🎙️76. Exploring Meaning-Making Systems with Karen LePage

podcast

May 21

the spiritual 9-5 podcast transcript

🎧 Listen on Spotify
🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts

Episode Published on May 21, 2024

Transcript:

Intro to the Intro

Karen LePage is a multi-faceted, multi-talented, just magical and creative, and all around unconventional-in-the-best-ways human being, who was so gracious enough to join us on The Spiritual 9–5 podcast. I know Karen because she gave me a Gene Keys reading maybe even a year ago, or over a year ago now, and in so many ways that reading changed my life. We’ve since stayed connected through our work, and Karen has a plethora of experience working in the corporate world, working in the service industry, working in entrepreneurship. She has experience across many skill sets and functions–like business strategy, strategic planning, Gene Keys, astrology, human design, clothing design, and so, so, so much more.

In this episode, we meant to talk about Gene Keys as a meaning-making system for the corporate world, but we ended up talking about meaning-making systems in general, among many other things. Our discussion is vast and very fluid. I hope that you enjoy this conversation as much as I enjoyed spending time with Karen. Her way of moving through the world is truly special and I’m excited to share a bit of it with you. And, because we are in the Woo Woo at Work series, stay tuned for a revisiting of Gene Keys, and how it may add value to your working team or individual experience.

Intro music 🎶

I believe that working can be one of the most spiritual paths that we walk. Whether that work is turning your passion into a business, or sitting behind a desk for 8 hours a day, or anywhere beyond and in between. And yet we often take the way in which we show up to work for granted, even though it's where we spend the majority of our time.

Here on The Spiritual 9–5 podcast, we talk about that. We talk about entrepreneurship. We talk about the 9-to-5. We talk about what it's like to be multi-passionate and talented and inspired and also utterly demotivated. We are here to support you in your work, whether your work is sacred to you or just something that you do to get by.

We are here to help you see and know yourself a little bit deeper, and to inspire you to show up no matter what it is that you find. I'm your host, Marie Groover. And like you, I am as multi-passionate as they come. I'm the founder of two businesses that are here to bring the soul back into the office. I, too, work a 9-to-5 in corporate tech. I'm a surfer, a writer, a philosopher-artist, if you will, and I'm so excited to bring you this episode today.

If you haven't, please leave the show a 5-star rating, and if this episode resonates, consider saving it and sharing it with someone you think it would resonate with, too.

Intro music fades 🎶

Marie Groover: Hello, Karen!

Karen LePage: Hello, Marie.

MG: We are here to talk about Gene Keys. Specifically Gene Keys in the workplace, both for the individual at work and for the team. Or/and the organization and/or the company, which then ripples out into the world, which is why I think this work is so cool. And you are a practitioner and a professional Gene Keys reader. So, I want to start with just the question of “What are Gene Keys and how do we use them in general?”

KL: Gene Keys is a meaning-making system.

MG: Mhmm.

KL: It's a framework we can use to look at ourselves; to discover who we are. The philosophy of using the Gene Keys, which is a system that was pulled together by Richard Rudd––I wanna make sure to acknowledge he's the one who wrote it all down and pulled it all together––and has a beautiful kind of rules or tenets for using Gene Keys, which involve gentleness, kindness, self inquiry, patience.

So, you know, whether you take a personality test, or you look at your astrology more deeply than just your sun sign, or human design, and it is really exciting to look up to try to take everything in at once. And we're just not equipped to take everything in at once, and things don't mean something to us, everything at once. You can be told something multiple times, whether it comes from a meaning-making system or framework or not, or even write something in your journal––have you ever gone back and reread something you wrote and then thought, “Who is this genius who wrote this?” Or listening to that song in a different way, or listening to a talk because you wanna get to the quote, and then hearing something before you get there.

So many different ways to take things in over time. So, I feel like patience is definitely the first most important tenant here. And it's not to give yourself excuses, and it's not to like pop astrology. Like, I was joking earlier about my husband: “Of course, you don't wanna be categorized. You're a Gemini!” Which, you know, can be fun as long as we hold it lightly. But there are people who even with the Myers Briggs or the Enneagram, one of these meaning-making systems, so that kinda use them to keep themselves in a box, or give themselves permission to explore the shadow, and not a kind of a gift frequency that they have, and these are words I'll define in just a moment. But just to say, it's a meaning-making system. It's built upon the I Ching, human design, astrology, and the Kabbalah tree of life. And all of those synthesized together to form the Gene Keys.

