Twelve months ago, I dreamed I would be where I am today. Equal to my aspirational, dreamy spirit…was my doubt, kept alive through continual (and painful) roadblocks.
Not only did I grow in trust, but I succeeded (surprisingly!) in bringing my dreams to life. As we turn toward 2022, here are 4 lessons and tips from this year that I’m going to take with me into the next.
I invite you to dream and reflect with me.
Here’s a little preview of my 4 lessons:
- Follow your BIG dream.
- Let your dreams be babies that grow beyond what you imagine is possible.
- Business comes with heartbreak, but your heart will mend and become even stronger.
- When it comes to your calling, let yourself “disappear.”
In case you haven’t acknowledged it in yourself yet, 2021 was another Covid-bound year of you and I courageously turning lemons into lemonade! (*Pause here to give yourself a big hug!*)
Bless those lemons for the growing edges they brought us to — even if we didn’t want to cross them (and maybe still don’t).
As I sit in reflection on the year that unfolded, I am amazed at the bounty that has come. It is all I hoped for, but for all 12 months I cohabitated with the inner critic and its incessant whisper that none of it would show up or succeed.
This year delivered some pretty big blows, knocking me flat more than once. But the resilience I found within fueled a willingness to turn it all into medicine for myself and others.
Out of that medicine came these 4 lessons, each embedded with actionable tips to realign our compass and invigorate our dreams next year.
Lesson #1: Follow your BIG dream.
In November 2020, I decided to put on paper a program that had been calling to me for a few years.
I knew the ultimate goal of the program was to empower leaders and practitioners to cultivate their own style, along with rarely-taught essential skills, to become sacred leaders of the future.
While I began writing about it, doubt hassled me on every side, telling me that it was not possible, that no one would come.
Edgy voices showed up to niggle, but I knew it was because I was going over a big edge and stepping up everywhere.
At Christmas that year, I went into the outback. I sat on a baking rock under a gum tree in a dry river bed, and I allowed the program to flow through me.
Then, we built it.
And people came.
Today, I finished semester 1 of 2, with the most incredible group. I have loved every moment of teaching Sacred & Safe Leadership. It has been deeply moving and successful for my students and myself. The students are flourishing into being their deepest selves in their work in the world.
I am fulfilled. And they are, too.
My tips from lesson #1:
Tip #1: Take your dreams out of the closet.
Give them some space for sacred dreaming and finding their full form, and trust that they want to come to life!
If I gave in to the doubt and did not make the choice to give it centre stage on that sunny day, I, and my students, would not be steeping in such transformative fulfillment right now.
Sometimes, all that big dream needs is a little loving space to breathe.
Tip #2: Doubt is not truth.
Doubt is an ally, here to refine your vision and help you stay on track. Instead of shoving it away (probably rather constantly), welcome and wrestle with doubt.
And get support to help you uncover which of it messages could actually be useful.
My doubt helped me refine my vision for my new programs by telling me that they were “not enough.”
Instead of giving up in response to that prickly statement, I got curious. Was it true?
A resounding YES. This doubt ally was actually a subtle signal that I wasn’t finished putting it all down on the page yet. I had much more to give, much more wisdom to share. I needed to dream deeper and wider. And I needed to be way more courageous in being my whole, wild, edge-walker self.
Not to say that I didn’t push back when my doubt chanted “not enough, not enough.” It was in the wrestling that I got to the truth and found more of my power — both of which I poured it into my pen on paper.
Be curious about your doubt and let yourself wrestle with it. That wrestling energy might be the best way to communicate with it and thus understand its allied message.
Lesson #2: Let your dreams be babies that grow beyond what you imagine is possible.
For several years, people around the world asked me to make my program Spirit Magic global and online.
Since it was a practitioner training, held richly in person, I was uncertain about this transition. The groups had cultivated such a powerful, engaged and enlivened space to learn these methods and principles — in person. Moving it online made no sense.
Then came COVID.
As the Sacred & Safe Leadership program took off, the energy of Spirit Magic pestered me to be brought to life again.
Could I do it online? With international participants in various time zones and languages?
My team and I transformed it into a fully certified online course, and last week, my first, big cohort of talented, heart-centred people around the world built their first Spirit Magic teams. Here are a few of their comments:
“This energy opened me up to my own capacity, my own vastness, my own intricate system that connects me to the world, and to others.”
“Myree, it is all so amazing what I am learning from you. It feels life-saving!!!”
“Spirit Magic is definitely the perfect word for this course 🌟”
“I feel all juicy and loved!”
“I got so emotional as fears dissolved — omg.”
“I feel held and loved. I feel like I’m coming home.”
“I found my spirit family. Profound love, beauty and grace. Emanating deep reverence.”
“Myree, this experience has just absolutely blown me away. It was nothing like and yet so, so, so much more than what I anticipated. A huge thank you to you and your team for facilitating this. Whoa!!! My head and heart are still catching up and absorbing the magnitude.”
