Embrace Your Highest Path and Purpose

Embrace Your Highest Path and Purpose Archives

Are you willing to die?

I’m not being melodramatic with the title of this article. If you’re going to create a new, more abundant reality for yourself, the current “you” is going to have to die. Not all of the current “you” … but perhaps, if the reality you want is very different from the reality you’ve created so far, most of the current “you” is going to have to go!

We get so focused on the end result of the transformation we want to create. It sounds so inspiring, so uplifting, to think that we can transform ourselves and therefore manifest new circumstances. And it’s true.

But what about the “you” that is, right now?

Before rebirth, there is a death. A caterpillar breaks down to mush in its chrysalis before it emerges as a butterfly.

And it might hurt a little. It might hurt a lot.

The vibrational frequencies that make up your body, your emotions, your thoughts … they cannot remain the same. Sometimes, all those vibrational frequencies have to turn to mush before you can emerge, hopefully as a more congruent expression of your Divinity.

This IS what we’ve been working towards in the spiritual development community. We’ve gained enough consciousness to know that we are not only our bodies or our egos. Conscious awareness that we are Spirit is necessary if we’re going to let the vibrational state of our bodies and minds fall apart, to be resurrected in greater alignment to our true nature.

In real life, it looks like doing lots of scary, unfamiliar things. Some of them aren’t particularly dramatic. Your “scary and unfamiliar” may be perfectly ordinary to others.

You might have to send out a regular email newsletter. Maybe you have to have a few sales conversations. Maybe you need to utter the words “I charge three thousand dollars a month.” Or maybe you just need to let your Facebook peeps know that you have a new website.

None of those things need be dramatic or extraordinary. None of them are “hard.” But if they are the trigger to your transformation, doing them will make you feel like you might die. And you’ll be embarrassed to admit this, because it seems so silly.

At several points in our entrepreneurial lives, we’re going to feel overcome by a fear of death. Sometimes the fear is so severe that we don’t even allow ourselves to feel it. Instead, we procrastinate, we distract ourselves, we have another piece of cake or another glass of wine or get on the phone with a friend. Or heck, we crack open another information product. The end result is the same: We don’t do the things that will create the income we want.

For some of us, the fear doesn’t become debilitating until we’ve established our business, and then our income plateaus. We stall out. Or we manifest other circumstances that justify our lack of financial growth.

Sometimes, the need for death within your own transformational process arises when you are just starting your entrepreneurial path. For some, the fear doesn’t even allow you to get started. You just can’t seem to get your marketing going. You can’t find your target market, your niche. Maybe you can’t even manage to get your website up and running. You hear phrases like “Feel the fear and do it anyway” and nod, and agree. But you can’t move forward.

I’ll let you in on a secret. Business coaches complain about clients like you. “I tell them what to do but they just don’t DO it.” You’re written off as a mere wantrepreneur, someone who just doesn’t want it bad enough. “They just don’t want to do the work” is the general perspective on clients who can’t seem to move into action, no matter how big their financial investment.

It’s just not true.

If you’re investing in your growth, if you’re studying entrepreneurship, if you haven’t yet resigned yourself to staying in a J.O.B. for the rest of your life … you’re willing to do the work.

But are you willing to die? At least a little bit? Maybe a lot?

Will you let everything you know about yourself, about the world, about your relationships, turn into murky, gooey pudding without knowing how that mushy mess will reassemble itself? Will you surrender into new action without any assurance that you will not fail?

Will you let your Soul lead you into the death of who you are right now?

To your infinite abundance,
Andrrea Hess

Financial Self-Sabotage Exposed …

When we start a business, we tend to arm ourselves with information – with modalities, with webinars, training programs and events. This information-gathering often takes up a lot of our precious time … time that we could spend DOING and implementing, rather than learning.

Our rationalization? We are preparing ourselves for success.

The truth? We’re trying to stay safe.

The mind and ego has an overwhelming need for knowledge before venturing into the big, scary unknown that is our own business. After all, if we can just know the “right” way to make money then we’ll be safe. If we know the “right” way to market ourselves and sell, then we’ll feel prepared, we’ll know what we’re doing. We’ll be safe.

Of course, there is no “right” way.

But we sure try to find one … and this is exactly where we shoot ourselves in the foot.

We “try.” We try a way of marketing ourselves, we try launching a product, we try running Facebook ads, we try selling our products and services.

The problem with trying is that it always carries at least a partial expectation of failure. Sure, it makes our mind and ego far more comfortable. If we try and fail, we can tell ourselves that at least we tried. Failure won’t hurt as badly, won’t rock our world, will not shake our faith in the Universe and ourselves.

