Okay, I’ll admit it. I’ve been doing a lot of striving lately. Striving to make my business work, striving to make my relationships work, striving to make my life not seem like a colossal waste of time.
What do I mean by “striving”? Well, for me that’s the word that best describes the panicky, desperate, clawing-for-success effort I put into things when I feel like I’m losing my grip. Striving is all about spinning-my-wheels, addicted-to-action effort, that usually has little to do with what’s in my heart. Striving is the opposite of trusting.
Striving is the space I’m in when I think “if only I could figure out the magic to online marketing like so-and-so, I’ll be able to sell more copies of How to Lead with your Paint Clothes on“.
Or “maybe if I create a few ‘cheap and easy‘ e-courses and sell those first, I’ll be able to generate more of an audience for the ‘hard and soulful’ stuff that’s closer to my heart”.
Or “perhaps I’m not tweeting enough, engaging enough, marketing enough, hanging out with the cool kids enough… etc., etc.”
Or “maybe if I could just get an endorsement from So-and-So-Bigshot I’d have hoardes of people flooding my blog.”
Or “I’m just not going to the right events, meeting the right people, doing the right dance, singing the right songs.”
Or, in the relationship realm, “something’s broken and if I don’t bend over backwards to FIX IT NOW, then I’ll be a failure, the relationship will be a failure, everything will suck, and it will all be MY FAULT.”
Honestly? Striving sucks. It sucks big time. It sucks all of the energy and creativity out of my soul and leaves me depleted and feeling lost.
Striving is the stuff I do when I’m not being true to myself. Striving is the stuff that takes me far from my authentic self, far from my heart, far from the path I feel called to.
Striving is almost always about comparing myself to other people and finding myself lacking.
And the truth is, striving never works. Striving takes me down a dead-end-road every single time. Maybe not right away (sometimes there are momentary rewards that make it seem worthwhile), but in the end, it’s always the same – failure.
Whenever I’ve attempted any kind of suck-out-my-soul marketing, or paste-a-cheery-face-on networking, I fail. I can’t lie to my heart. I can’t “fake it”. I can’t cozy up to So-and-So-Bigshot or market like Big-Shiny-Expert – I just can’t. It’s not me and it never will be.
I’m learning the same about relationships. When I’m giving away pieces of my heart that don’t feel right to give away, or participating in things that feel like betrayal to my heart, I’m losing and the relationship isn’t really working (even though it may temporarily seemed fixed because of my actions).
If I can’t sell the things that are true to my heart, that evolve out of my deepest truths, then I might as well go get that job as a postal carrier that I’ve been tempted to get. Because at least walking the neighbourhood delivering people’s mail feels authentic and honest and doesn’t turn me into a big fat self-loathing fraud.
Authenticity is the only way I know how to live. I mean REALLY live, not just “get by”.
A meditation teacher once taught me “When you’re sitting in meditation, and a thought enters your mind, don’t try to judge it or chase it away. Just label it ‘thinking’ and let it pass. And then when the next thought comes, do the same with it.”
I’ve started to apply that teaching to my temptation to strive. Whenever I sense myself doing that inauthentic, desperate-for-sucess striving, I simply label it “striving” and then let it pass. Once it is past, I try once more to lean into trust.
Because trust is the only thing that can replace striving. Trust in God. Trust in my own authentic heart. Trust that even if I fail, I will be okay and my failings don’t define me as a failure. Trust that Sophia God is calling me down this path for a reason, even if that reason seems blurry these days. Trust that there is goodness and abundance available for me.
Trust that the best thing I can offer the world is not a reasonable facsimile of Big-Shiny-Expert, but authentic, beautiful, flawed, honest me.
This week, my guest is one of my dearest friends, Christine Claire Reed. I met Christine online a couple of years ago, and since then she has become my cheerleader, confidante, supporter, and friend. I have been known, on occasion, to send Christine frantic emails when I most need a shoulder to cry on, and she has always responded with just the right kind of wisdom to help me find the hope again. What I love most about her is that her wisdom comes from a deep and authentic place in her heart, a heart that has known great suffering, pain, and mental illness, but has found a way to continue praying, hoping, dancing, and seeking joy, even when there is no ground beneath her.
In this interview, Christine shares an experience in which she learned to “give up fear in order to surrender to joy.” (The rest of this interview will be shared when I release the e-course.)
Amy Oscar is one of those people who exudes wisdom and depth, even when her words are limited to 140 characters on Twitter. I haven’t known her very long, but I have already learned from her, been challenged by her, and been encouraged by her many times. Recently I participated in Amy’s Wisdom Series, and I would highly recommend that you read every single one of the contributions because they are all amazing. My own contribution is here.
Amy is an author, speaker and professional intuitive consultant, encouraging clients and students to develop a personal relationship with the Divine. In this interview, she shares a personal story of when she had to make a difficult choice to give up a dream in order to support her family.
I still have a number of juicy interviews to share with you for my Let go of the Ground series. This week I had intended to share more, but at the beginning of the week I was in a place where my own “letting go of the ground” was where I needed to place my focus, and so I spent a couple of days mostly in silence, avoiding social media and this blog.
But now I’m back and ready to share. This week I’m excited to introduce you to the “Wild Heart Queen” (her Twitter handle), Chris Zydel. What a delight it has been getting to know Chris over the last year or two! She is such an inspiration to me in both her work (teaching and writing about intuitive painting) and her generous spirit.
Chris knows a lot about the importance of surrender. When she teaches people to dive into the process of intuitive painting, she’s really teaching them to surrender to the creative goddess. In this interview, she shared her own process of surrender when she realized intuitive painting had become her primary path and it was time to step away from her career as a psychotherapist.
