This week I saw another group of year 12 students graduate. As I sat at the back of the auditorium my mind was cast back in time to my own graduation. It was 1998 and I was rocking a baby blue medieval formal dress. (You know, cause my fav subject at school was Ancient History and I wanted to totally tap into that princess vibe, despite the fact I had braces on my teeth. I digress). I’d already been accepted to study High School teaching at uni and I was super excited about making a difference in young people’s lives.
I knew what I wanted to do. In fact I felt called to do it.
Now here I am in another season in my life with a new calling to help women live out their raddest (yes I’m a child of the 80’s), lives.
And I’m sure a few of you are sitting there, eyes rolled going ‘here’s another live your dream life rant.’
But here’s the thing:
You were put on this earth for a reason. You are here to be a light on the hill (Matthew 5:14:16) and you are called to be the salt of the earth (Matthew 5:13). To season this world with your awesome goodness.
But yet you don’t feel like a light at all. You’ve let it go out and you feel frustrated, disappointed and annoyed. Each day you’re getting up knowing you should be doing something else. You feel trapped like you’ve been in a mine trying to dig out all the pretty and precious gems. You’ve tried chipping away at the dirt, you’ve been putting in the hard yards and you’re ready to uncover the beauty that is your dreams.
And lo and freakin’ below its collapsed on you. You’re suffocating below the surface. It’s choking you and you want to breathe life into this beautiful dream of yours. It’s a dark place there. You feel blocked and extreme sadness for what could have been. (Like so sad you could go through a whole box of tissues for your issues right now). You feel ripped off and everything is spiralling out of control. (And you want to take back the steering wheel don’t you?).
Life has taken its toll on you. You’ve sabotaged your dreams but you want more. In fact you crave more. The way you craved that last piece of chocolate cake at work. (And you missed out because someone got to it before you did).
Here are the 3 ways you sabotage yourself:
Conformed to the Norm
You thought you had to do life a certain way. Does this sound familiar?
- You went to uni (college) straight after school instead of feeding your wanderlust dreams and travelling.
- You did a uni course because it would give you a job. Your dream job doesn’t feel like it could earn you an income so you went with the safe option and it’s slowly sucking the life out of you faster than Dracula.
- You got married and had kids because that’s what you do. It’s the logical next step.(P.S I love being married and I adore my little boy heaps. This is more about where do you fit your dreams in with the dreams of others).
- You bought that house but now you feel tied down because you have a mortgage. You feel like you dream is soooo far away because you now have responsibilities.
- You force yourself to read your Bible (meditate, yoga, insert spiritual discipline here). You’re an audio learner and you absorb the word so much easier by listening but you feel you have to read because that’s just what you do. Right?
- You go to church when it physically makes you feel sick to be there. You ignore the fact that feelings are in themselves a spiritual experience. You go and put on a mask instead of being honest and connecting with God and crying your eyes out. Even if that means you do it in public. You can’t cry in public at church damn it. You have to reign those emotions in baby.
In my faith as a Christian there’s these verses in Romans (12:1-2), that talk about conforming to this world. (P.S you don’t need to be a Christian to appreciate the verse by the way).
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
Have you become some well adjusted to the world to fit in? Are you open to what God wants to do in your life? Are you open to what He has called you to do?
Cause here’s the thing. When we’re plugged into a higher power (for me that’s God and I’m totally cool with using the word God. You use what you feel comfortable with), there’s a refining that can come with it. It can feel awkward to go against what the world says you should do because it’s just so darn comfortable there.
But what if God had something so flipping amazing for you on the other side of that awkwardness AND you got to use your mad skills. How awesome would that be?
A good indicator often is addressing ‘where are you finding resistance and why do you feel it’s there?‘ ‘What is your higher purpose and are you seriously tapping into that today or are you ignoring it because you feel safe?‘
Negative Nelly Elephanted Yourself
You’re a bit of a skeptic when it comes to your dreams. You speak negativity into your life and it’s started to take hold of you. It’s becoming your reality. Bad things happen to you because you think bad things just happen to you. You think to be selfless that you need to sacrifice on your dreams. You think you need to have achieved a particular status or have x,y,z in place before you can step out and do what you’ve been put on this earth to do. You think martyrdom is your high calling.
Undervalued Yourself
You have low self esteem. You don’t think you are smart enough, pretty enough, worthy enough. You think people won’t pay me to do that or you question the prices you want to charge and it never gets off the ground.
WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT?
The 2 most common reasons people come to me for coaching is that they want more boldness + freedom in their lives.
What does this look like?
It looks like waking up each day refreshed and not rushed. You’ve got time to make a cuppa because you’re not living a life on someone else’s watch. You see the opportunities before you and you chase them because you know you are worthy of such beauty. It’s being able to eat cake and not feel guilty. It’s about being on maternity leave and not feeling the stress of returning back to work.
It’s about saying ‘no’ to things that don’t light you up and ‘yes’ to the new opportunities that excite you so much that your muscles hurt from smiling so much. You start wearing clothes that make you feel beautiful. Not because they are practical but because it ignites a creativity and awakens the feminine spirit in you. It’s about allowing yourself to play and letting out the inner child.
And gathering up 50 sparklers and lighting a sparkler bomb on your life, releasing the inner spiritual rebel because darling not only is it cheeky but it lights up the whole yard, your soul, and babe… that is so worth the risk.
How do you get there?
It starts by making small steps each day towards your dream. Often it starts with work on the internal. What are the things that light you up? What has been blocking you from achieving those dreams? What work do you need to do to feel worthy? To not be compelled to people please? What steps must you take to get up off the couch and off to that social event with ease? (If you need help with that I have a free e-book for newsletter subscribers only. Click on the subscriber box above).
If you want to make a start towards your dreams whether that be to run your own heart centred business, travel the world or to feel the sexiest you’ve ever been I’ve created a guide for you that you can use.
Download the worksheet by clicking on the image below. There are 4 tips to help you getting on your way to a life that lights you up.
What’s holding you back from your dreams? I’d love to know. Comment below and please share the post using those buttons below as well.
