The Heroine (that’s you) is in her comfort zone or what we call Ordinary Life, in Journey terms – and she hears a Call to do something – often it’s a call to change - something. She answers it (after God only knows how long she debates if she will or if she won’t) and that means…GROWTH, ahead! Whoo Hoo!! This is part of the process of learning to listen to your inner voice.

She then crosses over the Threshold from her Ordinary Life and lands onto "The Road of Adventure" (otherwise known as The Unknown!) Usually, this crossing over the Threshold (which is imaginary but marks the leaving of one way of being and beginning a new way, i.e. change) takes a lot of gearing up and courage because if it’s a big Call then the Heroine is probably leaving something behind that’s hard to leave, like a relationship or a job… or maybe the Unknown is really completely unknown territory and the Heroine has no idea what to expect.

Making The Leap

So, often I characterize these crossings as a Leap instead of a step across. They’re big, these Leaps, and they can significantly change the trajectory of one’s life.

You have made Leaps in your life. I know you have. It’s useful to look back at them and remember how courageous you were to make the big changes that you did. It’s kind of like going through childbirth – we forget what it takes!

What does it take?

And, my dear Heroine, it takes a LOT! In my School for Real-Life Heroines, I ask students to look back and remember these leaps and make note of the lessons they learned from each one. They discover patterns and have all kinds of ahas because they have the benefit of hindsight – a perspective that always reveals things we don’t see when we’re in the middle of things.

I have had many leaps and have categorized them. Some were small-ish but still a definite move from one way to another, like the firewalk I did here in Maine. Did that ever take a lot of gearing up!! Actually, a firewalk is a perfect metaphor for all threshold crossings! It’s so much about overcoming fear. My exit from my marriage of thirteen years was a huge leap for me, as you might imagine. Both leaps brought me into an unknown. But now I want to share this one with you because if I hadn’t done it, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now!!

This leap is about my entrée into the “improvement industry.”  Of course, I didn’t know that someday it would be called that — the self-development world and all its practitioners — the Improvement Industry!

A Look Into One Of My Threshold Crossings

This particular threshold crossing happened on a quintessentially perfect May morning in Maine, 2000.  The ornamental cherry trees lining Spring Street in Portland were showing off with an overabundance of pink blossoms.  It was warm, sunny and I am excited, nervous and feeling on the edge of a whole new life as I climb the hill up to the Holiday Inn to give my first workshop for women.  It’s a huge new beginning for me… a leap, for sure, the results of which I would watch unfold and bear fruit over the next twenty-one years.

Here’s the back story. My journey to take this leap began with a process, culled from my facilitation work, using 3M Notes or “stickies.”  The process, itself, begins with asking a question.   One could call it “structured brainstorming,” and that’s how I used it in my organizational consulting, but when I used it later on in workshops with women it was more about accessing their intuition instead of their “brains.”  

Intuition-storming?  That could be a more accurate term for what my original process morphed into. 

I learned the process while I was still at the shipbuilding company where I worked for twelve years.  I was part of a problem-solving special projects team when a consultant came up from Cambridge, MA and taught my team a Japanese process developed during the quality movement.  And, I fell in love with it.  As a “process person,” I found it extremely helpful in focusing people and producing results, while allowing each person to feel heard and safe.

Yo-One Technique

I proceeded to use it throughout the company…for problem-solving, for visioning, for developing a project plan, for brainstorming.  I was obsessed.  I called it YT, for the Yo-One Technique.  “Yo-One!” is an affirmation, something like “We did it!” used throughout the process.  People were excited and the process became the most useful tool in my facilitator toolbox.

I continued to use the process with schools, boards of directors, companies, non-profits when I went out on my own, hanging out my own shingle as an organizational development consultant. Then, after several years of consulting on my own, I joined Barton & Gingold, a small management consulting firm in Portland, Maine.

