Imagine you’re walking in the woods.
The rich, calming quiet of the forest surrounds you. It’s not silence but a deep, settled stillness. You feel the moist air on your skin. You smell the leaves and the soil and decay. You feel a grounded sense of peace and rightness for being where you are.
And then you come across a divine presence. (It’s not a burning bush.)
It’s the figure of a woman. And as she draws near you, you notice something unusual about her face: it keeps changing.
One moment it’s youthful, smooth and unlined. The next it’s older, more full. Then it’s old, wizened, twinkling, with salt-and-pepper hair.
The figure before you is the Triple Goddess.
The Triple Goddess Paradigm
The Triple Goddess archetype is (as my mom would say) “as old as the hills” and it perfectly describes the stages of creating magnetic thought leadership.
The metaphor symbolizes the three stages of a woman’s life as we age and time passes:
- maiden,
- mother,
- crone.
But the metaphor is most powerful when you view it symbolically. Rather than linear, the phases are like points on a circle that you move between whether you’re sixteen or sixty-seven.
Each phase is critical in developing your magnetic thought leadership. Each phase also has an extreme side: a place we can go mentally and energetically that tips the scales into not helpful. These extremes are normal, but a sign that fear and anxiety and running the show.
So. How do thought leaders embody the Triple Goddess paradigm when we create and produce our body of work? Let’s get into it.
The Maiden Thought Leader: Creation
The maiden is Big Yes energy. She is coming of age and brimming with ideas, enthusiasm and ambition.
She is learning to be autonomous, sovereign unto herself. When I connect with this energy I feel my posture straighten, my feet widen, my shoulders tilt back, and I want to throw my arms open like I’m going to embrace the whole world.
This is the ALL THE IDEAS phase of thought leadership. Your mind moves quickly, making connections, having epiphanies, invigorated by possibilities. Your mental vision is strong: you can clearly see the impact your work will have.
Extreme Maiden
The extreme side of maiden energy is overwhelm. It’s when ALL THE IDEAS make your head spin or paralyze you with indecision — what I call Hydra Condition.
It’s needing external validation for your thought leadership, needing approval. It’s when you try to make your thought leadership into what they (your ideal client, your heroes, your coach) want to hear instead of what you need to say. This can lead to self-censorship of your ideas.
It’s shiny object syndrome, getting distracted by something new.
Thought Leader Actions in Maiden
Maiden energy is the creation phase of drafting (which may include your MUSE draft — more on that another time), note-taking, frantic scribbles on scrap paper, rich conversations, and research.
It’s that thought that makes you strop in your tracks, whip out your phone, and open your notes app.
I often feel maiden energy early in the morning when I sit quietly by myself in A Room of My Own (metaphorically and literally). I also feel it when I’m doing something physical that lets my mind wander: walking, doing dishes, showering. The key is letting myself hear my thoughts and my mind do its magic.
From Maiden energy we often transition into Mother: cultivation.
The Mother Thought Leader: Cultivation
The phase of mother isn’t literal parenthood, but the energetic phase of cultivating and nurturing something new. You sun and water and fertilize your ideas and let them flourish.
There’s contemplation, love, compassion, even a little exasperation as your ideas morph and grow and take on a life of their own. There might be fierce protectiveness, which may cause you to keep your ideas private until they are ready for the world.
Where the maiden is becoming autonomous, mother energy is in relationship with her thought leadership, committed to seeing her creation come to fruition. When I connect with this energy I feel gentle and curious. I want to wrap my arms up and embrace myself.
Extreme Mother
The extreme side of mother energy is betrayal, because you gave so much to this damn thought leadership and it ONLY GOT TWELVE LIKES!?!?!?
It’s anger at and impatience with your work when it doesn’t have the outcome you hoped for right away. Or it can be neglect and punishment: refusing to tend to and repurpose your thought leadership over time, leading to it wither on the vine instead of bearing new fruit again and again.
It’s perfectionism, or what I call qualification-itis, making you second-guess yourself or tweak and fiddle with your thought leadership instead of letting it out into the world.
