Acute Mess Doesn't Need Strategy As Its Lifeline

What it's gasping for is energetic alignment

Sometimes we get ourselves in a mess. It’s life. It happens.

At this time of the year, it would be ‘appropriate’ to write good news stories about clients’ successes. Wrap things up nicely, neatly. Make things look pretty. Wouldn’t that be ‘good business’?

Nope. That’s not how my deep desire to be of service wants to show up this morning.

Unfortunately ‘tension’ has no consideration for our calendar year. The 3 Wise Men of Peace, Love and Joy who are supposed to arrive in December are not always reality.

I’m coaching a few people right now where the tension is very prickly. ‘Current reality isn’t biting at my ankles, it’s now biting my ass. Today has been challenging, the situation is quite urgent’ was what I read first thing this morning. Then I had an 8am call with someone else in a similar situation.

Whether that tension shows up in our business, relationships, finances and health, it’s all gasping for re-alignment. And not just a little re-decorating here and there but a whole renovation.

Let me spell out what will inhibit that re-alignment and guarantee that we stay in the mess.

When you distrust the process

I believe that the Universe is self-correcting and geared to have us remember who we really are. It’s how I’ve consciously lived and coached the last 21 years. Personally I don’t see the point of our humanly existence if this were not true. For some ‘survival’ is everything given the state of their nation, but for others ‘survival’ isn’t what life wants to offer us.

Life wants us to thrive. Life wants us to say ‘that was a life well lived’. Life wants us to do that with our brothers and sisters. As we thrive, so do they. As they thrive, so do we. This is the true definition of abundance.

We lose our compass when we forget that life is lining us up to have this experience. And when we forget there is only one reality that we can experience - being victim of our circumstances. In this role we are powerless to change anything.

There is only one thing that thrives when we distrust the process. The vicious cycles and endless loops of trying to resolve and fix our circumstances rather than remembering the purpose of tension. Tension is part of growth. Growth allows us to remember who we really are beyond the limitation of our stories and masks.

When you allow yourself to be the sacrificial lamb

It was on my 8am emergency call this morning that I made a connection.

A few years ago I remember saying to someone who was about to create a new political party focussed on the health of our planet ‘This doesn’t need to be a burden. This can be a joy.’ I made that statement on our discovery call yet it was this statement that most impacted her over our year coaching together.

This wonderful human referred me to another wonderful woman who I’ve been coaching for just over a month and who was on my 8am emergency call. She was about to go into a spiky meeting. I said ‘you don’t have to be the sacrificial lamb today. We have soul contracts with people who enable freedom from our woundings through the triggers they provide. But we also have soul contracts with people where the relationship can be one of great joy.’

Breakthrough time.

Quite affected by this proposition she said ‘I have never brought joy, fun and more of my wild side to my work. That’s always been separate. The corporate world has not had a place for that.’ Up until now, I replied.

There are truly generous and powerful humans whose genuine desire and purpose is to love, nurture and protect people, planet and all living things. If that is you I am reminding you that you don’t need to be the sacrificial lamb in this pursuit. Because there are only winners and losers here, and the loser can only be you if you don’t allow and welcome those you are soul contracted with to share joy as a vital element to your mission.

Let me remind you of something simple that can create many Ripples of Impact.

Joy is purpose.

When you’re decimated by another person’s response

This isn’t freedom. This is attachment, co-dependence and need.

Your freedom doesn’t depend on whether someone agrees, says yes or hears your needs.

Basing your freedom on someone or something external to you is entanglement. And entanglement creates mess. And mess affirms the victim role.

Nobody else is in charge of your thoughts and feelings but you. Your perception and your response is fuelled by your thoughts and feelings. Take great care of your internal reality. Remember to fuel your internal reality with love and not fear and back to point one, to the premise that life wants us to thrive.

My darling friend Suzie De Jonge, author of the book The Untangling and host of The Untangling Podcast is an avid A Course in Miracles student, as I am too. She posted this today.

Thank you Suzie. Perfectly timed with my writing. Of course. 🙏🏼

When you fail to see that this is a never again moment

And then you repeat it.

