Take a Deep Breath and Look Your Inner Demons in the Eye

In personal development there is a tremendous amount of attention right now on manifestation and ‘getting what you focus on’. We’ve learned that the more we apply ourselves to creating a detailed vision of the life we want to create, the more likely we are to achieve that life.

I believe this to be true, wholeheartedly.

Daily visioning, journaling and dreamlining (along with a hefty amount of action taking) is how I have achieved so many amazing things in my own life and business, particularly over the last 2 years. In that timeframe I’ve gone from making a few grand a month online to high five figure months being the norm. I expect that this year I’ll cross the 6-figure mark for my monthly income. I’ve also gone from working full-time with clients and being in constant burn-out, commuting from a house I downright hated and felt embarrassed by, to living in a stunning beach-side apartment with nearly 360 ocean views, and working generally 4-5 hours a day, 4-5 hours a week. Come June of this year we’re taking off for 2 years or so of endless travel, starting in Germany where I spent my teens – I can’t wait!

These are some of the ‘big ticket items’ I’ve created using manifestation + hard work. But there’s so much more to it than that stuff. I write in my journal pretty much daily. I absorb personal development blogs and books like they’re essential to my survival. I associate as much as possible with people who believe in my big dreams and have crazy-ass big dreams of their own. I pay for expensive coaching so that I can learn from and be inspired by the best.

In short, I point myself daily in the direction of the life I want to achieve.

Creating Your Dream life: What Do You Want to Be? Do? And have?

One of the things I do every few months is I write down my ‘be’, ‘do’, ‘have’ list. Everything I want to be, do and have within the next 6 months. It’s an exercise I learned from Tim Ferriss and have used for years. Each time I create a new list, I look back at some of the old and I am without fail blown away at how 70-80% of it has come true. Every freaking time y’all. And I’m not just talking little stuff, as the ‘brag’ paragraph above will attest.

Using this technique, here are some of the things that have changed in my life –

I’ve become a more fun Mum
I saved up for and bought a designer handbag
I escaped from the clutches of bulimia and developed a relationship with food and my body that I am proud of
I shifted my work-mode from constant stress and burnout to working from a place of purpose, passion, calm and flow
I got in shape for a bikini photo-shoot
I fell pregnant with our second child and had a healthy baby (if a very complicated and scary pregnancy, but even throughout that I used manifestation and visioning to work past it)
I started a savings account and for the first time since my early twenties saved consistently
I published my first book and became a best-selling author
I created (and am in just 3 days launching!) my Dream Life Academy Online Bootcamp – my biggest life’s passion and calling, and a project I’ve managed to distract myself from for 3 years due to fear and self-doubt!)
I’ve worked with first-class business coaches
I’ve joined the ‘inner circle’ of some amazing 6 and 7-figure female entrepreneurs and become close friends as well as mastermind buddies
I’ve been invited to speak on several fantastic telesummits, speaking my message of living life on your terms

I look at this list (and it’s just a small percentage of what I could write!) and I am absolutely awed and humbled. It is just incredible what you can create in your life when you make a decision to follow your dreams, to believe even when you feel that you can’t, to deal with whatever you have to face along the way, and to do what you have to do every day to get there. The truth is I usually forget what I put on my ‘be, do, have’ dream lists and it’s not until I go back and look at earlier versions that I get that goosebump moment as I realise that everything I’m living NOW I asked for earlier.

But.

Where I am now in my life is wonderful, it gets better each day and I’m so thankful. And yet at the same time I’m frustrated that I feel there are certain areas I can’t break through. That frustration has recently turned to curiosity, which I’m certain is a better feeling to harbour 🙂

I just wrote myself a little note, asking the following –

“What do I still desire in my life in order to feel that I’m completely on purpose and in love with who I am and how I live?”

Kinda like my ‘rest of my life bucket list’. I don’t mean down to the details of all the adventures I want to have, things I’d like to try my hand at and so on. I’m talking the BIG stuff. You know what? Rather than try to recap it for you, here’s an exact copy, including my initial ‘date’ journal entry so you can see how I started on this train of thought 🙂

January 18, 2014

God. Soon it will be 2020. Time is passing. I’m becoming more and more proud of how I do spend it.

What is left to work on? Well, there’s always evolution; the constant evolution of being more true to me.

To really do this writing thing, give it my all.
To develop a STRONG spiritual connection.
To be a more engaged mother. A more fun and loving wife.
To be financially free, truly and abundantly wealthy, and empower others to do the same.
And of course lots of travel and adventure, seeing the world. Making a difference. Helping people. Giving it my all.

