The disadvantage is that intimacy and truly understanding someone’s heart and their mind, still happens at the same rate that it did twenty years ago, because people are people. We put forth our best foot in relationships, like we do in our interviews, we put on our interview face. People still do that. There’s no difference. Social media doesn’t change the process of people’s hearts, and people wanting to hide. It actually speeds that up even more.
Something my former pastor had told me years ago. He says, “You must summer and winter with someone,” and it just doesn’t go for interpersonal relationships. I think it can even go for your professional relationships. Summer and wintering basically means you have to give it time. You have to be in a place and in a season where you’ve seen it from all different seasons, and that summering … Summertime is when everything’s good. When you’re in the summertime of your job, everybody loves you. You’re the best thing, smoking. Why didn’t they hire you before? You think, “Oh, my God, I’m going to stay here forever.” Well, wait till the winter comes, and that’s when maybe you’re not doing such a great job, or you’re really starting to get to know this boss. You’re really starting to get to know your co-workers. You won’t know them like that until the winter season hits, and I think it’s the same thing with interpersonal relationships. Our social media doesn’t show us who people are through all the different seasons. It only comes through spending time with them. Really getting to know them.
The process of growth and change happens at the same rate that it did. An apple tree is going to grow at the same time it always does, and that’s how people are, too. People don’t change overnight. People don’t show you who they are overnight. Although I may be getting to know you, the details of you, I may still not get to know who you really are heart wise, mind wise. What you’re like in a crisis. What you’re like in the winter season of your life. Who is Alesha when she’s frustrated and stressed. Social media can’t show me that.
If I were to give advice to millennials, it is learn how to summer and winter with someone and someplace, before you make long term decisions about a place or a person.
Alesha Thomas: I love that advice. I absolutely love that advice. I think it goes back to the specific season in one’s life and just playing off of that vocabulary, summer and winter.
Niki, I want to shift gears a little bit, and I want to talk about you, and really it amazes me how much you have going on, and how well you’re able to balance everything. I mentioned earlier about your women’s conference, Ignite, and it was absolutely dynamic.
Niki Brown: Thank you.
Alesha Thomas: Outside of the conference, outside of your counseling, you’re, also, in the middle of really launching and pushing your book, which you did talk about earlier. Can you tell us a little bit more about that read?
Niki Brown: Sure. There is More, Eight Steps to Embracing the Greater You, is a compilation of my life and my journey to breaking free of limitations. It’s, also, an integration of the years and the hundreds of women I have counseled, and men, too. The book is for women though, but the hundreds of men and women that I have counseled, and the commonality that I’ve seen with all of us. I don’t just say them, us, because I’m included. There were many times when I was in therapy with people, when I was counseling them, I really was counseling myself. There is More is really geared towards that woman who feels stuck in life, in whatever personal or professional stage she’s in, whether she is just coming out of high school, going through college, and they’re just not clear of what the next steps should really be.
Sometimes when you’re stuck, you will come to a conclusion that maybe this is it, and you will settle for what you can get versus what you really desire, and I think I walked that journey for many, many years, because I just didn’t know what I was gifted in. I didn’t know how great I really was. I didn’t have a lot of cheerleaders around me saying, “This is what I see in you. This is what I think is possible.” I didn’t have that cheerleader within myself, and so for many years, I settled in places that did not really speak to the potential of who I was, the greatness of who I was. I settled in relationships. I settled in jobs. I settled in my ministry assignment, because I just didn’t know. When I was told during those various times what I could be, I didn’t believe it.
This book is to really shake the cages, and to raise the consciousness level of women in whatever stage they’re in. It’s even for the successful woman, who comes to a season in her life where she has conquered the mountain, yet there’s still this emptiness she feels. There’s a sense of, “Okay, so I’m here. I’ve got the degree. I went back to law school. I’m a lawyer,” and after five, six years, she’s starting to feel restless, and can’t explain it. There’s a chapter in my book called Trust the Transition, and it’s for all those successful women who have said, “Hey, is this it? Shouldn’t there be more,” or, “I want more. I don’t know what more looks like, because I’m so successful.” Sometimes success can keep you from seeing the next level of your dimension.
