘why’ is a deeply important thing to anchor into. Otherwise, you end up focusing on so many other aspects of your business only to turn around one day and wonder why everyone else’s business seems to be growing and yours is stagnating.

This is a very predictable pattern. It’s not personal. It’s not life … [Read More...]