I have just finished my fortnightly call with my Mindset Mentor and I always leave these calls with such heightened levels of awareness and presence it feels almost electric.
And I have to share what I have learned!
But let me put an * asterisk alongside this share by emphasising that we have been working together regularly since August of last year, and so this is a definite example of the evolution that I often speak of to my own clients – it is not a revolution!
When the call began I was in definite “popcorn brain” mode – so many ideas flaring that I was almost tripping over myself, my thoughts and words.
You may be aware that I am in the midst of a major rebrand at the moment. Since I evolved into what I now recognise 100% as my place in the world, taking care of people stepping into their Next Chapter, I have felt the strong need to realign my visual brand and the way I provide service and resources to my community. And indeed, to expand that community to embrace like-minded women and bring them into a Next Chapter with curiosity and courage whilst they also provide the same support and encouragement to others in a pitch-free environment of honesty, vulnerability, expansion and celebration.
As a part of that intention, I have been focused on creating a Program called “Your Journey Board” and was so excited to share with my Mentor the fact that, after being in the incubator of my heart for almost 2 years, this powerful program had finally been set free.
No wonder I was excited!
However, what I was doing was then quickly jumping into the busyness of “what next, what next, what next?”. No space. No pause, No celebration, No reverse gapping.
I had completely forgotten that the previous week when I had connected with my intuition and asked the question “what am I to focus on now” the clear and unequivocal answer I received was “build your community”. I had put aside that message and was plunging into what I thought I should be doing next (very much shaped by external factors, what I was seeing in the entrepreneurial marketplace, what my colleagues were doing), as opposed to tuning back into my own internal guidance and trusting the message I had already received.
My energy was temporarily scattered and the session with my Mentor allowed me to recognise that fact and to pause, reconnect and reintegrate what I know to be true about myself.
That in turn then led me to recognise that there is indeed a pathway, a process that I go through each and every time that I expand myself, my business and my own awareness as I step further forward into my own Second Act.
Here are the six steps in what I have called The Upward Spiral of Personal Evolution.
You might already recognise some, all even all, of these steps in your own experiences.
Awareness
Always the starting point. Your awareness of a desire, a need to know, to expand, to find answers to questions you have
Exploration
You begin to look around, to consider how you might fulfil this desire
Learning
You find a source and connect – a book, a workshop, a person, a place and an experience that gives you the opportunity to immerse yourself in this new knowledge.
Integration
The new experience and knowledge are absorbed into your internal landscape, you blend what you’ve learned with what you know and the landscape is forever changed as a result. This takes time and the results may not be immediately visible to you so maintain awareness and curiosity, to be a conscious observer of yourself.
Reflection
The time for space – to gift yourself the space to fully absorb what you have learned (and later, to allow yourself the space to observe and recognise your growth, the way you do things differently now – those aha moments, like I had today, are priceless!)
Inspired Action
You can now make new decisions, take new actions, and develop new levels of awareness as a result.
And so it is until the next desire appears.
The beauty is that this new desire has been shaped by and only exists because of, its predecessor, the desire that you responded to before.
And you now have a new level of awareness to respond to and from.
Thus flows your evolution.
Resist the temptation or pressure to dive into several of these spirals at once, as this makes integration nigh impossible, thus compromising the desires that are meant for you. They can’t develop clearly and cleanly and your personal and business growth will be haphazard as a direct result.
Furthermore, if you enter a spiral for reasons others than your own wholehearted, internally inspired desire, if you are motivated by what you think you should be doing, or what the market tells you is “the right thing to do, the thing you MUST do to be successful” you will not be able to integrate what you learn into your internal landscape. It simply will not fit. (Litmus test – how many programs, books and courses have you started and not finished or implemented)
Utilise the power of the pause. The power of meditation and contemplation. If your life is filled with noise and hustle and bustle, with no time or space to hear the calling of your desires, of your purpose, you can feel tense, flat, angry and resentful. And you can tend to react rather than respond, which rarely delivers a great result.
In my experience, a quick decision can certainly be a good thing, but even better to then give yourself the grace of a little bit of space to allow that decision to settle. To make sure that it is indeed, aligned with your vision and your purpose, not resulting from fear of missing out or a feeling of not being enough.
Trust your intuition. You do have the answers.
P.S: My beautiful Mindset Mentor is Larissa Halls at Everyday Inspiration.
