A Single ‘Horse’ Leads To More Focus, JOY And Abundance
So I have always complicated things - until recently.
I wrote stories in my mind first, then on paper, then digitally... with multiple characters and twisting plots, deep emotional connections and drama.
Don’t forget the drama.
Lots and lots of drama.
But that drama spilled out into daily life as I tended to complicate life.
There are two ways of being for me, for anyone, that are polar opposites. They are flow and force.
I lived the better part of my life forcing my way through each day, each decision, making everything so-damn-hard.
I'd have glimmers of another way... a tasting of ease, a heavy rush of simplicity, a breath of flow and yet, until recently never was able to make the connection that the way of beingness —
FLOW
— could be my default setting.
I think, perhaps, I came out of the womb "heavy"...
My mentor has a saying he received one day from his mentor of more than 25 years. "When you think too much you're heavy and when you're heavy you can't fly."
And damn was that me for more than 45 years.
Heavy.
Always thinking.
And therefore spinning and even more heavy.
You know how some children you can lift and they giggle, light as a feather. JOYful...
Happy...
Easy...
Well, that wasn't me...around people. That was me in the woods, with animals, or in my mind creating stories..light and free and easy.
Always laughing, smiling, skipping, dancing, face to the sun, light as a feather...
But around people, I was heavy.
Lift me, and I'd try to sink like a stone in a pond.
Literally ppppushing down to the ground to make myself more dense.
Even when I was a tiny, little thing.
Even my language to describe myself was the opposite of flow, allowing for no lightness..."No, no. Don't pick me up. I'm too heavy."
Even before heavy was me, that was my way of being, of seeing myself, of speaking about myself.
Granted, I was a chubby baby with fat knees and pinch-able cheeks, which were cute, adorable even, until suddenly they were not.
Baby fat became my prison but it was my mind that made me heavy.
Let’s take this site as an example which was “born” in November of 2019.
I hired a fab social media specialist to help me get my dang self out there, as me, and she said all you need is a basic home page, an about page and a contact page.
She encouraged me to focus on writing 3 good quality posts to get started.
And voila — done.
Easy, right?
Hmm, until I complicated it.
Until I showed her!
25 pages of website content and at least 7 posts later…
Yeah, complicated.
I wrote up three offers, sales pages and designed them, published them even, two of which never even saw the light of day…
Meaning, I never bothered to share them with anyone.
I simply loved creating them… more on that in a moment.
So much complexity,
So much creativity.
Untethered.
Unleashed.
Without structure.
See I am a creator. A visionary. And I tended to be all over the place.
Until recently.
Now, I’ve known this about myself, as I have digital files out the wazoo.
And folders upon folders of files in too many locations. I’ve actually hired people (times two) to help me organize my files and well, that’s a mistake.
Because it’s not simple, easy or even possible for another to organize what isn’t understood.
Cue more chaos and now multiple copies of said files.
So, to say I have more content that I can shake a stick at or even promote in this lifetime would be an understatement.
I write 2500 words each morning minimum, at least 5 days a week and typically 7. So let’s have a quickie math moment, shall we?
Don’t get so excited! So many of us have horrid math-stories, do we not?! I sure did...
As sometimes it’s hard to know what “a lot of content” represents until we start talking word count or pages written, let’s dive into the math.
2500 x 5 (let’s go low) is 12,500.
That’s 50 pages of content each week, if there are 250 words on a double-spaced typed page. That’s 2600 pages in a year.
Let’s say I’ve been doing this now for 25 years, even though it’s closer to 30…but we’ll lowball it again.
That’s 65,000 pages or 16,250,000 (that million) words.
And this is just my morning pages… not counting rewrites, drafts, or things I write during the day…
Some days I’ll write an additional 30 pages… To say I’ve got files upon files upon files would be an understatement.
Thankfully, I’ve developed a better naming system than the word “BOOK” followed by a date!
Oh yeah, it was nasty. Especially for me with no concept of time… when did I write that thing about that girl who did such and such with so and so.
There are days where finding something I think I might have written is like finding a faerie’s needle in a giant’s haystack.
Oh and did I mention the journals?!
Ah, yeah… this brain.
And because I have an agent who swoops into my files, literally, like a knight on a white horse, and takes what’s done or what she considers as done, or good enough for a first read, well, I’ve been able to function in the world.