It's all though essentially, even the way they use the I Ching is kind of based in astrology. So, if you're not someone who understands astrology or holds with it or believes that there's any kind of reflection in the sky, it can just be a way to use some words to describe yourself that you can hold lightly and see if they're true or not. So I'm a little skeptical myself of, of things, and I always joke and, but it's the truth that I only 70% believe in anything. So there's always room for doubt. So, yeah, it can be really an interesting deep dive into yourself. Why you are the way you are? Maybe? Hold it loosely. Suspend disbelief is my advice always. And just what if it were this way? What if these were my gifts? What if these were shadows? And, you know, whenever you look for something, you find it.

MG: You said so many things here that I love. That I want to, almost like, come back to. But…

KL: Yeah, for sure.

MG: What I love love is you describe Gene Keys as a meaning-making system that shows us ourselves in our gifts. And this is something that I almost forgot about, but I think is so crucial to talk about with Gene Keys, where there are these really beautiful words that are used to describe us at various, kind of, points, in various perspectives. And what I love about it is that it is so much more open-ended, and so much more positive than maybe other meaning-making systems like astrology or like human design.

Not that these other meaning-making systems are negative in any way, shape, or form, but there's so much room for interpretation. And I feel like Gene Keys is such an invitation to step into, like, a bigger, bolder, more beautiful version of ourselves. Versus shrinking down into a containerized version of ourselves, or prescriptive version of ourselves. It's just so open. And, okay, before we go deeper, let's orient on you. What's your story? So, like, who is Karen? What's the storyline that you wanna share with us? How did you come to Gene Keys? And, yeah, let's start with that.

KL: Well, when I think about myself as a child, I think of myself as an artist and an explorer. I always wanted to be outside. I always wanted to try new things. I read voraciously. I just found my fairy tale book that I had when I was a little kid, and I just remember laying in bed with this big heavy book. And I would just read for hours into the night. And so that was a way for me to travel. I was an explorer in that way, exploring different ways people think, exploring different ways people live.

Also, young, kindergarten me was a dancer and a person who drew all the time and painted and made tiny little things out of clay. And so up until about age 7, that was basically my life. And then I lost my best friend who was my grandmother when I was 7. And she used to make clothes for us. And the way that she would just make something out of something else with her hands and then give them to us and we could wear her love around. It was how I stayed connected with her when she was gone. I wore things that she made until they didn't fit me anymore. And then, I had already started learning to sew myself, so I would try to make things for myself even if I wasn't wearing them, even if they were just to play with or to have around from a really young age. So. I like to make. Make meaning, and I like to make things, and I like to make friends. I’m a maker.

MG: Mmmm…oh my goodness. That is so beautiful. I wish that every time I ask someone what their story was, they took me back to their roots. Because what I was thinking is you were, you know, speaking about your all the way up until you were 7, I was like, “Woah, these are the formative years.” And so often when I work with clients in adulthood who have lived a whole life, and who have lived a whole life maybe disconnected from their core. When we start diving into their selves, their lives, their meaning-making systems or different meaning-making systems, it so often brings us back to their childhood. Right? It so often brings us back to their formative years. And it's so often is like a reminder of, “oh my goodness, yeah, I loved to travel. I loved to read. I love to make things. And this is why I love to make things.” And then it…it becomes such a source of inspiration. And I realize, you know, part of our lives as adults are sometimes figuring out how to be kids again. You know?

KL: Yeah. Trying to recapture that. I think. Right? Yeah.

MG: Yes, it's like, wait a second. We can be anything we wanna be. Why this, and why not the thing that we actually want? So I will, I just love this so much. Thank you for that.

KL: Thank you! So I've had almost every job. I never worked fewer than three jobs at a time. I went to college for, like, between 12 and 15 years and never graduated. I just changed my major all the time, learned three languages. I just wanted to take in as much as I possibly could. And then I realized, this is even how I solve problems in my technical work now, where I have to look away or I'll think about it before I go to bed. And if I'm, as I'm looking away, my brain organizes it behind the scenes, and then I turn back, “Oh, that was obvious. Why? Why didn't I turn away sooner?”

And so I feel like it's the same with these meaning-making systems. As I mentioned before, like diving in deep and then pulling back, it's almost like putting away the notebook and then coming back to it and looking freshly at, at someone we are, or something we've said that can have a new meaning.

I used to start the day over with my kids as many times as necessary to be in a good place before I dropped them off. Because somebody would have a stressful morning, definitely started with me, I'm not a morning person. But even as much as I try, even just, you know, there'd be little conflicts or a little, “oh, I forgot this!” And then let's start over. We'd take a breath. Okay. Move forward. Let's start over.

Sometimes it could be like six times starting over, but it taught my kids and it reminded me that it's not too late in the day to do your morning pages if you get bright every day. It's not too late in your life to start something new, to learn something new. How many painting classes have I taken where there are 72 year old women talking about how they never allowed themselves just to do what they wanted to do. And I felt like, “Oh, I'm only 50. I am way ahead of the curve here.” But, of course, when you're 15, you think 50 is, like, the oldest you could possibly be, so…

MG: That's so good. So you've almost always worked three jobs at a time. You were in corporate for a while. Like, give us your history. What's your story there?

