So you want simplicity and freedom?

Here’s what it takes.

Releasing.
Letting Go.

The you who has grasped on tenaciously to things, people, a busy schedule for security…

The you that is keeping the expensive dress that you bought but never wear….

The you who is still doing that work gig that stresses you, or bores you, or frustrates you because the money is good…

The you who is keeping this ‘high-achieving’ show going…

You know? That you.

That you needs to learn how to release, let go.

That you needs to make a trust fall into oblivion.

You can’t take that you with you into the new life you want – a life of simplicity, freedom and flow.

But you also can’t castrate this you.

This you, afterall, is a valid, high-functioning part of you. This you “ahem” is credited with affording you such a stable and well-established life. This you has gotten you to where you are today.

The tricky thing about the security and stability consciousness of this you, is that it binds things into place.

It seeks what works and then to repeat that way until the end of time. It does not want change.

In the ancient Indian art of living “Ayurveda”, this is called the “Kapha” aspect. Comprised of earth and water, it forms mud, and wants to stick us there, heavy and unchanging. Kapha provides us with stability and strength, but it also keeps us from ready mobility and lightness.

And at this point in your life you know what business as usual brings you. You feel an urge to do your thing, your way.

You want to travel more. You want to lighten your load. You want more time in your schedule – a lot more time – maybe you’re even ready to not have a schedule!

The kind of freedom you are sensing is possible is very real and very possible.

I believe there’s a change under-way in the collective norms. I believe that this is the way that many more of us are meant to be living.

Having less in your schedule makes you more available to the way things naturally want to unfold. You are able to go with the flow because you don’t have to be anywhere at 12:45.

You’re able to follow your body’s cues about sleeping, eating and movement. You can go for a swim today because your body wants to feel the water rushing over you. And while swimming you receive a life-altering insight and then meet a new friend. You’ll do yoga tomorrow.

What I’ve found is many people crave the kind of simplicity and freedom that they see and sense is possible – but they want it without having to change.

They want simplicity without having to let go.

They want the new without letting go of the old.

It simply does not work that way! : (

You can’t take the old with you into this new life.

The old needs to metamorphosis into a new orientation towards life and security entirely. The new orientation to life is one of moment-to-moment trust.

The old you was good at creating and acquiring.

The new you needs to be great at releasing.

That which is normal to the current you will seem absurd to the future you.

The schedule I kept ‘normally’ at the height of my success would be utterly intolerable to me now. I simply could not and would not do it. Why would I, anyway? Why would I be overly busy and stressed when life is taking care of me perfectly?

This situation arose recently in an intimate coaching session with a client. This person has a well-established, 20 year, lucrative holistic wellness practice and wants to make the transition to more teaching, selling books and leading retreats.

In her mind, she had a plan about how she would go about this transition gradually and logically. By next year, she would have decreased her practice from 4 days a week, to 3 days a week and replaced the lost income with her new endeavours with speaking.

It sounded sound. But at the same time…like a paper house.

As she was talking, the image came to my mind of someone swinging from one vine to another. And that in this case, in order for her to reach the new vine (her new life of teaching and travel) she would first need to release her grip on the old vine. And that if she didn’t let go of the current vine, she wouldnt’ be able to reach the new one.

Release the old, stay a moment in that space of nothingness…nothing to hold onto, suspended mid-air, new vine within sight but still just out of reach.

That, my friend, is a bold transition.

Not all transitions happen that way. Sometimes the new vine is right there within reach. We keep the grip of the old ways of thinking and doing things. We keep the old job, or the old business. And then, something new and fantastic comes along that we can get a firm grip on, making it easy and comfortable to release the old.

In this case, we get to enjoy all of the security and comfort of the old and the fresh opportunity of the new. Hurrah! This is a safe and easy transition to make. You’d be crazy not to go for the new vine!

It’s still a change, but it’s the best kind of change. It’s change without the risk.