It’s urgency, trying to force your next big idea to just be done already, instead of giving it the time it needs to grow.
Thought Leader Actions in Mother
Mother energy is the phase of editing and reworking, and that includes contemplation: letting your ideas marinate and grow and develop. It’s a phase of deep listening, of taking your time, and trusting the process.
It can also be the energy of repurposing, of breathing life into an old piece of thought leadership.
From Mother energy we often transition into Crone: concede.
The Crone Thought Leader: Commitment
The crone is wise, still, steadfast energy or staying aligned with her purpose. She is committed to her service. There’s deep love and protectiveness in crone, too — but not attachment. This is a phase of unwavering trust.
You commit to your self, your service, your craft by letting your thought leadership go. You let it out into the world as well as out of your control. You let your ideas go, the ones that aren’t ripe yet or aren’t right for you anymore — you don’t overcommit. You let others build upon your thought leadership — you know it’s ultimately for them anyway.
I feel most connected to this phase in meditation. When I sit with my eyes closed and feel myself breathe, I get glimpses of that absolute trust and groundedness.
Extreme Crone
The extreme side of crone energy is resentment. Feeling forgotten, invisible, ignored for your service. It’s needing credit and recognition and accolades. Don’t they know you invented that idea? Don’t they know she stole that concept from you?
It can make us falter, feel uncertain and second-guess or even give up: what’s the point? No one pays attention to me anyway. This thought often leads to inconsistency, where thought leadership goes to die.
And then there’s self-disgust, scolding yourself for not doing better in the past, for not trying harder to have more, for not being consistent.
Thought Leader Actions in Crone
Crone energy is publishing your thought leadership with trust that it’s enough, you’re enough, and everything happens exactly on time. It’s peaceful promotion: letting your thought leadership stand on its own, helping others to access it and be changed by it.
Grief is welcome in the crone phase. Loss is inevitable, and in crone you can feel the bittersweetness of letting go the topics, niches, clients, and ideas of your past self.
There’s no force, no rush, no competition. You are in service to whatever is ready to happen. And when it does… the Maiden energy of creation will play her part.
How Thought Leaders Embody the Triple Goddess
You don’t necessarily start your thought leadership in maiden, move seamlessly to mother, and finish up in crone.
You might move through each phase multiple times. In fact, just as you experience each phase when you create an article or video or keynote, every moment and every sentence contains these phases in miniature!
That’s something else I love about this metaphor: it’s like a fractal. No matter how far you zoom in or out, you experience these phases at that scale:
- You create a sentence, cultivate it, and concede it. Perhaps you go back later and cultivate it some more. Or maybe you scrap it entirely and recreate it.
See what I mean about the fractal?
The Triple Goddess paradigm is a poignant metaphor for what thought leaders like you and me experience as we ideate, create, and publish our work.
You can invite this paradigm into your thought leadership practice further by:
- Declaring an intention for your thought leadership time. As you sit down to work on your keynote, lead magnet, or article, make an intention to yourself about the Triple Goddess phase you’re identifying with. Is it ideation time? Writing and editing time? Or time to let go?
- Adjusting your linear expectations. It’s tempting to self-flagellate when we don’t progress in a linear fashion. How many times have you berated yourself for not following steps from beginning to end? With the Triple Goddess paradigm, you’re always moving between phases and that’s normal. You can’t do the phases wrong. You can’t miss a step. Let your mind and ideas go where they need to go — you can trust them.
- Noticing the extremes. When you’re paralyzed with indecision, disappointed in performance, or impatient for fame and fortune, pay attention. Identify the phase you’re in, and see if you can breathe through the extremity and bring yourself back to the supportive and creative energy of that phase.
Now take a deep breath. How does the Triple Goddess paradigm make you feel?
As you embark on creating your next piece of magnetic thought leadership, be it a podcast episode, email to your list, or Instagram post, notice these flavors of energy. Notice how your maiden, mother, and crone energies rise to support you.
Here’s what I can tell you: the Triple Goddess paradigm will give you ease and reverence for any and every stage where you find yourself. This is a process of creation. What could be more holy than that?
Come on in, Goddess
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