It’s not a long list! And it’s exciting because it all feels so in reach. It feels almost a little wrong, but yet perfectly okay. I can really get there. I really am there, really. It’s just filling in the gaps. It’s quite mind boggling.

As I looked at what I wrote, even though it excited me with its possibility, I knew there was something missing. I wasn’t addressing my fears. And the truth is I’ve become so good at focusing on what I DO want that I largely ignore what I DON’T want.

Now believe you me, one of the very worst things you can do if you desire your dream life is to focus on what you don’t want! You get what you focus on; where your attention goes energy flows.

But there’s a difference between harbouring or even fueling thoughts of scarcity, stress, lack and between simply acknowledging your fears. Acknowledging your deepest fears is like looking into the eye of the beast. It is a truly terrifying thing to do and generally we (consciously or not) do everything within our power to avoid it. It’s so much nicer to focus on what we can or ‘should’ be doing to create GOOD stuff in our life than to think even for a moment really openly about the stuff we are scared might happen.

But if you’re going to truly quit the B.S, deal with your sh*t, and finally start living the life you damn well know you deserve (which is exactly what my Dream Life Academy Bootcamp is about by the way!), then you’re going to have to deal with this stuff.

And if you don’t admit to yourself what you’re really scared of then how in God’s good name are you going to deal with it?!

In my ‘7 Steps to Living Your Dreams‘ free video Step 4 is ‘Deal’. You cannot and will not achieve your dreams if you’re not willing to deal.

I know this. I teach it. But yet I’m just like anyone else, I do worry that my deepest fears might come true. I do a great job at creating and moving forward despite this. But some of this stuff just eats away at you, you know what I’m saying? That stuff? That’s the beast. That’s the demon you need to look at square in the eye, and then FIGHT until it exists no more. It’s a battle you absolutely can and will win. But not if you keep pretending the problem’s not there. And as I wrote my ‘what is left to do in my life’ list (which sounds God! so arrogant framing it like that, but you know what I mean :)) I realised that it was time for me to take a deep breath, feel the fear, and then face it – or them – anyway.

Okay, let’s be brutally honest. What are my greatest fears?

Time. Feeling like I’ll never have enough time to do it all. As though for the rest of my life I’ll feel I’m playing catch up and can’t afford to slow down, let alone rest.
Money. What if I never get on top of my credit card debt, what if it just keeps growing? What if my cashflow just STOPS?
Family. What if I look back and realise I didn’t spend enough time with them, that I was a push-away mother and wife, not a pull-to one.
God. What if I never have the courage to create the spiritual connection I desire.
My other (growing up) family. What if I lose closeness with them?

This is IMPORTANT to me. This is my life.

It’s simple stuff. But oh so freaking big and scary. And the simple but oh-so-big stuff, the stuff that is SO deeply important to you that you often don’t face it and instead focus on all of the secondary stuff that allows you to more easily feel a sense of success?

That’s the stuff that if you deal with it will allow you to look back on not just a day or a year but your entire LIFE and be proud.

We’ve all heard the story of the man on his deathbed, who when asked what he regrets most, said not spending time with his family, and working so hard.

None of us want to be that person.

But yet we allow ourselves to be pulled along day by day by our own lies about what will fulfill us or make us ‘enough’.

I don’t want to look back and see business success, writing success, speaking success, travel and adventure success, ANY ‘success’ if at the end of my life (or even at the end of today actually, now that I think about it!) I can’t also look back and know that I enjoyed the moments as they passed.

That I took time to stop and just be. That I had a truly amazing relationship with my children and husband, one I can be proud of, one that I know I prioritised on a high level. That I took the time to maintain and nurture relationships with the other people in my life who I love. That I answered the call of God, which is something I’ve been pushing away for a very long time; scared of what it would mean to fully embrace my spirituality. That I created and passed on a legacy of true wealth and abundance, in all areas. And yes, that I left my mark in a big way through my writing and my speaking but also no – that I did not do so at the expense of these other things.

These are my greatest fears.

I’m stating them because I am ready, as of right now, to stand up and take ownership for dealing with them. I refuse to be that person looking back with regret and sorrow – even for another day – that I bought into any sort of lie about what I have to sacrifice in order to have success, even in order to live my dream life.

And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let those demons lurk within me any longer.

So my question to you is this.

How about you? Will you take a deep breath. Square your shoulders. Lift your head up and grit your teeth. Look your inner demons full in the eye and join me in kicking their mother-fucking asses.

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