Love wins. The Supreme Court finally struck down bans on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional.This is a victory for so many reasons, but I am rejoicing for a reason that is very personal.Dearhearts, guess what?After four years of being happily solo, I am in love.And the love of my life turns out to be a woman. An amazing woman.
And so today I am brimming with joy, and I wanted to share it with you. Twirl!!!!
Have a wonderful weekend!
much love,
Anna
When To Do The Scary Thing
Just five minutes ago, I wrapped up an interview where I talked about sex and intimacy and communicaiton. I know. Right?!?!? What?!?!? It’s part of the Pillow Talk Summit, and you can sign up for the whole free series here. My interview airs next Wednesday.
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming…
The last couple of weeks we’ve been talking about plugging away and knowing when to quit.
This week is the advanced seminar version of this topic.
Here is a text exchange I had with one of my VIP private clients, who’s part of my EFBA (epic fucking badass) Mentorship.
She just took a really scary and amazing step in her life.
Me: Fingers crossed!
Her: Thanks. I’m feeling kind of sick about it.
Me: Yep. Classic symptom of being an EFBA.
Her: Epic f*ing barf action
Me: Bwahahahaaa
Yep. Sometimes the next right thing to do is so terrifying that it makes us want to HURL.
But on the other side of taking that next step is immense RELIEF.
This is true whether the scary thing is something that is bona fide scary, like calling the insurance company, or only mildly horrifying like leaving your job and moving to another country.
(Your mileage may vary. Stop it. The insurance company is SO scary.)
The women in my Queen Sweep Master Class are doing scary things right now, too; they’re declaring their true priorities, and tossing clutter, and making budgets and setting up filing systems.
Once you’ve built your courage muscles up to a certain point, the degree of resistance you feel to something is in direct proportion to the amount of RELIEF you’ll get from doing it.
The women who are MOST scared of the money broom usually need it the most. Same with the ones who feel the MOST paralyzed by paper; they will sing the praises of their filing system forevermore.
And I am SO FREAKING PROUD of my EFBA client for doing the scary thing that she feels so scared by. (Did I mention it was scary?)
Does that mean that if it feels awful, you should do it?
NO.
This is dicey territory. Let’s be super clear. Most of the time, you DON’T want to be doing things that make you feel sick.
Please do NOT assume that if something feels bad, it must be good for you. And it does not mean that you should go through life doing the things that feel awful and make you feel sick every day. ABSOLUTELY NOT. NO EFFING WAY.
This is so important that I am going to use lots of caps and even! excessive! punctuation! This misunderstanding has caused SO MUCH suffering in my life over the years. If a relationship felt horrible, I thought that meant I should try harder. If a decision felt tight and constricting, I figured that must mean it was The Right Thing To Do. No. NO NO NO NO NO.
Also, nuh-unh.
IN GENERAL, if something makes you feel nauseated, you should steer away from it. Really. Even if it’s tradition, or the people around you really want you to, or it promises an illusion of safety.
IN GENERAL, your gut is a highly reliable piece of navigational equipment.
If you keep steering with your gut, or by starlight as Martha Beck would say, eventually you come to a place where you don’t feel nauseated very often at all. In fact, you’ve gathered lots of empirical data that tells you that your gut is trying to direct you, with its clenching and fluttering and covering its eyes, away from toxic dangerous situations and directly toward joy and freedom.
Sometimes it does this in a very gentle way, with little nudges and urges and Oprah quotes. Other times it’s more like when the baby alien bursts out of its mother’s insect belly in Alien.
Either way though, whether it’s gentle or dramatic, you feel yourself being pulled by the sweet pull of freedom, joy, and exhilaration. That’s the yearning we talked about last week.
So WHY ON THE GREEN EARTH would I encourage my client to do something that makes her want to puke?
Because she’s playing the game at a different level now.
After a while you’ve cleared out a lot of the crap. You left the horrible relationship; you threw away the boxes of moldy crochet patterns; you transferred to a department that was not run by sadistic nuns. You work on your stuff. You begin to trust yourself and take small risks and build your courage muscles.
And then you start to dream. You start to wonder if maybe there’s something even better than just NOT breathing in poisonous air every day. What if it could get EVEN BETTER than not hating every single aspect of your life or job or marriage or body or wardrobe? What if there were MORE JOY than walking on eggshells or frantic coping or grim determined resigned plodding?
That’s when you begin to get nudges. Little urges.
Wild and gorgeous possibilities present themselves.
Secret longings and old hopes tap you on the shoulder. How bout now? they whisper.
And then, loves, it’s your turn.
It’s your turn to listen in deeply to that yearning. To get really honest about what you really long for.
And then to start walking steadily or boldly toward that thing.
And sometimes you’ll come to a spot in the road where there is a boulder. A nauseating, scary, hideously frightening boulder. But you KNOW– you KNOW!!!– that on the other side of the boulder is the thing you long for. (Even if what’s on the other side turns out to be failure or a fork in the road– it won’t matter. This is your road to walk, no matter how it turns out.)
When you come to a boulder, it’s your job to push through the fear and the nausea and find a way over, under, around, ot through. You can move it, climb over it, levitate it, blast it with your etheric laser beams.
It will totally feel like epic fucking barf action.
But on the other side will be RELIEF.
And that is what my beloved client will have. Even if the thing she’s trying to do is a total failure, she will have PEACE because she knows that she gave it her very best shot. And she will have clarity about walking down a different road next.
That’s how you play like an epic fucking badass.
(Barf bags definitely included.)
much love,
Anna
P.S. If you’re going to be in Portland, OR on the evening of Sat July 11th, I’m holding a meetup! Hold the date– more details coming soon!