I get discouraged by how much our culture values “easy”. We want easy money, fast food, drive-thru spirituality, and ten easy steps to fix any problem.
We’re living in a culture where MacDonald’s and Wal-Mart thrive because they not only promise to make life easy, they make it cheap. Next to easy, cheap is our second highest good. If you can combine easy AND cheap, you can make a million dollars of that easy money.
I’ve got news for you, though… there is no easy path.
I’ll say that again, just to let it sink in… there is no easy path.
Keep choosing easy and cheap (whether it’s over-processed white bread or overly-simplified spirituality), and you’ll pay for it in the long run. It may not be right away, and the marketers may convince you that easy-street is working for you right now, but you’ll always have to pay. Eventually.
It doesn’t take a rocket-scientist to realize how our earth and our cultural diversity are paying for all of the easy choices we’re making. Climate change, plastic islands floating in our oceans, species going extinct – those are pretty hefty payments for our easy lifestyles. And we all know at least one story of a business that had to close (and a little piece of our diversity, creativity, and culture died with it) when Wal-Mart moved into town. When I was in Kenya, I searched everywhere for funky African fabric but found very little – “well-meaning” North Americans had dumped all their cheap cast-off clothing on the market and killed their fabric industry. Cheap and easy always ends up being destructive.
Similar things are going on in the online world. The proliferation of e-books, e-courses, and e-workshops is both overwhelming and a little discouraging. Once again, it’s easy that sells. Give someone “ten easy steps to zen” or “spirituality simplified” or “your best life NOW (without any effort)” and you’ve got a sure winner on your hands. And THEN, throw ten of those e-courses into one bundle, offer it at drastic discounts, and you’ve got pure gold. Just sit back and watch the money flow.
I can’t help but think, when I see those bundles of e-courses, “how can someone actually process all of that information and make it a meaningful experience?” But perhaps, unlike me, people are more interested in deep discounts than meaningful experiences.
Sadly, people selling creative courses on the internet will soon find no market for them, just like the fabric manufacturers in Kenya.
I can’t help but go back to what I said earlier.
There is no easy path.
You can read all of the e-books or blogs you want, memorize hundreds of “10 easy steps” and you are STILL going to have to do the hard work if you really want to grow. Only YOU can do that work.
You can go to all the right retreats, sign up for all the e-courses you can find, and you STILL have to go through the depths of pain when someone you love dies or betrays you. Not even a guru can make that easy for you.
You can try for cheap and easy all you want, put a bandaid on the pain, avoid the conflicts in your relationships, and all you are doing is delaying the agony. Trust me, you’ll have to pay – eventually.
But let’s be honest, hard doesn’t sell.
Even as I prepare to release my e-course on “Letting go of the ground” about surrender, transformation, and growth, I know that it does not have the makings of a best seller. It’s about “hard”, not about “easy”. It’s about working your way through the pain, hanging onto trust when you’re in the middle of the goo, and surrendering to the Divine. None of that is easy. Or cheap.
And yet I know that I have to release it, because it is my truth. And my gift. And I know that it is desperately needed in this easy-seeking culture.
I know pain, I know surrender, and I know transformation. I never thought that those things would serve as my gift to the world (and I’ve resisted that realization, quite frankly), but life is full of surprises.
I have been to hell and back – more than once. I have suffered the loss of a son. I have been raped. Twice I’ve had to live through the attempted suicide of my beloved. In a three month period, my dad died tragically of a horrible farm accident, my uncle died suddenly of a heart attack, and my grandmother died of natural causes. I have been to more funerals than I can count. (I am not saying those things to suggest my pain has been greater than yours. There is no measure of pain – it just is.)
And yet, despite all of that pain… you want to know something? I am completely in love with life.
Oh sure, when I’m in the mood for a pity party, I can let myself wallow in bitterness with the rest of them, but most of the time, I soak every bit of goodness I can out of life because I know that life is good. And God is good. And people are good. And there is hope.
Yes, my path has led me through a lot of pain, but I can’t imagine living such a rich, full life any other way. Pain has been my greatest teacher. And that’s what I’ve realized as I’ve done all of the interviews in support of “Let go of the Ground“. The people I’ve interviewed are wise people largely for one reason – they have let pain and loss and the gooey-ness of surrender be their teachers. None of them believe in cheap and easy either. They have walked through the surrender and the pain and they have emerged into wisdom and rich beauty. Just like the butterfly.
Here’s one thing I have learned to trust in all of those painful experiences… even in the deepest, darkest pain, God is there.
The God of my understanding doesn’t like cheap and easy. I don’t think we get to have it both ways. Either you take easy street and reject God, or you dive into the messiness and pain of life, and delight in the presence of God in both the pain and the beauty.
Here’s another thing I know… beauty is magnified by darkness. Think of a rose without the shadows between the petals. There would be no depth and beauty if there weren’t dark shadows. Life loses its richness without a mix of both light and dark.
So I’ll stick with this path, release the e-course I feel called to release, and trust that those who have grown as weary as I have with cheap and easy and need something deeper will find their way to it.
Most of us arrive at a sense of self and vocation only after a long journey through alien lands. But this journey bears no resemblance to the trouble-free “travel packages” sold by the tourism industry. It is more akin to the ancient tradition of pilgrimage – “a transformative journey to a sacred centre” full of hardships, darkness, and peril.
Okay, I’ll admit it. I’ve been doing a lot of striving lately. Striving to make my business work, striving to make my relationships work, striving to make my life not seem like a colossal waste of time.
