Today we’d like to introduce you to Judith Wright.
Judith, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
From former fat girl raised in the factory town of Flint, Michigan, to cofounder of the Wright Foundation and the accredited Wright Graduate University for the Realization of Human Potential, an author, public speaker, and acknowledged lifestyles and relationship expert and executive coach…it has been quite a journey.
I feel privileged and blessed to be able to do the work I do—to contribute to people living great lives and making bigger contributions in the lives around them. Perhaps I am most proud of my relationship—the deep partnership, intimate journey, and shared vision I have with my husband, Bob. I am also blessed to be surrounded by the wonderful people who participate in and are part of our Foundation, a community of lifelong learners supporting each other to live lives of purpose, power, and service.
Looking back, I can see that my life has been an immense adventure of the heart, of spirit, of risk-taking, and of consciousness. But it hasn’t always seemed that way. It often seemed like something was missing—which lead to my first book, There Must Be More Than This.
Early in my life, I sensed that there was something bigger in life, something more, but I didn’t know how to go about getting it. I made many attempts to try to create something more, fill the emptiness, become satisfied—sometimes successfully, sometimes not. I didn’t understand at the time that all of it—the stumbling and the successes, the ups and the downs—were all part of the adventure.
I am a butcher’s daughter from Flint, Michigan, the third of four daughters. Growing up in a factory town where the norm seemed to be waiting for the day to be over, I sought out a different way of life. I figured out that I could study, so I became a good student. I was valedictorian of my high school class, held student government positions, won many awards, and spent my after-school hours in dance and music and volunteering. In short, I became an achiever, thinking that working hard, doing well, and achieving my goals would bring me what I was searching for.
In my union town, achievement wasn’t something that was honored—unless it was sports and you were a boy. With everything I did to try to find something bigger in life, I was often ridiculed for my ideals and put down or attacked for standing out. Even though I was valedictorian, they wouldn’t tell anyone—they didn’t want to hurt the boys’ feelings. So even achievement was treated as something wrong and didn’t bring a sense of accomplishment, reward, or satisfaction. Every nasty thing said about me hurt me to the core, and, while I was brave and smiling on the surface, I also was hurting underneath. I used food or television to numb my pain. Although I was outgoing, popular, and well-known in my high school, I was also chubby, afraid of boys, avoided dating, and buried myself in my studies. I hadn’t realized yet that even my pain and fear were part of the adventure of life.
I finished both my undergraduate and graduate studies summa cum laude and engaged fully in a wonderful career developing model programs for people with disabilities and families of children who were developmentally disabled. Those programs won multimillion-dollar grants, and in my twenties, I rose to national recognition in my field.
While I was successful, serving, and doing good work, I still felt something was missing, and I kept trying to fill the gaps. I lost weight, got into relationship with my college sweetheart, kept achieving and worked more, but I still felt like I was sleepwalking through my life.
I had major gains and losses. I kept working hard, going for the next goal, always keeping my game face on. Yet, every time I was afraid, hurt, or disappointed; every time I failed or made a mistake; every time someone dissed me or didn’t like what I was doing; every time I was scared to death of failing, not living up to expectations, not doing the right thing, I felt it deeply and thought there was something wrong.
Luckily, in my work with people who had disabling conditions—paraplegia, quadriplegia, blindness, deafness, cerebral palsy—I was learning about the power of the human spirit and what really mattered. I had thought a good life was being perfect, having perfect circumstances, a perfect body, and a perfect mind. If I could do/have that, then I’d be OK. Yet, I loved the people I was working with. I was uplifted by how they negotiated their lives and realized that many of them were much happier than I was. And yet, they didn’t have perfect bodies, minds, or circumstances. What they did have, and what made me love them, were their struggles and their successes, their presence and their feelings—the raw pain, trembling fear, deep sadness, effervescent joy, the rage and pain of their struggles, and the raucous joy and celebration of successes.
Then I started to realize that this is the adventure of living, of consciousness. This. This up and down, back and forth, succeed and fail; all of it matters. All of my feelings—fear, hurt, anger, sadness, and joy—mattered. This was all part of experiencing life, of learning and growing. All the time that I was looking for a life of more, trying to figure out what it was that I yearned for, I was learning what it was to live a life of meaning, fulfillment, and consciousness. It wasn’t about being perfect, doing things right, and having wild success with no downside. It was risking humiliation, falling down, and falling short of my expectations as well as enjoying and building on my successes. For me the adventure of my life and career is to do what feels right in my heart, even if my head might tell me it is foolish or futile. It means feeling everything—love and despair, joy and grief, anger and peace.