KL: I started as a temp, which is perfect for me, because then I get to try all different kinds of things. It's very easy for me to pick up technology and understand different structures and how things are communicated. The rules of a place. I can dive in and function. I don't always agree with them, but, you know, I can, I can play the role? Being a waiter was perfect for that, too. But I worked at a small architectural firm, and I worked in academia as a research assistant, and then I wanted to wear a suit and have a full time job with benefits because I was a soon-to-be-single mom. That's really when I looked for more corporate gigs so I could work one job at a time, at least, maybe, to support my tiny family, me and my first baby. And then I, when I got a temporary opportunity to work at Ford Motor Company, that's where my family had worked for for generations. Never high enough up the ladder to pull someone else in. Everybody had to get their own job there, but my family had worked at Ford since there was a Ford Motor Company.

MG: Wow!

KL: So, yeah, so I thought, okay, this will be a good job because I was raised that you get a job and then your job takes care of you for life. Well, my parents were the last generation where that was true. But I did enjoy working there. I, as I said, I started as a temp. I had the opportunity to use experience that I had gained over so many years of having so many jobs and living in so many social situations and, like, based on, you know, how much income I had or where I was working or that kind of thing. I could be fluent in my discussions and still straightforward in asking questions. And because I wasn't asking questions to be obstinate, I was asking questions to understand, they hired me the last day before a hiring freeze happened. They wanted me there full time. And so I ended up working there for almost 7 years, which was pretty great. A big cycle of my life in strategic planning.

So, speaking of meaning-making systems, the first few years, I was in the, the finance division, so Ford Credit. There was a CEO there who brought, they say, the engineering and finance types would say, oh, he brought the circus to town, but also he brought he we would have lots of meetings to do training and leadership and to get people to make mistakes and to, you know, help each other out and to try new things because doing the same thing wasn't gonna get them to the exponential growth they wanted to have. Especially right before big financial dip, dip recession, depression of the, of 2008. So I worked there from 2000 to, like, 2006 and a half-ish. So or almost 2000, yeah. 2007.

So it was all, “How are we gonna navigate this change? How are we gonna be able to make money? How are we gonna be able to make money without taking advantage of people?” How are we gonna you know, like, all these really wonderful questions. And they even brought in an artist to paint the vision that each department would bring together in words, but they they this artist would paint this in a painting and that they hung in the center of each department so that everyone could come by and, like, basically buy back into the values that they were all part of putting together.

So, yeah, that was a really exciting time to be there, and then that CEO was fired. And they tried to get rid of everybody who was brought in by him because they wanted to wipe the culture back to straightforward, blue suits, and keeping quiet in meetings. Even though they still kept the same values. So, one of those many synchronicities that showed me I was in the right place at the right time, and then when it was time to move on. It was time to move on. So I, I left on maternity leave and never came back. So that was just the perfect timing for me.

MG: I love it. Where did you go after maternity leave?

KL: I actually ended up still doing some work. It was freelance work. I did presentation development, so I would try to translate these really high level or very specific financial structure concepts to the sales field or to an employee meetings. And so my former vice president, before he retired, would have me on a contract basis do some more of that for them and then also referred me out to other people that he liked my work.

And I also my husband hired me to do some things for his company, and I got to travel and work. One of the things he wanted to make sure to do was that we could build something to get like, I could be a part of building it even if just helping him sort things out by discussing them with me. Because, I understood, because I came from strategic planning where you synthesize all the information and put it together to try new things, and then track what effect that has and then prove it to people who don't want to change.

MG: Mhmm.

KL: Prove that change is necessary. And I was part of the team who saved Ford's credit rating. When the auto industries needed to be bailed out, Ford didn't need to be bailed out.

MG: Ah this is so…

KL: It was a really exciting opportunity there. But yeah. So I worked for German, because I one of my majors over my many years of college was German. I was an exchange student in 1988 and 89 to West Germany. So I was, I came back here right before the wall came down. Talk about a period of change and just fascinating cultural shifts, being able to witness that was amazing. And so I felt like that kind of prepared me for all kinds of cultural shifts. Being a chaos surfer. I don't surf on the water like you, but I could surf chaos.

MG: I love this so much. And also, I'll say, of course, this is why you're a part of the team that helped save Ford's credit rating because, you know, so often I think we value very linear thinking in corporate. We value, you know, strategy is linear. We value a very rigid kind of way of being. And what happens is when we allow for true creativity and innovation, we allow for a more neurodivergent approach and we allow for connective tissue across very disparate systems and ideas, then solutions emerge.

