Life After the Leap

“Nothing can resist the human will that will stake even its existence on its stated purpose.” -Benjamin Disraeli

Yesterday, I wrote about “The Leap.” To summarize a leap is when you let go of everything that you think you're supposed to be and head toward your heart's desire, your burning passion, your gift. You go toward that thing because you literally don't want to live any other way anymore. You have to leap, to let go of the fear, and move in the direction of your dream. Not only do you have to make the leap, but you have to do that enough times to where leaping and trusting in your inspiration and passion is the new normal.

So, I wanted to continue down that train of thought with this post and a little of my own leaping story.

I've leaped many times for many years. I'm hoping my experience will help you head toward your calling with confidence. Maybe you can learn from my mistakes. I’m not trying to shortcut the experience however you would be truly wise if you can learn from someone else's life experience.

When I first let go and headed toward a dream, the floodgates did not magically open. The heavens didn't just rain down dollars and everything that I wanted. It took time, a long time. I believe I know why. It's because even though I was, at that point, still a student of law of attraction, spirituality, philosophy, of energy, and ancient wisdom, I didn't fully comprehend it.

I had made the first initial step to let go of the life that I had and go out into the unknown. I literally left the town I grew up in, all my friends behind, a relationship, an illustrious career. I left it all to chase this dream. It was hard. Not the leaving it, but what came after. There was stress, and fear, and worry plus challenges around every corner. Please believe I'm not telling you this to scare you into not taking the leap in your own life. I'm telling you that today I can look back on it with a smile.

If I had known then what I know now, I wouldn't have worked as hard as I did. When faced with adversity I did what I've always done, which was to work harder, work more hours, sun up to sun down, fingers to the bone, no social life, just flat out work with get-it-done drive. I was going to make it, even if it killed me but I did not work on myself. I was going to force the Universe to give me success or die to try.

Looking back, instead of molding the clay that was my life and creating my reality, life was molding me through experience. Time and time again, I realized that hard work wasn't the answer. But "how could that be?" I could not accept that, so I just would do more and more. I would be out there “making” it work. Then, the next day, I had to get up and do it all again, and it just never came together until eventually, I burnt myself out. The reason why it never worked back then is because I always carried with me a strong fear that it wouldn’t work.

I would say positive things. I would read positive things and listen to all the audiobooks on greatness and achievement. I'd write down my goal 30 times a day for 30 days. I'd carry it my goals with me in my wallet. I did all the tricks, right? I did mantras, affirmations, seminars, read so many books, having constant positivity pumped into me. But it didn't matter because my ingrained belief, my default setting, the program running in my brain was that I wasn't good enough. I wasn't smart enough. It wouldn't work for me. And it didn't, so I struggled for a long time.

The struggle drove me inward because I knew that there was something that I was missing. Now I see it’s like school when we’re kids. There's just no way to shortcut from kindergarten to a high school senior. You have to learn these things and it will take however long it needs to take for you to really learn them. What I'm doing is letting you know what I've learned, but you're still going to have to go through it.

What I learned is that the real work is alignment of self. The work of replacing old beliefs with new ones, that is the real work. That is what you're really doing. I had been habitually doing things I didn't want to do for 30 years with a belief that struggle is the only way to "make it" in this world. The belief that hard work is the only way, and that's simply isn’t true.

When I realized it wasn't true, I had to replace the belief, because the struggle kept coming up. I could start in a new industry, with a new dream, but I ran into the same problems, because I never changed the underlying belief.

Then, I let go of everything, all of it, I leapt again. I put all my stuff in storage and lived in the wilderness. Please know I’m not saying you have to do that, it's just what I felt I needed to do to face my fears. I had a fear of being homeless, so I decided, let's find out what there really is be afraid of. Even though I went to an extreme and there was peace for a time, there was still fear after that.

However, slowly but surely there were more and more glimpses of divine guidance. More and more feelings of trust. I started to sense things, watch life unfold, I enjoyed nature on another level. I started to gain my footing and began enjoying the journey. Challenges were just steppingstones. I felt this knowing that I could overcome anything, this knowing that I was eternal, and nothing could truly hurt me.

True freedom is living with the absence of fear and doubt.

It's having an inspired thought come up, "I want this," knowing that the Universe is already conspiring it to give it to you, that you deserve everything that you want, that your imagination of a gorgeous life can't even scratch the surface of what the Universe has planned for you because you're imagining it from your limited point of view of where you are now. I hope it doesn't take you as long as it did me to truly believe in yourself.

Good Journey My Friends