After six years of marriage to my college sweetheart, I had to face the hard truth that we were not on the same journey of engagement and consciousness. We divorced, and I moved to Chicago and subsequently started my own personal growth business, coaching and leading seminars.
I met my current husband, Bob, and started on a completely new experience of intimacy. From our first date, we set a context for straight truth and accountability, exchanging both mutual appreciation and criticism. I discovered what it really means to be a woman in relationship—the power in vulnerability, the power of total honesty, the power of open-hearted living. Before I was with Bob, I had no idea that a relationship could be an ever-growing adventure of intimacy and discovery. I also had no idea that fighting could bring you closer, that hard truths are way more intimate than being nice, that rocking the boat is what makes the relationship an adventure, that I could be myself, all of me – the light and the dark, while being loved and continually falling even more deeply in love with my husband.
I discovered, and continue to explore, my full capacities including my spirituality and mysticism. I have traveled around the world leading pilgrimages to sacred sites of world religions, willing to be led by spirit in my relationships, business, and daily life.
As a result of my journey and those sharing it with me, I have found vast resources within myself and others that continually surprise me. I understand things I should have no way of knowing. I am discovering how to live life differently from how I was taught. And through it all, I feel, I experience, and I keep taking steps. I keep growing and exploring, reaching and stretching—I expand, my life expands, and our business and service expands. I realized it’s not about getting it right but continually emerging and transforming, becoming someone I’ve not been before.
My husband and I continued to stretch together and in partnership. We both pursued and received our doctoral degrees and used them to further our research into human potential. We co-founded the Wright Foundation and the Wright Graduate University for the Realization of Human Potential, an accredited university that now offers masters and doctorates in transformational leadership and coaching as well as graduate certificates in both of those plus social and emotional intelligence. We stretched by risking to put out our work through books (There Must Be More Than This, The One Decision, The Soft Addiction Solution, Transformed! The Heart of the Fight), through talks at a wide variety of companies and organizations (google, Xerox, American Psychological Association, JP Morgan Chase, International Network of Personal Meaning, and many, many more). I turned myself inside out from being a massive introvert to being able to spread our mission through publicity and media (Oprah Winfrey show, ABC’s 20/20, Good Morning America, the Today show, and many more) not totally over 1,000 print, radio, and TV interviews.
These days, in addition to spending a lot of time in my role as President and Chief Academic Officer for our foundation and graduate university, I am continuing to do a lot of teaching, training, and media. I’m choosing to reach out to more people and continue to step into the public eye, taking strong and often unpopular stands for open, honest communication in relationships, taking risks for greater satisfaction and service at work, and orienting toward higher consciousness in all we do. I’m working now, in a focused way, to get out the work we have done in emotional intelligence over many years as well as the curriculum I developed and taught in the area of women’s leadership and development through SOFIA, the Society of Femininity in Action, an organization I founded. As in my youth, I am sometimes ridiculed, attacked, or ignored, but I am also loved, cared about, and respected. That is my continued adventure in living and contributing: to turn myself over and follow spirit to the best of my ability, to feel my feelings fully, to express my emotions and thoughts, to be real, vulnerable, constantly emerging—living a better life than what I grew up thinking life had to be—and to support others to fully live the adventure of life.
Has it been a smooth road?
The road has been very far from smooth as I shared a bit in my story.
Having earned valedictorian of my high school class near Flint, MI, I put up with attack and belittling at a school that valued sports success over academic success. Despite the school choosing not to announce my academic placement even though I had earned it, I kept pursuing my own education and development. Kids would smear sandwiches on the windshield of my car. I was attacked a lot.
In my early career, I pioneered work in developing innovative education and early childhood development programs for individuals with developmental disabilities and demonstration programs for college students with disabilities. Despite single-handedly securing many large grants for these special projects, my name was deleted from a grant application and replaced with that of a male superior as a matter of course.
