Happy New Year, 2024 is here!

In an earlier blog post, Money and Uncertainty, I spoke to sharing lessons I learned about my relationship with money over the course of my life… revelations that were catalyzed in the years following a business failure in 2004 and a declaration of bankruptcy in 2008.

That business failure was 20 years ago. Hard to believe! The expression that time heals all wounds carries some truth; time and distance invite a forgetting until we are faced, again, with similar patterns of being that are playing out again. We have the opportunity to take a deep breath and ask ourselves what is really going on OR to hold our breath [brace for impact] to avoid that broader question. There will be consequences either way.

If you consciously choose to step into the consequential fray of all the decisions that did not work out as planned, leaving you with feelings of anger, sadness, fear, guilt and shame, I promise you, you’ll get your life back. I can tell you that it takes courage to examine - and feel - what you have denied, avoided and defended as not your fault, to get to that place where you finally stop rationalizing the decisions made so that you can stop feeling badly about your results. It takes ownership of the strangling resentment, the big grudge that we carry about having failed. It’s always somebody else’s fault; how dare they? The moment we choose to own and validate that grudge, there is nothing left to fight. Can you imagine living without the ‘fight’? If nature abhors a vacuum, if you give up the fight, what could you imagine instead?

I have insights gleaned through my very personal experience which I am willing to share to help others. Given the craziness of the last 4 years we have lived lived through, I believe that some priority thinking is in order by each of us about what is most important about being alive. Without that consideration, all bets about manifesting a meaningful life - consciously - are off. We must ask ourselves what is our intention for being here at this time; who is it that we want to become? What are the hopes and dreams we have that will evolve us when we allow ourselves to feel the internal impulse that will bring them to life?

Both hind-sight and the distance afforded by time and space make it easy to reflect and reconsider decisions made as expected best practice through the ‘expert’ guidance of others. The truth is, that what others advise for our business as best practice may not always align with the unique vision we carry within ourselves for our lives, and more importantly, the unfailingly truthful gut instinct that supports that vision. It is essential to pay attention to the quality of that gut feeling in order to keep you and your aspirations aligned to your core values for being, doing and having the life you are choosing to live.

I will have more to come in future posts on my lessons learned over close to 50 years of creative self-employment. I trust that, in some small way, they will propel you forward into your own emerging self-empowerment.

Thank you for reading.

Sheila