So, I’ve been asking the universe for a message. Last night I got one.
I’ve been wondering what I’ve been missing in my life. Not like what’s missing physically, but a deeper meaning behind what I’ve been doing, how I’ve been showing up, and the emotions I’ve been feeling.
Something’s been “off” so to speak, and I haven’t been able to figure it out.
This week in my group coaching program we’ve been talking about words and how the energy behind them creates your life. I’ve been noticing the things I want to have, that I’ve been “working” on for years that still haven’t shown up, and I’m left wondering what I’m doing wrong.
I help people build success in their businesses. I work one on one with others to improve the overall quality of their life. I assist in shifting energy around love, money, life purpose, relationships, career paths, and mindset.
Yet, the things I can release in others I can’t always do for myself.
So I ask the universe to help me.
I know when the time is right, awareness and guidance will come to me. It’s just a waiting game until I am ready to receive the information, and that time is not up to me.
Often we have to go through several seemingly unrelated experiences to make us “ready” to receive what we need. It’s preparation because you can’t understand things you don’t have the awareness for yet. I trust that.
Patiently, I’ve been awaiting my answer. I finally got one.
What I received was one word: small.
I thought about this one word answer, which is odd for me. I’m used to getting massive downloads that take a few days to decode. So this is new.
And there’s a lot packed into this one.
Small.
How does “small” show up in my life?
Oh, this one is a doozy.
(And if you think I’m someone who has it all together, I’m about to ruin all that. Read on if you want to know what’s behind the curtain.)
Small.
That’s how I show up in life.
I AM physically small. I am about 5’ tall on a good day and can get knocked over by a strong gust of wind.
I can’t reach a damn thing at the grocery store, have a hard time finding pants that I don’t have to cuff with a tight roll, and am overlooked quite often because people don’t see me standing there (although the blue hair does help me stand out more these days).
I feel like I’ve had to overcompensate with a BIG personality to be seen and heard. That gets old after a while and I revert back to my “smallness” because it feels safer to just go unnoticed.
Some of the life experiences I’ve had pushed me deeper into my small existence and my self-implied invisibility. Being small meant I wasn’t seen or heard.
I was brushed aside when I had anything to say when I was in a room with people with bigger personalities and who were smarter than me when it came to certain topics. I wasn’t “allowed” to weigh in. Nobody heard me when I did anyway, so it led me to feel rejected, unworthy of contributing to conversations, and stupid. So I stopped talking.
The depression set in deep. So did the drinking. Soon after I started thinking that there wasn’t even a reason for me to be on the planet.
It got bad.
All because I felt small.
It didn’t stop there either.
After becoming a mom, I felt like I got even smaller. My needs went unnoticed because my child came first. Often when I’d visit family, I felt like they didn’t even know I was there and wouldn’t notice if I walked off in the opposite direction and never came back.
My belief in being small clouded everything in my life. I was left feeling so empty, so unhappy, so disempowered.
It even showed up in my work.
While working as a visual merchandiser, I never felt good enough. I felt my ideas were “under” the level of my trainers and I’d never get it right. I knew the staff looked up to me (I also managed the store every Saturday night) but owning that was something I never did.
Owning any of my expertise was out of the question for me for DECADES. Why? Because of being small.
By being small I could remain a victim. I could keep the illusion of not being good enough going for as long as I wanted. I could complain that I didn’t have any skills or I wasn’t smart enough to get paid a lot of money. I gave myself a glass ceiling because I didn’t think I was capable of being “big”.
And trust me, I’ve wanted to be “big” my whole life. My dream was to be a rock star, have a band, go on tour, and sell out stadiums. Or be on Broadway.
Neither one of those things happened (yet), but I did try my hand at starting a tap dance company. It was good, it was fun, but it never took off the way I wanted it to.
Even though I am definitely considered an expert in my field, with 25 years of teaching under my belt, tons of classes and experience, and a damn good education from the best of the best in Tap dance for 20 years, I didn’t think I could do it. I played small.
I thought other people were way better and I compared myself to them constantly. I thought “Who am I to do this? I don’t have the kinds of performance credentials these other people have! Who’s going to hire me?”
We did have a good amount of success and visibility, but because I felt so small I was never able to manifest the types of opportunities I really wanted. I played small because I didn’t think I was capable of being any bigger.
There are countless other experiences I could tell you about, but this is a blog post, not a book.
After receiving this one word answer last night, I began to notice how “small” has affected my life and who I am working to become.
As I mentioned, this one is loaded with things to unpack. It’s like my long lost luggage has finally arrived home from being lost at sea for the last decade.
Joy of joys, I get to look inside. (Yes, I am being facetious).
Sometimes you just gotta bite the bullet, pull up your big girl pants, and dive in.
That’s how you grow. You face the uncomfortable shit head on so you can learn from it, lean in, and alchemize what has been stuck for so long.
I’ve shared with you only the tip of the iceberg of how “small” has shown up for me, and I won’t lie and say I am looking forward to seeing all the other ways this energy has secretly seeped into my life.
However, I am so freaking ready to step up and live big.
I have big dreams. I have a reason for living and a purpose driving me to do better and be better every day that I am given.
In order to truly live that life and become the person I so desperately want to be, I have to let go of this smallness. I know I probably won’t ever be 5’5” unless I wear platforms, but I do know that I can allow myself to grow bigger energetically and visibly in life.
By being willing to grow and shed the old skin, I will also be face to face with my fears around being seen, heard, visible, big, successful, and breaking new ground in my life and business.
This means I now have an opportunity to be “bigger” than those fears. I can get above them with new thought patterns and beliefs about myself and what I believe is possible for me (anything!).
I know I am meant for great things. I know that you are too.
If you’re playing small, I invite you to take a look at why. Dig into those fears around why you aren’t playing big and how it’s affecting your life.
Reach out any time if you’re ready to kick those fears to the curb. I’ll be digging in deep and using a process I‘ve used for a while now to unravel whatever is ready to go, and can show you how to do the same.
There’s no reason to live a life where you don’t feel like you’re good enough to thrive or play big. You are meant for so much more.
Here’s to us, you and me, facing the fear and doing it anyway.
“I got you Boo” – the Universe.