In this episode, Ashton Smith of the Awakening Membership shares her leadership journey, advice for uncovering and leading from your strengths, and cultivating confidence as a leader. 

We’re all leaders – no matter if we’re leading teams, a company, in our communities or churches – and the key to awakening your leadership is standing confidently in your strengths and passions.

Listen to the episode now!

Ashton Smith is a brilliant soul and wonderful lighthouse on this earth. She’s a writer, coach and space holder for women who are ready to take radical ownership of their life and create the reality they’ve always craved. 

Inside her online membership the Awakening, which I’m a part of, she helps women connect with their inner voice so they can create a life that serves their needs in a business that supports their dreams!

How has Ashton experienced her own leadership awakening?

Most people end up leading in areas they’ve grown the most in, and Ashton is no exception. She shares how her first business, an empowerment-based program, had no strategy or framework because she hadn’t yet experienced the growth needed to speak with confidence.

When she was just starting out, her dad gave her an analogy. Life is a series of valleys and mountain tops, he said, and when you look at a landscape you naturally see the mountain peak is the smallest part of the landscape. The valleys, he said, make up the most part of the landscape.

While we’re showing up and building our businesses, Ashton says we’re fully living life the whole time. Most of our process is lived on the valley floor or climbing the mountain or descending the mountain.

She shares how she followed that analogy to bring life to her leadership journey and develop a framework for her teaching.

What would you say to leaders who are beginning their journey?

Show up to find out, and you have to be serious. If you want to find your voice, then you have to speak, you have to use it – and that’s where the action component comes in. A lot of leadership is born just by taking imperfect action and showing up.

We all have this magic inside of us – every single person on this planet is born with unique strengths. Everyone has a core identity.

Everybody has natural rhythms, and we’re full of infinite wisdom and goodness, and so often we are looking all around us instead of within us.

We’re looking for all of these answers and are looking at how everyone else is doing things. We’re building our business, using the model that so-and-so is using.

But instead we need to sit down and ask, “What makes the most sense for me?”

What else do we talk about in this episode?

Ashton shares so many magical takeaways as we discuss:

• The role confidence plays in leadership, and what you should do if you don’t feel confident yet
• How she’s pulling in support of other people and making strategic hires this year
• How she’s growing in her role as CEO and the new things she’s stepping into
• The ways she’s pushing herself to grow as a leader and CEO this year

What encouragement does Ashton give to anybody listening? 

Come out of hiding and open up and let the light. There’s literally so much  hidden glory inside of every human being there, so much goodness and infinite wisdom that you do carry and again – there’s grace for your process.

There’s grace for your growth, and so you don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to be 50 steps ahead of everybody else in order to bring value to the table. 

You already have value and wisdom inside of you, and it’s just a matter of you opening up and shining a light on that and shining the light on what you have available right now in this season, it doesn’t matter if you know you’re still not fully grown.

No one’s ever fully grown we’re all still growing, and there’s grace for that. But you have to come out of hiding in order to even keep growing.

Connect with Ashton Smith & the Awakening

Website – www.awakeningmembership.com

Instagram – @ashtonlongsmith