One Grounded Angel

This week I will hand back the keys to the practice where I’ve been offering reiki treatments. Long-time readers of my blog may remember that 12 months ago, I took a massive leap of faith and committed to a one-year lease on a room at a health and wellbeing practice here in Sydney. I planned to offer reiki treatments two days a week (read that blog post here), and hoped that I could grow a client base and eventually make this, combined with my angel card reading service, a career alternative. It was a big financial risk… and it has not, unfortunately, paid off. The very worst result that could have happened – the one I was most afraid of – has indeed happened. And I’m OK with that. Now.

For a long time I was not OK. In February it became apparent that my business was not working. That, on top of a (temporary but prolonged) drought in my primary source of income, plunged me into a state of despair... not to mention debt.

When I realised there was nothing I could do but watch money flow down the drain until my commercial lease ran out, the sense of disappointment was immense. I had lovingly stacked my hopes and dreams, along with significant sums of money, into this business, and it had not worked. I had wholeheartedly trusted that having faith was enough to make my dreams come true... and I was wrong. I couldn’t not see this failure as an indictment on my skills and my worth. The failure of my business felt like proof that I was a failure as a person. My inner bully’s cries of “I knew you’d fuck it up!” were deafening.

Business leaders around the world consistently describe the experience of losing everything as integral to shaping their success. JK Rowling famously had her Harry Potter manuscripts rejected 12 times. “I was the biggest failure I knew,” she said. When Bloomsbury Publishing took a punt and printed her first three books, it warned her not to quit her day job. As we all know, Joanne went on to achieve stratospheric levels of success. Yet on 12 previous occasions, she had failed. It was not her moment to shine… until it was. The Universe has a schedule all its own.

Failure is a blistering, heavy word. The most unhelpful thing anyone said to me when I was coming to realise things were not turning out as I’d hoped was: “Just think positive – it’ll all work out.” Please, never say this to someone going through a significant challenge. It implies they’re not trying hard enough, that a lack of faith is the cause of their struggle and that getting what they want is a mere case of wishing for it (a wildly inaccurate interpretation of the law of attraction). So, so unhelpful.

What *was* helpful for me as I licked my wounds was reframing the situation. There’s a difference between failing and being a failure. The former means I haven’t had success yet; the latter indicates I am flawed on a personal level. Once I understood the distinction between the two – and stopped beating myself up – I found my way to a space of acceptance. Instead of seeing myself as incompetent I was (eventually) able to depersonalise the experience, and recognise failure as a necessary step in my development. Brene Brown says: “Failure is an imperfect word because the minute you learn from it, it ceases to be a failure.”

Although the Universe didn’t meet me halfway on this business plan, it did issue me with an invitation to grow. Learn from this, and you’ll become more resilient. Learn from this, and you’ll navigate future obstacles better. Learn from this, and new doors will open up to you, opportunities better than you could have scripted. The secret of life, as Paulo Coelho expressed so exquisitely in The Alchemist, is to fall down seven times and get up eight.

There are all sorts of reasons why my reiki practice likely didn’t fire. It could have been the wrong area. It could have been (and most likely was) simply the wrong timing. It was 100 per cent not lack of skills nor lack of effort on my part. I know that I could not have put anything more into that business. I have no regrets… now.

So when I take my certificates off the wall and push my business cards through the shredder, I will remember the difference between failing and being a failure. I will remind myself that I am not defined or diminished by this disappointment. And as I let go of my expectations I will hold space for shiny new opportunities.

Your move, Universe.

Remember The Sunscreen Song, which came out with the Romeo and Juliet movie in the late 1990s? When it comes to snappy truth bombs, this song is an absolute goldmine (it’s basically Pinterest in music). These lines are among the most memorable, for me: “Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance – so are everybody else’s.”

