Excerpt from THE HUMAN HERD: AWAKENING OUR NATURAL LEADERSHIP

THE HUMAN HERD, Beth Anstandig

Part guidebook, part manifesto, part wake-up call, The Human Herd: Awakening Our Natural Leadership unleashes our mammal instincts with a framework for living, relating, and leading a more empowered life.

We are human animals. Yet in the modern world, the natural signals of our mammal bodies are suppressed. Our instincts go unanswered as we move through life on autopilot, reacting to the latest dilemma instead of listening to the innate wisdom we carry. Without integrating this fundamental part of ourselves, we lack presence, joy, and passion, deeply affecting all aspects of our well-being and success.

To reclaim the innate power of our human animal, we must learn to pay close attention to the signals our mammal body sends us. When we wake up this vibrant part of our humanity, we have access to a new source of information we can use to take better care of ourselves, to respond to pressures within and around us, to make sound decisions, and to build more authentic relationships in our lives and work.

This is our Natural Leadership, and it allows us to move through the world with a keen advantage that benefits our entire human herd.

Each chapter includes stories spanning all aspects of the human experience along with the core concepts of the Natural Leadership model, plus a set of easy-to-use tools and a variety of practice modes such as exercises and reflective experiences.

“If you were a child who stared into animals’ eyes and knew they could speak to you, you were right. This book is for all of us who tried to talk to animals as children, because we knew they had something to teach us.” Sam Lamott, Podcast Host, How to Human

“This book invites us to change our conversation about the human experience and to return to our fundamental nature as a source of wisdom and health.” John Boyd, PsyD, Sutter Health Systems CEO, Mental Health and Addiction Care

BUY HERE

EXCERPT

How We Settle In

Excerpted from The Human Herd: Awakening Our Natural Leadership 

By Beth Anstandig

My heel catches the edge of the running board as I swing my legs out of the truck, held hostage by the narrow skirt squeezing my thighs. I shift out of the seat and try not to spill to the ground. I’ve compressed myself in so many ways today; I swear these pointed-toe heels will take me down. But right now, they raise me up and lengthen my stride. It’s like I become another body, someone with stately legs and fingers like willows. Someone who knows the right thing to say and what to do with her hands. Only an hour earlier, I stood in the closet dreading another fancy party. Feeling desperate and lost, I chose the heels like a punishment for not fitting the mold. A deep longing from my bone marrow surfaced, a primitive reflex: Show up. Fit in. No matter what. I brushed off the dust and dog hair and shoved my feet inside, toes numbing almost instantly. I steamed and ironed the wrinkles of my garments and my being, buttoned up and quieted my oddities—so many contortions and folds as I collapsed into myself like a card table.

Yet again, I’ve painted myself into this familiar corner. One part of me is wild and free and knows her needs. She’s the one who drives the truck, bought the ranch, and lives with a pack of dogs. She lies in the dirt with her horse herd, barefoot, dreaming up new ideas and poems. She can hear beyond words. But she’s scared and sometimes finds herself too far out in front and alone. Buddhist nun, Pema Chödron, says that anxiety is the human response to wide open space. The freedom to just be becomes too vast to bear. It’s the panic a newborn feels unswaddled, a state of formlessness, without boundaries, an abyss of self. The other part of me is in that corner. She is tidied up, polished, and poised. She wears education and privilege like a designer bag, full of cash, connections, and credentials. She uses charm, irony, and an occasional sharp tongue as she chitchats her way through the country club lobby. But she’s trapped, she can’t breathe, and she’s dying inside. 

We hurry along the circular driveway with its tightly trimmed shrubbery and leafless sidewalks. Golf carts whir in the distance over an eerily silent backdrop that only an exclusive membership can buy. Every car is new and spotless. Every parking spot amply wide. No dents, no deviations, no signs of people coming or going or living. It seems fixed in time like artificial turfgrass or starched shirts that stand on their own. I’ve done this walk a thousand times, wrestling with these misaligned parts of myself. But this time it’s different. There’s a little girl holding my hand: Emma.

She’s four years old and chatty. The soundtrack to my life is her diminutive voice, flute notes fluttering the octaves. She narrates the day passing, the wind blowing, the emotions rising and falling as they do. She comments on her interior world, and she wants to know about mine. She weaves our emotional worlds together like a cloth she grasps, and she asks me to do the same. Today is different though. Today, she has worry in her throat, longer pauses between questions, something in her that hesitates. It has no name. Not yet.

We walk past the doorman, and she pulls my hand. She wants to look him up and down, wants to look in his face and figure him out. It’s puzzling, this man who does nothing more than open and close a door. I have no words for her. We stitch the moment together with our eyes, our place of shared awareness, the gaze where we meet and know and breathe. This is the soft feel of our relationship, an invisible give-and-take that allows us to move through the world together. But I can feel my muscles constrict and my skin tighten. It’s like I’m wearing a suit made of concrete. I can move, but only an inch or two before I hit the hard edges, the strict form that tells me I can’t go any further and to stop being who I am. I hurry us forward, pulling her hand as I feel her willingness drag along the polished floors. When we get to the entrance of the banquet room, we both pause. The doorway busts at the seams—not with people but with pressure. 

This time Emma yanks on my arm with force. We feel the increase in pressure at the same time, and we balk like animals startling and spinning toward safety. It’s too much. I drop to my knees instinctively. Maybe prayer is this simple: the moment when you are at eye level with your child and you’re humble and open enough to listen to the world through her pristine awareness, her unfiltered self-preservation. It’s all I know to do. Feel the pressure. Stop. Listen.

We stop, and we stay. We stay at the banquet room entrance, Emma in her flowing party dress and me on my knees next to her.

She whispers, “I need a few minutes to settle in.” It’s the wisest thing I’ve ever heard. 

Emma’s simple lesson about Settling In teaches us to be aware of pressure and attend to it, teaching us how a slight adjustment can make a profound difference in how we take care of ourselves. This story was one of my most powerful awakenings into this radical and fundamental form of self-care, attending to our Natural Leadership.

The Human Herd: Awakening Our Natural Leadership

©2022 Beth Anstandig

Published by Morgan James Publishing

Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

—

Beth Anstandig is changing the way organizations, leaders, and individuals use their power. As a life-long cowgirl, writer, university faculty member, and licensed psychotherapist, Beth has 25 years of experience developing, implementing, and training people in Natural Leadership—a model she pioneered. Natural leadership helps people awaken their innate awareness so they can live and work with more authentic relationships and connection.

Beth owns Take a Chance Ranch in Morgan Hill, CA providing leadership, culture, and well-being programs through The Circle Up Experience. Together with an ever-growing menagerie of animals, Beth works with human herds onsite and online. She’s trained thousands of leaders and teams from some of the most renowned corporations, universities, and nonprofits.

Beth’s fresh perspective and work integrating basic animal practices into everyday human life have been featured in global media including BBC World Service, PBS, and Forbes. She is a frequent podcast guest, contributing writer for MomsRising, and an advisor and content creator for Kahilla: A Basecamp for Women on the Rise.

Beth has an MA degree in Clinical Psychology from Santa Clara University and an MFA degree in Creative Writing from Arizona State University. Beth is the author of A Garden of Forking Paths (Pearson Longman, 2006) and the upcoming, The Human Herd: Awakening Our Natural Leadership (Morgan James Publishing, 2022). She lives on her ranch with an expanding community of animal herds.

Find our more about her on her website https://www.thecircleupexperience.com/thehumanherdbook/

 

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing