I had a realization today.
It’s one of those realizations that is cumulative, you know?
Like you could feel it for years.
Like you thought you knew it.
Like you thought you were over it – or at least that your reckoning with it was done.
Complete.
And now I sit with it and realize – now I see it.
Now I see the truth of it.
And it’s actually a choice point.
Now let me back up several steps to catch you up to speed to what the fuck I’m actually talking about.
Over the last few years on my journey of building, deconstructing, re-constructing, destroying, and re-creating my business, I’ve been vacillating from a place of hope and creativity to deep despair and hopeless disappointment.
To feel like I’ve failed would be a vast understatement.
But underneath everything, the thing that has puzzled me the most is the emergence of this deeply critical inner voice.
Now, of course I’ve always had an inner critic – I’m human after all. But I’ve never in my entire adolescent and adult life never ever let that voice dictate my decision making.
Ever.
Even in times of failure.
I wasn’t expecting the journey into entrepreneurship to be a cake walk.
I used to literally climb mountains for a living – I know the deal.
Surrender.
Expectation.
Loss.
Success over time.
Patience.
And more surrender to the the ebb and flow of Mother Nature.
I lived the damn thing my whole life!
Embodied it.
So why now? I thought.
Why now am I suddenly gripped by fear of failure?
Of not making money?
Of not being able to take care of myself?
Pay my rent this month?
Why now am I worried about destitution?
It was beyond the biggest mind fuck of a question.
That just wasn’t me.
It wasn’t me at all.
But it was certainly familiar to me.
The overly critical, jealous of other’s success, obsessively trying to find the cracks in another successful entrepreneur’s profile so that I could say “SEE?! Ah HA! Now I’ve got you! You’re not successful after all! You’ve got “such and such or so and so” really paying for your bills of your hobby of a business!”!
See?! I knew it wasn’t possible.
See?! I knew you’d have to go back to the “real world” and get a “real job” one day.
One with a pension.
And benefits.
This voice was oh so familiar because it’s the voice of my mom.
My whole life.
The thing that perplexed me though, was recognizing that I have actually embodied her.
Her thoughts are now my thoughts.
I mean, I could see myself thinking these thoughts more and more as time passed in my business and it still wasn’t getting the traction I’d hoped for and expected.
My failures, disappointment, and grief turned to bitterness.
And bitterness had a voice I knew all so well.
Stepping back a bit further, you see before, I was able to keep bitterness at bay by proving her wrong.
I spent over 10 years in my dream jobs – work that fulfilled me and my purpose and paid the bills.
I had the “fuck you” over bitterness with the simple success of proving her wrong.
I really could do whatever the fuck I wanted and The Universe would provide.
But the next chapter – my next evolution – would shake what I thought was firm ground and bring me to my knees over and over again, humbling me like never before.
A lot happened in the last 4 years.
A lot of powerful things.
A lot of healing and coming into my own in a way in which I never fully have.
And for whatever reason, it’s brought me to this moment and realization – or maybe a better word is recognition.
The recognition that what I am/was experiencing in my vacillation between hope and despair was something that turned into bitterness.
Bitterness is a new experience for me.
Bitterness is not a new experience for my mother.
Bitterness is the place where she lived – and still lives – as long as I’ve known her.
She has her reasons, I’m sure.
But in this recognition of the flavour of what I was feeling, I had the sudden realization – my recognizing my own bitterness is also my choice point.
Because when you live with someone your whole life who lives in bitterness, you also see the consequences.
You see how bitterness creates more bitterness in a spiralic journey deeper and deeper into your own misery – so deep, that you forget that there is a way out.
So deep, you forget that you created it to protect yourself in the first place.
It keeps you from the things you so deeply desire: to be loved, witnessed.
Intimacy.
It’s false protection.
As soon as I recognized the flavour of my own bitterness, I realized here I was – on the threshold of my own choice point.
And growing up seeing the consequences, I dare say, I’m prepared for anything else but that.
The thing about landing in my own clarity in an embodied way, is that it’s mine.
This is not about blaming my mother for her negative programming – in a way, blessed be, seeing her suffer by her own will taught me with such clarity of how I did not want to live my life.
No, this is not about her at all actually.
It’s about finally claiming my own expression of bitterness – which granted looks a lot like hers.
But those thoughts are my thoughts.
Those judgements and anger and bitterness and criticism – are mine and mine alone.
It has nothing to do with anyone else but me.
And in that knowing, in that claiming and fully landing in my own bitterness, I was able to clearly see my own choice point.
For me a choice point is that magical place of potential. You can also call it a “change point” because it’s the moment where you can chose something different to your normal.
The choice point is a portal.
It’s a portal that only opens once we have the embodied awareness of our own sovereign truth.
It requires a certain level of compassion and openness and gentleness with ourselves.
It requires beginner’s mind and a willingness to take responsibility for parts of ourselves that are hard to integrate (aka our “humanity”).
It requires a certain kind of relationship with ourselves.
It cannot be hacked.
It is not a jedi mind trick that can be “reprogrammed”.
It must come in it’s own time and spontaneity.
This portal of awareness is our personal change point.
Now the trigger of bitterness and ensuing criticism and negative thought train for me becomes a pause.
Now, I can just see the thing for what it really is – and what it’s really trying to say.
I don’t have to change my thoughts or shame them.
I can finally free myself for thinking I’m broken for feeling bitter and jealous of other’s success.
Now I have space for more – I can have space for my bitterness and be tender with it and I can see the other I’m comparing myself to for who they really are (just another entrepreneur playing this wild game called business).
This.
This is what pattern changing looks like.
It’s not about wiping out stuff you don’t like.
It’s not about “negative” reprogramming.
It’s about accepting more and more of your humanity.
And when we do that, strangely enough our need for the negative critical stuff kind of just starts to melt away organically on it’s own.