There and Back Again…

Hey everybody, it’s me. 

Long time no see, I know.  And I’m sorry. I know I basically dropped off the face of the earth. 

This time a year ago, I had a lot of ambitions, hopes, and dreams for the Authenticity Corner. 

I had done so much personal work leading up to launching my practice that I felt like I had cut through all the noise, all the bullsh*t, and I had finally crystalized my vision for my business and what kind of work I wanted to do. Then I booked my first few beta-clients, and this great positive momentum was starting to build. I was talking to all kinds of people, and I felt so good to be finally dialed in on my vision, my drive, my *why* for my practice and what I was doing.

In the midst of that work, I reached out to a fellow coach and had a great conversation with her. She recommended that it was time for me to take my practice to the next level, which included a business training opportunity, a leap of faith, and a big investment on my end. 

And in the magic of the moment, and in the middle of everything I was doing, I thought it was the right choice, and I went for it. I felt so confident that I was making progress, that I was in alignment with my vision for my life, and I wanted to be bold and make an investment in myself. 

But after many hours, and many many many dollars later, I hit system overload and found myself crashing and burning. 

I got sucked back into the cycle. Again. 

Have you ever struggled with that? Trying to make a change, trying to be different, trying to create a better life for yourself, and going all in on something SO. HARD that you feel like you’re spinning your wheels in the mud? But no matter how hard you go at it, you can’t seem to make it work the way you want? 

Followed by the crushing disappointment, the what-the-hell-am-I-doing question, the look-I-failed-again monologue, and then The Shame. The shame of sharing with your friends and family that this didn’t work out AGAIN. 

I have been riding this struggle bus for a long time, almost a decade now, trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. What kind of life do I want to have, how do I want to spend my time, how much money do I want to make, what do I find valuable and meaningful in this world, and how do I contribute to that.

But more than that, I struggled with what I *didn’t* want to be. 

I didn’t want to be stuck in a 9-5 schedule. I didn’t want to feel stuck and trapped with the level of income I was making. I didn’t want to take on more debt to spend more time going to school, just to get that promotion that paid enough for me to pay off the debt, but still stuck in the 9-5 schedule. I didn’t want to do the corporate meetings, I didn’t want to use the buzzwords like ‘circle back’, ‘walk-off items’, or ‘deliverables’. #barf

And I know I’m not the only one who feels that way, because all these messages keep popping up in our culture about “Quit your 9-5 in 90 days” or “So and So went from a single mom of 8 kids with $500,000 in debt to a multi-millionaire working only 4 hours a week, and here is how you can too!” They seem too good to be true, but maybe if we can just find THE THING, it’ll finally take off for us and all work. 

I have been trying to find THE THING. I’ve tried maybe 9 to 10 times by now, and have spent (super vulnerable alert) nearly $30,000.00 trying to figure it out.  When it doesn’t go according to plan, I wonder “is it me, or is it the thing?” 

Most of the time, I assumed that *I* am the problem, not the thing. And every once in a while, depending on what the thing is, I will blame the thing, or just say that the thing isn’t for me. In either case, in order to keep going, I just try not to think about it, chalk it up to ‘lessons learned’ and go out and try to find the next thing. 

Lather, rinse, repeat, the cycle continues. 

So now, here I am, basically back to where I started, feeling a little more beat up, a little more unsure of myself, and honestly, laughing at myself a little bit because breaking this cycle is the whole point of why I want to be a coach and why I started this business in the first place. 

I created the Authenticity Corner as a space where I, and like-minded souls, could come together and unpack all the hidden messages, beliefs, stigmas, the shoulds and shouldn’ts of the world. A place where we can identify the constructs that our culture, our jobs, our friends, and family, or even ourselves, have put on us about what life is about, what it should be, what is or isn’t important, and how we should live it. 

Yet, with this opportunity that happened a year ago, I got sucked into doing just that, buying into someone else’s framework of how I should build my practice, what is or isn’t important, what will work and what won’t. 

Don’t get me wrong, I learned a LOT from that opportunity, and have been given insight and tools into how to continue this work going forward. 

But in my efforts to build my practice the ‘right way’ or the ‘perfect way’, i.e the way others were telling me to build it, I lost sight of the joy I was feeling of building this business for authenticity (they told me authenticity was too vague). 

So, now that I’ve had some time and space, and have been able to get up, dust myself off, and am here to try again, not starting from scratch, but from experience, I’m here to reorient myself to my authentic self and what I’m trying to build here. 

Because truly, while I personally feel like I need to lean into the Authenticity Corner now more than ever, I created all of this for you. 

Because I don’t want you to spend 10 years and $30,000 trying to figure this out. 

Because I don’t want you to have to stumble through all the books, all the podcasts, all the ‘how to be happy’ Google searches that I did to get to this point.

Because I don’t want you to feel like sh*t about yourself the way I do when I repeat these cycles. 

With being a coach, I feel this enormous pressure to have it all figured out, so I can write blog posts like these and present myself as ‘the expert’. But I’m not, I’m clearly not an expert. But in the midst of all this cycling, I have picked up a thing or two. I have learned just enough to be dangerous, I like to say. ;) 

And what I have learned is that there is courage in vulnerability, there is compassion in showing up as the messy human being that I am, and that above all else, there is always hope, so long as I am willing to pick myself up and try again. 

Walt Disney had to file bankruptcy before creating Mickey Mouse. 

J.K Rowling was rejected 12 times before publishing Harry Potter. 

Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, applied at 242 different banks for a business loan before getting the approval he needed to build Starbucks. 

For me, with reading and thinking about these stats, I’m not saying I’m the next Walt Disney. But what these stories tell me is that getting knocked down and losing my way is a part of getting back up. 

And as tired as I am of this cycle, I’m getting back up again, and I’m going to lean into my heart this time, instead of the ‘shoulds’. 

I hope you’ll tag along for the ride. 

All my love, 

-Lauren