We’ve all been there: A racing heart. A pit in the stomach. Perhaps an ever-present feeling of “I should be doing more” or “I’ll never be enough”. That familiar, visceral feeling is your body trying to send you a message: Something isn’t working, and you’ve got to start paying attention.
I lived with that full-body experience of anxiety for years.
On the outside, I’m sure I seemed happy: I was driven, had a great job, a ton of friends, and always seemed to be on the move. But on the inside, I was struggling. I was completely unhappy with my career, in a constant and incredibly toxic battle with my body and self-image, and felt wildly lost in most of my relationships.
That sense of powerlessness was especially triggering because I knew my core that I wasn’t meant to feel so small. I intuitively knew that I had untapped potential, but I had no clue how to let it out.
For about two or three years, I allowed that sense of powerlessness to become my homeostasis. There was even a point where I started to assume that this is just what it’s “supposed” to feel like when you’re an adult: riddled with anxiety, unsure of your purpose, and never quite happy. But the more I started to resign to that storyline, the more my anxiety flared up - my soul was trying reeaaally damn hard to get my attention.
After one particularly bad stint - I was calling out of work left and right, bailing on all my friends, in a tremendous amount of debt, all while my mental and physical health disintegrated - I finally decided to listen to my inner voice.
I knew that there were quite a few things in my external environment that needed to shift, and my inner world needed a hell of a lot of TLC, too.
With the help of my first coaches, mentors, and spiritual teachers, I started to feel empowered enough to begin removing my blocks and deal with my fears, anxieties, and sadness so that I could finally meet myself for the first time: in my power, full of love, successful, and happy.
Light and prescriptive on one hand, and almost painfully and emotionally charged on the other. For some people, “happy” is a goal in the distance, something they strive to one day be. A destination point. A light at the end of the tunnel. Hope. For others, “happy” is a pretty word used as a disguise. A thinly-veiled attempt to push down the sad, the bad, and the ugly. “I’m good! I’m happy! I promise!”.
Before I started doing the inner work, I wasn’t too sure I bought into the whole “happiness” thing...but as I moved deeper and deeper into my own healing journey, I finally understood what authentic happiness - or, dare I say it, joy - truly feels like: freedom from negative inner dialogue, gratitude for the now, and a deep, unshakeable sense of trust for all that’s to come.
I tried a lot of things on my own healing journey, from the super-tactical (Make goals! Achieve said goals!) to the super-esoteric (we’re talking vows of silence, energy work, and past-life regressions). It felt like I was piecing together a puzzle without a picture to follow, and that initial sense of confusion is how I ultimately created my own approach to coaching: scientific, spiritual, and tactical.
I am loved, loving, and whole.
I am loved, loving, and whole.
I am loved, loving, and whole.
repeat after me:
my approach
scientific, spiritual, and tactical
scientific
spiritual
Tactical