Dear Saboteur...
Someone asked a question in one of my coaching groups “why do we feel the need to burn everything down when it comes to our creative success…?”
My answer to that would be:
There’s a core belief that nothing good lasts, it will be destroyed, it will backfire or be taken from you, so you do the dirty destruction work first.
When things start to get a little closer to what you've always dreamed of, just as a runaway lover believes they’ll escape inevitable rejection, the same happens with burning your creations to the ground. An existential kink destroys any major transformation.
The bigger and better things become, the more you must open up, surrender and receive. The more you have to face yourself. And, that’s fucking scary. Rather than seeing it as transformation, considering what you will gain, you hyper-focus on what will be lost. Attached to things that no longer serve you. Subscribing to old stories.
New forms of love and recognition can feel strange and excruciatingly uncomfortable at first. If you don’t have a strong support network around you, if you don’t have people in your life who truly recognise you and understand this kind of evolution, it’s very easy to clam up, criticise yourself and burn everything down.
It can feel very lonely, it can throw you into a highly dysregulated state and sometimes what you think you ‘know’ when it comes to handling this isn’t enough. You need community support. You need people on the same wavelength. You need people who want you to grow, succeed, and evolve and will always be willing to call you out on your bullshit.
We cannot turn huge corners on our own, we end up at dead ends. Fact.
I’m going to share a little glimpse into one of my experiences with this:
In 2020 I created an online women's circle called ‘Wild Woman Reclamation’ that started out as 10 women, grew to 20, and then 30… it kept growing week on week to the point there was so much interest I held an online event for over 70 women!
The event went really well. I went to bed that night and experienced a huge emotional release which took me on a cosmic trip through the female line on both sides of my family. I felt generations of inadequacy and insecurity. It kept me up all night, I wailed and cried, my heart was tender and I felt a love for women I’d never felt before.
Your true soul calling will initiate you, over and over again… that’s understated.
I woke up the next morning to compliments flying into my inbox, my following went up by thousands, and people were messaging to work with me, liking and commenting on old posts…
Things blew up overnight, and in a sense… so did I. Internal combustion.
I felt sick. I wanted to hide. I was so overwhelmed.
Despite all the positive feedback being sent my way I could not open up and receive any of this positive stuff. It felt good on the surface, I held a weak smile, but deep inside I was dying.
In fact, in honesty, I totally clammed up and went offline for three months. It was too much. I felt like a fraud. I froze up and shut myself off to the momentum that was building. Messages were left unread, comments were ignored, and I even switched off Instagram for a while and deleted my Facebook group full of hundreds of women. People were offloading all kinds of issues, traumas, and situations they were dealing with into my inboxes and I was not ready for it. I thought I was.
Friends distanced themselves in the process of this happening. They didn’t see the work I was doing. They started treating me differently as my following grew and when we’d talk about work they’d quickly change the subject, they didn’t know what to say.
A part of me was like “I don’t want success if it means the people I love are going to abandon me” - and that’s what it felt like over and over again on my journey when I chose to change. People would judge, get jealous or slowly drift away. Many assumed I was ‘killing it’ and stopped contacting me. I began to isolate myself and felt very alone.
This was before I was a Spiral Practitioner. I wasn’t part of any coaching communities, I didn’t have a coach, I didn’t know anyone else who was doing this kind of work. In a sense I was a total newbie to ’spiritual’ business building. None of my family and friends were into healing work. The joke was I'd turned into a hippy, run away from the ‘normal’ world and was virtue signalling and sharing my problems online.
They didn’t know I was following the whispers of my soul. My work began to emerge through me, through internal guidance, just as changes in my life emerged when I chose to quit my job and hit the road. I went solo and followed an instinctual pull to do things that looked crazy to everyone in my life at that time.
I knew I was on track. Things kept coming in so naturally, but when they did I felt bedazzled and overwhelmed. From expansion came HUGE contractions. I started shrinking myself down. I wanted to return to some kind of comfort and safety. I wanted my friends to talk to me again. I was actually afraid of the success I’d been working so hard to create in my life.
I did not know how to stick at it and maintain balance. To trust in the process.