KL: Yeah.

MG: And when we allow ourselves to follow that, we save ourselves from, you know, Great Depressions. We save ourselves from disaster. And we also get to experience life and work in such a more fun way. In such a more beautiful, alive way versus, you know, resting on the linearity that doesn't actually exist. Right? It's all false. So, I just think this is like, what a gift. What a gift. Just what a gift you are.

KL: Thanks for saying so. I think the keyword that you said there was “allow.” And it's funny, because we don't actually have to allow that everything's connected. We just have to be open to the possibility that things might be connected. Anytime we are allowing to see that things are connected is when we're going to get some kind of nourishment or entertainment or connection from a meaning-making system.

MG: Mmmm, I love this. Okay. So how, so how did you find a Gene Keys? What led you to this?

KL: Well, like I said, I was obsessed with astrology since I was a little kid. I would read the baseball scores, and then I would read the horoscopes to my family in the morning..

MG: I love this.

KL: ..in second grade because they were right next to each other. So there we go. So, I'd say baseball brought me into astrology if you wanna to see it that way. So how I found Gene Keys is through human design. We moved to Seattle, which was the plan of record for my husband and me since we started dating. So we moved out here and I thought, “Okay, my husband is working, has a reasonable amount of time to work per day, like only 10 hours instead of 14 to 16. So isn't that nice?”

And I thought I'm just gonna focus on making this transition as healthy as possible for the baby who was 10, not a baby. But, you know, and then to be supportive so my husband could, like, get into his new job without having to do all the mental gymnastics or emotional gymnastics of managing the family, too. And, by the time the kids started middle school, I thought, I'm ready to make friends. And so I've been listening to this podcast called the “Jess Lively Show” for many years, and she had this “Glow with Intention” online, like, 6-week or 8-week course or something. And I decided, okay, I'm ready to make friends, and I signed up for it and I met a friend group. Right there! Local friends who got together in person. And that's where we, I was exposed to all different kinds of things. One of them's an Enneagram coach. One of them is human design.

We were listening to podcasts, and Jenna Zoe was interviewed. And I actually was able to get a reading from her directly, and it just resonated so much! I just really felt like, “Okay. I can accept that this is, yeah, this makes sense. If I match patterns back to who I am, I can accept that this is who I am. And this is maybe I'll experiment with working in the way that it shows me how to work with my energy.” And so it was about maybe 6 weeks after I had that session that I found a a little group on Facebook back when I was on Facebook that combined human design and Gene Keys.

And that's when I was exposed to Gene Keys. So “Unlock Your Design" was a group––Ashley and Bella lead it––and they really like to weave together astrology, Gene Keys, and human design. And I thought, “Okay, never mind human design. I'm going all in on this Gene Keys thing!” Because I love how open it is, how Richard Rudd is a poet, and so everything was designed to be interpreted in the words themselves were designed to resonate in a way. And being a singer, I didn't even mention that, I’m a musician as well or was. I love Sanskrit, and chanting, and yoga because it's the actual resonance of the shapes of the words that bring you meaning. You don't have to understand them with your mind.

And so I felt like Gene Keys approached life in that way. And so that attracted me to it. And then, of course, I realized after I got really into it after a few months, “Oh, wait. No. This is just reinforcing everything else I already have learned.” And so it becomes mutually reinforcing. You don't supplant one meaning-making system with another. I feel like because Gene Keys is so open that it…it invites us to bring all of all of what we have into exploring who we are.

MG: Mmmm.

KL: So the, the gates in human design and the keys and the Gene Keys are exactly the same source material. They’re just approached in a different way. And so that was really nice to see the perspective shift and how it allowed me to soften and open up to different kind of possibilities, just by changing the words, just by having a more inviting atmosphere. So that's how I got into it. But the approach in general is one that's really helped me live a life that's a lot more peaceful.

MG: Oh, I love that. And so why is that?

KL: Because I accept who I am. Which is different than excusing it. As I mentioned before, I think a lot of times we'll get into pop astrology and excuse who we are: “Oh, that's a Sagittarius. They're not gonna show up on time.” No. I can show up on time. Or at least I'll communicate when I'm running late. And then just, you know, having that be the dominant kind of flavor of who people are and we categorize them and judge them in that way.

Where I feel looking at my gifts and seeing what's possible for me, what I'm born with. Even just our profile is not just what's possible for us. That's a starting point. But even bringing myself to that starting point, to see these gifts inside myself, really helped me be a little more open and accepting and patient with who I am that might even drive me nuts before. And now it's just, Okay, you can take your time. It's okay. This is who you are. You require patience, but you also give patience.”