There I continued to pursue my conflict management work, facilitation, strategic planning, public involvement and eventually executive coaching.  I got to work with all kinds of people and all kinds of groups.  It was challenging (especially the conflict work) and fulfilling.

I used the YT process as a staple of what I offered to people, because it worked.  

At the same time, my passion to help women be successful in the workplace and in their own personal development was growing.  After leaving the mostly male shipbuilding company, my opportunities to work with women were much more numerous.  I remember one of my first consulting jobs with an executive staff of a newspaper.  I was shocked to see all women around the boardroom table! Why? I was so used to seeing all men.  I began to look for ways to bring women together to share their stories of success and failure because I wanted to hear them and I knew sharing them would help other women.  

How I Used The YT Process

As a consultant, I used the YT process most often in strategic planning.  At some point the idea came to use this same strategic planning process with individuals so they, too, could think about where they wanted their lives to go.  I could offer this outside of my “regular work” at Barton & Gingold.  I called it Personal Strategic Planning.  (For those of you identifying this as my Call – you get the gold star!!)

Now, how to put it out there?

My vehicle was the Maine’s Women in Management Conference, run by the University of Southern Maine.  I submitted my application to run a Personal Strategic Planning workshop and was accepted!

True confessions, I submitted the application with two names on it, mine and my boss’s, Art Gingold.  Why? 

My Threshold Guardian voices were telling me: 

“You can’t do it alone.”  

“You don’t have the credibility.”

“Who do you think you are?”

But fate stepped in and at the last minute Art couldn’t make it.  (To this day I wonder if he bailed on purpose because he knew it would be good for me to go solo.)  

I had to go it alone. (And I’ve already shared with you that is my lifelong lesson. You can do it alone, Susanna!)

I did.  There were fifteen people in my workshop, fourteen women and one man.  I remember the classroom, clearly, with all of them sitting behind tables in a u-shape.  I had prepared a workbook for them.  By the end of our time together, they would have a personal strategic plan.  And almost as an afterthought, I made up a sign-up sheet… 

“If anyone wants to continue as a small group, facilitated by me, as you carry out your strategic plan, sign up here.”

I left it at the registration table.

They loved the workshop.  I loved it.  This was great!  I realize this is what I want to do, this is what my inner voice was telling me!  This was “Follow Your Bliss” times ten!  They had come up with goals for themselves in response to the question: 

“What do I want my life to look like in three years?”  

Ruby Slippers Was Born After Listening To My Inner Voice!

Better yet, six women wanted to continue working with me, meeting monthly!  (They met with me for three years and that was my first foray into group coaching…even though at the time I didn’t even know it was group coaching!  The coaching movement was just beginning in Maine.)

Ruby Slippers, (what I called my business for women then) was born!  

In the Ruby Slippers planning process, women first consulted their intuition, not their left (logical) brains.  I invited them to first see what “came up”, what occurred to them, when questioned about what they wanted their lives to look like/be like in three years.  It wasn’t a process of “figuring it out”, seeing where one fit into predetermined categories and writing down what you thought you “should” do.  It was a plan developed organically, from the heart.  

“It’s what your innermost self wants for you,” I would tell them, “Not what others want for you. It's your inner voice”  I still teach the same process in The School for Real-Life Heroines and it’s also in my book, You Are a Heroine: A Retelling of the Hero’s Journey. It is a valuable tool for finding your way on the road of adventure.

Learn To Trust Your Inner Voice

And, of course, I also needed to learn to trust my own inner voice. Always, I was teaching what I needed to learn.  This business, Ruby Slippers, now called Susanna Liller, LLC, is my yellow brick road – my road of adventure, which ultimately, led me here, writing to you - for which I am so very grateful!

That Leap in 2000 to try out my concept of a workshop for women opened door after door; enabled me to meet the most awesome women; helped me to create workshops, retreats, write a book and more…and who knows what’s to come!

Yes, dear Heroine, follow your bliss (your Call), even though you’re shaking with fear and the very ground is quaking - and you will grow – and who knows what doors will be opened for you!