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BE PART OF THE LEGACY

TAMPA BAY • FEBRUARY 23-24 2026

This FINAL encore experience will be unlike any other. Because like everything we do, it's been "reimagined" from beginning to end. It's not a virtual or hybrid event. It's not a conference. It's not a seminar, a workshop, a meeting, or a symposium. And it's not your typical run-of-the-mill everyday event crammed with stages, keynote speeches, team-building exercises, PowerPoint presentations, and all the other conventional humdrum. Because it's up close & personal by design. Where conversation trumps presentation. And where authentic connection runs deep.

Why Does it Take Courage to Have Tough Conversations?

What do you feel when I say that Orange contains some of the most challenging emotions you will ever experience – shock and trauma.  Something that has been very present of late in the personal and collective energy.  The gift if you can remain with the messiness of all this is deeper connection; and BLISS one of the highest vibrational states available.  You will know if you read my articles that it is also about FORGIVENESS.

David Whyte wrote if forgiveness comes through understanding, and if understanding is just a matter of time and application then we might as well begin forgiving right at the beginning of any drama rather than put ourselves through the full cycle of festering, incapacitation, reluctant healing, and eventual blessing.

As I said in my stillness heart connection this week, it takes courage to forgive.  You have to be able to let go.  Let go of the small agenda for the sake of the big Agenda. And I had a real epiphany around all of this when having a challenging conversation of my own.

What makes a difficult conversation excruciating?

Someone I have been getting to know whom I admire a great deal left me a voice message this week stating his unease at something I had done.  What made this even more difficult to hear for me was we had recently had a breakthrough in our relationship and I had shown him my vulnerable self.  Add to that the fact that when I first met him I had given him a piece of my mind,  you can imagine I was rather dreading this conversation.

That said I didn’t want it to hang over me so we found time to speak on the day he raised it with me. That same day I had been on a rare date with my husband for lunch and had shared with him the situation. Ever the pragmatist he gave me his take on how to handle it.  He’s much more in his feminine than I am in some ways.  His view was that I should let the person share whatever they had to share, acknowledge it and end the conversation.

This sounded great in principle and much less messy than what actually happened.  And yet I couldn’t adopt that approach however much I wanted to because it wasn’t me.  I did prepare in a number of ways first by reflecting on what he had said and seeing what came up for me.  Secondly, I shared some of my fears with a mutual friend who knows the other person far better than I do.  That helped on a level and yet I knew it was going to be tough.

How the conversation played out

We met and shared some preliminary niceties.  We then dived into the issue and it was so hard not to get caught up in the drama.  Nothing I said made me feel any better.  I acknowledged his points. There was a moment where if we ended the conversation, I may have left with my dignity intact.  Yet something inside me urged me to speak up.

I felt so judged by him because I was judging myself.  In his compassion, he was able to show me how hard I was being on myself.  Another reminder that the hardest thing to practice is self-forgiveness.  Here’s the rub you learn nothing when everything is going well.

The whole process was very painful and in some ways tainted my special lunch with my husband.  I spent so much time critiquing myself and finding myself guilty that it was hard to enjoy the wonderful surroundings and the delicious food.

The gift

The real gift in all this was seeing my own pattern when I am triggered.  I had projected onto this man the idea that he was judge and jury because that’s what I had done to myself.  His love for my higher self was so pure that his intention had been to save me from getting negative press from others who might think less of me for what I did.  This man was only trying to save me from myself.

What a gift and what insights, when I stopped for a moment and took another look.  I am indebted to Rich Bellars and I encourage you to get to know him if you don’t already. I am a recovering harsh critic of Kate Griffiths and need constant reminders to cut her some slack!  And best of all, this will lead to an even deeper connection with myself and therefore with others because that’s the magic that happens when we pause to see the whole picture.

Kate Griffiths
Kate Griffithshttps://www.wholeselfleadership.com/
Some call me the coaches' coach. I work with visionary leaders doing world work who are really good at what they do but haven't found their sweet spot yet. I help them unlock their whole selves by learning to build their intuitive muscle and so create more meaning. Ultimately this enables them to move into expanded awareness and the realms of higher consciousness. This is deep work because it requires you to embrace your shadow so you can discover the gold that is hiding there. You have both masculine and feminine energies within you but somewhere along the way you learnt to rely more on one more than the other making you either more of a "prover" or a "pleaser" Working with me you learn to access both energies so you can increase your presence and enjoy greater influence and visibility. Since 2008 I have pioneered an approach that integrates spirituality and business using Colour by blending the esoteric and the practical. I have found that it can transform every aspect of your life and enable you to develop the tools you need to ride the waves of adversity, you will experience in life. If you want to understand how colour can help then why not read my book Colourful Boardrooms. At the very least it will help you discover what type of leader you are. In 2018 I realised that I wanted to help change the story for the leaders of tomorrow so I set up Colourful Classrooms, a social enterprise, and have gone into schools and communities with programmes to support teachers, parents, and students to have better emotional health and wellbeing by building their awareness around what makes them feel more resilient. In terms of where I hang out:I tend to hang out on LinkedIn, so do connect with me there if you want to continue the conversation. And at the moment I am trialling a new social media platform MeWe which has the feel of the "village green" and to show my support for the stop hate campaign. If you like videos then do subscribe to my YouTube channel.

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