And so that's my life's work, is patience. Seeing that and then understanding, oh, this is here so that I can learn patience, or this is here because I need patience from someone else. I can ask for what I need.

MG: Mmm, yeah.

KL: And the same thing can be true with a really great therapist. I just feel like this kinda shortcuts it, right? Instead of therapy. As I mentioned before. But it it kinda can shortcut through to asking more meaningful questions.

MG: I really like that you mentioned this because something that will happen so often with my 1 on 1 clients is that, you know, when I have a new client, we do everything together. So we'll do a “Find Your Purpose” session, which is basically they answer a bunch of questions that I have for them as their homework. We review all those questions together. We articulate their purpose, like, in their own terminology, and we talk about their values, and we talk about how and why they fulfill it. But then the next session, we'll do, like, astrology. We'll do human design. We'll do Gene Keys. Like, we hit kind of all these different tools.

We'll do discover insights. If they're interested in doing something a little bit more structured, we'll do Myers Briggs. But we we hit all these different tools so that we can look at the individual from lots of different lenses and then to see from the person's perspective which lens feels the best for me. Right? Like, what feels good? What doesn't feel good? How can I know myself better? But what ultimately happens is after every single one of these type of sessions, these self inquiry sessions, my clients are like, “Wow, I feel like I just had 7 years of therapy in one session.”

And I think it's because therapy is so and therapy is amazing. I think therapy plus this is, like, amazing, but therapy is so open ended and so you have almost nowhere to start, nowhere to end. Whereas when you have these tools or these meaning-making systems in front of you, you have an anchor. Where you're like I, yeah, you have a framework and you're like, “Oh my goodness, I can see so much of me in this small period of time.”

Whereas if I, you know, start talking about myself, who knows where that's gonna go, and who knows how long it's gonna take for me to get to that, like, core little thing that that that happens over and over and over again in my life that I don't really realize until, hey, you read your your Gene Keys, and you're like, oh my gosh. Of course. Of course. Of course. And it's okay that I'm this way. Of course. Of course, this all makes sense.

Or you're like, this doesn't make sense. I need to, like, look into this deeper. Right? But things kind of fall into place in a way that I do agree with you that happens faster than if we're just meandering through the forest. Right? It's almost like you're given a map versus, like, looking aimlessly around. And if you have nowhere to go, you can be anywhere. It doesn't matter. But…

KL: Right.

MG: When you're looking for something, when you're like, I need to know who I am or I, you know, I need something to point to or something to guide me, I just, like, what a gift these methodologies can be for us.

KL: Yeah. And they can help support us in making big changes. I feel like when people come to me or when they're seeking some kind of reading, they're looking for affirmation. They're looking for insight, of course, but I'm never gonna tell anybody no. But I will listen to them while they tell themselves no, or I will tell them yes when they want permission from somebody. I think people come looking for me when they're ready to make a change. It feels just like flipping a coin. If we're looking outside ourselves for affirmation or for a reflection, which is what I feel like I can provide as a reflection from a different perspective, whether I know somebody beforehand or not, then you can kind of taste it and see if it if it's right or you can pretend, act as if, you know, just like in manifest manifestation, like act as if something's already here, approach it in a way that it's already yours so you can let go of grasping.

And so whatever it takes to let go of the grasping and feeling pressured back to allowing again, whatever that takes to help whatever is coming next to be looked at more as an adventure or an opportunity, while still facing reality, that there are some shifts that probably need to be made as you're changing jobs or having a child or when your youngest goes away to college, which is the situation we're in here. There are big changes happening where you start a new business or you want to start a new business. All of those are questions that having a Gene Keys session isn't gonna give you the yes or no answer. Is it time for this, or am I meant for this? But it will give you some questions or some reflections to remind you of who you are. Sometimes we need reminders.

MG: Yeah. Oh, I love this so much, too. And I love the flipping the coin analogy. Because when you flip the coin while the coin's in the air, as they say, you tend to know what it is that you want because you know which side you want it to land on. Right? Oh, yeah. Or you know that you truly are different if you don't want an, if you're not sure, maybe there's something else entirely. And I

KL: That's why I was I was like, let's flip a coin if kids can't decide something because they'll know afterward, like, oh, no. I really wanted the other thing. Okay. We don't abide by the coin, that was just a tool.

MG: Right? The coin is a tool. Oh, I love this. And, and similarly, these meaning-making systems can be tools to show us what feels good and what doesn't feel good. You know? Because sometimes I think there are aspects of ourselves that maybe we're not ready to see, that we don't wanna look at. There are aspects of ourselves that we wanna see more of. There's permission that we seek from the world. There's validation we seek from the world.