I’ve been able to focus on creating and creating and, yep, creating.
But now, with this site, not under the control or supervision of Becks, my super agent...now I have been forced to grow and shift.
And damn if it hasn’t been painful.
But not uncommon.
See, I did this complicating thing as a teacher and when I had a tutoring business and when I started EducationLady.com…
I created and created and rarely did I release anything.
And when I wasn’t creating, I was learning. So. Much. Learning.
And so little implementing. Let’s be real.
Are you feeling me?
My fulfillment came, not through the praise or accomplishment of completing or sharing but the actual work itself.
I loved to work. I loved to create. I loved to envision and then bleed it all over the page with words and the creation of worksheets and scripts and even videos (that no one would ever see).
I loved to complicate things. I loved to create drama.
What, after all, are stories, but drama and complication.
And I loved to speak to the drama of all I was doing yet where were all the people, why weren’t they just swooping in like Becks to magically take what I created.
Uh, spoiled much?
Yep.
I always thought of structure as limiting.
Even in my writing. I would learn grammar rules (yuck) only to break them.
I am not a purist.
Yet recently, I've started to flow into a new way of being.
A powerful way that has shown me that without structure, I have nothing but files and confusion.
And a site full of words no one gets to see, if we return to the first example of this very online space.
Heck, I can even say that about Education Lady. About the awesome course I created and recreated, even though nothing was bloody wrong with it, that could have served so many in teaching them how to be rockstar tutors — if I’d only gotten out of my own way.
Complicating things is an addition.
Not sharing is a way to avoid rejection… judgement… living.
Yet now, now I am a different version of me. And, I have a choice.
I can share my SuperPower, my words, and get them out there for others to see, to read, to experience.
Or I can keep writing, creating and building a castle in the sky that no one can see let alone visit with enJOYment.
I can stay in my isolation of heavy.
Or I can flow into the lightness that is, was always been, within me.
I found flow in letting it all go.
I found flow in stepping back.
I found flow in focusing on one thing.
That one thing...
JOY.
So logically, you might be asking what the heck does JOY have to do with anything?
It’s not tangible. It’s not a doing-thang… And yet, it is.
JOY has everything to do with everything.
See Abundance Follows JOY and JOY is one of my top values in life.
And I’ve decided that this space, this site will be a success.
Not a hobby.
But a success that will impact the masses and spread JOY.
I stand corrected.
This site IS a success and IS impacting millions of people by infecting them with JOY.
Did you catch the subtle difference there?
And that JOY unfolds for them, for me, in one main offer right now — The JOY-Subscription.
That’s called focus.
That’s called simplicity.
That’s called narrowing my hyper-productive, creative-cray-cray self down.
That’s called working within a structure…a framework that makes all possible.
Where I once boo-hoo-ed structure and thought simplicity was for the weak, I now welcome it.
Because in this space, there is ease. There is flow.
In “riding one horse”, as my mentor loves to say, minus the Texas twang, all becomes possible.
My one horse is writing and then — drumroll please — actually inviting people to read my words, after writing them, of course. Some words are free and some are not.
One horse.
Not this and that, workshops and coaching, programs and more.
Nope. Simple.
I write.
My words are available.
I share them.
24-hours later most words are locked down in the JOY Vault.
Accessible by those in my Inner Circle of JOY.
Those who invest in themselves, adding JOY to their lives and becoming a JOY-Subscriber.
Talk about a narrow focus. For now.
Simple.
Easy.
And because it’s aligned with my values there is flow.
I let go of all those pages of workshops, programs, offerings and such. They still exist on this site, somewhere, but now, now I offer one thing.
JOY.
When you head to my site, you’ll see it.
The JOY-Meter Quiz®
A Way To Measure
Your Current Level Of JOY
And A Simple Path To Tap Into More
I mean, come on now, who doesn’t want, no need, more JOY in their life!
Am I right or am I write?
Ha. Did you catch that? Hmm…Gotta be quick!
And JOYful.
When you flow into simplifying, narrowing your focus and allowing flow into your life and business — things work.
It’s not to say that we don’t do other things too, but to access flow the focus is on one. Because flow, is a way of beingness that is bigger than any doing activity.
