ACTUALITY

/aktjΩ’aliti,-t∫Ω-
being
ACTUALITY IS YOUR STATE OF BRILLIANCE..

GETTING COSY WITH CRISIS

In the middle of the night I woke up to my mother talking on the phone. She had called my uncle to say that my Dad wasnt home yet. 

We lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere. They had an agreement to be home by 10pm.

It was Easter.

That year my older sister and younger brothers had gone to boarding school. So we went from 6 of us at home to only the three of us.

I was 10. I got out of bed and sat with my Mum paging through magazines. By 5am he still isn’t home. We went and got the farm radio from the office. It was way before cell phones. 

My Uncle and my Godfather were out looking for him. They didn’t know we had the radio.

As the sun rose we heard a message over the radio- We found him, he’s dead.

In that moment my life changed forever. I stood at the beginning of an unfolding crisis that was so hard and so painful it would become the foundation of my life’s work.

The farm was enormously complex. It was sugar, avos, naartjies, oranges, pine, wattle and gum. There were 800 people living on the farm and we were responsible for feeding every person. 

And suddenly it was my mother and me who needed to figure it out. We were alone, in crisis and consumed with grief, fear and inner conflict

TRANSFORMING A CRISIS

Jump forward 25 years. I am working on a project to unlock an ecological development deadlock in the 9000 hectares of future development around the eThekweni King Shaka Airport. The client is made up of three parties who are in crisis and so deeply in conflict they won’t be in the same room together.

I realise that I don’t have the human behavior skills to deal with this. So I seek out the a human behaviour specialist and I go to a weekend breakthrough process with him.

For 25 years I have been dealing with the pain of grief and relentless cycles of burnout. I’m told that only time will heal it. 

What I witnessed that day changed the trajectory of my life once again. 

I saw this man transform the grief of a women whos son had committed suicide that month in 3 hours. From pain to love and gratitude.

I had been struggling with grief for 25 years, and he transformed it in 3 hours.

I thought what else can I do with that! Collapsing 25 years into 3 hours.

In that moment I committed to developing a process to transform burnout back into brilliance. Collapse years into hours so that no one had to struggle at a moment of crisis again.

I realised that every crisis is there to wake us up to our mission and our purpose in life. And if I could accelerate that, we could change the trajectory of Africa.

Africa is my home and my greatest love. I am African.

It is my mission to support leaders in Africa who are on the verge of burnout. A process guaranteed to store their brilliance into an opportunity for our evolution and expansion to influence the future of our world.

To become conscious in the midst of a crisis is the key to leadership that leaves a legacy.

You are here for greatness, don’t let a crisis keep you playing small.

Much love

Shannon