This week I channeled some guidance I didn’t want to hear. It was intended for my email subscribers but I didn’t want to send it out because it felt too challenging. (Note that this guidance is for me, too, and I wanted something less challenging!) So I channeled more guidance, which I also didn’t like.
I kept channeling guidance until I had six weeks’ worth of guidance…and I didn’t like any of it.
But you get what you need, not what you want. Sometimes those things are the same, sometimes they’re worlds apart.
This challenging guidance began, “What are you avoiding right now, and why?”
How’s that for a kick in the pants? The universe will always shine a light on what we need to pay attention to. Sometimes this takes the form of subtle reminders and synchronicities. And if we ignore those, we get something like the guidance above: direct, confrontational, and with no room for interpretation.
If you take a few minutes to be quiet and ask yourself what you’re avoiding, what comes up for you?
I’m pretty good at facing unpleasant realities and doing what needs to be done–in some areas of my life. But with certain things, I can keep my blinders on (and excuses at the ready) indefinitely.
As an added challenge, my guides asked me to share publicly what I’ve been avoiding, what I’m struggling with. Not as punishment for avoiding it for so long, but as part of the practice of seeing it for what it is. Because when we keep our challenges hidden they seem bigger and scarier than they actually are.
I was also reminded that sharing my struggles will help you understand that you’re not alone.
We’re all struggling with something, and in fact most of us are struggling with many things. We keep our struggles secret because we fear judgement, we’re ashamed, and we think no one will understand us.
This is bullshit. If you look back on your life experience I guarantee that the times you were open and honest about your struggles you got unexpected support and you felt loved and connected. I guarantee that the times when you (finally) stopped avoiding what you didn’t want to deal with, you felt a sense of relief and empowerment, and your opinion of yourself improved. (Not to mention you made actual progress toward living the life you’re here to live.)
So without further ado, I’m gonna get real and raw with you.
Just like you, I have many struggles and challenges. The biggest challenge I’m facing right now has to do with my work as a professional intuitive. It’s about the work I do and how I do it, and my ability to be vulnerable in my work. I’ve been called to step into a new way of sharing my knowledge and working with my clients, but I keep avoiding it.
Even though I do meaningful work and receive rave reviews from my clients all the time, I still doubt myself. It’s not wholesale self-doubt, it’s the insidious sneaky kind of self-doubt. I don’t doubt my talent or my skill, I doubt my self.
My doubt shows up as a voice that says, well, yeah, you have a lot of useful information to share, but what if you can’t pull it together into something that will knock people’s socks off? What if you create something and no one wants it (which would therefore mean that you’re stupid and no one likes you)? What about the fact that you don’t have all your shit figured out and you’re not perfect–what if people find out about that? How ridiculous will you feel then?
My doubt even had me looking around at other people in my industry and comparing myself to them. And even though I haven’t seen anything like what I want to create, my doubt has, in particularly low moments, convinced me that what I have to share isn’t needed. I mean, really.
This self talk is insane. Writing it all down here for you to read feels crazy. One of my favorite authors, Brené Brown, says that you should never share anything you haven’t resolved. And this is, clearly, unresolved and totally in process.
I’m sharing it anyway because I feel like only sharing struggles in retrospect can sometimes create too rosy of a reality. I had a problem, I had some doubts and felt vulnerable, but then I figured it out and now everything is great! Yeah!
But the distance between where you start and where you finish can be enormous and the journey between those points can be incredibly tumultuous.
That’s why I’m sharing with you today. So that you can understand that even someone like me, who helps other people get their lives sorted out, and who has the benefit of very well-developed intuition that guides me towards what I need to do, still struggles. Because I have free will and fear and all the same resistance that you have, too.
I have that same impulse that you have, when the going gets tough, to wonder if I should just quit.
But I also know that everything I want is on the other side of what I’m avoiding. And I know this is true for you, too.
So look again at what you’re avoiding and realize that the pain you’re causing yourself through your avoidance is infinitely greater than the discomfort of facing a challenge you may not feel like you’re up for.
I’ve got your back, and I’d love to help you.
With so much love,
Jessica
