Choose A North Star — Having a North Star Vision is also a tool that helps develop greater resilience. When you align yourself to your deeper reason why a situation is important to you, there is a devoted passion that lives in your efforts, and builds momentum to your sense of purpose. This ignited motivation is what carries us through the darkest, most difficult challenges; when we feel there is nothing left, but somehow find a way to keep moving through.
Resilience has been described as the ability to withstand adversity and bounce back from difficult life events. Times are not easy now. How do we develop greater resilience to withstand the challenges that keep being thrown at us? In this interview series, we are talking to mental health experts, authors, resilience experts, coaches, and business leaders who can talk about how we can develop greater resilience to improve our lives.
As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Theano Evagelou.
Theano is a Certified Sexologist, Relationship Expert, and Authentic Tantra Practitioner, whose mastery is guiding visionary leaders to live their most extraordinary lives through the portal of their sexuality.
Over the past decade, Theano has been on a resilient path of nourishing the most important relationship we will ever encounter — the one with ourselves. She has taken the journey she invites you into and stands as a stark mirror of truth with soft, but stern, compassion as she acquaints you with parts of yourself that you never knew existed.
Whether it’s for business, love, or life, Theano is the wing woman who will help you live in the mastery of your sexual power; illuminating the path for the physical, spiritual, and emotional closeness of your mind, heart, and body. Her activation will not only strengthen your relationships, but bridge the connection of your inner and outer worlds with a potent yet glorious harmony.
Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory?
Thanks for hosting me on your series. My story begins as a young girl where I was raised in a fairly unorthodox upbringing of divorced European parents, questioning the long-held gender roles and submissive expectations of females, particularly in terms of love, sexuality, and power.
As time passed, I tried to conform to the cultural and societal standards; searching for my grounding and acceptance in the world on the outside, while becoming more and more disconnected on the inside.
I still didn’t understand that the fuel for my core desires were in the whispers from the universe that lied within. I somehow maintained the belief that solutions were found in the voices of others, even though my unsettled spirit continuously pulled at my core, driving me to seek teachings, philosophies, practices, and various healing modalities that gave me a safe place to be ME fully.
It took me a very long time to identify the impact of the many traumas I was exposed to growing up, which inevitably impacted my sexual expression and understanding of love in my adult years. Burying myself in achievements, status, or other people’s perceptions was my ‘normal’.
It wasn’t until I started identifying and working through all the disconnect I had in terms of my own self-acceptance, that I started experiencing a new way of being that allowed me to re-acquaint myself with the sacred essence of my sexuality and the beautiful gifts of being a woman.
It was by looking at how I was raised around money, power, conflict, and love and how it played out in my life — and ultimately my relationships — where I was able to start going into the deep crevices of my heart and shine light on it once again.
As I healed internally, my external world transformed. Today, I live in connection and nourishment with one of the most important relationships — the one with myself — embraced with the confidence and clarity that drives the success and fulfillment in every other area of my life.
Can you share with us the most interesting story from your career?
The most interesting story of my career has been the transformation I experienced shifting into a leadership style that embodied more feminine-esque qualities that often get overlooked and undervalued in a world driven mainly by masculine values and theologies.
I was amazed at how I felt more energized, confident, and fulfilled operating from this flow state that not only benefited me in mind, body, and spirit, but also rippled into all other areas of my life. I felt reactivated as I lived from this (dare I say) more pleasurable way of “being” and leading.
I discovered how much my sexuality was such an essential part of my humanity as a whole, integrated and embodied human being.
I discovered that by becoming a conductor of my sexual life force instead of a reactor to it, I can allow myself to embody my inherent power in a way that others can’t help but respond to with respect.
I discovered that as a woman I inhabit inherent qualities as a collaborator, nurturer, protector, creator, and intuitionist, and have at their core a unique sexual life force that is fanning it all.
I discovered that when these inherent qualities within me are awakened I can dismantle the shame around my sexuality and lead from a place of deep love and care.
This was my direct experience in fusing my sexuality into my leadership.
Prior to that, I rose up the ladder very fast in my career while in the corporate arena but I was always exhausted from the patriarchal energy that was pervasive as I climbed. At times it felt combative, competitive, and downright harsh.
Not only did that eventually take a toll on my health, but it fueled a deep well of resentment and disconnect to my sense of contribution, value and purpose.
It was my relationship to my sexuality that allowed me to embrace a new kind of embodied leadership.
Can you tell us what lessons or ‘takeaways’ you learned from that?