If we try and fail, we can try again and pat ourselves on the back for our willingness to try. We can even congratulate ourselves on our perseverance, our determination, our commitment to our Soul Purpose.

The difference between TRYING and DOING is our willingness to risk.

When we DO, we put our hearts on the line. We take all of our passion, our hopes, our dreams and risk being very, very wrong. Doing feels like we’re putting our lives on the line. That feeling may not be rational – after all, no-one has ever died by launching a website, or having a sales conversation. But it sure feels like we are putting our naked heart on a silver platter for all the world to see, to criticize, to reject.

If your next business project doesn’t have the potential to break your heart, to devastate your self-esteem, to make you lose faith in all that you thought you knew … you’re not playing big enough. You’re just trying.

Doing your purposeful work requires giant leaps of faith.

Trying is looking for the staircase that will lead us safely down the cliff and conveniently up the other side.

Take a look at your current business projects. Look at your calendar. What’s on your to-do list that has the potential to break your heart? And what is on that list that is designed to minimize risk?

Leave your comment and share!

To your infinite abundance,
Andrrea Hess

What Rules Do You Live By?

Rules aren’t necessarily a bad thing. We all have certain rules we live by – whether the rule is eating a healthy breakfast or starting the day with coffee, not doing business with our friends, sending out Christmas cards the day after Thanksgiving, or not bothering with Christmas cards at all … we all have rules we live by.

Some of these rules were created by us consciously, based on our own experience.

Unfortunately, most of the rules we live by are the ones we have unconsciously adopted from our environment – from our family, the school system, a favorite teacher, our industry, and the media.

There’s nothing wrong with any rule, consciously chosen or unconsciously adopted … unless, of course, the rule is in direct opposition to what we want to create!

If you have an unconscious rule that you can only make money when you work hard, for example, you will always limit your income … because there are limits to the amount of “hard” work you can tolerate.

If you have an unconscious rule about how much income is acceptable, possible, or even appropriate … then that’s the income level you’ll get stuck at. Frequently, it’s the highest income level our parents ever achieved.

If you have an unconscious rule that you can only focus on love OR money, your income will suffer whenever you engage in a romantic relationship, but will go up when you’re single and focused on your business.

Because you unconsciously resonate to these rules, you attract situations that affirm them over and over again, thus strengthening the rule.

Of course, you may also have some fabulously helpful unconscious rules playing out in the background of your subconscious mind. Maybe you expect help and support from others. Maybe you expect to be smart enough to figure out anything.

Rules are actually a good thing, when they are not in conflict to what we want. Rules allow us to manage a great deal of our lives on auto-pilot. We don’t have to think about every little decision in every situation. We say “please” and “thank you” automatically. We brush our teeth every morning. We drive our car without having to invest much thought into the process.

Of course, when our rules state the opposite of our Soul’s Divine self-expression and our conscious creative desire, we immediately experience conflict. The conflict actually begins within us. Vibrationally, our unconscious and conscious mind are in dissonance. Conflicting vibrational qualities of thought may create a big mess, or cancel each other out completely. The end result is that we can’t conceive of the thoughts that would become the actions that will create our desires. We just go blank. Externally, we manifest not much of anything at all.

Of course, the first step to repatterning the rules of our unconscious mind is to become aware of them. It’s not hard to do, if we’re willing to look at the results we consistently create in our own lives.

Our rules are actually written, clear as day, in our circumstances. Our rules are obvious within the areas in which we’re stuck, or unwilling to change, or have surrendered into tolerance.

But we MUST be willing to open our eyes and look!

What do you keep creating, over and over?

What’s not changing?

Blessings,
Andrrea

How To Acquire Discipline

A small miracle happened while I was on vacation. I worked out, all by myself. And I don’t mean a leisurely stroll on the treadmill … I mean I worked out HARD. Two hours later, and my arms still had that deliciously tired feeling that mean I did some good.

Now, why is this a miracle? Because I used to be terrible at working out! For years, I went to the gym, spent about twenty minutes on a treadmill, and called it a day. I did not push myself. I barely broke a sweat.

The truth is, I lacked discipline.

Last December, I decided I had neglected my body enough, and hired a personal trainer. I actually have her listed in my phone as the “Queen of Pain.” After my first workout with her, I had trouble walking for a full three days. The only reason I stuck with it is that she insists on first-time clients making a financial commitment to twelve sessions. (Entrepreneurs take notice … she’s VERY smart to do this!)

Now that it’s March, I’ve spent twenty-five hours with my trainer. I just re-upped to my third twelve-session series. But while on vacation, I discovered the real gift (besides WAY more upper-body strength).

I have discipline.

I pushed myself past my comfort zone. I stuck to my own workout plan, even when it was painful. And I didn’t need someone standing over me, telling me what to do.

