Can You Trust Yourself?

I have a good friend–ok, he used to be a good friend–who after becoming ultra-Christian would constantly get on my case about following my intuition. When he had an important decision to make, however, he would say that he first needed to pray on it. God would answer him and–tada!–he knew what action to take next.

He said that when I was following my intuition it was really just my ego that I was following. Wait. So, I’m talking to my ego, but you’re talking to God?

Interesting.

For him, our two approaches were very different, but for me they were pretty much the same thing: connecting with Spirit/Soul/Divine/God.

Our conversations brought up a very interesting and confounding question that I have been grappling with ever since: how do I know if I can trust myself?

Are my intuitions/hunches/feelings coming from some deeper (read: higher) source, or are they originating from my base desires, such as comfort, security, lust, etc?

Allow me to provide an example.

I had some really amazing success with one of my recent blog posts, The New Sexy: Women Over 40. At its peak, more than two thousand people an hour were reading my blog–twenty-four hours a day!

That’s amazing when you consider that before that article, the most hits I had ever gotten on any of my blog posts in an entire day was only 200 views.

It’s very interesting to have your dreams begin to manifest in the world outside of you. I couldn’t sleep. I kept refreshing the stats button on my blog, as every 30 seconds it seemed like another 100-200 people were viewing my blog. I was giddy with joy.

It was also stressful. I wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of visitors to my site. I had no social media buttons set up; no way to capture followers, as they say in the industry.

I was worried that I would become another one-hit wonder, vis-a-vis Vanilla Ice.

For the next three weeks, I impatiently waited for my new website to employ social media buttons and capture email functionality so I could be ready for the next big wave to hit my blog.

Just last weekend, I traveled to Orlando, Florida for our company’s financial services convention. This is my meat-and-potatoes business as I wait for my writing career to really take off.

During one of the main sessions, I was standing in the back of the room, somewhat restless as I had been up all night talking to one of my new friends in New Zealand about my article. My main mentor in the financial industry, Jeff, saw me and called me over. He was standing next to an extremely tall gentleman, and he introduced us. Now, Jeff is no short guy, and this guy was hovering over Jeff!

Amidst small talk, he asked me what I do. I told him about my blog and how one of my posts had just crossed over the half-a-million mark in the past three weeks. He was impressed, and he asked me what the pain point of my target audience was.

Pain point? I had no answer. We discussed it more, and he mentioned that he would put me in touch with his business partner who had a business dedicated to helping people like me turn their blogs into full-blown money-making machines.

For REAL???! That’s exactly what I had been asking for–help!

It was as if the Universe was sending me a direct confirmation that I was on the right track.

A day after the convention, I received an email from his partner. We scheduled a time to talk the next day. I was so excited! The call went amazing. She gave me some insights into how to move forward, and at the end of our call, she mentioned the Master-Mind class that she was offering to 8-10 clients.

She then told me the price tag: $10,000.

Ten-thousand dollars? I hardly had ten dollars to my name, I thought.

But then she told me the really good news. It was half-off for the next Master-Mind group. So, it was truly only $5,000!!!!

I know what some of you are thinking. Total sales strategy. But between our great conversation and the synchronicity of it all, I was feeling a big fat YES!

I told her I didn’t have any money, and she said, why not do a Go Fund Me campaign to raise the money?

Her brilliance was astounding! I had never thought to do that. This cemented, even more, that this was the right business relationship for me! The stars were aligned. I mean, what are the chances that out of all those people, I would happen to be standing at the back of the room and meet this guy? And, that he would happen to be well-connected with a woman who helps people with exactly what I needed most?

It was a sign from the Divine.

I had shared the news with some of my good friends, including one of the smartest guys I know, who is a strategist. He pretty much jumped out of his chair when I told him about it.

Alex. There is nothing new they are going to teach you. All the ideas are already out there. You don’t need to spend that kind of money. You can learn it on your own!

I was so mad at him.

I had already been guided by my intuition and by this synchronicity. He had started to created doubt within me; and, as they say, doubt kills the warrior.

I went into a major funk shortly after our conversation. I didn’t fully understand why until talking to my roommate about it today.

You see, my friend had challenged my trust in myself–a trust that I hold pretty sacred. As I began to doubt myself, it propelled me into a state of utter confusion, and I didn’t like that feeling at all.

Part of me wanted to not tell anyone else about my plan so that I wouldn’t have to deal with their criticism.

But when I told my roommate about it, I got more of the same. Criticism. He practically exploded on me. $5,000!? What?!!! Are you kidding me? I tried to justify it to him based on my feelings of intuition and by explaining the synchronicity of how it all happened. As a person who believes in that kind of thing, in general, he was more sympathetic.

He did an e-ching reading on me (sort of like a tarot card reading), and what came back was essentially a warning of wrecklessness. 

Now, my roommate and I have known each other for several years, and he understands me almost as well as I understand myself. So, when the reading corroborated his experience of me, I had to listen. I have always been an extreme person. I get an idea lodged in my head, I’m uber-excited for like two days, and then I fall back to Earth. When money gets involved around a big idea, I have been known to be pretty impulsive.

He then did another reading for me; this time on the  Go Fund Me idea. The result: favorable!

That’s when I had my big realization: Sometimes, what we think is the synchronicity isn’t really the synchronicity.

It’s just a piece of it.

Let me explain. At that convention, I experienced what I thought was a synchronicity meeting that guy who led me to the woman who was an expert in internet marketing. While it was a synchronicity, perhaps the main takeaway wasn’t that I was supposed to work with her; rather, that I should do a Go Fund Me campaign to raise money for my career aspirations as a Writer/Relationship Unguru.

You see, we humans are meaning-making machines. We are constantly looking to find meaning within our lives. And when we don’t find it, we create it!

Ok, at least I do.

Have you ever been SO SURE about a synchronicity that you went all in on it? Perhaps, you left everything behind and moved to a different part of the country for a job or to be with a romantic interest, believing that it was destiny.

You followed your intuition, and then you got BURNED in the process.

And then what happened? You made a decision: to stop trusting yourself.

But then, a year later, something beautiful shows up in your life that would never have happened if you hadn’t trusted yourself and moved.

Perhaps, then, the real lesson is one of drawing the wrong conclusions from these events–and making up our minds too quickly when the results don’t match our intentions.

I picked up a great idea by following my intuition with the guy from the convention. It sparked a whole new idea to start a fundraising campaign–and maybe that is the main takeaway from the synchronicity (and not necessarily working with the internet business guru).

Or, maybe, in the process of starting the Go Fund Me campaign, I meet someone amazing who helps me and then becomes my life partner. The point is: who knows!?

It could be anything.

Maybe the bigger idea is that we should pay attention to what shows up in our lives and follow the juice (i.e., our passion), as we never know what beautiful results are coming our way.

This event, and my feelings of confusion that followed, have really helped me to distinguish something for myself: I can trust myself.

I can be in a process of discovery, of inquiry, instead of trying to label it or pin a meaning on it, prematurely.

 

More commas, less periods.

 

 

www.alexobed.com

thank you for sharing