Refuel Your Brilliance Part 5: Community over Comparison
There's something magical that happens when you put highly sensitive, creative, intelligent, soulful women together in the same room.
I've witnessed it countless times in my programmes, it’s an almost alchemical transformation that occurs when women stop trying to succeed alone and start supporting each other's brilliance.
"Erika creates a really powerful container through her holding, and in combination with the other women who were drawn to working with her - it's just incredible. It’s very healing to be in the company of other highly sensitive, creative, intelligent, soulful women. To have a group of us together - is just extraordinary. The way we're able to support each other, the insights we share, the courage we find, the willingness to take action and inspire one another was really transformative. It built up this incredible energy and momentum."
This testimonial from a recent Feminine Fire participant captures something I see again and again: when women gather in authentic community, their individual transformation is magnified exponentially.
What I witness again and again
In my group programmes, I consistently see:
Nearly 100% completion rates (unheard of in online courses)
Almost 100% attendance at live group calls (women show up 100% present)
Private community spaces that buzz with daily engagement and mutual support
Women staying connected long after programmes end, continuing to champion each other's success
I think this is testimony to the type of woman I attract into my spaces, for which I am endlessly grateful.
And the magic happens for each woman when she realises she's not alone in this journey.
The myth that keeps us small
One of the biggest lies our culture tells ambitious women is that you're supposed to succeed alone.
This myth shows up everywhere:
In "self-made" entrepreneur stories that erase the countless people who contributed to someone's success
In the superwoman narrative that expects us to juggle everything perfectly without support
In social media culture that demands we only show our polished, professional highlights
In the shame we feel when we need help, as if asking for support is a personal failing
This false narrative of isolated individualism doesn't just make business harder, it's the root cause of all the struggles we've been told are our individual shortcomings.
You can listen to more of my thoughts on this in a snippet of my teaching on the Feminine Fire course, below:
What happens when we believe we must do it alone
I see brilliant women trapped in these patterns:
Perfectionism prison: Never showing struggle or vulnerability, only revealing the polished side. This creates echo chambers where everyone pretends everything is "good and shiny and easy" - leaving each person feeling like they're the only one who's struggling.
Help resistance: Even when support is available, there's this internalised belief of "I should be able to do this myself." The shame about needing assistance keeps women isolated and overwhelmed.
Comparison trap: Seeing others succeed triggers jealousy and unfavourable comparisons, reinforcing false narratives of scarcity and competition. If she wins, I must lose.
Vulnerability fear: Underneath it all is fear of rejection, of being cancelled or criticised, of saying something wrong and being ostracised.
But here's what I know to be true: this entire framework is built on complete BS.
The truth about interconnection
You exist in a vast, interconnected web of conditions that have been rolling for millennia.
The internet you use to reach clients, the language you speak, the education you received, the ground beneath your feet, the food you eat, none of this exists in isolation.
You can't ever not belong to this web of interconnection. You are woven in.
So why do we feel so alone in our businesses?
Because we've been sold a story that serves capitalism, not our wellbeing.
The myth of scarcity and individualism keeps us competing instead of collaborating, struggling instead of sharing resources, comparing instead of celebrating each other's wins.
When everything changes
So much becomes possible when we shift from isolation to interconnection:
From perfectionism to authenticity: When you stop pretending or performing, you create space for real connection and mutual support. Your struggles become bridges to deeper relationships.
From struggling alone to receiving support: You realise that asking for help isn't weakness, it’s totally natural. You learn to ask and receive gracefully, while also offering generously. We’re an ecosystem - just like a forest.
From fear to vulnerability: You discover that your challenges and imperfections are exactly what make you relatable and trustworthy to your ideal clients, community and friends.
From comparison to celebration: You start genuinely celebrating other women's successes because you understand there's room for all of us to thrive and one woman’s success creates more possibilities for the rest of us.
Training my heart to rejoice (a personal reflection)
I just came back from a Buddhist meditation retreat on which we were practicing the Brahma Viharas, also known as the Four Divine Abodes. These are practices designed to open and expand the heart’s capacity to love all that life presents us with.
