A client and I had a coaching call scheduled. About an hour beforehand, she sent me an email telling me [life stuff] had happened, plus [more life stuff] and she wasn’t sure she was up for talking and what did I think…?
Here’s how I knew she wasn’t actually avoiding doing the work she’d decided to invest in: She told me what was going on, and invited me into it by asking what I thought.
Real avoidance (the kind that paralyzes you into suffocating fear and inertia) just avoids. It gives not one shit whether or not you are betraying yourself; it just climbs into bed, turns off the light and holds a steady middle finger up to the Universe and everyone / everything that might come knocking at the golden door of opportunity.
The story ends with her thanking me for calling BS and both of us learning what her “avoidance” actually looks like: asking for help.
ASKING FOR HELP IS STILL SHOWING UP, AND SHOWING UP IS HOW YOU TELL YOUR ESSENTIAL SELF — AND THE UNIVERSAL FORCES ALIGNED FOR YOUR HIGHEST GOOD — THAT YOU’RE STILL IN BUSINESS.
However.
When you don’t show up (for life, for coffee dates with your friends, for the work you know it will take to bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be), you’re saying to your most Essential Self, JUST KIDDING I’M NOT LISTENING HA HA HA!!! And then you go on about your ho-hummery, or your un-processed grief, wondering why nothing is changing and you feel like crap about not reaching your fullest, most life-giving potential.
There’s a difference between the stuff we genuinely don’t want to do, and the stuff we aren’t giving ourselves permission to explore, because it scares the ever-loving shit out of our protective mechanisms, i.e. ego, inner gremlin / critic, etc.
When you’ve invited transformation into your life, you have also invited all your patterned responses to death (hear me out) to rise up and rally against death. Death of what? Ego. Old Self. Stories. Unconscious (or conscious) roles you’re playing in your family, relationships, business, body…. the list goes on and on and on. Your lizard brain is like ALL ABOARD and you can count on something / everything going wrong as you attempt to reach for your highest, most powerful manifestation of Self.
Those mechanisms are like a confused army: super stellar at protecting the kingdom of your heart, but dumb AF when it comes to allowing transformation.
The ONLY way to get the confused army of your ego on board is to stare every soldier down, one by one, and saying (and acting) with resolute not-fucking-around-ness: YOU ARE NOT THE BOSS OF ME.
You will have to show up. You will have to not cancel. You will have to hire the coach, go to the therapist, the doctor, the lover, the family member and tell the truth — most importantly, to yourself.
In order to create a life reflective of who you know yourself to be, you will have to let the old you die.
Which, can we talk about this for a sec? It’s painful. Anyone who tells you it won’t hurt to change into your most badass self is full of poop. You will literally feel layers of belief and pattern and lies tearing themselves away from you as you re-align with truer patterns, relationships and actions. People you love will leave, or YOU will leave. And there will often be a pause, an incubation time, where you feel completely, emptily, what-the-hell-was-I-thinking… alone.
Keep going. Show up. Place your precious feet, one at a time, in front of the other, over and over again. Don’t look back. Hold your Highest Self at the center of your being, and TRUST it. You wouldn’t reach for what’s impossible; in fact, the only impossible thing is staying stuck in a life that doesn’t fit.