You know, It's really funny. I started reading tarot because of an astrology reading, because in this astrology reading, you know, the reader said, Marie, you have psychic medium all over your chart. What are you doing with that? And I was just like, I don't know. What should I be doing with that? And she was like, do you have a tarot deck? And I was like like, I'm too very skeptical, and I I grew up very, like, logical and, like, you know, like, math, science.

KL: But you had that friend's mom that showed you tarot isn't what's gonna happen. It's how you react to what's gonna happen.

MG: Totally, totally. And so but it was funny because she said, do you have a tarot deck? And I was like, no. And she said, well, why not? And I said, well, I've been waiting for the invitation. I've been waiting for someone to gift one to me because isn't that how this works? And she was like, no. Consider this your invitation. Go buy a deck. But it was wild because in that moment, I realized how much I longed for someone else to tell me that about myself.

KL: We all want someone to tell us what to do, weirdly.

MG: We all want someone else to tell us how special we are. We all wanna be seen in our gifts. We all wanna know what our gifts are. We wanna know how special we are. And when we start playing with these meaning-making systems, we're, like, rained upon with gifts.

KL: Yeah.

MG: We're like, woah. There are all these things, and then we're also

KL: Never even opened that box!

MG: Right? Like, I have no idea what this is. And then, and then suddenly, we have permission to start to embody them.

KL: Right.

MG: We have our mission to start to explore them. We have permission to start to take ownership of them and to really show up in them. Whereas, you know, some, some of us, I think, were fortunate enough to maybe grow up in homes where we were super seen and super acknowledged, and we were able to be whatever we wanted to be. But I think so many of us based on culture and society and conditioning from, like, school, we learned not to stand in our power and our gifts, but we learned to conform instead. And we learned to blend in and we learned to hide. And so when we start to experience these meaning-making systems, we get to tap into that, that specialness again in a different type of way.

KL: Mhmm.

MG: And thinking about this in the corporate space, I think that this is so crucial because when I worked at Microsoft, we invested so heavily in what we would call hypo or high performing individuals. So individuals that we already were saying, “you're special.” Right? You're special because you're performing really well. You're special because, we, you have visibility. You know, we're gonna give you more visibility. We're gonna give you more resources. The work that I love to do with Essential Teams is to say every, you know, like, the quote from the Dalai Lama, “No one is special, everyone is essential.” But it's to start to look at every individual in an organization and say, you're special. Like, what makes you special? Or rather, you are essential to this organization. What makes you essential?

And it's looking at everything differently. And rather than, you know, pointing out people and saying, like, “These people are, like, the best or the ones,” it's looking at everyone and realizing, this is your power. Right? And you now have permission to step into that power and, like, what a gift that is, I think, when we're working with people and what a difference it makes in their lives. I even think about, there's a story that I read about this man who, in high school, he took, like, the SAT to go to college, and he got his score back and he was kind of a kid that just kind of like screwed off. And all of high school, he was like the jokester. He didn't really show up for class. He took the SAT, just, like, didn't think he was gonna really go to college. And he got his score back, and he had, like, the highest scores. Like, it was, like, insane high, and everyone was like, how do you get it? And so he ended up getting into this really incredible college, and he ended up being this super successful man.

Years later, he gets his SAT score. Like, he gets a letter from, like, the testing facility, and they messed up the scores. So, actually, that boy, like, failed it all, but he didn't know that he failed it all. And so it was literally this test result that he got back that gave him permission to be great and to take himself seriously, and to show up and to try. And what happened when he took himself seriously because he thought he was recognized is he became an entirely different person. And I was telling you before we started recording this call, like, after the Gene Keys reading that you and I did, you know, I sat with it for a while. I'd process it for a while. I dove really deep into it, and I felt like I became a new person through it. Because I felt like I was invited to really stand in and embody these beautiful words that came through in my reading that I never would have seen for myself or thought for myself.

And whether or not, you know, you're talking about your skepticism earlier, but whether or not it's true, and what if I think it is? What if I allow it to be? What if I step into that?

KL: Yeah! Whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you're right. That one always comes to me.

MG: Exactly. Oh, it's so good. It's so beautiful.

KL: Stepping into who we want to be or who we believe we are is easier when the words resonate with us. And it brings me back to frequency. Thinking about even just, I was in this amazing course, “Create Your Cosmology.” So building your own meaning-making system from scratch with Xenia Marie Viray. She's amazing. “Myths of Creation” is her handle, or her website. One of the things that she reminded us of, she loves to bring science in and then also mysticism together. So it's really fun for both sides of your brain. But she reminded me and said, “Ask any kid, you know, like, how did they learn about the structure of the atom?”

