Herding cats or ducks in a row?

Today the river is at your feet, flowing in a tumbling, jumbling, joyous mass towards the ocean. All you have to do is step into the energy and allow it to carry you towards the place you know you belong. And you are terrified. Terrified?

You know what you know. You may even know that others know you know what you know.

Do you wake up in the morning with thoughts in your head that are old thoughts? Do you find your brain making old connections, following old riverbeds of thought that you know take you to the places you've already been? You’ve probably been to some awesome, exciting, successful places, so no issues there, it’s just that maybe you’d like to go someplace new, but, like changing the flow of water down an established river, you have to intentionally think new thoughts to create new spillways.

The answer for me when I found myself in this place was to hire a mentor. Someone just at the edge of what I thought I could afford, someone who knows more than I know, which is a lot. That’s not ego talking, that’s reality, and it’s the same reality that so many of my own clients have struggled with in the past. They’ve settled for their own brain for directions, and the things their brains know are based in old habits of thinking. They’ve done the inside work, and delved into the deep, dark regions of their own psyche to unearth the pains that controlled what they’d allow themselves to do. They’ve pushed beyond their own limits time and time again, and still, have wound up falling short of where they know they belong. The only way for them to do it differently, is to be different, and that means not doing it alone.

My brain wants to think that because it knows so much, because it has the degrees, and the workshops, and the certifications, and the experience, and the successes, that it doesn’t need anyone but itself. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. You really can’t know more than you know until someone helps you find new things to know.

We all need a mentor. Someone you are in an energy exchange with, the energy of money, who knows more than you do, who’s at least a level or two ahead of you, who is dedicated to your reaching the lifestyle goals you’ve envisioned in your head for as long as you can remember.  In my very first call to my mentor I changed the way I think, and the way I feel, and no amount of self talk could have done that for me. She talked about getting my ducks in a row and I realized, I didn’t  have any ducks. I had cats. I’d become extremely adept at herding cats. I excelled at taking seemingly disparate aspects of my life and moving them along towards my destination. I could do it, but damn, it was a lot of work!

She helped me bring in the ducks.

At first my ducks were in conflict with my cats. At the risk of mixing metaphors, the riverbed my cats had created were in conflict with the flow that my ducks were craving.

For years I've talked to clients who are herding cats. They are visionaries, artists, and creatives who are able to juggle multiple high-level skills, and wide-sweeping programs of transformation, but who are out of breath with the amount of energy and time it takes to pull it all together. And what I see is, most of them are confused about why they are doing it.

One of the first thing most coaches or mentors will ask a new client is, what are your money goals? This is important, knowing where you want to get to helps you to get there. Much less often, and will a lot less emphasis and definition, will they ask you what your lifestyle goals are. The myth in this is that if we reach our monetary goals, we will automatically achieve our lifestyle goals.

As a lifestyle coach. I help you to define your personal goals, because how you want to experience and be in your life is the key to achieving your professional goals. As an entrepreneur you need the skills of sales and marketing, so you have to learn these things, but you will continue to miss achieving your highest dreams if doing what you do is in service of money over life.

The New Year is a time honored reset button for sweeping life changes. It's time to get real about what you really want. You. Not your friends or family, You. Shape it. Move things around like a rubiks cube til things click. Now find a mentor who knows at least a little bit more than you know to help you get where you really want to go.

What is one thing you're going to do differently, starting NOW?

Guides, Angels, Spirits, and Myth

Guides, Angels, Spirits, Myth and Archetype

As a mentor and coach I often work with people who listen to the abundant intuitive energy that surrounds us. They listen to the sources who are here to help and guide them, and that’s a wonderful ability that can offer support for their decisions when maybe the people around them aren’t in such a helpful place. What is distressing about this is that I also see them using their guides as a reason to play small, and to constrict when they’ve chosen to risk playing big.

Getting my guides into perspective. 

I once had a very unusual dream, so unusual that while I was still dreaming I turned to the other person in the dream and told them they were on their own, that I couldn’t wait to wake up to consult my guides, that I needed to do it right now. And I did. I walked out the door and down the street to where I knew my guide would be. 

I wasn’t actually prepared for who met me, or where I found him. 

Before this dream I had imagined my guides to be bathed in a shimmery, ethereal light, wearing draping clothes, with an overall purity of otherworldliness. Too many movies, I know. The guide I met that day couldn’t have been any further from what I’d imagined.  

The office was in an old tract home, down a nondescript suburban street, and was a confusion of walls covered with memos and sticky notes threatening to bury the old metal drawer desk haphazardly stacked with papers and books. I was sure I’d been sent to the wrong place. I was even more sure of this when a rugged, unshaven man burst in wearing a flannel shirt and levis. He slid  into the metal pedestal swivel chair, crossed his arms behind his head and planted his work boot covered feet on a bare corner of the cluttered desk. 

I asked him where my guide was (okay, maybe I demanded). He said my guide was busy but had sent him as this wasn’t really that important. Before I could speak he started laughing, out loud, total guffaw belly laughing, and said that the dream I’d come to him for didn’t mean at all what I thought it did. He laughed til the tears rolled down his face. I left, shaking my head and wondering, what then did it mean?

I did ultimately find out the answer, and I too had a total guffaw belly laugh over it all. He was right, it wasn’t even in the ballpark of what I originally thought it meant.

So what’s my point? It’s this. Everything we know, every decision we make, is informed by lifetimes of experiences. Our fears, our successes, our desires, and our insecurities are just a few of the things that shape our perceptions, and our perceptions are what we call REALITY. Our guides also use our experiences to communicate to us in a language we understand. We understand it, because we created it out of our experiences. That does not mean it’s reality. 

Guides, Angels, God and Spirit are not in our lives to take away our ability to practice free will, they are here to help us see what we might be missing, to broaden our horizons, and sometimes, to offer their protection.  

The question to ask yourself is: Do you still need the kind of protection you’re being offered? Or, is it time to say thank you for your wonderful guidance, you’ve helped me to become who I am, and, I've got this one.  

Your guides are not your parents. Even if they were, do you still listen to mom and dad when they tell you how to live your life?

The final question I will leave you with is: Why do you give your guides a level of control over your life you’d give to no one else? Are you steering your own ship, or having you given that power away?