I could not believe in the positive feedback because I was yet to truly believe in myself.
By the time I felt ready to come back to the online space and start working again, it was really hard to regain that momentum. I’d successfully sabotaged what I’d created which in some ways felt very relieving, but in all honestly felt absolutely horrific. I’d deleted and destroyed so much of what I'd created because it didn't feel good enough. I’d put myself down, pretend it didn’t happen, and blame different situations as to why I couldn’t keep going. You name it, I found an excuse to stay small.
This kept happening.
When I built myself back up and had another big surge of success… the same pattern happened again. I got overwhelmed and hid away from the world. I’ll save that story for my book ‘Chronicles of the relentless and savage saboteur’.
This isn’t unusual behaviour when it comes to soul work… especially if you come from a very challenging background where the family has no idea what it means to follow your heart and do what you really love. Many are likely to be stuck in jobs they hate, fuelled by dopamine-inducing addictions to cope with their own unfulfillment.
Had I invested in some kind of support back then, I don’t think I would have handled it in the same way, but at that point, I had no idea what I really needed. I was stubborn as fuck. I found it hard to trust in anyone and set out to do EVERYTHING by myself.
What a mess… BUT I NEVER GAVE UP.
When you're on track with some form of soul-led work the surges of success will keep coming. The internet paints the illusion that you can be some kind of overnight success, but it’s the superficial, material success that you’re seeing. Genuine, sustainable success built from life experience and a deep need for honesty and integrity is going to take years and years of trial and error, lessons and blessings.
The trick is also learning how to open up and hold the bigness of it all. When you get hit with a struggle, a challenge, a test of will, you need to learn how to move out of a constricted state and keep going. You have to keep going. If it’s what you truly want, you won’t stop.
Several years down the track I now know, we all need healthy, authentic support. If you’re creating something soul-led, that no one in your family or friendship circle has had any experience with, expect to feel unmet when you need to express or de-stress. We need cheerleaders. We need teachers. We need guidance.
Every day is a new day to decide how you live your life. Every day is a new day to take a self-responsible approach and find people who can call you out on your blind spots.
Many try to approach creative pursuits and business building with the mindset that they can do it on their own… and for some, I’m sure that works, but I don’t believe it’s sustainable.
If you’ve grown up around harsh critics, and never really had any genuine cheerleaders, be sure to expect that those harsh voices are going to come back and haunt you at every single milestone when it comes to pursuing success. If you’ve grown up to become Ms/Mr Independent `don't need nobody, I’ll do it myself” be sure that will add an extra delicious layer to your mess.
I am grateful that after several years of trial and error with this, I’ve finally got some pro-cheerleaders on my team who know how to do emotional clearing work and are a few steps ahead. The best cheerleaders are those who rise like a phoenix from the flames of destruction over and over again. They know what it is to be in the trenches and they know that it’s no good staying there, crying victim to all who can hear it. They get their hands dirty, build the strength to get back at it and lovingly call you on your bullshit so you can get back into focus and follow your soul mission.
Maybe we should call them firefighters. People who have walked the path and know how to help you out of those difficult tower moments before you burn the whole thing down. Building your own soul-led business is going to have plenty of tower moments. It's part of the process.
To help us bring things to fruition we need healthy sounding boards and conscious mirrors to help us navigate the shadows we cannot see or choose not to.
I say this from the depths of my heart, don’t end up in a forever loop of self-sabotage. If you know this is you, at some point you’ve got to admit to yourself that you’re never going to get where you dream to be if you keep turning into your own worst enemy.
You have to get up, show up, glow up… KEEP GOING.
If this speaks to your soul and you feel it’s time to get the support you need to bring your own soul-led visions to life, I’d love to chat.
I have a 1:1 spot available for a 5-month mentorship available Please message me to discuss. Using Kinesiology to support me in my work, I will help you to go back in time to places in your life where a situation may not have been truthfully felt, recognised and processed. These forgotten or avoided situations from the past can create the same situations in life over and over again in the most subtle of ways until the pattern is seen and broken. I will help you to do this.
You can also click this link to apply or join my waitlist for future opportunities: APPLY
Becky x
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