Personally, I don’t believe in ‘chance’. But I love this lyric because it reminds me not to put too much pressure on myself when it comes to making choices – because I don’t have absolute power to determine the outcome. Since that song came out and I’ve gained a greater understanding that anything I create in my life is a partnership between myself and the Universe, I now realise that I can’t possibly make a bad choice. #relief

One of the main factors that drives people to book an angel card reading with me is they’re facing a tough decision. Their circumstances can be vastly different – a job opportunity that requires them to move cities, a relationship that is no longer satisfying, perhaps – but the common thread is fear of failure. They know deep down what is right for them, but they’re scared to commit to that course of action in case they’re ‘wrong’.

I read a UK magazine article recently which suggested that people in the west are facing more decisions than ever before in history, and as a result, our anxiety over making any selection has increased. Previous generations – particularly women – did not have as many options available to them as far as jobs, relationships and lifestyle. We can now have anything and do anything we want – yay! That’s undoubtedly a good thing, and I’m not for a minute advocating our choices should be curbed, but if you’ve ever found yourself stressed out over a four-page pizza menu, unable to make a selection, you’ll know that too many choices can be overwhelming.

“From research we know that people with no choice are significantly more resilient because they can blame life or other people when they make a wrong decision,” psychologist Pieter Kruger says in the article. “But if you make a wrong decision having had a range of choice, you have no one to blame but yourself. We become much more obsessive because we want to make the right decision every time.”

US psychologist Barry Schwarz, author of The Paradox Of Choice, agrees. In an article with The Guardian he described how there are so many varieties of jeans available now – stone-washed, straight-leg, boot-fit, distressed, zip fly, button fly, slightly distressed, very distressed, knee-holed, thigh-holed, knee and thigh-holed – that his expectations of finding the perfect pair for him are high… and inevitably, he winds up disappointed.

Adding to our decision-making anxiety is social media, which has somehow become our yardstick of success. We’re being constantly slammed with pictures of people appearing to nail their life choices – cosy relationships, chic wardrobe picks, glamorous travel itineraries and high-achieving kids. Even though we may be vaguely aware that what we’re looking at is contrived and edited, rather than an accurate summary of other people’s lives, we can still wind up feeling like everyone else is doing life *right*. The allure of achieving something equally fabulous can be strong.

If you feel crippled by decision making, it might be worth asking yourself if you’re putting too much pressure on yourself to achieve a dream result. The resulting state of stress means you’ll struggle to hear guidance from your intuition (which is your best asset when it comes to making decisions).

From a spiritual perspective, it is not possible to make a bad decision, because every course of action you take will teach you something valuable you need to know for your soul’s journey. Even if the situation doesn’t work out the way you’d hoped, you will always be better for it. Plus, the Universe has a way of course-correcting you if you go way off track.

When I finished my journalism degree, I struggled to find employment. After three months I applied for, and got, a role on a business newspaper – which, for someone with zero interest in financial journalism, was not an appealing option. A year later, that publishing company went into receivership, owing me more than $2200 in unpaid wages and holiday pay*. This was not, obviously, an optimum result for me. But that does not mean it was a bad decision. I got the valuable experience I needed, which, as a new graduate in a flooded job-seeker market, I was struggling to get. I learned professional skills that set me up for my career path. Plus, I made a friend I instantly bonded with – and 15 years later, we remain close. I lost money, and I ended up unemployed again for several months… but if given the chance to go back, I would make the same decision again.

The truth is, the Universe will always make sure you end up in the right place, and among the right people, for your highest good. You may not have Oprah Winfrey’s wealth, Lena Dunham’s body of work or Salma Hayek’s boobs, and probably you never will, but you do have a pure heart, a resilient spirit, treasured memories, wonderful people in your life and the knowledge that the best is yet to come.

This I know to be true: you are exactly where you are supposed to be. I imagine that some people will find that depressing – probably because they believe that they have total control over their lives, or they had expectations of something more glamorous – but I personally find it enormously comforting. It means I’m being looked after by the Universe, and it also means that while I have the power to create anything I want, my choices won’t have the monumentally dire consequences I might have imagined.

The only bad decision we can possibly make is to let fear paralyse us to the extent that we make no decision at all.

Instead of procrastination, let’s choose courage and action.

*I got back about $345 of this around a year later, after the liquidators had settled the company’s affairs. Sad face.