Thank God for Girlfriends

I’ve been having a bit of a rough time lately. Not really with anything in particular and with everything at the same time.

One of my companies is in what Seth Godin calls The Dip, my 10 year old daughter is cranky and moody, my son broke his arm, and I’ve had limited time for my spiritual practice.

It might sound odd to hear this, but even with all that, I’m thrilled with my life. Pretty much.

The pretty much comes from a part of me that is not happy with my life and is not getting it’s needs met.

It’s my girl. The one inside who I don’t let out often enough.  The dreadlocked, tattooed, skirt-wearing, hippie girl.

She’s not too happy with the situation going on over here.

She wants a whole lot more freedom. To twirl and dance. To party all the time.

She wants to laugh. And feel.

She doesn’t care about the big house, flying first class and eating at fancy restaurants. She wants to run and jump and play. She wants to be outside and do art. And paddle-board. She definitely wants to paddle-board. In Hawaii.

And since she’s not getting any of that right now, she’s punishing me with negative behaviors, primarily in the form of whining and complaining.

I contain it and manage her, but she’s becoming unmanageable.

Hm, no wonder my daughter is whining and complaining as if she has PMS at only 10 years old.

Everything we experience is an out-picturing of our inner consciousness. She’s merely reflecting my girl back to me. Which is fitting since she is, well, my girl.

Did you ever notice that?

If a part of you is cranky and tired and whining, that will be projected on someone around you.

And when you are feeling resolved inside and have addressed the needs of all of your parts, everyone else around you seems more at peace as well?

Well, thank God for girlfriends because I’ve been struggling with an internal “what’s wrong” for a few weeks now and I couldn’t understand it because while there are a few hard things happening, overall so much is going so right:

• new CEO coming into company to help us through the Dip (what Les Mckeown calls Whitewater)
• clients are having huge successes (one of our Personal Family Lawyers began her firm in January and she engaged 9 new clients this month and already has 5 on the books for April)
• I’m meeting my daughter’s needs even though she is a crankypants without raising my voice or getting angry and my son’s broken arm is healing without surgery
• we are about to close on a farm about 20 minutes away from my house where we are going to have an organic farm, and
• despite that I don’t have marketing energy people are lining up to hear about the money map to freedom, which means my money map is working.

But, it took a lazy Sunday afternoon conversation with my girlfriend Sandy Grason to see “what’s wrong” and what I could do to fix it.

More focus on my personal spiritual practice.

I’ve given my business all my spiritual practice time over the last several months.

Putting LIFT in place in my own business, getting my money map running, seeing what I wasn’t seeing.

Those have been my spiritual practices in the recent months.

It’s time for me to take back some of my time and come home to me. When I do, I’ll rediscover the gratitude and truly be able to serve at the deepest level.

It’s time to rediscover my own personal spiritual practice.

Sandy’s began with journaling and she wrote a book about it – Journalution.

While I want writing to be enough of a regular spiritual practice for me, it’s really not.

My practice is something that must combine my body and breath and bring me out of my intellect and in connection with that part of me that is not being heard, my girl.

Ariana Hall, another girlfriend of mine, helped me recently understand more about these various parts of myself.

My awareness after working with her  is that whenever something is “wrong” it’s because I’m missing a communication from one of these parts of myself.

So, my practice will give my girl time and attention to be heard and felt.

As I understand more about what it looks like on a daily basis, I’ll let you know.

In the meantime, what’s your spiritual practice? Our natural state is joy, freedom and lightness.

If that’s not YOUR natural state, inquire into that.

And consider the possibility that all you need to get “better” is practice.