The takeaway I have learned is that when I am connected to my sexuality I am happier and more fulfilled as a woman and as a leader. I strongly believe that the paradigms we are operating in today are outdated and need to be dismantled.
Our world profits heavily from doing everything it can to separate us from ourselves and each other. We somehow get conditioned to believe that the glorification of life only exists outside of us or in the constructs of what others dictate.
As a result, I’m on a quest to turn us all into better lovers.
Fully integrated beings. Divinely sensual partners. And deeply authentic leaders.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Put simply, I understand the symbiotic and undeniable relationship between sexuality and success.
We have been approaching success as an end to itself, outside of us even, at the cost of our physical, mental, and emotional well-being. And even more importantly, at the cost of our relationships — especially the one with ourselves.
Our sexual vitality has inevitably become a forgotten and lost critical piece to that equation.
For example, on a macro level, our planet is in crisis and we have stressed its natural resources to the point of no return.
We live under the illusion that we have the power and that we run it, when in fact, just the opposite is true.
My company is all about teaching leaders how to connect to their life force energy and then cultivate it to renew their vitality. so they can handle the big work they are doing in the world, while having thriving relationships that make it all worth it.
Equally, on a micro level we are also at a crisis with ourselves.
We’re dangerously close to mass burnout and a depletion of our own personal resources. Whether you’re a c-suite executive, investor, entrepreneur, or busy parent — we’re all leaking energy with no way to get it back because we’ve never been taught that the portal of our life force lives in our sexual vitality.
So, what makes my company stand out?
I have worked with many walks of life from Olympians to astrophysicists and the message has always been the same: If you want to thrive in all areas of your life, take a deep dive into your sexuality.
It’s a reconnection back to that which will heal us and protect us or allow us to thrive beyond dining at a table of mass consumption with ravenous appetites that sadly leaves us with materialistic indigestion.
It is how we can embrace our sexuality as something sacred once again that will combat the crisis we are living in.
My clients often go from depletion, numbing and repeating unhealthy patterns over and over, to learning how to have deep connection with self and others; a buzzing vitality that’s palpable and magnetic, that comes with success beyond what they’ve ever been able to accomplish before.
This work is revolutionary. And critical.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
My gratitude extends to not just one, but a culmination of many coaches, mentors, and teachers.
As I continue my journey into the work that I do, I feel the transmission and influence of their wisdom and words inspiring me to continue doing the deep work.
I think back on one mentor in particular though whom I worked with early in my career. She unexpectedly provided liberating advice while in the process of going through an emotional divorce. Everyone else in my life offered condolences, and judgements of the failure of my role as a wife and ultimately the position in my family construct.
She offered one word. “Congratulations.”
I looked at her incredulously.
She repeated, “Congratulations, on choosing YOU.”
Every day I choose me, I’m reminded how important resilience plays a role in moving forward through adversity; ultimately landing at the pinnacle of pursuits which is self-love.
Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of this interview. We would like to explore and flesh out the trait of resilience. How would you define resilience? What do you believe are the characteristics or traits of resilient people?
Resilience has been a part of my DNA my whole life as I grew up in an environment that consisted of a lot of adversity. I define resilience as the ability to keep moving in a forward direction while utilizing situations and experiences as a catalyst to becoming stronger and smarter.
I believe resilience isn’t just about overcoming obstacles, but also about bouncing back from these challenges in ways that transform us, because we are taken closer and closer to the core of who we are and what drives us.
Characteristics of Resilience that stand out to me are:
- Emotional strength
- A healthy view of one’s self and their abilities
- An internal fortitude to prioritize self-care
- Ability to implement boundaries
- The commitment to live a full and prosperous life in all areas no matter what’s coming at you.
Courage is often likened to resilience. In your opinion how is courage both similar and different to resilience?
Courage is similar to resilience in that it takes courage for one to test the physical boundaries of their limitations. Imagine a boxer getting in the ring for a title match. It takes an equal amount of resilience to test your inner fortitude and resolve should you have to climb into the ring again for a rematch.
And while it takes courage to venture into a situation that is fraught with danger or fear; it takes resilience to pull yourself out of a situation that courage got you into in the first place.
Think of a mountain climber that is close to the peak only to lose his step and fall, hanging 1000 feet in the air by a single rope. Courage got them up the mountain, but resilience is going to get them down.
When do you think of resilience, which person comes to mind? Can you explain why you chose that person?
Malala Yousafzai is definitely at the pinnacle of my thoughts when I think of strong models of resilience.
Despite her young age and very hostile circumstances, she was determined to be a voice of change. She was shot to be silenced, but that’s exactly what dismantled her fear and also gave her strength to continue on a pursuit of action instead of just staying quiet.
