Success Coaching: Are You Really Ready For Success?

Welcome back!

My podcast this week is about satisfying my curiosity because I sincerely want to know... Are you really, really ready to succeed?  Are you really ready to have that magical relationship, to discover work that you’re passionate about or to otherwise make that shift from hoping to having?  If you're at all like me, then you're probably saying "Yes!  I am, I’m so, so ready to create miracles in my life and I've been ready for a very long time!"  "But (you might add), I'm still waiting for what I want and I don't know what I'm doing wrong."

So, if your intention is clear and your desire is absolute, then why haven't your dreams come true?  I'd like you to consider that any delays separating you from your prosperity are significantly impacted by your success aptitude.  The word ‘aptitude’, like countless other words, has more than one meaning. I'm not using the definition of aptitude that refers to ability because I'm convinced that everyone has ability to a lesser or greater degree.  So the question is not "Can you succeed?" but "Will you?"

That's a perfect segue into another variation of aptitude that you may not be familiar with.  Its secondary meaning refers to ‘a state of readiness’. And when you’re truly ready, your WILL works in beautiful concert with your ABILITY.  And when you combine what you can do with what you will do, you form a powerful synergy that constitutes the force of change.

These small but critical distinctions became very clear to me recently as I found myself struggling to achieve the goals I'd set for myself.  In the midst of that challenge, I realized how much I really needed support, encouragement and perspective.  So, I called a dear friend of mine who's a gifted coach in her own right.  She knows me intimately.  She knows my history and my heart.  But most of all, she understands the difference between what's real and the self-limiting stories I tell myself in the midst of my own practice of prosperity.

The “ahaâ€? moment for me in that conversation was when she helped me to understand exactly what was preventing me from having the experience of my life that I truly and deeply wanted.  I wasn't doing anything wrong per se because it wasn't about action in this case.  Actually, the problem wasn't what I was doing but what I was being.  And what I was being was afraid.

Can you relate?  Can you think of the time when you were going through the motions that logically should have resulted in the outcome you sought but never actually realized?  Can you remember making consistent effort while hoping and praying you would get what you wanted?  Most importantly, are you also able to recognize that fear was a constant partner to your desire?

That's precisely where I found myself.  Yes, I was doing what I could and I believed that I was certainly ready to succeed as never before and yet, I was privately afraid that it would never come and that I wouldn’t realize my most deeply held dreams.

The point is that fear is an invisible shield with stealthy properties for its ability to repel what might be realized in its absence.  Fear surrounds you like a bottomless moat, trapping and preventing you from reaching your intended destination.  And the most interesting thing about living with fear, even if you don’t realize it, is that fear is almost invariably an illusion fabricated by your mind. Most of all, fear is entirely antithetical to aptitude which means the two cannot co-exist because they’re opposing forces.

When I researched the origins of the word ‘fear’ I learned that it’s connected to the words harm, distress and deception.  And those early meanings underscore my point that operating out of fear is fundamentally illusionary. It seems then that our common task is to repeatedly lift this veil of foreboding in order to clearly see and reach out for that which exists beyond fear. It's not really a matter eliminating fear, but of the acting in spite of it.  It means to simply acknowledge fear without succumbing to its deceptive ways. 

To do that is to illuminate the self-deceit that occurs in your mind; obliterating any false image that precludes your best life from being realized.  You see fear has many disguises including frustration, anger, doubt, despair and worry.  When you find yourself dealing with any of those feelings, it's a clear indication that your mind is where your consciousness is currently centered.  Knowing that, you may actively shift that consciousness downward, to the center of your heart from which all creativity is born and in which fear cannot survive.

To operate from courage means to be fully occupying your heart.  And from that place, you’ll enjoy fortitude, integrity and power. From heart-centeredness comes aptitude; the readiness to fully receive your much-deserved success. 

In the words of Alice M. Swain:

 

“Courage is not the towering oak that sees storms come and go; it’s the fragile blossom that opens in the snow.�

Here's my 7-day challenge for you:

When you find yourself experiencing doubt, frustration, worry or any variation of fear, immediately take five minutes of stillness and solitude.  Examine the nature of your fear and continue past it until you’re clear on the underlying desire or dream that lives at the base of your fear.  Hold your wish confidently. Allow it to grow from the center of your body until it fills every inch of you including that space occupied by your mind.  You have the power to intentionally expand what is conceptual in a way that allows you to embody the power of your intention.  And when you’re the consistent embodiment of such enchanted possibility, the veil of fear is forcibly raised and put aside by you, for you and because of you.

Please join next time when I ask "Do you have the power to heal?"

Until then, I leave you with abundant peace.