In this client’s case it would be the equivalent of her beginning to feel restless in her current practice and then her publisher offers her a gig teaching and travelling for the same income or more. “Yes, please. Why not?”

These safe and easy transitions do happen…I think. I don’t have much experience with them. They certainly aren’t what people come to me for! I have more experience with bold transitions.

I specialize in them. ; )

One of the principles of letting go of the old vine to make it possible to reach the new vine, I learned from Catherine Ponder in her book The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity. In that book she talks about the “vacuum law of prosperity.” The gist of this law is that if we want something new in our life, we first need to create a vacuum of space for the new to come in.

In other words, we literally need to let go of the old to create space for the new to fill it.

I have applied this law courageously and sometimes trembling in my boots, fingernails gripping on many times over the past several years in my process of simplifying and freeing myself.

Some highlights have been:

• Deciding to stop doing 1-1 enrolment conversations because I knew that my future life and self had a free schedule and my schedule was full of them. At the time, my sense of security was so threatened that I literally felt like I would die if I let go of doing these. But I did it anyway. And I didn’t die.
• Returning from my vacation in Mexico to my home in the rocky mountains of Alberta and knowing that I didn’t belong there anymore. I didn’t know where I would go or what home I would live in, but I gave the landlords my notice and sold, gave away or pitched nearly all of belongings, including: my precious wardrobe of expensive clothing that I’d work with a personal image consultant to acquire over many years, my years of elaborately beautiful journals (I threw them in the dumpster…an image that’s emblazoned on my mind) and all of the furniture, art pieces etc. I’d work hard to acquire.

It wasn’t easy. I cried a lot that month. I was shocked to see how attached I was to these things.

“What you own, ends up owning you.” – Fight Club

I also had no idea what the next step was. I didn’t have a plan. I wasn’t secure in when or where the new vine was coming. I was letting go without the new vine in sight. All I saw was emptiness.

But I could ‘feel’ that the new was there. And that this was the right next thing. And that all I needed to do was act in faith. And I did.

Back to my client and the vines. What becomes evident when faced with a bold transition is one’s relationship to life.

How much do you really trust life and your place in the whole?

The only reason one doesn’t let go of the old vine in favour of the new, desired vine is that we are afraid of the fall. We are afraid that if we let go of the old vine, we’ll miss the new vine entirely and plummet to our demise!

Well. That might happen. Actually, you don’t want to hear this, but it’s quite likely that letting go of the old vine you won’t get the new vine.

You quite likely won’t get what you think you want but instead, in letting go you might enter into a free fall through the air, a disorienting descent.

But when the initial moments of panic subside, you get used to it. This falling becomes a release and a relaxing surrender into the hands of the God/Universe/Life – a power far greater than you that is way better at controlling the reins anyway.

The vine you were reaching for, turns out, was only there to get you to let go of the old so that life could finally, in your absence of control, do the exciting things with you that you were born for.

Know this:

Life takes care of those who are devoted to playing their small part in the picture with utmost trust and devotion.

They can be unconcerned about their security. It is guaranteed.

It is those who are not in the flow, those who are grasping for security and maintaining unnatural, stressful scheduled lives that end up fighting for their survival.

I’m making this sound dramatic, but the unnatural, stressful busy-ness is so much the norm of ‘successful’ people that it goes unquestioned. But anytime I interact with one of these beautiful, well-meaning leaders, I can feel it…it’s suffocating. There’s so little room to breathe.

The world needs less successful leaders and more surrendered leaders.

If you are called to simplify and to feel free….
If you are called to shed the weight and responsibility of your current business structure…
If you are called to leave behind your highly scheduled existence in favour of a more spacious one..
If you are called to teach and meet with people to touch their lives…

Then, chances are, you are called to that for a reason. And now is the right time for you to make the move in that direction. But it won’t happen without releasing the old.

So how to make this bold transition?

Boldly.

I help Type A Hippies to get into flow in all three realms of Love, Sex and Genius.