“This is the most grounded experience I’ve ever had with integrating a new team. It feels aligned with my destiny and my work with healing my brain. All my heartache of trying to function with my brain, this is the information I needed to work with my brain and teach others new ways to access information.”
“That was amazing. I felt such a complex and sophisticated teamwork of processes happening across multi. dimensions, having explored and opened along so many lines of spiritual work in this life and other lives, I often feel I move back and forth from different compartments… Here, I felt so much integration of such complex processes from shamanic medicine journeys to healing work and samadhi states and various mystical states and ecstasies and archetypes and deep penetrative insights.”
My tips from lesson #2:
Tip #1: Don’t try to control and contain something in a smaller form than it fits.
That effort takes more energy than unleashing it to the world in the size and shape that it desires.
I wanted to keep Spirit Magic in its sacred, lovely little weekend retreat container, thinking that was the only real way for it to exist. But it wanted to be accessible by everyone. So, I released my grip, and now it gets to equip people the world over to be powerful beacons of healing and awakening.
Tip #2: The biggest joys come from sharing your gifts with the world, and seeing other people delight in them and in themselves.
When we share our gifts with others, they get magnified.
When our gifts are transformative or useful in any way at all (music, arts, healing, teaching, anything!), they inevitably ripple through many lives.
This is the most satisfying thing in the world for me and my soul. It feels like purpose fulfilled.
Lesson #3: Business comes with heartbreak, but your heart will mend and become even stronger.
I had my first hardcore business betrayal in 2021. I had put my trust in somebody. I had invested in working together, paid in advance and was enjoying the dream of collaboration. Then they didn’t come through.
While it stung and injured my trust in the moment, I decided to simply appreciate what I had received from this person (good things), lick my wounds (painful), let the rest go and keep going. The vision we had begun was simply too big to be grounded.
Lessons learned, growth attained.
My tips from lesson #3:
Tip #1: See relationship challenges as possibilities.
A challenge does not have to be synonymous with failure. It may actually be delivering the exact pivot you need so you take the direction you are meant to be taking.
Challenges can realign us onto our most fruitful and timely path.
So, when amidst your next challenge, step back and look for the possibilities within it.
Tip #2: Hang in there.
It can be devastating to be betrayed. It’s okay to let yourself mourn and digest it.
But then…squint your eyes, turn your head and look at it from a different angle.
That experience could be a doorway to a deeper understanding of what you were trying to do together — just now you must continue solo. And a solo path may be exactly what allows the vision to truly fly!
Lesson #4: When it comes to your calling, let yourself “disappear.”
I’m reminded of a teacher of mine who said, “When you step into leadership, *you* disappear.”
He meant that with the work you are meant to do in the world, you have no choice but to do it. Because whatever needs to come through must come through and thus will come through. And you will surrender to that, merging and disappearing into the calling.
I hesitated at first with creating and launching both Sacred & Safe Leadership and Spirit Magic. Yet now they are up and flowing, and it feels effortless.
Of course, I am the human creator and the teacher of these programs. But when they came into form, I became a conduit for the work.
Allowing myself to be this conduit, to disappear into the work, is what allowed it to flow with gorgeous vigor and ease.
My tips from lesson #4:
Tip #1: Big work is usually not about you.
The work within your calling is tied to a deeper vision. When you can find the sense of service beneath what you are creating, it becomes more magnetic, more alive, more powerful.
You still matter, but by surrendering to this special kind of leadership, the creation is what truly shines (which makes you shine in the process).
Tip #2: Surrendering allows the calling to take its most potent form.
By letting ourselves surrender and become the conduit, we often find a much more playful, wild and full imagining. It expresses as “itself,” instead of a shrunken, edited or blurred version that we unintentionally morph it into when we grip to remaining centre stage.
—
2021 could be the year that we continued to grapple with a world turned on its head, constantly flipping us around so we cannot find ground for our feet.
Or, this could be a year remembered for the resilience, creativity, wisdom, growth and blossoming gifts we found within. When we might not have had solid ground to stand on, externally, but we found something solid and sustaining in our spirit.
With new life lessons tucked into my belt and a transformed lens through which I see myself, I am choosing the latter. Will you join me?
What lessons, nuggets of wisdom and growing edges did you find this year? Let’s celebrate them together in the comments below.
With gratitude for this journey called life,
2 Comments
Thank you for this hugely helpful post, Myree. Your thoughtful analysis and profound insights are needed now more than ever. I completely agree with the idea of surrender and have noticed in my own life when I finally gave up things started to go right. It’s true that when the focus is on service to others magic can happen. You’re helping the world heal with your great mind – looking forward to the next post.
Dearest Sean,
Thank you for your beautiful message and feedback and I m so touched that this was supportive for you. Yay! You made my day. I too stand beside you in the ever deepening art of surrender. And yes! Service is such a magnetic and satisfying doorway to keep walking through.
Sending you big love and sweet blessings for 2021!