This Is Not What You Were Born For
I had a conversation with a client the other night that resulted in her crying tears of passionate rage and me holding back my own tears and swallowing down a choked ball of emotion as I tried not to visibly break down right there in the hotel lobby I was working out of.
It was the first time we’d ever spoken, but I’d say we were done with any ‘niceties’ by one minute into the call and then just straight down into cold raw truth and asskickery.
Truth about what?
Everything.
Everything that matters, which is to say not a whole list of things that this woman could or should do, in the various ‘categories’ of her life according to some kind of random goalsetting template but instead the everything that is really only one thing, and the one thing is this:
Living the life you were born for.
And this client, this incredible woman, this kickass entrepreneur who is CLEARLY a natural born revolutionary fucking leader, well this woman?
No.
Was not.
Not fully, in fact not even close, although on the surface based on what she is DOING I suppose many people would applaud her for being ‘on her way’. After all – she’s stepping out to build her own business, and has had some modest success in doing so! That’s on your way, right? Right?!
Well, here’s the thing about living the life you were born for:
It’s not a halfway kind of a thing.
You can’t SORT OF live the life you were born for.
You can’t do it ‘a little bit’, because right now that’s all that’s possible but don’t worry, one day you’ll go ALL IN!
You’re either in … or you’re out.
It’s kind of like pregnancy, or Christianity – you can’t be KIND OF pregnant, kind of Christian. And life on your terms and stepping into your CALLING?
Same thing gorgeous.
And the thing I find really fucking sad, and sometimes confusing, and definitely frustrating, but mainly just yep fucking SAD, is that for so many women I speak with the only reason they’re not stepping into their purpose as leaders, and sharing the message they have within them, and going ALL out to create a business and life on their terms?
Is they’re not sure if they can.
This can manifest itself in all sorts of ways –
I don’t know where to start …
Nobody would pay for that …
I don’t even fully know what I want to do yet, or what my true gifts are and what my true MESSAGE is, so how CAN I start …
I’m scared …
What if it doesn’t work …?
What if it DOES work?!
Can I really make money like that …?
How do I …?
But how will that make money?!
Can it really be that SIMPLE?!
All of which boils down to: I don’t know if I can.
And the reality behind THAT is that it’s not because they don’t have skills, or knowledge, or passion, or INCREDIBLE drive, and it’s sure as hell not because they don’t have something burning within them just desperate to be unleashed on the world, and it’s not because they don’t feel (and oh boy do they feel this!) that they were born in some ways to shake things UP and CHANGE the world, it’s just plain and simple because they’re not giving themselves permission to just do it ANYWAY!
Do you want to know EVERYTHING you need to know about guaranteeing success and actually living life on your terms?
Here it is:
Do the fucking work.
Repeat.
But what’s the work, I hear you ask?! What’s the fucking work I need to do?! Just tell me Kat, and I’ll do it! Tell me how I should do my launches, or grow my list, or get my message out there, tell me what I should sell and how to sell it, tell me how often to email and in what way, tell me what I need to know and I’ll DO IT!
Well, this is where it gets tricky. Because most people, when I hit them over the head with what the actual fucking work is, want it to be more complex. They are disappointed because it’s so freaking simple! Of course simple doesn’t mean easy … it is TORTUROUSLY hard at times and INCREDIBLY confronting, and so yes it would be EASIER to go and learn everything about everything to do with online marketing and business and then go and implement it.
But honey you’ve already TRIED that, haven’t you?
And how’s it working out for you?
And don’t tell me it’s just that you haven’t yet learned the right stuff, or that you haven’t done everything you’ve learned yet! Let me tell you there will ALWAYS be more to learn if that’s the angle you want to take, and also don’t you think there’s a REASON you haven’t done it all yet … and do you really think that all the DOING is going to work for you when you’re not BEING?
And that’s the conversation I had with this client.
As she sat there in the afternoon in her home and choked out the words, the passion, the INTENSE raw and also clearly scary POWER that was within her, and I sat there in Paris, downstairs by the jazz bar at midnight while my children and husband slept upstairs, thinking I was just jumping on a welcome call for a new client and instead having my SOUL touched and my eyes fill and my heart and head just slow down and block out everything around me as I listened to this woman, this woman who is trying to be an entrepreneur and ‘build a business’ but who is actually born to change the world, who has this incredible calling and mission and who SEES things in a way that can HELP people, this woman who is not LIVING that calling, this woman try to tell me what it’s really about for her and what she wants to DO.
And it hit me – and I cut her off mid-stream to tell her – stop.
Just stop.
STOP FUCKING WORRYING ABOUT WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO.
Can I tell you something about being someone who was born for something?
You’re not here to build a business! You’re not here to LEARN stuff about the online world. You’re not here to make some $$ online so you don’t have to go to work like a normal person! If only it were that simple, hey? You could just build your little – or big! – business in a box, follow the steps, fill in the dots, play the numbers game and make the big bucks.
And the truth is that if you’re willing to bang your head against a wall until it bleeds every day, and you’ve got enough fucking discipline to do business as a NUMBERS and STEPS game even when it goes against your core, shoves down who you really are, then you really CAN make the big bucks that way.
But there’s just one tiny problem with this approach, when you were born for more and you know it:
You are VERY unlikely to sabotage your CALLING by allowing yourself to create so-called success this way.
And there are many reasons people don’t do the ‘paint by numbers’ work when it comes to online business, but I don’t really care about what everyone else out there may or may not be doing, I care about YOU. I care about that CLIENT. I care about US.
