One of the coolest things I did this summer was to spend a week in Taos at Jen Louden’s Writing Retreat. To spend a week not cooking and cleaning, not taking care of anyone, and just making room for what called to me.

While there, it hit me like a ton of bricks that in my efforts to constantly improve my business and my offerings, I started drifting away from the work I love and do best. Which is why I am offering something both old and new, which I am very excited to be making available, which I will tell you more about in the next few days.

During one of the writing sessions I wrote the following:

There’s really only one reason we don’t do the work we were called here to do.

Fear.

Fear of failure.
Fear of rejection.
Fear of criticism.
Fear of not being supported.
Fear of not making a living.

Of course it often doesn’t look like fear.

It looks like not knowing what you really want.

It looks like being practical.
It looks like being sensible.
It looks like following all that good advice you paid so much for.
It looks like “what the *beep*, how did I end up here?”

That’s what’s happened to me.

Today, I snapped out of my trance of busy-ness to find I had wandered off track. To realize I’ve backed off of my true work, that I gave up on some level believing that my work can be as joyful, as free, and as powerful as I’ve dreamed it could be.

I’ve been trying to be smart and strategic. Calculating the odds that my offers would succeed.

Protecting myself from disappointment.

You see, I decided somewhere along the way that people don’t want to know the True Spirit of their Work. I decided they don’t care about bringing forward their deepest message.

And rather than feel the pain and reach for it anyway, I decided to protect myself. To play it safe. To give people what they want.

Or what I thought they wanted.

I stopped trying. I wrote proposals with no message work in them. Or message work near the end.

I hoped if I played my cards right to earn the *right* to get around to the message work.

I thought this was a good thing. But it made me sad.

It made me feel like I was conspiring with all the naysayers, agreeing with the pragmatists who said I’d better offer something more marketable.

More easily understood.

More accessible.

Something that could command more money.

But you see, when I do message work, magic happens.

I hear what isn’t being said. I feel the deeper story behind your words.

Sometimes the words tumble out of my mouth fully formed. Or the questions I ask crack something open, and you start speaking in rhythm, laying down one beautiful line after another and I’m there to capture it and say it back to you.

My gift is telling the sublime from the mundane, from knowing when we’ve struck gold and when we’re still speaking everyday language.

My gift is helping you find the few lines that vibrate at a higher frequency, that carry in them the distilled essence of what you are here to share, at the greatest level you can own it today.

So, why would I spend any of my precious time doing anything else?
Seeking any other kind of work?

Because the risk of having this work overlooked and discounted, and rejected was too great. It felt safer to wrap this jewel up in another package, to slip it in with something else.

It felt smarter to offer lots of other valuable, worthwhile programs that I predicted would be better received.

But the result was slow, grey hell.
Depression.
Confusion.
A big, long stretch of blah-ness.

I’d been here before. In my twenties, when I gave up a promising dance career because someone in my life didn’t think I could make it, convinced me that if I did, I’d be miserable. So I gave it up.

And then wondered why I felt so lost.

I no longer want to choose playing it safe over reaching for the work I really want.
I am willing to heal anything I see that keeps me from living in full alignment with the bigger, deeper message I am here to share.

And I want that for you too.