I continue to risk my personal career for the sake of the cutting-edge training I do and how important I feel that it is that we learned to feel and be with our emotions honestly. I have been attacked online fairly consistently since online commentaries have been available, from blatant lies to distortions of the truth, to just mean-spirited comments on my appearance or my intentions. It can be really painful, but frankly, setbacks like these are partially what has fueled my passion for developing human potential and creating trainings focused on a world that works for everyone. It proves to me the importance of our work—how critical it is to be conscious, aware, truthful, and in touch with our feelings—to be able to really feel our feelings, tend to them, and use their wisdom. To be able to be with our fear of the unknown, of others who are different from ourselves. To take responsibility for our own pain, fear, and anger and not project it onto other people or make others pay for our pain. To be capable of critical thinking, to transcend our prejudices and judgements. At one of our trainings, I play the Peter, Paul, and Mary song, “Don’t laugh at me” as I think it so beautifully represents the common pain we all share from a wide variety of adverse life experiences. I also think the shared pain is what can bring us together if we are willing to fiercely be with it and accept it. My next book is going to be on the power of emotions, and at this stage of my life what matters most to me is to make as big of a contribution as I possibly can before my time here is over.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Wright Foundation for the Realization of Human Potential story. Tell us more about the business.
Perhaps one way to answer this question is to share our purpose statement–which is a living reality for our foundation:
Our purpose is live radiant, authentic lives and to support others to unleash their potential by consciously engaging in their own transformation and leadership for the advancement of humanity and conscious, sustainable living on the planet.
The Wright Foundation for the Realization of Human Potential, which I co-founded with my husband Bob, is a 501(c)3 non-profit. The foundation focuses on educating current and future transformational leaders, through innovative curriculum in social and emotional intelligence, classes, and coaching, to activate leaders who help contribute to a vision of a world that works for everyone, one person at a time.
What people know us for, when they experience us, is a community of lifelong learnings who are dedicated to the mission above.
The foundation includes three primary divisions or areas:
The Wright Graduate University for the Realization of Human Potential (WGU), www.wrightgrad.edu, is an accredited university, which offers M.A. and Ed.D. degrees, plus graduate certificate programs in social and emotional intelligence, transformational leadership and transformational coaching. WGU provides a performative learning environment and synthesizes the best theories and methodologies related to the enhancement of human potential—ancient Greek philosophy to modern-day existential philosophy; developmental, Adlerian, humanistic and positive psychology; educational theories from Dewey to Vygotsky to Mezirow; current research in neuroscience, and behavioral economics.
Wright Living: www.wrightfoundation.org, is the non-credit division of the foundation where clients engage in applied coaching and coursework in social and emotional intelligence to leap ahead in their careers and lives so that they can make a positive contribution in their sphere of influence whether that sphere is a corporation, a family, a community, or society at large. The unique yearning-based learning approach applies both traditional and cutting-edge human emergence technologies to personal development, career, relationships and parenting, leadership, and more. Rather than limiting expertise to one static discipline, we continually seek to synthesize the latest in training and research along with past technologies and distills it for students into a pragmatic step-by-step system, called The Assignment Way of Living, that students can easily apply moment-by-moment in their relationships, careers, and lives.
The Human Emergence Group: Our business division brings our innovative curriculum into companies and organizations to empower individuals to be change-makers where they are, to take responsibility for their leadership, and to have a positive impact in their organization no matter what their role or level. Offerings from this division include workshops and training in social and emotional intelligence, executive or professional coaching, consulting, and more.
I am probably most proud of the community of individuals whom we have contributed to but who are also the future of the foundation. We have trained thousands of individuals in a wide variety of arenas to be more conscious, caring, and contributive individuals, employees, bosses, parents, friends, spouses, brothers, sisters, co-workers and so much more. Our community is incredibly diverse but what they share is a common vision of this world that works for everyone and they share the commitment to start with themselves in making that equation work.
We are research-based, with proven curriculum and methodologies, with a fully integrative approach, synthesizing the best of human emergence technologies from the Ancient Greeks, existentialism, psychology to current neuroscience to empower people to bring out the best in themselves and those they touch. We are known for our work in empowering self-development, intimate relationships, emotional intelligence, parenting and families, entrepreneurs, salespeople, people in transitions (whether graduation, life changes, divorce, empty nesting, etc.), personal power and influence, and leadership development.
But I think part of what sets us apart is our willingness to dig deep, to experience emotional expression, to be with our feelings, and to facilitate others to do the same even though we risk ridicule and attack. Most organizations aren’t willing to be really honest, to facilitate honest dialogue, to train people to risk living lives of contribution at this level. It’s what makes our lives challenging but also meaningful.
One of my personal slogans that I believe we live by often is to:
love fully
laugh loudly
pray often
express fearlessly
work joyously
commit totally
play hard
touch tenderly
live consciously
Contact Info:
- Address: 445 E. Ohio St.
Chicago, IL 60611 - Website: www.wrightfoundation.org
- Phone: 312-645-8300
- Email: hello@wrightliving.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wrightlivingchicago/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WrightLiving/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/wrightliving
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/wright-living-chicago
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