I’ve written a few blogs for my meditation website (especially the last one about being comfortably uncomfortable). I really wanted to write something that was more personal in the hope it was going to help someone who might also have hit a road block.. What do we do when we are powering down the road building our “dream job” or building a new business, and then we hit not just a road block, but a F’ing wall..
This happened to me last year. on the outside, my life looked fine, but if you were able to look under the hood, I was really struggling to just keep everything together. I had made some poor budgeting decisions and then just had a series of events which literally stopped me in my tracks. I wasn’t suicidal or anything just wondering am I supposed to be doing what I’m doing, which I knew with every fibre of my being that it was… I have a strong practice of meditation– it was what I went to everyday without fail no matter what was going on, and it gave me a baseline and the determination to keep moving forward.
Every time I thought I was getting ahead, there was another bill or something else, like my car breaking down right when I needed it most, and instead of crying in my cornflakes, I just kept drawing a new line in the sand every day and moving forward.
I then invested in myself as well, and got a business coach (which I really couldn’t afford at the time) – but you know what I did, I got up at 4.30am in the morning a few times a week and drove Uber, just to pay for him.
I already knew that I was on the right path, I just hadn’t cracked the right structure and just actually needed to upskill myself a bit with some new tools, and also getting someone completely removed from my business to pull it apart. I had 30 years of TV experience, not of building a business, and if I look at where I was then (almost exactly a year ago) and where I am today – sitting in business class, flying to India to run my first retreat, it shows that anything is possible, because back then, this was just an idea.
Let’s rewind a bit and go back to where I was, because this is where the lessons were. Life has a strange way of pushing us where we need to be, and it was like, even my practice was being tested. So many times I wanted to skip it or do it later – which meant I wouldn’t do it, but I didn’t, I made it THE priority , the one thing that was the constant in my life. The other thing was reading again, books on Surrender kept popping up, so I read them, started making that a practice as well – stopping what I was doing at 11am and reading for 90mins.
Even with this, I couldn’t actually see how I was going to pull myself out of this and how this was going to end, but I knew I just had to get up every day and treat each day as a fresh start, and it was NOT easy… but I did keep at it,
I knew that consistency is key, and I was lucky that I was teaching enough students to just keep myself afloat, it was literally more like bobbing in the water.
This is where I completely regrouped myself – especially once the car broke down as well, I was like, what am I to learn from this, but I can look back now and see that it was just to STOP… Look at where I was going – and I wasn’t actually going in the right direction – I was looking at everything in a “small” way, when I needed to go BIG… that was the first thing…
It actually required me to stop and re-group, stop swimming upstream to survive, and to look at how I could do things better. It took time, but I had nothing but time as I couldn’t go anywhere. Taking this time was the best thing I ever did, it let me set structure in my life and start putting in pillars to work towards, and then it was about execution. Once I did this, and knew what I had to do – not looking back – and just starting with small steps to move forward, I found my flow again. Opportunities started presenting themselves and more and more things started showing up – so much so, that I am on this rollercoaster ride now, which is just in motion and I am just guiding it.
It’s funny to think where I was a year ago – but if we have no doubt that we are supposed to move in a direction then we have to just keep going… But how do I do it without doubt… I go to that place of stillness every day, twice a day. I have such a deep knowing that this is for me. I just had to find a way to keep going.
I think it’s also a test to see if you have what it takes, nature gives you a little nudge, but also making me stop gave me the opportunity to read books on surrender, to go deeper into my practice, work with my coach (investing in myself) so that when there was a bit of light starting to shine through, I knew exactly what to do..
I am sure that other “obstacles” will come up – but I now look at them as OPPORTUNITES to regroup – reframe – trusting that there is a process. I think that the speed in which you move through this process – is determined by how you approach it, with a daily practice, by investing and believing in yourself and surrendering to what is, but not in a defeatist attitude, reach for the higher thought vibrations, and keep moving forward, because on the other side… It’s a sweet sweet ride.