What stands out to me the most about Malala is her selfless devotion to a life of work for equal education and her generous actions in using her platform to fight for peace, equality, and education. She defied the Taliban in Pakistan and demanded that girls be allowed to receive an education, while never compromising the integrity of her mission by promoting anger, vengeance, or any other form of violence.
To me, that is not only powerful, but a potent example of resilience.
Has there ever been a time that someone told you something was impossible, but you did it anyway? Can you share the story with us?
When I decided to go to University, I was a participant in a pilot business program where students were being taught through a project based learning model. This model consisted of four subject areas, and then based on the execution, an additional credit in management was granted if the completed projects met all the criteria with a passing grade.
While in this program, it was highly advised not to take any additional courses due to the workload, but I was on a mission to finish fast. I went to my academic advisor at the time and told her I wanted to take an additional load of three courses. She thought that was a lot of pressure to put on myself and required authorization from the Dean given the magnitude of my request. But without any hesitation, I asked her to set up that meeting.
In the meeting, I was told by the Dean that it was impossible to take on a challenge like this; I would be setting myself up to fail. I remember replying with a calm confidence, “If I fail, let me fail trying, but don’t take the opportunity to win away from me”.
I was granted approval.
I attribute my success of completing my degree in two years to the support of my academic advisor who was a constant cheerleader in my corner.
We stayed in touch for many years thereafter, upon which she would tell me all the times she’d share my story to anyone who would complain about their workload tolerance and what was possible if they wanted it bad enough.
Did you have a time in your life where you had one of your greatest setbacks, but you bounced back from it stronger than ever? Can you share that story with us?
My divorce was one of my greatest setbacks. As it is for many.
I had to figure out life as a single mom while processing the parallel stories between my parent’s divorce when I was a young girl to my own. We were different people, of course, but the circumstances were very similar. Except this time I wasn’t going through my divorce as a young child, I was going through it as a woman with a young child.
During this life-altering transition in my life, I discovered a bold ferocity inside me. It was a powerful intuitive sense, an enormous empathic nature, and an ignited awakening to my sexuality that was not only transformational, but healing on every level; mind, body and spirit in ways I never thought possible. These were parts of myself I felt I was getting to know for the first time, while simultaneously feeling the familiar sense of how they always existed inside of me, abandoned, until now.
I recognize that I probably wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for my divorce. I needed it to happen to embody my full emergence as an integrated woman. And although I don’t wish it upon anyone, I am thankful for all the lessons and growth it has imparted upon me.
Sometimes, we need to let what needs to die, die, so what is ready to live, can live.
How have you cultivated resilience throughout your life? Did you have any experiences growing up that have contributed to building your resiliency? Can you share a story?
The way I cultivated resilience throughout my life was by learning to master self-care and the strength to commit to it — even in the most challenging of times.
I had a lot of adversity throughout my life, especially in the arenas of love, connection, and sexuality. I did not have healthy models for reference, and after seeing so much in my life fall apart as a result of the dysfunctional relationships around me, I was desperate for healthy models of love. I had a satiable thirst to break the toxic patterns and beliefs I grew up surrounded in.
This had me working hard, fixated on overachieving, and embodying a Type A personality; witty and smart. I took as much as I could on my plate to prove how strong and capable I was. I equated my success to my ability to love and be loved. But the truth was, this by-product of my behavior was a coping strategy for all the pain and suffering I was in.
This eventually took a toll on my health. I was hit head on with a life-threatening illness while running a business, going through my divorce, and raising a young child. My body’s cry for help put me fully out of commission for 2 ½ years. Every time I tried to push myself out of bed, I lost the battle and would be put out for days, if not weeks at a time. It was only through learning to surrender to my body’s pace and listen to her wisdom where I was able to reclaim my softer side and heal.
Prior to getting sick, I believed resilience to be fortitude; to keep going no matter what in any situation. It was my illness that taught me that resilience has so much more to do with an embodiment of self-care, boundaries, and making space for recovery that I now prioritize in my life to give me the bandwidth when I need to forge forward.
Resilience is like a muscle that can be strengthened. In your opinion, what are 5 steps that someone can take to become more resilient? Please share a story or an example for each.
- Regulate the Nervous System — Practices like breathwork, meditation, yoga, hiking, biking, grounding in nature, are all supportive in keeping the nervous system regulated. This regulation is critical to expanding one’s resilience capacity because it facilitates our ability to connect — especially with ourselves. It also supports our ability to feel safe and be more emotionally available when challenging situations present themselves. This is because we have trained ourselves to shift into a different state of relaxed, focused awareness that the body now has a strengthened memory to call from when adversity is present.
