Moving from lost to aligned in 3 steps
A question I hear a lot is:
Why is being “aligned” so important, when being lost is an important part of the journey?
This is a valid question.
In this newsletter I will be answering this conundrum.
I will also be addressing where I see so many people going wrong, keeping them in a perpetual in a state of LOSTness.
And finally I will share specific coaching practices I use with my clients to move them into alignment.
WHY IS EVERYONE SO OBSESSED WITH BEING ALIGNED?
First of all, let me begin by addressing the art of being lost.
I am a fervent believer in the important of losing yourself in order to find yourself again.
People who have never got lost or never hit rock bottom are often the ones most out of touch with themselves. I see this a lot in Corporate – people who have worked their way up the ladder but never taken the time to stop and question if this is really want they want. They are often the ones who go out at the weekends to get drunk. They think they are being sociable, but they are just drowning out the voice inside of them telling them they are not happy.
Their stories are not as interesting to me as the stories of people who have been brought to their knees by life. The people who have questioned everything, and had to claw their way out one fingernail at a time.
After all, the greaest discoveries are often the by-product of getting well and truly lost.
Let’s take Christopher Colombus for example.
We’ll call him Chris for short.
Disclaimer: I don’t know him personally.
BUT…
I´m pretty sure when Chris “accidentally” got lost and discovered America, his though process would have sounded something like this:
❌”SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT”
❌”I’m a failure”
❌”I KNEW I wasn’t capable of leading this mission.”
❌”OMG Kind Ferdinand and Queen Isabella are going to HATE me and think I´m a LOSER!”
As we all know, Chris was supposed to be finding a shorter trading route to India.
Instead he discovered America.
If you are not yet convinced by the fertile twilight zone between being lost and found, let us turn to a different example.
VAN GOGH
In his lifetime he made 1200 paintings.
However, only 17 become famous.
Wait a sec while I pull out my calculator…
That’s a success rate of ONLY 1.4%.
But nobody thinks about the “failures”. Nobody considers the paintings that “didn’t sell”. The fact that he spent most of his life depressed, living on coffee, cigarettes and white bread…
No wonder he cut his bloody ear off!
When Van Gogh died, he was 37 years old. And he has only sold 1 painting.
He died considered himself to be a failure.
Nobody knew that his being lost enabled him to create some of the most important art of the 19th century.
I konw what you’re thinking…
If getting lost is so important, why is this newsletter called “from lost to aligned”?
Well, here’s the thing:
Being lost is all well and good.
But you don’t want to stay there too long.
Otherwise you may well end up like Van Gogh…
WHAT I SEE SO MAY PEOPLE DOING WRONG.
Depending on your personality-type, getting lost can get you trapped in one of two possible scenarios:
1) GETTING STUCK IN NON-ACTION
I see many peple so terrified to make a mistake and choose the “wrong” path, that they don’t do anything.
The truth is, it doesn’t really matter WHAT you do.
Just do SOMETHING.
Because if it doesn´t work out, it´s going to lead you closer to what you really want.
If you look at it from this perspective…you really can’t go wrong!
But because it is “scary” to go wrong, many people don´t even give themelves the chance to go.
The result is that they get stuck in non-action.
Non-action looks like:
❌having ideas but not following through on any of them
❌getting distracted by food/exercise/pleasure over sitting down and getting on with the task at hand
❌escaping through travel & plant medicine to keep you stuck in the illusion of moving forwards.
So many people think that making a mistake means failure.
But the truth is failure is when you don’t make any mistakes.
Read that again.
FAILURE IS WHEN YOU DON´T MAKE ANY MISTAKES.
🌟How else can you learn?
🌟How else can you grow?
🌟How else can you find a redirection for your life?
Then there´s the other side of the coin…
2) GETTING STUCK IN OVER-ACTION
I had a call with a potential client a few months ago.
She was completely lost.
And she was doing EVERYTHING to try and claw her way out.
She was exhausted and burnt out.
But she didn’t want to accept it.
She thought that the next training would finally bring her success.
She believed that by teaching a few more classes per week she would finally earn the respect she desired.
She was hating life. But because she didn´t believe there was an alternative, she kept forcing herself onwards. She was like the racehorse AND the jockey rolled into one, thinking that whipping herself into action would make her win the race.
But she was running the wrong race.
What she needed to do was PAUSE and ask herself HOW SHE WANTED TO FEEL.
And from there gain the CLARITY she needed to create a life that made her really happy.
