I feel the silence all around me...the hibernation of my creation cycles. It's permeated my whole self. I was explaining to my coach yesterday that it feels like I have a whole buffet of crock pots cooking in the background while all I want to do is read my fiction books and nothing else. Life feels like an interruption to my reading. Thank goodness for my Kindle app so that I can read anytime, anywhere.
And she laughed and agreed that she sees all the things working in the background. No rush to produce them. They will be ready when they are ready. Then she asked me a different question... "What are the themes to what you are reading?" I was like - 'don't fun suck my fiction by making it a life lesson lady'. Then I was like - 'I read about magic, epic journeys, reluctant heroes, light and dark, humility and power.' And I tell people I don't read many self help books...shit. It's one of those moments when I realize that who we are permeates everything we do, even when we're hiding out cooking up shit in the background. It's all there, even in the quiet moments, our purpose, our drive, our messages, our brilliance. We can not escape our very essence. We are driven to remember and be it. Even in the things we do when we're feeling quiet. The stories we ingest and live - it's all us. And it's our responsibility to bring those into the world and share them. As soon as they are cooked and ready... Integrity...
When I was younger I was recruited to teach kids how to wind surf. I had NO idea how to windsurf but I figured that neither did they so we'd just give it a try. After a quick lesson from someone who actually did know what they were doing, I spent days in the water helping kids pull up sails filled with water, flipping the boards, holding them steady. We had some successes and some exhilarating short runs for everyone. Everyone except for me, since I never really had a chance to try it. Quite frankly I was over wind surfing after the first day of intense treading water in the cold lake. So yeah, I never did learn to windsurf. I taught others how to do something I didn't know how to do and I helped them have a really great experience. But I never ONCE pretended like I knew what the hell I was doing, like I was an expert at wind surfing. The kids and I figured it out together. I asked the 'real' teacher lots of questions to help them get better. We did a lot of 'hey, let's try this and see if it works'. That's where the integrity comes into play. Because if I had pretended to know what I was doing, those kids wouldn't have had nearly as much success as they did because I'd be teaching them all wrong. I wouldn't have asked questions and we wouldn't have been experimenting with what felt right. I wouldn't have been laughing when we got it wrong either. We had fun figuring it out together. If I was busy pretending, I wouldn't have been nearly as joyous, even in the cold water working my ass off to lift a sail. The energetics would have been out of alignment and that would have tainted the entire experience. Integrity means coming from where you are and speaking the truth, even when it makes you look bad. Holding up to your end of the bargain. Being in alignment... Don't Blame Your Introversion!
Being an introvert isn't an excuse not to do things. It's not a disease. It doesn't mean we are shy, socially misfit, unable to create powerful invitations or make a proposal effectively. Those are personal traits, not part of an umbrella to hide under. It means we aren't FED by large groups of people, it means we're not inclined towards small talk. It doesn't mean we're not capable of being entirely pleasant in a group or being witty with the 'how do you do's'. It just means it takes a lot out of us to do. We are FED by smaller groups, solitude, deep conversations. Which by the way is exactly what inviting people to work with us entails...so yes, that actually means it should be that much easier for us to create 1:1 clients because it's in our nature to have that level of intimate connection. "But I'm an introvert..." is just bullshit. It means we're not inclined to do certain things but it doesn't mean we're not capable of doing them. Your business is in no way successful in proportion to the amount of likes you get on your Facebook page, the amount of hits you get on your website, or how many people open your email.
Unless you just want to play a numbers game - then you better be prepared to work your ass off to get 100,000+ names on a faceless list for the occasional taker. Be deliberate. Intuitive people need connection. We CRAVE it. Yes, even the introverts crave the relationships. One relationship is worth 10,000 likes. Keep that in mind each and every day. Go for the big life win, not for the single hopeful sale. Not everything you do makes sense. Not everything needs to... As long as you trust yourself, expansion happens. This quote was part of 'Your Inner Council'. I don't know what page or which council member this came from. I do know that it popped up for me today as I was working on my next book 'Active Surrender' and I may have to reuse it lol. Because at the core of surrendering to our own best lives lies TRUST in our own voice and in our own path. As we wrapped up one of my groups yesterday that was the theme - that everyone was leaving with a deeper sense of trust, with faith that they do have their own answers, even when the path seems to diverge from the norm. Rock on my maverick souls. Expansion begins one trusting step at a time... http://www.yourinnercouncil.com I was in contraction last week...feeling off kilter and certainly I felt alone, misunderstood. I went up into my tower to cut myself off from the world.
Then I went to an event for the past couple of days. It was a lot of intense brain work in a room of people, who I actually ended up really enjoying being with. I learned shit-tons of stuff, remembered a lot of basics and connected with the mechanics of my business (having been hanging out with the heart of it for so long I almost forgot that there were cogs somewhere in there). Today I'm tired but I'm reengaged in a new way. I was bracing myself to really just collapse but it's quite the opposite. Honestly, I believe it's because I surrendered to the contraction. I whined a little and then just allowed myself to wallow in my self pity, and got comfortable in my tower. I let the contraction happen however it needed to happen and I watched it. I didn't really engage in it or get sucked down into it. I still wrote my book every day...I still had amazing conversations. Then I surrendered to the event. I knew I would be triggered by some of the brain work and I did it anyhow. I watched the trigger happen and I let it just roll on by and continued working away & engaging in the class. I learned things at an energetic level that I would have missed if my energy was tied up in fighting the brain work and rebelling against the 'do this next' classwork. I let the ocean soothe me. I ate what I wanted. I laughed. I did some small talk. I sat in the same chair the whole time. I looked at my business with fresh eyes and a new perspective as it matures into it's next phase. Mostly I connected with a few brilliant souls and did some work I found to be pattern disruptive. The point is...Today I don't feel the contraction anymore and I don't feel the snap back of having been surrounded by people for a few days. And I believe it's because I've been focusing so much on surrendering instead of struggling. I didn't navigate it perfectly. I felt my flareups. But I did consciously work at breathing and allowing myself to sink deeper into the experiences and it made all the difference on the back end, on the morning after feeling that flow is still all around me. So where can you surrender in small ways? Where are the places you fight? Can you not fight and just observe instead? Can you lean deeper into experiences and contractions and even into expansions? |