Discipline is not something we’re born with. It’s not something we either have or don’t have. It’s something we ACQUIRE. And the process of acquiring discipline usually sucks.

Whether we are starting a business or starting a new workout regimen … we start by doing something completely outside of our comfort zone. It’s painful. It’s labor-intensive. It’s mentally, emotionally, physically fatiguing. We don’t enjoy it … not at all. The rewards come later – much later, when we realize that what once required a herculean amount of willpower has become second-nature.

We expect this when we start working out.

Why is it that when we embark on stepping further into our Divine Soul Purpose, we expect it to feel good? Why is it, for example, that when we take our business to the next level, we want to feel motivated, inspired? And why is it that we insist that, when things get hard and uncomfortable, we’re on the wrong path?

It’s like doing ten crunches and, when it starts to burn, we announce that core strength is just not “our thing.” It’s not aligned to who we “truly” are. Or we rationalize that we accept our abs the way they are.

Take sales, for example. NOTHING makes highly conscious entrepreneurs squirmier and more uncomfortable. Nothing is more difficult than showing up to a prospect on the phone and asking them for their hard-earned cash, up close, one-on-one, facing the possible burn of rejection, the soreness of a “no.”

You’d be stunned how many entrepreneurs are willing to insist that one-on-one sales conversations are not “their thing” when they’ve talked to less than ten or twenty prospects.

Last year, I did three live events. Before the first one, I honestly hated my life. The second one took a lot out of me. The third was still pretty stressful and consumed my attention for most of two months. It was last month, when I hosted a retreat for about forty people in Dallas, that I realized organizing live events had become easy. It’s not that they are less labor-intensive. But my mind has learned the discipline of this level of organization and planning.

If you want new results in ANY area of your life … you’re going to have to acquire discipline. Because new results require new actions.

It’s going to be very, very, very uncomfortable.

It’s also going to be very, very worth it.

To your infinite abundance,
Andrrea

Is Your Past Creating Toxicity In The Present?

Let’s face it, we’ve all made choices that had unwanted and unanticipated consequences. Call them mistakes, call them “bad” decisions, call them failures … we’ve all “screwed up” at one point or another. Every one of us has made choices that we’ve at some point come to regret.

Unfortunately, regret is an energy that brings the past into our present in a highly toxic way. Regret invalidates where we are now, having made our mistakes, having learned and (hopefully!) grown and become a wiser and more experienced person.

Instead, regret is about wanting to revise the past, wanting “do-overs.” Of course, we can’t go back. And so we disempower ourselves and make ourselves helpless by focusing on choices we cannot re-do or un-make!

At best, regret has us beating ourselves up, telling us that we “should have” known what we obviously did not know. We blame ourselves for our mistake in a highly unproductive way.

At worst, regret has us pointing the finger at others, telling THEM that THEY “should have” known that our decision was a “bad” one. We project our anger at ourselves at others and blame them for our choices.

But let’s face it – unless someone else was literally pointing a gun at our heads, the responsibility for our choices lies with us.

And this is, perhaps, the most toxic way regret disempowers us – when we abdicate responsibility for our own choices. In this way, we turn ourselves into victims. And once we’ve decided on our own victimization, our disempowerment is complete.

Here are the ways we can handle regret and turn our past mistakes into the GIFTS that they truly are:

Take 100% responsibility for the decision. Remember, no-one can “make you” do anything or do anything “to you” without your permission. You are never a victim unless you decide to be one.
As objectively as possible, look at the energy of the result. Besides regret, is there loss, disappointment, or hurt? Now take a very close look at the intentions behind your choices … because the outcome ALWAYS reflects the intention! Was there any level of wishful thinking involved on your part? Were you hoping for unrealistic gain? Were you looking to be rescued, to be healed, to be safe, to avoid risk, to avoid effort, to find the magical bullet to quick results? What situation in your own life caused you to make the decision? What was the real root cause? You created the situation for a reason … own it!
Treasure your new-found self-knowledge. Write down all the things you have learned about yourself, and send love and gratitude to yourself for having gifted yourself with the experience.
Look at what you were hoping to accomplish through the lens of acknowledgement of your own faulty intentions. How would you do it differently today? Do it – turn the mistake into a triumph!
Keep it about you, and about you only. No-one else’s part in your experience is worth dwelling on. Blame turns you into a victim. If you truly feel that someone wronged you, then just remember that karma can be a real bitch. She’s also relentless and impeccable. Let her do her job in the lives of others – she does not need your help!
Let it go. Bless the situation, and everyone who played a part in it, including yourself.

Our past mistakes and regrets can be the greatest gift to our future … unless we turn ourselves into victims of our past, rather than its Creator!

Blessings,
Andrrea

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