But she didn’t allow herself to PAUSE because her ego wouldn’t let her off the hamster wheel.
FINDING ALIGNMENT
Being lost is often fertile ground to allow you to find all the pieces of the puzzle.
It´s OK to take your time in the process.
Rushing it could mean that you put the puzzle back in the wrong order. Or with pieces missing.
But you also have to recognise when it’s time to start moving into alignment.
We all have gifts to share with the world.
Time isn’t getting any slower.
And you’re not getting any younger.
As we start navigating our own path, we realise that we have indeed scattered pieces of our puzzle in different corners of the Earth.
This can be due to other people´s expectations, society telling you what you should want, toxic relationships…
It’s important to bring all these pieces back to you. That way, you can lay strong foundations in order to build the future you truly deserve and desire.
And that’s exactly the process I take my clients through when we work together.
We find CLARITY on who they are and what they wan. Then we create create a PLAN in order to take the daily steps to move them into ALIGNMENT.
But how do you know if this is really your purpose or just something that interests you right now?
DIFFERENTIATING PASSIONS FROM PURPOSE
There is a sure fire way to tell your passions from your purpose.
Your passions can me multiple and they can change throughout the course of your life.
Your purpose tends to stay the same.
Whereas you can continue discovering new passions throughout your life, your PURPOSE is usually the underlying force holding these passions together.
Your PURPOSE is often born out of your greatest pain.
For example, as a child I felt I didn’t have a voice.
It’s no coincidence that when I grew up I developed underactive thryoid. I also developed Hashimotos autoimmune disease (where the body attacks the thyroid gland).
Now I Coach people to find their creativity & get in touch with their purpose.
I hold Singing Circles so people can connect with their authentic voice.
And I am a Ceremonial musician, working with medicine to empower people to come back to themselves.
You can see that I have 3 passions: Coaching, Music & Medicine.
But these are just the tools I use to carry out my purpose.
My PURPOSE is over-arching theme weaving them together, born of the pain I felt as a child of not having access to my own self-expression.
My purpose is supporting people to be fully self-expressed in this life.
You see how it works?
If you have a tendency to start one passion and then run out of steam, then you haven´t found your purpose yet.
SO KEEP GOING!
When you tap into your purpose you will know.
It feels like:
🌟electricity
🌟you are tapped into something greater than yourself
🌟time just flies by when you do this thing
🌟you can’t wait to get out of bed to keep working on it
🌟you have been CHOSEN to carry out this mission
Remember – it’s only through the process of experimenting that some options are ruled out. That way, you are always getting closer to what it actually is you want to do.
To finish, I’m going to share some of the steps I take my clients through so YOU can start moving YOURSELF from LOST to ALIGNED.
SELF-COACHING STEPS TO FIND ALIGNMENT
1) THE WORK by Byron Katie.
Whenever you have a situation or recurrent thought that is causing you stress, there is a series of questions you can take yourself through to reach peace of heart.
You can access these questions using Byron Katie’s app (available on both the Apple and google stores). It costs €1.
If you don´t want to invest, hit REPLY to this email and write THE WORK and I´ll be happy to send you the questions over.
The app is great because it’s easily accesible any time you have a real-life situation that is causing you stress.
2) ENERGY LISTS
Energy is the new currency.
There are things you are doing right now in your life that are draining you of energy. Maybe it involves people, habits and/or places.
There are also things that are filling you with energy.
Make 2 lists – one of all the things that drain you of energy. And the other all the things that fill you with energy.
The first step is to become aware.
The second step is to start crossing things off the list of things that drain you of energy. This means that slowly, you start saying goodbye to habits, people and places that are harming you.
If you are meticulous with this practice, you will soon start to see your energy rising and things that used to frustrate you falling away.
3) INTENTION
Alignment is a daily practice.
Here is a practise that takes less than a minute that works EVERY TIME.
After you wake up, light a candle and set your intention for the day.
Your intention can be how you want to feel (“peaceful,”, “joyful”, “spacious”). Or it can be a particular intention for a specific outcome at work or a conversation that needs to be had.
The act of lighting a candle brings presence and sacredness to the intention.
You’ll be amazed at what you achieve when you make this a regular practice!
I do it every day and encourage my clients to do the same.
I hope that this week’s newsletter brought you clarity and inspiration to move from LOST to ALIGNED.
Thanks for reading me.
Until next week!
Love from Abbey xxx
p.s. If you would like some one-on-one support, I have a couple of spaces open for new clients. Get in touch and let’s see if we are a good fit to work together.
