Six Ways I Was Making Myself Feel Like I Was Dying Inside (And The Five Killer Realizations I Came To That Turned Everything Around)
For as long as I could remember, I’d been unhappy, frustrated and feeling like I was banging my head against a brick wall. I knew I was born to fulfill a great purpose and have a big impact; and yet, I couldn’t find a way to let my brilliance shine.
Today, I want to share with you the 6 (extremely costly) ways I was killing my potential and strangling my own happiness. I wonder if you can relate?
1. I stayed really busy trying to figure everything out.
2. I resolutely believed that someone else might have the “magic answers” to fix my life. If I just looked hard enough, and was quick enough about it, I would find the solution and finally be happy.
3. I did everything in my power to suppress my own knowledge and my own voice. For example:
* I was always on the move trying out the shiniest new ideas (click here check out all the trips I took in the last 10 years).
* I subjugated myself to teachers and mentors who kept me feeling small (a follower, not the leader I was born to be).
* I set myself up in business in the least visible and accessible way possible.
* I qualified and practiced as a lawyer: In law, you usually know the rules (if not, you argue your case based on analogous case law – i.e. other people’s arguments). There was no outlet for my voice, my knowledge – or any need for originality and creativity.
4. I repeatedly picked men who were unavailable to me – I kept wanting to feel that “I didn’t have it all,” and that the magic answer was just eluding me.
5. I didn’t move abroad into the sunshine despite repeated opportunities to do so in my 20s.
6. I tried to keep my body less beautiful than I wanted to it to be, trying to reduce my feminine charms to compete in a masculine world.
And then I realized: What if I adopted a bigger perspective? What could I learn from all that I had experienced and suffered?
Today, I’m sharing my realizations in the hope they’ll be of benefit to you, too.
1. I cannot excel in a life that is not meant for me.
I learnt very clearly that looking to others couldn’t bring me happiness or success. Plenty of things helped me become financially successful – studying to become a high-earning earning corporate lawyer, or studying property investment strategies – but this kind of success was always limited in the end.
I learnt that I had to fulfill my own unique potential (oh, the irony after all that searching for external answers!) – otherwise, I would always suffer. I couldn’t just “make do.” In order to find joy and meaning in my life, I had to make sure I was living on my terms.
There was no “in between”!
2. There is no manual for living a “good life”.
Looking outside myself for knowledge and validation, I assumed I was incomplete, lacking the answers to life. During my first years focusing on personal development, I was actually gathering information to write a “manual for living a good life.” That was my first book idea.
But I learnt that there is no manual, no one-size-fits-all approach to “living a good life.” It’s actually very simple: More than “what I would love,” I have to follow the things I cannot NOT have in my life. I must be the woman I alone was born to be.
3. There is no knight on a white horse coming to save me.
No one would ever have guessed it from the outside – but for all my competency and all the energy I poured into my life, this is what I was secretly hoping was going to happen! Let’s get honest: Life gets hard. We get lost. It doesn’t turn out the way we think it should. The idea of someone sorting it out for you can seem pretty appealing!
Maybe it’s those stories of “Rapunzel being rescued from the tower,” and so on, which we grew up with.
I’d had intuitive realizations in the past, like “In this lifetime, you need to experience your power as a woman.” OK, so that’s helpful-ISH. But I would smile to myself as I surveyed my life circumstances: All this drive, all this desire for big things, and life was still not working out as I wanted – and time was a-ticking. What was I supposed to do?
I couldn’t quit, was the advice I kept hearing – “Not an option.” No guru had the answers. But eventually I realized there was just no choice: I was going to have to create my life for myself. I learned to listen deeply to myself, and began to create and embody MY OWN path to success.
4. My head leads me down a life path that feels empty.
I can experience no joy in life unless I am realizing the expression of my own soul. I learned this in my life as a corporate attorney and during my brief dalliance with property investment, as well as in my first attempt at running my own business.
Knowing what is meant for me is everything in my life. This knowledge is the most powerful GPS system that I could imagine. It’s been quite a while since I’ve even attempted to make rational decisions about my life, because I know my rational mind always leads me down a path that feels empty. Maybe you can relate to what I’m saying. Your head makes choices based NOT on your happiness or what you really want, but on an unconscious desire for external validation and a safe life.
The second danger I learned to look out for is only “sort of” listening to my own knowledge. That’s what happened with the first iteration of my business. I created something that was boring and invisible. When I checked in with my vision for the business, I wondered how the heck I’d ended up going down that path!
I told myself I would build a platform first, making sure the business was reliable and well known, and that it would be easy to make money with it, BEFORE going for the bigger picture. It was a painful detour!
What I learned here was that I really have to listen carefully to myself and follow the route I’m meant to take, not grasp for what feels safe, easy and immediately accessible.
5. My fiercest leadership lets my ideal clients know they’re in the “right place” when they meet me.
The more I suppressed my brilliance, the more men left me and life’s bounty eluded me. But now the more I own, embody and honor the fierce, powerful, feminine woman I am, the more the world flocks to me. There was such an IRONY in hiding from the world, an invisible woman leader trying to compete in the world with men.
I am a wild woman, a queen – this is my truth and it’s magnetic. When I take ownership of this wild woman and give her a voice, my life shows up for me – MY life, for ME. And with it, I gain an inner peace, a sense of joy and freedom, and a knowledge that I am living the life meant for me. And most important, there’s the enjoyment of the ride!
6. Life is about TWO things only – the emotions we’re choosing to experience and the challenges we’re up for surmounting.
This one should really make you think.
I was choosing success and achievement, for no reason other than the assumption that when I had those things, I would be happy.
You know how it is: Success feels good for minutes, maybe even hours or days, but then what? Emptiness.
I learned that life is really about how you feel in any given moment. There really is no destination. It’s the nature of the human spirit – we “arrive” and then we want to grow again (well, maybe not all people; but for you and me, that’s what we experience).
My core values are love, joy, growth, adventure, radical authenticity, abundance and freedom. You’ll notice each one of these has an emotional component. My approach to creating my life centers on experiencing those core emotions. My drive is important, and my desire to create big things; BUT, these come from a place of true passion and desire. They don’t come from fears of inadequacy, a need to be loved. (Under the surface, your mind is always producing these fears. But creating your life on this basis will always turn you into a workaholic, leaving you with nothing but burnout and a feeling of emptiness.)
It’s the idea “I’m not good enough” that is mostly responsible for the emptiness we feel, and the “What’s missing?” experience we know so well. This perception of yourself causes you to chase a kind of success that doesn’t relate to what’s in your heart, but is rather about getting approval so you feel valued in the world.
Then there are the challenges. I am up for the challenge of building a global movement of empowered women executives and leaders who will pursue their brilliance, their natural leadership, their true loves and a “good life” on their terms. And I’m up for creating a life with a man who comes from the other side of the world. These challenges are the most rewarding endeavors I’ve ever undertaken.
That’s me. Now over to you.
Some questions for you.
In the comments below, let me know:
1. What are the ways in which you’ve resisted your brilliance? How are you suffering right now as a result? What lessons have you learned, and what realizations have you come to about yourself while reading this?
2. What about the emotions you’re choosing and the challenges you’re up for surmounting in this lifetime? How are you committed to making THIS lifetime count?
I’d love to hear from you.
Much love,
Sofia xo
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