Wisdom to remember

“There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.” Freya Stark

A poem for you

Journey by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life that you could save.

and One More Thing

I’ve Been On Sabbatical

For the past couple of months I’ve been on sabbatical and I’m not sure how or when I will return full-time to my business

I’d love to say it’s been liberating, healing and restful

But not so much…

It’s been confronting, uncomfortable and totally not what I expected from this shift

What it really has allowed me to do is see all the ways I projected ‘problem-solving myself’ into the way I approached my work

Something that seems to be glamorised and purported as ‘needed’ when growing a business

Of course, I love coaching and believe in the power of this work…AND there is a lot of messaging out there, some of which I have also shared, that with the wrong perspective can actually be hurtful rather than healing

An example…

“You are the only one standing in your way”

Hmm…so we can see this as – it is only the stories you tell yourself that keep you stuck in a life that isn’t aligned with what you truly want

Does that mean that YOU are the fundamental problem in your life?

That idea lends itself very well to self-blame and self-punishment. That somehow whatever you are doing you are causing your own misery or lack of success and unless you solve some innate problem with who you are or how you are being then you will never get to live the way you want to

When I look around at the world and how people move within it I can see this is categorically not true – many people live wild and fantastical lives regardless of who they are and how they show up and vice versa…tragedy doesn’t pick and choose who it strikes

In the business coaching paradigm it appears that if your business is somehow not working out as planned then YOU are singularly the cause and solution…and not only is this confusing AF but it is just fundamentally not true

To bring it back to more compassionate and healing roots, let’s instead think of the serenity prayer

“[God] grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference, living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; taking this world as it is and not as I would have it..”

Let’s relinquish control of and responsibility for every single thing that has happened in our lives and instead take pause to sit in the liminal space that knows we have far less understanding than we think, far less control than we would like and that there is far more possibility available to us than we could ever imagine

As heart-led entrepreneurs I know we want to see things shift in the collective, we want to build Soul Businesses and part of that is unpacking the narrative around what it takes to do that.  Most of it is still old paradigm, not trauma-informed or ‘safe’ for so many of us

Exactly why my coaching prioritises your safety and well-being above all else while inspiring you to build your business in a way that feels nourishing to you. That has always been my goal from the inception of my work and even though I am on sabbatical my fire and passion lives on…we will just have to see what the next incarnation looks like!

Thank you so much for being here, loving you infinitely