One practice has had a huge impact on me over the years (in fact after the first time I did it 12 years ago - I asked for Ordination), and it speaks directly to everything I witness in my work.
It’s called the Mudita Bhavana and is the cultivation of joy for another person's happiness. It's the practice of training your heart to genuinely celebrate when someone else succeeds, to feel delight rather than jealousy at another's good fortune, to let another person shine without feeling diminished.
Just to be clear this hasn’t been (and still isn’t) easy for me. But in the meditation hall all these years, slowly training my heart to soften around those familiar pangs of envy, feeling it gradually transform into joy for a stranger's breakthrough, to let go of needing to be ‘the best’ - I’ve understood something fundamental about how we're meant to be together.
This quiet practice becomes nothing short of revolutionary in the business world, a complete rejection of the scarcity mindset that keeps us all small.
This is the shift from scarcity to abundance, from competition to collaboration, from isolation to community.
The extraordinary power of sensitive women together
What my client described as "extraordinary power" isn't hyperbole, it's what I witness every single time.
When highly sensitive, creative women gather in authentic community:
Insights multiply: One woman's breakthrough becomes everyone's possibility
Courage becomes contagious: Watching someone else take a scary step makes your own risks feel more manageable
Wisdom compounds: The collective experience in the room far exceeds what any individual brings alone
Energy amplifies: Individual motivation gets supercharged by group momentum
Healing accelerates: Being witnessed and accepted in your struggles creates profound transformation
What this looks like in practice
In your business, choosing community over isolation might look like:
Sharing your real struggles and breakthroughs, not just your highlights
Asking for support when you need it (and offering it generously to others)
Celebrating other women in your field instead of seeing them as competition
Building genuine relationships rather than just "networking"
Remembering that your clients want to work with a real human, not a perfect avatar
The ripple effect
Here's what I've learnt after years of creating these containers: your individual success doesn't happen in isolation, it ripples out to benefit everyone.
When one woman in the group gets brave about raising her rates, others follow suit. When someone shares a breakthrough about boundaries, it gives everyone permission to value their time more. When a participant celebrates a win, it expands everyone's sense of what's possible.
It really is true that we rise together, or not at all.
Your success doesn't diminish mine. My visibility doesn't steal from yours. There's enough abundance, enough clients, enough opportunities for all of us when we stop believing in artificial scarcity and competing with each other.
The invitation
What would change if you stopped trying to succeed alone and started embracing the support and community that's available to you?
What if your greatest business breakthrough isn't found in the next strategy or system, but in the healing power of being truly seen and supported by other women who understand your journey?
This is why I create group programmes. Not just because the content is valuable (though it is), but because the real transformation happens in the spaces between us - in the vulnerability, the witnessing, the celebration, the community.
Because when sensitive, soulful women come together and reject the competition narrative, we create something far more powerful than any of us could build alone.
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Some links for a deeper dive into ideas around community and connection:
This beautiful essay in Emergence Magazine, by ecologist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer, explores how we can learn from Indigenous wisdom and ecological systems to reimagine currencies of exchange, and move from a mindset of scarcity to one of abundance.
In this classic TED talk, writer Elizabeth Gilbert shares her views on the pressures society puts on creative ‘geniuses’, and how the process of creating may be a more mysterious and collaborative process than we think.
How To Fail Podcast
(this link is to Spotify but How To Fail can be found wherever you get your podcasts)
How To Fail with Elizabeth Day is a podcast that celebrates the things in life that haven’t gone right and what we might learn from them along the way. It’s a great listen to help us realise we’re not alone in our failures - even super famous and successful A-list celebrities fail sometimes!
~
With interconnected love,
Erika x
An invitation...
If the themes of this blog resonate with you, I’d love to invite you to join my next Community Conversations on 26th August where we’ll be taking a deeper dive into the transformational nature of power, community and presence. Sign up here.
If you’re enjoying this series, and would like to go deeper, my six-month mentoring programme opens again in September - join the waitlist here for early bird pricing and exclusive bonuses.