This week I taught a class in my “Power in the Hallways” program on the “Denying” hallway. This isn’t about being in denial, but rather about denying the Truth of who you are – your own greatness – and it involves a lot of waiting, wishing, and hoping. Waiting for someone else to take up your cause so you can join it. Wishing that the opportunity to do it – to do that thing that you wish for in your secret thoughts – would fall into your lap without requiring the leap of faith that stepping into your brilliance will always require. We deny our calling – the voice that says “what if I could _____” – out of fear, thinking someday it will be easy.
(It never becomes easy until you make the decision to step into it. Make the decision is hard. The resulting action is easy.)
I also had several conversations yesterday – with new clients, with potential clients, with past clients, and also with a good friend who is in transition. The theme that showed up was time – the idea of timing one’s “launch” into greatness (and by greatness I mean stepping into work you love, and the difference you’re here to make, and allowing the money to come). It will always feel as if another time is better than now. I had conversations about miracles that showed up when someone made the decision to have what they wanted, then released control about how it would happen. Conversations with people in the “Hallway” in life – who are finding it an uncomfortable test of their faith, yet a million times more liberating than denying their truth. Being scared and doing it anyway had brought a sense of aliveness to this person that they could have never experienced by staying in a job that drained them. I also had conversations with people who weren’t yet ready to even acknowledge what they really want for fear they would have to do something about it. Stepping into your brilliance always requires giving up something of a lower nature in favor of something of a higher nature.
Now, there is nothing wrong with avoiding looking at your Truth. Many people do it for their entire lives and the world goes on. Some people are here for a lifetime of struggle. I don’t judge this – struggle on! (But ENJOY it!)
Yet, when people are nudged into a new direction, and they know it, and then hide from it, I admit, calm as I generally am, I sometimes want to grab them and say – “DAMN IT, YOUR LIFE IS WAITING!”
I have a note to myself on my wall that says, “There are people out there waiting for you to step up now.” That is my message today for anyone who knows they are hiding from their Truth.
See, I had the nudging about my purpose more than 10 years ago. The whole plan for my business, and the next evolution of my business, was laid out in my mind in a flash of inspiration. And I ignored it. I found other things that I thought would be “good enough” or “close enough” to what I really wanted to do and the difference I really wanted to make. Only the nudging didn’t go away. And it got increasingly harder to live with myself knowing that I was avoiding my Truth. Everything became more frustrating, people were annoying, society felt “wrong.” Only it wasn’t them, it was me. And all there was was to step in and trust. I know that now, coming out the other side. But belief systems are a powerful thing.
Every single person who is saying, “I’ll do that in 10” – 10 minutes or 10 YEARS – has a damn good reason for waiting. There is a 100% logical thought process at play that has them stuck. They just can’t see it.
But the resource that will get you unstuck is right in front of you, if you have the courage to use it. Every time, it is there.
Thank you to the beautiful people I conversed with yesterday. And I ask the rest of you – now, or in 10?