Nothing Has Changed…but Everything Feels Different

“It’s time to come clean.” These words I heard as I woke up this morning.
To help you understand the changes I’m going through, you need to know the truth. You need to know how bad it really has been, so you can begin to understand – as I am beginning to understand – what this is really all about.

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In 2010 I spent tens of thousands of dollars on programs to help me get my message out there so more people could discover the beauty and power of their Inner Wisdom.

People promised to make me into a million dollar author. I went for it because I’d learned that to get the book I’d written published I needed platform – thousands of followers who would snatch up my book the instant it came out. These people knew how to get platform.

People promised to make me a six figure coach. I went for it because their plan to reach more people with information products and teleseminars made sense – even if it didn’t feel right to me.

A famous author promised that she would show me how to achieve the success she had enjoyed as a speaker and writer. I went for it because I liked her work, respected her message and envied her success.

Here’s what I got for the tremendous amount of time, money and effort I put in:

• Huge credit card debt for the first time in my life. Each time I plunked down another six or ten or twelve thousand dollars, I told myself I wasn’t buying something frivolous, like diamonds and furs. I was investing in my vision, my business, my future – and anyway, I’d make back many times these amounts by following the program.
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• Deep feelings of failure and shame. In my entire life, if I worked hard at something, I always succeeded. I was always at the top of my class in school. I never doubted my talents and abilities. In these programs I saw people succeeding, while I floundered. I compared myself to them and felt like a failure. For the first time in my life I experienced what others may have felt in comparing themselves with me – inadequacy, helplessness and inferiority. I had never paused to think about those people before, and now I was one of them.
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• Doubt in my message. How could I put out there that following your Inner Wisdom would lead to happiness and success? Look at what had happened to me! I felt like a fraud and – worst of all – I found myself questioning the very foundation of my life.

This was truly the dark night of my soul.

In October, 2010 everything ground to a halt, like gears rusted shut that simply refused to move. I sat down at my computer one day and seized up with anxiety. I could not push myself one step further.

It had become clear that I wasn’t going to grab the golden ring. Now I knew it was time to get off the merry-go-round.

I went back to my roots.

Up until that point I knew Interactive Imagery – the process I use to connect with Inner Wisdom – to be my path of learning, healing and growth. I’d done my own work three times a year in a retreat with trusted co-journeyers – our beloved Woodstock Group. The healing I needed now could not wait. I started working on a regular basis to heal – not the personal, family traumas of childhood – but the more subtle and pervasive traumas inflicted on all of us by a culture obsessed with competition and material gain.

Those earlier quotes and blogs you may have read about going with the flow, about releasing painful comparison with the apparent success of others, about learning to be kind to yourself – all of this was part of my own healing. We teach what we most need to learn.

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Nothing has changed. My book has yet to be published – though the book that I’ll publish will be quite different from the one I wrote four years ago. I have not achieved the fame and fortune promised to me by those programs. Others continue to enjoy success in ways that I have not. (Well, actually, I have worked my way out of debt, so at least that has changed!)

But everything feels different. I no longer hate myself for failing or those other people for succeeding. I recognize that those programs could never have worked for me, because they were never authentic to who I really am and what I really believe.

I now see the whole experience as a process I needed to go through. I know I can trust that process as a necessary gift for teaching me what I needed to learn, for helping me get where I needed to go. I’ve come into acceptance, and with that has come peace and joy.

I’m coming to learn the true happiness is not a matter of achieving your goals. In fact, my old URL – achieveyourgoals.com – is up for sale.

Going forward, this blog will be all about what I’m learning about true happiness – all gifts of Inner Wisdom.

Post Script: As I finish writing this blog, I weep deeply, deeply, knowing the relief that comes with the release of the shame I have carried for all of this time. If you are carrying shame, please know that shining light into the shameful places brings blessed relief.

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“The more we open to the unconditional love that is always there waiting for us, the more joy and equilibrium we experience in our days here on Earth.”