- Prioritize Self-Care — Prioritizing self-care is also an important tool to develop greater resilience as we live in a world that is designed — and heavily profits from — separating us from ourselves; exhausting us, robbing us of our worth, and distracting us with the next best thing. We are constantly being programmed to believe that everything we need is outside of us. If we don’t keep this in check we will have no sense of strength or power to maneuver diversity when it falls upon us because we won’t believe we have what it takes to do so on our own. It takes a conscious, intentional, consistent effort to prioritize ourselves in today’s world. It is essential, if not critical, to do so if we want to be able to thrive amongst all the kicks and punches that are flying at us from all directions. Think of how we are told to put the oxygen mask on ourselves first on the airplane. Self-care is your oxygen mask and should not be negotiated. You want to respond to your environment from the cup runneth over, not on empty. This can take many forms such as a nap, a bath, a massage, time in nature, or listening to your favorite podcast. The key is that it is something that feels nourishing to you…and is just for you.
- Nourish Your Life Garden — Investing in your mental and emotional health development is also an important ingredient to building resilience; I see this work as maintaining your life garden. We always have both weeds and flowers in our gardens. Both grow and get water every day, unless we monitor that. We need to constantly be pulling out the weeds (anything toxic to mind/body/spirit), so that our flowers (anything nourishing to mind/body/spirit) can blossom and thrive. When we do this, we are able to approach situations from a cleaner, more vivid perspective of what our boundaries are, and can use this newly conserved energy that is freed up to live more soul-rich lives.
- Choose A North Star — Having a North Star Vision is also a tool that helps develop greater resilience. When you align yourself to your deeper reason why a situation is important to you, there is a devoted passion that lives in your efforts, and builds momentum to your sense of purpose. This ignited motivation is what carries us through the darkest, most difficult challenges; when we feel there is nothing left, but somehow find a way to keep moving through.
- Trust Yourself — Trusting yourself is also an incredible resource in building resilience and nourishing that relationship daily. We grow up our whole lives breaking promises to ourselves and procrastinating. Think of how many new year’s resolutions you broke to yourself? Your body has repeated evidence that it can’t be trusted and this subconscious programming only deepens over time if it is not corrected. Choosing to work on that daily with mindful practices, making an effort to be in integrity to yourself every single day, and piling up the wins (no matter how big or small) with acknowledgment and celebration will begin to rewire your programming in anchoring a greater sense of empowered confidence.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
It’s not a movement I would start, but one that I would resurrect. Some of the great healers of the past were women, and somehow over time we have moved away from recognizing these potent qualities of the feminine, especially when applied in loving leadership that is rooted in deep connection and care, where true power can rise.
In this day and age, the taboo around sexuality is the cause of tremendous pain and suffering.
The feminine aspects of our sexuality relate to everything in the material world; our senses, our environment, our intuition, our bodies, our relationships, our community, and of course, our inherent sexuality- all for the purpose of bringing health, balance, enrichment, pleasure, and joy into our lives.
And who wouldn’t want that?
We aren’t taught how to leverage our sexual energy or power in ways that can really enrich our lives. Instead, we have diluted it to a mere transaction of instant gratification or a means to an end.
Do the powers that be ever want us to awaken from this repressed zombie state? What gives them the right to withhold the knowledge and education of the critical role that sexuality plays in being a healthy, whole, and fully integrated human being?
It would be my divine responsibility to break these chains that bind us from discovering the true power and magnitude of our sexual energy and its ability to heal, transform, and awaken us.
We are blessed that some very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them 🙂
I would love to have a private breakfast with Ariana Huffington. She’s an incredibly inspirational, diverse, and multidimensional leader; a true Renaissance woman.
Her recent undertaking through Thrive Global to redefine the tenets of success are ground-breaking. Even though we approach it from different angles, I’m very much in alignment with her focus on slowing down, unplugging, and reducing stress. I also stand behind her unique perspective on leadership and how she believes that rest and relaxation are imperative in both your professional and personal life.
So yes, breakfast with Ariana Huffington — illuminating!…and after all, how much trouble could two strong, independent, Greek women get into over bullet coffee and spanakopita. It’s not like we’re going to unlock the Eleusinian mysteries…or are we?
How can our readers further follow your work online?
IG: https://www.instagram.com/the.theano/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/theanoevagelou
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/thetheano
Photos: Darius Bashar & Mirza Noormohamed
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!