I mean, I learned with tinker toys. Like, it was a stick or, or it was a marshmallow and a straw. You know? It wasn't an electron cloud of possibility. My kids both said, “Oh, we learned both ways. We learned both of them. We built the things with toothpicks or straws and marshmallows. But, also, we were taught that, like, this is just a metaphor so that we can see how it's built, and, actually, the electrons don't form a structure until they're, they bump up against something else, not necessarily physically, but until they are influenced by something else.”

And then in Xenia's class, she invites us to think about, like, how we are constantly influencing each other.

MG: Mhmm.

KL: And I want to be somebody who influences people with my big heart and my optimism and my belief in people and in myself. And my adventurous spirit, and I feel like that can happen. When I was a barista many years ago, my job was to help people start their day. It wasn't to make coffee. It wasn't I mean, yes, it was all of those things, but I felt like my real job was to pull it together and have myself, like, on the start to my day before I started work so that I was ready to share some cheerfulness, but not too much cheerful like, to just really be balanced and positive and help somebody start off on the right foot. With a sincere compliment or a question that showed interest because I was interested, not because I was using a strategy, though it sounds like it when I, when I say it now.

And, yeah, when I, when I look at my profile, I see, like, oh, I might naturally have some of that built in here and maybe that's why it's easy for me to say, “Oh, just do this.” And then some people, whether they grew up in, in a place where they weren't encouraged to be friendly to strangers or where everybody seems frightening because of trauma, they might not naturally be that way. So I don't know if it has to do with the chart or if it's just a reflection or if it just came behind and supported the ideas I already had about myself. I don't know. And it doesn't matter why. But having that support helps me maintain that curiosity and optimism.

MG: I love that. “It doesn't matter why.”

KL: About who I could be. It doesn't matter why. It doesn't matter that it's based in astrology. What matters is the questions that we ask ourselves. And when I think about resonating and frequency and this cloud of possibility that's in every single atom in our body. I was listening to a podcast the other day, two magicians who are also…magicians. They are magicians, but they are musicians who also do energy work and astrology and that kind of thing. And Jonathan Koe, Healing the Spirit, amazing podcast.

He is classically trained pianist and he's composer now, and they also interviewed Joanne Chen who's also a musician. And what she said was, “The key to finding harmony is not all playing the same note.” So there's not one formula for success or for happiness or for self belief for everybody. And so when we look at these meaning-making systems, we see, like, oh, maybe there's a different way for me. It's not to say that you're not gonna get to the same point where you can play in harmony with other people, but also what she said was, “That in order for harmony to sound beautiful, or to be harmony, everybody has to be in tune with themselves.”

So, but, yeah, that, that resonated with me so deeply. It just suddenly everything made sense. Why is it important to watch your own plate? Why is it important to get your own ducks in a row? Why is it important for you to be who you are so that other people around you have permission to be who they are? Even though this is a personal system, this is how it can help groups and teams.

I think about the Detroit Lions who even the draft is tomorrow and they talk about, oh, who are you gonna get? Are you gonna get a quarterback? And the the general manager and the head coach are like, we're gonna find somebody who's the best player, who plays like we play, and who's gonna fit in our locker room, who's gonna be part of this culture.

And it reminds me of “Good to Great.” I don't know if you remember that book, but we went through a phase at Ford, too. Like, and I don't know if they believed it enough, but, like, getting the right person in is more important than getting the boxes ticked from experience. Because you can train somebody how to do anything.

MG: Mhmm.

KL: Most people. But if they're not the right type of person with the right kind of drive or the right, if you need someone internally motivated, that's the person you put there, and then you find the work for them to do. And so, yes, sports metaphors are effective because they're true. Because you literally have to play together. Music metaphors are effective because you also have to play together, and you have to make sure your own equipment, your own instrument, which is our bodies, right? Are in tune in order to be the best possible participant in some kind of team or group or collective moving forward.

MG: How does Gene Keys support us to be in tune with ourselves and therefore with our organization?

KL: Mmm…that's what I was talking about before. Well, helping me find peace with the things that are challenges for me and accepting the things that come naturally to me. A lot of times I don't wanna do something just because I can, doesn't mean I have to. That's true. And so how can Gene Keys help with this? Getting in tune with ourselves is getting to know ourselves. And not just how we are and how we were, but knowing that it's possible if we want something to change, that we are the ones who need to participate in changing it. It's more than just us.

We all live in community, in society, in an oppressive system because it comes from outside of us. But I, for me, Gene Keys, and especially in combination with human design, in combination with yoga, in combination with therapy, all of these have helped me be able to come to a place or return to a place because we don't stay in balance. If we stayed in balance, it would be stagnancy. Balance is over time. And so being consistent is also over time. It doesn't mean that every day at 8 AM, if we're not out the door, we're a giant failure. It means, like, if we go on a run or we sit and meditate or we make breakfast before we eat breakfast, that's still consistent. And so having, having a framework that's more expansive like that maybe wouldn't have even occurred to me before I started exploring what the Gene Keys were.

