If you asked me that question a week ago I would’ve told you, “Absolutely not!” I think most of us would respond that way. We’re all positive people, right?
I unearthed a new mental reality about myself last Saturday. I didn’t even know I was stuck in the mindset of failure, yet I was. Here’s my story:
I am blessed to have a cow horse named Pearl. The last time I showed her (the third time ever as a baby) was almost two years ago. It was the most horrible show experience of my life, and I’ve been showing since I was five years old so that says a lot. She was so panicked and freaked about going into the arena that she bolted as soon as I asked her to move forward. The entire class was one fast bolt – I don’t think she could have gone any faster if she had a pack of wolves on her tail. I was mortified.
We found a cow horse trainer to finish Pearl last year – a man with a gentle hand and soul who has calmed her fears and transformed her into a stunning performance horse. Last Saturday was my chance to make up for the horror of that last show – my first new chance to show Pearl as an adult. On Thursday when I got on her in my trainer’s large arena – she grabbed the bit and bolted all the way back to her stall. De Ja Vu is an understatement. All I could feel was the failure that had been with me for two years – descending on me again like the proverbial self-fulfilling prophecy.
I spent Thursday and Friday proving to her that she could trust me, showing her that the arena was a wonderful place filled with carrots and pets and lotsa calm energy. Yet I was still fearful, stuck in the failure and waiting for a repeat performance. My trainer had a heart to heart with me Friday night – and flat told me to shift my head because she was fine – it was all inside me. And so I did. Friday night I shifted my vision and meditated on one thing – a slow, steady and calm day for Pearli and I on Saturday.
In the end – we did really well. In fact – we won the cow class:) YAHOO! What really made me feel like a winner was that my Pearli stayed calm all day, even sleeping in the sun between classes by the arena gate. We have come so far!
So what does this have to do with business?
When I hit the freeway to come home, I started sobbing. That really caught me by surprise. I should be thrilled, why am I sobbing? As I felt my way into that overwhelming feeling – I had a big Rebelation.
I was sobbing because for the first time in a long while, I felt successful. We all know that feeling – the confident joy of something well-done, well-earned and long-desired. Yet how many of us have forgotten that joy in the face of our daily lives and the new economy?
The past few years have been tough for all of us. We’ve faced economic shifts, world shifts and for many of us, huge personal shifts. Many of of the shifts have been difficult (to say the least), energy sucking and just plain heavy. In my own life, thanks to some pretty amazing occurrences, I’ve questioned myself, my business, my very fundamental reasons for being.
In that questioning, surrounded by shifts of gigantic proportions – I lost my confidence. And I didn’t realize it. You see, I’ve always been the girl who created magic. I worked really hard for that magic – and I created it in most everything I touched. But then, life happened.
Five years ago I had the rug pulled out from under my personal life – and I began a downhill slide. Slowly and subtly I shifted from the power of the positive and creating magic – to the overwhelming position of a failure, a victim and simply trying to survive.
Little by little my confidence diminished. A poor choice here, a bad result there whittled away at my normal positive self. As my confidence slipped so went my expectations. And I never even recognized that I’d begun to slide.
Until years later I found myself driving down the road, sobbing at the long-forgotten and yet oh-so-powerful feeling of success. Wow.
How did I let success become a foreign feeling, rather than the basis of my life? The answer is GRAVITY. We all have it, we all get it – and usually we never know it’s there. Until we have a wake up call. Luckily for me – my wakeup call was a positive one. That’s unusual – those wakeups usually come in the form of negative occurences – so I’m feeling particularly blessed.
Here’s my question for you.
Are you operating from that feeling of success, the exhilaration of knowing that you can (and will) create magic in your business and personal life? Or are you like me, stuck in survival mode, lowering your expectations after a long and hard battle in our new economy?
If you are stuck in the feeling of failure – perhaps it’s time to take a look and shift your perspective. Success is all around us, there for the taking – when we expect it.