And we? We are the revolutionary fucking leaders who were born for more.
And we will NEVER. BE. HAPPY. doing business by following the rules.
And we’ll never fucking let it work that way either! So just give up now, yeah?
STOP FUCKING DOING!
Do you really think it can ever – EVER – work if what you do isn’t first based on who you ARE?
That’s not the life you were born for.
You were born for more, SO much more. You have a message within you and it’s not just a nice little message you can send out once or twice a year when you had a drink or two and accidentally take the gloves off. It’s a fucking message that needs to get out there – FULLY and NO filter – every day.
It is a message of passion.
It is a message of truth.
It is a message that is at times jumbled, or messy, it can be ranty, or angry, or ‘negative’, or even slightly scary, it can make you cry or want to scream, but either way it has to get OUT.
And it has to be real.
And YOUR MESSAGE IS ENOUGH.
So don’t fucking tell me you don’t know what you were called to do. I don’t care – and neither do you, really! – what it is you TEACH. You can teach whatever you want to teach, that is relevant for what you know and are into, and relevant to what you believe will help people get the REAL stuff sorted, and the real stuff of course is your message which is also your PURPOSE.
You think you don’t know what your purpose is, and what you were brought here to do?
Bullshit.
A purpose isn’t something you have to box up and say “I am a <<< insert fancy and sassy made up title >>> and I help <<< insert particular group of people >>> to ‘whatever’ by doing ‘whatever'”.
IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT YOU DO!
It’s about who you ARE.
Your PURPOSE, quite simply, is about you being who you are.
Don’t you see?
(And this is what I said to her)
It’s not about doing.
It’s about being.
You want to make the serious MONEY, you want to create fame, fortune and TRUE freedom on your terms?
Stop worrying about what to do.
Start worrying about who you want to be.
AND THEN BE THAT PERSON.
That’s what purpose is.
That’s what living into your CALLING is.
That’s what living as you were BORN TO live is!
But it can be scary – and very daunting – when you have a calling so big and bold. You have this … feeling, really, is all it is. This deep knowledge. These beliefs, about yourself, and about the world, and about what people need … and you question it, at times. Because really? Is that something you can actually talk about, base a business on, base your revolution on?!
Well yes.
It is.
The stuff you believe deep down that THIS IS WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT?
That’s your calling sister!
That’s your message. Your message is your message, it’s always been there, you KNOW it, and it’s never going to change.
So stop looking for complex ways to ‘build a business’ when THAT IS NOT WHAT YOU WERE BORN FOR.
Your message is ENOUGH.
It’s enough to help people.
And it’s enough to make MONEY from as well. BIG money, and ALL your ‘one day’ dreams come to life, but most of all the TRUE dream of LIVING THE LIFE YOU WERE BORN FOR.
But that sure as hell ain’t going to happen when you’re not getting it out there.
When you’re not showing up.
When you’re not showing the world what you have to offer, and how you can REALLY help.
When you’re not sharing the truth!
How do you do that?
You just do. Write it, speak it, heck sing it if you like (!) but just GET. IT. OUT. THERE.
What to say? How the fuck should I know what you should say? YOU SAY WHAT IS ON YOUR MIND. You say what is on your heart. You say what you think MATTERS, today.
YOU GET. IT. OUT. THERE.
And you trust.
You trust – and you can choose to trust, you know! – that when you speak your truth and you start SHOWING UP as the leader you were born to be, and you focus on BEING, that the DOING side of things will take care of itself.
That the what to SELL side of things will come … and we can talk about that, maybe I’ll write about that later, but before you worry about what you need to do to make money worry about WHO YOU NEED TO BE to have people give a damn!
One day all of that stuff you’ve spent so much time and money learning will be useful!
But not until you be who you are.
Not until you OWN it sister.
Not until you realise that YES IT REALLY IS THAT SIMPLE.
Show up.
Every day.
Share your truth.
DO WHAT YOU WERE BORN FOR.
The rest will – and I PROMISE you – sort itself out. You’ll figure it out.
But you can’t do the figuring out, and the applying, and the DOING, when you’re not being.
And if you want to know who to be, how to be?
Stop asking.
Just acknowledge, perhaps for the first time ever FULLY, that this?
This is not what you were born for.
And then be who you were born to be.
That’s it gorgeous.
Don’t ask how to be who you actually are.
Because scared, meek, I don’t know how, I’m not sure?
That sure as hell isn’t what you were born for.
But fucking revolutionary leader who OWNS it and just LIVES it and just speaks the TRUTH no matter how random or ranty it may be?
That’s what my client was born for.
And she knows it … and the pain of not ALLOWING it and the fear of not BEING allowed to be it had her so frozen within that just to speak about it brought tears of passion and rage to both of us but ultimately the only way PAST that is to just BE it.
So for you, it’s the same.
There is nothing else you need to know, or learn, about living your calling.
So stop worrying about what to do. And go BE the passionate LEADER with a God damn message, the leader who says what needs to be SAID, who stands UP for something, who stands up and goes forth with what she BELIEVES in, who changes the fucking world and of COURSE creates the (true!) fame, fortune and mega freedom along the way.
Because that?
THAT IS WHAT YOU WERE BORN FOR sister!
So go be it. And the doing? It’ll take care of itself.
This is one of the most passionate posts I’ve read, thank you Kat, you really are the fuel for hungry biz owners!