And here’s how I know this shift works. How being in flow becomes natural.
I got the hit to create The Joy-Meter Quiz® on Sunday and so I did, with the amazing help of Michelle, my editor.
By Sunday evening this quiz along with the results and all the ins and outs of a system went live, and except for some behind the scenes automation work, it was easy. It flowed. It was perfection.
And did you catch that little nugget? It was perfect at 70% done! Not fully. Not perfectly, but done enough to share, to impact, to change lives by spreading more JOY.
And because of this aligned flow...
On Monday, I had a message in my inbox about coaching from someone.
On Tuesday, same thing. Another message about consulting/coaching. That evening, a potential writing project circled back around.
Powerful, is it not?
And that writing project, it’s one I am super excited about but not tied to. If it works out, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. This is how I live — now.
If it works out, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. This is how I live.
Now you might be stumped here wondering, coaching and a writing project?
That’s not selling the JOY-Subscription and riding that one-horse.
Yet, actually it is. It's an utter allowance and the line I now live by.
Abundance Follows JOY.
My one thing is writing the JOY-Subscription and sharing that it exists. That’s my one “horse”, my focus. But all those other things that come my way, well, they revolve around my SuperPower of words.
I coach people around words.
I write words for other people.
So it’s about small steps with ONE focused thing because from that place now one can grow, expand, branch out like this most magnificent tree.
But that fifty foot red oak with it’s thick trunk, intricate root system and extended branches doesn’t grow from a little seed overnight.
Nope. It takes time. And care. And focused attention on one thing.
From seed
to sprout
to bush
to sapling
to tree.
To massive reach, a canopy of intricate branches and lush leaves, providing shade and shelter…none of this happens overnight.
That tree has one focus… growing strong from one trunk… not two or three.
Who am I to say how abundance will show up in my life?
Who am I to question it?
Just as I’m sure that red oak tree doesn’t question the number of branches or the direction they take. Instead there is simply an allowing. A knowing that all is as it should be. A natural flow. Which leads to growth.
I am the person I choose to show up being, talking about my one thing, the JOY-Subscription, and riding that one horse all that way into the sunset and through a lovely sunrise. Day after day after day…
When I do that I am working from JOY. And what did I say the line is that I live by - Abundance Follows JOY…
Well, then this sudden interest in coaching with me, in a book project, is actually flow...is alignment, is it not?
It’s not counter-intuitive when doing all the doing is from a place of Abundance Follows JOY.
It’s not up to me to determine how abundance will show up nor judge the flow but simply to allow.
To narrow my path to one stepping stone instead of hopscotching all over the joint and never getting anywhere.
To focus on that one thing I do — write — and let go of all attachments to how it must look
To simplify all the doing that I do in my day and live from this aligned place that I KNOW in my cells, in my core, in my everything…
That Abundance Follows JOY.
So now I turn to you, curious to hear where you are on this path of flow.
Are you Focusing, Narrowing and Simplifying To Create Flow?
Or are you as I used to be
Complicating...
Over-Thinking...
Spinning...
Constantly Doing...
With nothing or little to show for it at the end of each day.
Depleting, is it not? Exhausting and frustrating and lonely too.
But there is a better way…
What can you focus on that brings you JOY?
What do you need to simplify in your life, your business to create that flow I speak of?
The kind of flow that leads you to more JOY in your life and to more abundance… naturally.
See everything is energy…
When your energy, when you are wrapped in JOY… all is possible.
Narrow your all to one thing, that one thing that brings you JOY and just watch, because expansion and abundance will flow to you.
Does this resonate with you? Are you stuck, thinking of how to even begin?
I hear you... and I encourage you to get quiet…
All the answers are present in the pause.
Leave me a comment below, heart this post and share it with someone you know needs these words — this message.
And, if you want more JOY, make it a date to hang with me each week when I release my free-to-all Wednesday Words.
And if you or anyone you know wants more JOY, consider taking The JOY-Meter Quiz® and start the journey to access even more today.
My Mission In This Life, This World,
Is To Spread JOY Because
Abundance Follows JOY.
Period.
If more people tuned into their own natural abundance, imagine what this world would look like for a moment.
We need that world now more than ever, do we not?
Photo Credit: Mikael Kristenson @mikael_k
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