Hello my love

Hope you’re doing well?

Here’s part 2 of my story (do go back and read part 1 to discover the fundamental mistake we make on our personal development journey - here’s the link)

I hope you’ve already figured out what I was learning in today's letter, but if you haven’t, it's a must-read.

🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟

You know when you take big bold action. You feel so brave. It feels so right.

…I was convinced that selling my chiropractic business was the final step for me in releasing the parts of me that weren’t fully aligned, and getting back to the happy, joyful girl I knew I was at my core.

I just assumed that everything from there on out would be easy. It would all just flow. And building my coaching business would be a breeze.

Spoiler alert: it was NOT!

I thought I could take one little step (or maybe an elegant leap 😉) to move across the chasm between my old life and the new one I was building. Easy!

I hadn’t realised that you actually have to let yourself fall into the abyss between those two worlds (aka ‘the unknown’) as you begin to experiment with who you are becoming, while also letting go of who you currently are.

And letting our current identity dissolve (which is indescribably painful for our ego) and living in the messy middle of this undefined space, IS VERY HARD!

In that space, you don’t have anything concrete to show the world (or yourself) that you are worthy, that you matter, that you are successful. There’s nothing to hang your confidence or self-worth on.

You feel like you are back at square 1 in your life. And yes - you're bringing all of your lived experiences, life lessons etc with you - but none of that stops you feeling like an absolute beginner.

Lost, alone, floundering.

The best description I’ve heard of this transformation process that we ALL go through at some stage in our life, is to compare us to a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.

But not the PG version, where it's an inspiring story of a caterpillar changing forms, struggling to escape the chrysalis, but emerging a beautiful butterfly. How lovely.

What they forget to tell us is that inside the chrysalis the caterpillar literally dissolves into a liquid; bug soup!! - from which the butterfly forms.

And we are doing the same thing! We MUST turn into ‘human soup’ before we rebuild ourselves in a slightly new way.

No wonder it's hard.

...And it's so much harder than you think it’ll be.

But at least if you know it's coming, if you expect it, then maybe you won’t feel like you're failing.

You can remind yourself, 'this is what square 1 feels like. I’m ‘human soup’ right now' … It makes it so much easier to bring in the self compassion, curiosity and determination needed to make it through.

At the time, I had no frame of reference for any of this. I was not expecting to feel this way, and I resisted it hard.

Without knowing it, I was gripping onto my old life and trying to drag that me into something new.

And while my business grew, and I had lots of happy clients, on the inside it wasn’t fulfilling me in the way I knew it could, because I was bringing the perfectionist, people-pleaser part of me along for the ride.

18 months in, I knew that if I didn’t make another significant change, I would end up just perpetuating this feeling of ‘not good enough’ that had plagued me for as long as I could remember.

Final instalment next time…

PS Ironically (...or maybe not) the most common reason people seek me out now is when they're at a transition point in their life. Either they:

✔️ want to explore whether they are making the right decision

✔️ want to be supported through the process

✔️ or very often they just feel stuck. Not as contented as they know they could be, and wanting clarity on the road ahead.

If you are ready to step into all that's possible for you - to reconnect with your truth, your clarity, your inner knowing - let's chat.

It's time to live life unapologetically as you.