One of the things I love about my coach is that on occasion he has pointed out ‘this is a never again moment’. Of course he’s said that when life has been messy, and trust me, I listen.

When life is biting your ass it’s biting your ass for a reason. It’s urging you to take responsibility for the mess, not from blame, but from self-compassion, humility and radical self-honesty. It’s biting you on the ass so that through the awareness of what caused the mess in the first place, and through your decision to not repeat those stories because you love and respect yourself, this then becomes your never again moment.

When you hijack momentum because of other ‘priorities’

Yes. Our identity doesn’t like change. It prefers the safety and predictability of what it has known and herein lies a false promise.

Undeservedness can also play a part here. Can you fully reclaim yourself after a lifetime of giving yourself away?

When momentum is present and there is distortion due to unworthiness and the preference for supposed safety and predictability, other ‘priorities’ show up. These priorities can be very well dressed and beguiling to get your attention, but be cautious, because they will hijack momentum and undercut what you fully deserve.

Can you have it all?

Well, in the spirit of 2024’s theme of Untapped Abundance, yes you can.

When you don’t see sadness as a strength

When we’re in the mess, it’s easy to do anger, frustration, resentment, worry and anxiety. Those feelings come by default. And they need to be felt whilst not agreeing with the story they are wanting to tell you, nor agreeing with the victim or persecutor role they are wanting you to play.

But what lies underneath these edgy emotions is sadness. Always.

Do you have the strength to feel that sadness?

Do you have the strength to allow that sadness to share a compassionate moment with yourself?

Judgment is an anti-creator. But self-compassion wants to hold your hand and walk with you to freedom.

And finally, can you see that the solution is not what you might have thought?

For most strategy will be the first port of call.

Whether it’s about health, wealth, business or relationship the initial response is often the same.

What course of action can we take? What can we ‘do’ to clean up the mess? What strategy can we adopt?

Self-awareness is non existent.

But it’s never, ever, ever about action in the first instance unless life is literally being threatened.

For those who have the luxury of reading this newsletter including myself in the luxury of writing it, our lives are not being threatened by war or health emergencies in the day to day of our lives.

When our lives are not being threatened, we have the privilege to stop and take stock. We have the privilege to take a breath and to become present. We have the privilege to observe ourselves in the circumstances we find ourselves in.

Who were we being that created the mess?

When I first opened my eyes to personal growth work in 2002 I read Helen Palmer’s Enneagram - Understanding yourself and life. I ate that book up. When I saw that I held beliefs of unworthiness and unlovability, I saw how my life had been a perfect reflection of those beliefs that I was previously unconscious to. So many beliefs, so many stories sit there directing the show, well that is until we see them and choose differently.

I often ask clients ‘if your life was a book title, what would it be?’ Yesterday a new client I am working with said ‘Grin and Bare It’. Guess what belief underpinned that story line? Deep unworthiness.

I also work with people who have cancer or who have had cancer. The need to control is the common denominator here. Cancer comes into their life - something that they can’t control to have them surrender and go to that place of humility, radical self-honest and personal responsibility. Whilst they might want to punch me through the Zoom lens when I initially suggest that one day cancer will be their friend rather than foe, there always comes that moment of arrival where sincere gratitude is felt for the inner journey cancer catalysed.

Self-awareness is the answer. Self-awareness of what created the mess. And self-awareness of what is now seeking you from a place of self-love, trust, knowing, intuition, authenticity, faith and grace. In coaching I talk about ‘facilitating the breakthrough shift in perception - the one that changes everything.’ This is where the breakthrough shift in perception lives and it is this that creates energetic alignment. And when energetic alignment is present, this is the space for miracles to occur.

Without self-awareness we are merely treating the symptom through the implementation of strategy or going into doing and action mode. I promise you that in this orientation, unless it’s an emergency situation, nothing is going to change for the long term.

---

I hope that my not so good news story which really is the road to the true good news stories created some nudges, provocations, taps on the shoulder, even enlightenment.

If you enjoy this newsletter I’d love for you to share it with your community. Thank you to those who have already done that.

Love,

Gisele