MG: Yeah.

KL: And there are ways to get so deep into it and get so, you know, which amino acid goes with each key and which, you know, there are so many correspondences, you know, it can be easy to get overwhelmed. But simply asking, like, where's my how can I use my gift? Or what's my role? The lines talk about the role we have in each of these spheres of our lives.

MG: Oh, there's so many things here, because when we get to know ourselves…

KL: Mhmm

MG: …we can accept ourselves for who we are, which, like you said, doesn't mean we're excusing ourselves. But it does allow ourselves to be. We can, we can cancel like the dictator in our heads or the critical person in our heads. And we can, we can accept and we can allow ourselves to be. But on top of that, when we begin to know ourselves, we can also take total accountability for ourselves

KL: Yeah.

MG: Which means we can let go of accountability for other people. And when we can show up accountably, then we invite everyone around us to also show up accountably when we can show up. You know, and it it like, I love what you said, it doesn't mean, like, just because we're happy, it's gonna make other people happy. Just because we're buoyant, it's not gonna make other people buoyant. But what it does do is it invites other people to hold their own crap. So that you don't have to carry it anymore.

And we––human beings––are brilliant, amazing, genius, naturally accountable beings. And so when you let go of someone else's crap, they're gonna pick it up. And then suddenly, they get themselves in tune too. And they see what it is that they're working with. And when you see what you're working with and you get to be that and they see what they're working with and they get to be that, then slowly, it ripples out. Right? Or sometimes quickly. Sometimes quickly, it ripples out, but it ripples out and suddenly you have this brilliant musical performance. Whereas before, when we're, I think, not seeing ourselves, not knowing ourselves and carrying everyone else's shit…

KL: Mhmm.

MG: Then there's not really a beautiful performance happening. Right? It's just a bunch of noise.

KL: Right.

MG: I love this.

KL: And sometimes we discover that everybody else is playing in a different key–to stick with the musical metaphor–and that's okay. Maybe we don't belong in that group.

MG: Mmmm

KL: And it's scary, but also okay. So we, how do we find the group? That is our fractal line or our connection with one in our group of people that have our backs, who we can actually make something with.

MG: Yeah. I love it.

KL: We have to know who we are first. You have to know what we're looking for.

MG: Mhmm.

KL: And not pull too tightly to the specifics.

MG: What a great discussion on meaning-making systems in general and why they're important. You know, when we are introducing something into the workplace and we're saying like, “Hey, team, you have to do this.” It really does start with the individual. And this is something that I think about all the time. You know, when I go into a corporate environment and I'm doing a training or a workshop, it matters less to me that the whole team leaves feeling really good. And it matters more to me that one person was like, “Oh, I got that.” One person was like, “This has changed me.” Because I recognize that when one person can tune themselves, it sets an example for everyone else. And it creates safety for everyone else, and it creates permissioning for everyone else and it, like, that makes such a huge difference.

And so, you know, something that you and I said right before we hit record as well, was that when we think about leadership and we think about teams, we think about team building, we think about building culture in an organization. When we want to lead, it really starts with us and knowing ourselves. And we can't actually lead by checking off boxes, and I think that when we start to explore meaning-making systems like Gene Keys, it holds us accountable to that. And we get to see who we really are in all of these different situations. We get to accept the invitation of being ourselves. And then through that, we get to change an entire team, organization, company, and thus the world. Right?

KL: Mhmm

MG: So, yeah. Thank you so much, Karen, for taking the time, for being here, for sharing your heart, for sharing your mind, for dropping so much wisdom. I could talk to you for hours as we do when we get together, and I can't wait for part 2.

KL: Yeah. Me too.

Outro music 🎶

Thank you so much for listening to The Spiritual 9–5 Podcast. I'm your host Marie Groover and I am beyond honored that you are here. Please follow, save, and rate the show and if you can, share your favorite episode with a friend. It makes the world of a difference.

Connect with me on LinkedIn. I would love to hear from you what you think about the show or my work, so don't be shy.

And I'm always here to connect and support you or your business through coaching, team building, and leadership development. You can find my work in the show notes.

Until next time, Big Love.

Outro music fades 🎶

_____

Shownotes:

In this Woo Woo at Work episode, we dive into meaning-making systems, touching on Gene Keys with Karen LePage.

In this conversation, Karen shares her expansive career history, how the Gene Keys have informed her decisions, and the many ways this meaning-making system can support deeper organizational alignment.

This episode is intended for those with an open mind, a desire for adventure, and a willingness to accept ourselves as we are.

Learn more about Karen on her website and explore her Gene Keys readings.

References: