You're going through a challenging time right now. Or the same old thing keeps butting up against your brain.
I'm going to say the thing that you're not meant to say.
You're meant to say: I'm so sorry, that must be so hard. Are you okay?
What I'm going to say instead is: I'm really excited for you.
I'm really excited that this thing that you're in right now that you're done with, that you're sick of, that you despise, that you no longer want to define you - that you no longer want to define your sense of happiness and satisfaction and success.
I am so excited that you're in the muck of it. Because you know you're in the muck of it. And if you know that you're in the muck of something, if you know that you're in the hardship of this thing...
Then you're actually perfectly positioned to leverage it for your power.
That's right. This thing that you are in is going to be the catalyst that propels you into your power. If you let it (big Asterix on this one), if you let it.
So THE question is: are you going to give a green light to this hard time and let it metamorphosise you, change you and alter you and transform you into the next iteration of yourself that awaits?
That's your decision right now. That is a decision that you get to make. I get that it's hard.
You can decide to take that adversity and that old boring, stale problem and approaching it from another angle and using it to really elevate your energy into new echelons.
One of your very valid options is to take that and to let it take you way past GO. Way way, way, way, way beyond GO.
The hard times will show you how much power you actually have.
The times of comfort and surplus abundance, as glorious as those times are, what they can do is block, prevent and stifle some of your growth because those states are so comforting and comfortable. They're like a big warm blanket that can have you say put.
In our time together today, I don't just want to “remind” you of what is possible, I want to activate you into action by taking that really crappy thing and seeing how you can put a new pressure on it to turn it into a diamond. I want to active you to take a new angle on it - to step outside of the mental loop that keeps playing and approach it from a completely different angle.
This hard time that you're experiencing… What if it's compelling you to feel so uncomfortable that it ricochets and creates a whole new chain reaction of creativity and nimbleness and strength that you didn't even know that you possessed?
I respect if you can't love this time you're in. Understandable.
But can you respect this time that you're in?
Can you respect that it's edging you into a new wave of creativity, a new wave of purpose, a new wave of abundance, a new wave of pleasure that was never going to come if things had been easy? If you'd been in perfect health or you'd been in the “right” relationship or your business was going gangbusters?
All of this is about finding your power and leveraging your power when there are hard times.
The first step is depersonalising.
A lot of it hard stuff does happen to everybody and it's going on behind closed doors.
As a Mentor and Confidante to women in Leadership and positions of power, I can tell you right now, all those people that you admire, they're going through their own challenges - things that aren't safe to say, on socials or to the public.
Depersonalise that you are “the only one”.
You are never, ever, ever the only one. Step back a little bit. Watch the language and the words that want to say: I'm the only one, this only happens to me, no one else would understand this, no one else would get this. I can't let anyone see that I don't have my shit together…
None of what's happening to you is a personal attack on you. If your head is going to all of those places, what I implore you to challenge is this deep, deeply held belief that you expect everything to be perfect, or you expect everything to go well.
That belief is not going to make for a pleasurable, colourful, technicolour textured life.
Hard stuff happens to everyone.
The invitation, the nudge, is to stand on the edge of the cliff and ask:
Who am I going to be?
How can I be nimble?
How can I creatively problem solve around this one?
How can I apply new words and fresh thinking and self-inquiry to this problem?
Even if you think you know the problem really well and it's deeply familiar to you.
How can you enlist a fresh set of eyes to look at your problem and to inject not just a possibility that this problem can be overcome but that you actually get really bloody excited about what you're going to experience in moving through that problem.
This is where life gets interesting.
And you become more interesting in the process.
You become a more fascinating person, simply because you have shown up to that old persistent problem in a way that 99% of the mainstream just can't even fathom.
And it's that piece there that naturally injects and gives life to the embodiment part of the equation. You can't be the embodiment of whatever it is that you say you want unless you have been through the shadows of that thing.
This is one of your initiations so that your memoirs are not going to read: I sat there by myself in front of a screen and I problem solved my way out of it.
As a leader said to me about her most pressing problem at the beginning of the year: I can't think my way out of this one.
So if you're in this tough time and you're sitting there wanting to get to the other side and you're just trying to think your way out of it on your own in front of a screen, still doing what you do on autopilot every day… there’s every probability that going to be held back and you're going to be using up your own precious vitality and power. Vitality and power that could be used for more fruitful endeavours and pursuits.
If you want to be the embodiment of power, of authority, of bravery, of courage, of all these beautiful qualities, this time you're going through now is your initiation.
To say and acknowledge: I can't just tick the box and say I've done it. Life is presenting me with this in order to take that learning deeper, in order to become an even more extraordinary human being, in order to move my body in more extraordinary ways, in order to understand my body in more extraordinary ways, in order to get even closer to my design and who I am and all of the parts that make me, me.
That's what every hard, challenging time is doing.
If you are in it, I am excited for you.
I am excited because guess what?
You think you're good now?
Good is not even a good benchmark to hold in high regard.
You're going to be extraordinary on the other side of this…you're going to be even better.
You're going to be more powerful, you're going to be more impactful. You're going to have even more presence and gravitas.
That picture of you in your power and your pleasure, in your presence in your gravitas - that should DO IT for you.
That should excite you in the thick of this hard time.
It's calling you out on where you've gotten complacent, on where you're tolerating, on where things are just so cushy, that you're becoming a bit stale and stagnant.
Every hard time is there to elevate you.
And in order to elevate, you have to go deep first.
These hard times happen. The shadows come up, the stuff comes up, the barriers, the obstacles come up and then you can go deep and then you can elevate on the other side of that depth beyond that flat line.
Where the risk is, if you just want this all to be easy, then you prolong that flat lining. You stay in flat line for six months, a year, 18 months, five years, 10 years.
Are you okay with and accepting of that?
Can you reconcile that?
Can you sleep well at night and put your head on the pillow with a sense of satisfaction and gratification that you're okay with the flat line?
Perhaps you are because there are other things in life take your attention. And that's okay, there’s going to be times that that's going to happen.
I'm positioning this question more for you if those things have become excuses, and there's not really any excuse anymore, and the flat line is just rolling out and playing out like a record that's just spinning. The music isn't playing but the record is still spinning.
Are you okay with that? Are you going to be satisfied looking back at this chapter of your life and saying: it was okay?
My personal standards are above okay. And I suspect if you're here, and you're in this magical corner of the world, then you desire things to be above OK, above fine, above good.
You desire MORE.
If you are in the hard times, I'm excited for you - there is a more coming.
There is a golden opportunity to dig deep and to become more creative in a completely new way - more creative in the way that you think, more creative in the way that you execute, more creative in your actions, more nimble and formless in the way that you move.
Light will pour into your life when you recognise that you have untapped power inside of you.
There is no price for that, it is priceless.
There is no price for experiencing the satisfaction of knowing how much charge and surge there is inside of you and to learn that it is not out there. To finally know in your being that everything that you were looking for, every single sensation is in here already. It already exists. It is already here. That thrills me to no end every single day of my life.
The question isn't: what's out there that I can consume.
The question that your hard time is currently asking of you is: what's in here that I can extract?
Everything that every other woman or person has that you admire is in you already.
The only difference between you and who you admire and the qualities that they possess, (we're not talking material goods), everything that they energetically possess and embody, that is already in you as well.
The only difference between you and that other person and you can't even do a side-by-side comparison because you are incomparable…but the only difference between you and the other person that you admire is that they have access to something inside of themselves that you're yet to access. Yet.
When you put things in that framework, you take the power back instantly. It curbs jealousy and curbs envy, curbs comparisonitis and this sense of competition.
Your hard times are a call to action. They're a call to action to do things in an incredibly creative way so that you can feel truly feel how powerful you are. And that experience of your own power is something that no one can ever take from you. No one can ever take that from you.
It cannot ever be stolen. It can't ever be lost. It just goes quiet.
So I'm excited. I'm excited that you're going through a challenging time - it's here to bring your attention to how elevated you can be in the your energy and in the way that you address this problem this time around.
What are you going to do differently when your brain and your body just want to play everything out in the same stale, known familiar way?
What can you do differently to really shake that up?
That's what this hard time is asking of you.
It’s not asking you to do better.
It's asking you to do differently by approaching things differently.
As a natural extension of that, you will feel better and you will organically be a better person. You will step into this ultimate version of yourself that you couldn't even grasp or didn't even feel tangible to you when you're in the muck.
Every time something doesn't work for me, I have my moment of sadness and grief. Of course I allow that but I don’t stay there. I can't bear it. I can't bear to but stay in that energy.
I've wasted time in my life and energy and connection and presence and intimacy staying and wallowing in that.
So that time is a time for you to feel it. Feel the pain, physical or otherwise.
Feel the turmoil and then (swiftly) decide what are you going to do differently.
How are you going to really disrupt your operating system and let yourself go deep so you can rise up?
Because that's what makes for a fascinating life - a laughter-filled orgasmic life is not the hard thing. It’s about the energy that you choose to approach and problem solve when you’re in that hard thing. That is it. That is all that life is about.
Some questions to activate your capacity to problem solve:
What are you going to do differently?
Who are you going to approach for support, help and guidance?
How are you going to use your brain in a whole new way to look at this from a new angle?
How are you really going to see the problem as something to be excited about creatively problem solving your way through using a variety of actions through your mind, body, and energy?
Don't lie to yourself about this one. If you lie to yourself, you keep yourself at a gap from your power.
And you don't want that. You can no longer tolerate that and you can no longer afford it. It becomes incredibly expensive. It's an expensive way to go through life being suspended from your power.
And I know you really don’t want that.
In fact, my best guess is…
… you’re here because you’ve tried but you can’t “think” your way out of the dissatisfying situation you’ve found yourself in…and you’re ready to explore how I can help…
what you really want to say (but don’t) is:
I need someone to hold all of this craziness for a minute.
Thankfully, your In Confidence call is a safe space for you to be…
Deeply seen.
Deeply heard and
Deeply respected in the hard times you’re struggling to see your way out of.
Lauren xo