Haven’t Felt This Way Since 2011

Happy Blessed New Year friend.

If you know me at all then you know that I am not one for secrets, saving face to make myself look good, or lying by omission. I am writing to let you in on my massive healing journey from a “failed” launch. I haven’t felt this way since my last breakup in 2011. I’ll tell you why.

~ Note. This is very long and very vulnerable. I hope it serves you. ~

In truth, I haven’t invested and risked it all and then have it not work out since 2011. There’s two things to note here, I have risked it all and had it work out so far (Hi awesome super great wife!  Thanks for going the distance with me everyday!). And I just haven’t risked it all. I have made attempts, took risks, grew and learned and made things happen but not like I did with this past Biz Birthing Launch.

I mean, I stretched in every direction, and I had an expectation – that it would work out the way I hoped.

We can only really learn and integrate by doing, applying what we know. Imagine you learned how to give a massage and then never massaged someone out of class.  No matter the art form; physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, we have to apply what we know to know it any deeper. Put the tires to the road and see what we’ve integrated and what we let slip. I was told yesterday that failure means success in pushing past your comfort zone. Thus failure=success. 

So, at the end of this post I’m going to list a bunch of technical “things” and “lessons learned”, nitty gritty application stuff. Before that though I am going to talk about the more potent (to me) part.

The healing.

Like I said, this has been just like a breakup. And even though I was filled with grief as the days of the open cart drew to a close, and I saw that 0, and knew it would remain that way, I still pushed on, not giving up. (Doesn’t this sound like the end of a relationship you’ve worked so hard for. You know what’s coming, but you keep going just in case there can be a turn around.) I’ll tell you what, I rest better at night knowing that once I am in; I give it all I can.

There I was, the moment the cart closed. Clear as day. Zero. I had no one going on that adventure with me. I was filled with feelings. Grief. Embarrassment. Satisfaction. Relief. Inspiration. Shame. Fortitude. And everything I was feeling was deeply informing to me.

I was satisfied because I had many goals for my launch and the sell at the end was, just that, at the end.

~ I wanted to offer content that was valuable and healing. Check.

~ I wanted to step up with a new confidence and share with the world what I had been working on and, in a way, sitting on for almost a year. Check.

~ I wanted to take action and not let the timeline get pushed back any farther. Check.

~ I wanted to play full out. It’s a personal mantra (also from the theater world) about going all the way and not holding back. Check.

~ I wanted to sell an awesome powerful transformational program to people who need what it has to offer. Fail. (Maybe not a fail, maybe no one needed it right now and I sold exactly zero. Success? Failure? I’ll never know.) ½ Check?

~ I wanted to make enough money to support me by supporting others so as to create with my muses for the next 6 months. Nope.

So I can’t honestly say it was a failure. It wasn’t, 4.5 out of 6 is not bad. I was and am proud of myself.

The doozy though was what the grief revealed to me.

I was sad for many things, but the one that held a major healing key for me was:

~ I was filled with grief because I thought, “Now I CAN’T work with my muses and do what I want because I still have to focus on building my business.”

SOUND THE ALARM!!!! HUGELY IMPORTANT INSIGHT!

Oh shit!

I hadn’t even realized it – for how long now had I been making my joy and inspirations circumstantial? Too long.

THANK GOD THIS DIDN’T WORK!

If it had worked it would have reinforced my belief and recent practice that I have to have all these ducks in a row before I could do the creative inspirations I wanted to, a.k.a. be happy. Whoa. Problem. I thought I “knew better.”

Now sorting out and prioritizing, and focusing to get things to completion is important and that will still need to happen. But holy moly. I mean, fuck. That could have been bad.

Reflecting on my life, I realize angels or whatever the magic is (my own unconscious power perhaps) have never allowed me to succeed when the foundation had some terrible lie like this one. What sometimes is referred to as ‘being out of alignment.’ What a relief. I mean think about it. Healing #1! I am filled with gratitude, and found myself counting my lucky stars I didn’t go any further down that road.

The second big, I mean huge, healing came as I reflected on my money resistance. Morgana Rae, a money witch once said, ‘go to your deepest wound. That is your money wound.’ There I was dreaming up my future, the next vision of my business, because now it was basically a clear slate, an open road before me all the while feeling waves of grief, shame, and humiliation move through. I thought, I might as well use this open wound to look at my money wound, since they are all one and the same. While I am tapped into this worthlessness (among other self loving feelings) let’s take a look around.

Deep breath. Because what I found next was so precious, so raw, so hurt filled. Of course I wouldn’t want any large amounts of money, and bigger than money, I couldn’t let myself shine if this mess was what I believed about my fullest expression.

I am feeling cautious about sharing this here. It is so tender, it comes from such a deep and young place in me. I am going to share what feels right to share, and I ask that it be heard and held in healing love and listening. May it serve as healing for you as well.

Using Morgana Rae’s book, I used her process of looking at your wound and money villain (great book you can get it here). I found that my money wound was not at its core about money but about shining brightly, inhabiting my full life force, being all of me joyfully, expressively, fully and softly. “My Life force” and “My life” have become important turns of phrase to describe the thing I longed for and feared.

What follows next is a deconstruction or reconstruction of how we can experience things as a child (or before) and then come up with “rules” or “agreements” or “understandings” that govern our unconscious thinking.

I found that when I was very young I had translated my vanishing twin’s death, mother’s and sister’s illness, and my family’s coping to be my fault. This often happens for kids. Sad but true. And how did I cause this death and illness? My bright shining, by expressing my full life force. The brighter I shone the sicker and towards death those I love would go. My brightness=others death. Dramatic? Not for a little kid. It’s not like my adult self is walking around discussing the logical correlation between me making money and my loved ones being spiritually and physically murdered by a silent slow poison. No. That is a dramatization of a vague, subtle, sensory fear experience that was unconsciously governing all my motions through the world. In case I would miss it, the reflective universe even had my mother catch the Philly flu the day my cart opened. Just to bring it home. To make sure I didn’t miss it this time. I didn’t. 

No joke, a crow just went crazy crowing over my head. YES! (Crows often symbolizes death and transformations! The sound went to my bones! Awesome. Amen.)

So money is the murderer in Morgana’s Process.  So what did I do with it? Exactly what she told me to, got rid of him, and created a new agreement. (Again, if this sounds like it could be useful, check out her stuff, she’s an awesome healer.)

BAM! Healing #2.

THANK GOD I DIDN’T MAKE ANY LARGE AMOUNT MONEY while I believed the money/success/my full life force would result in the death of those I love. F@#k that. It’s clear I would rather choose the hustle over making someone sick any day, in fact I have everyday for my whole life. LOL.

Instead, I got to see it and engage in deep healing. Prayers and coursing cosmic Great Mother flowing, body shaking, a crying and deep emptying kind of healing. As I diligently create a new relationship with my beliefs around my shining brightly and embodying and sharing my life, my life force, I am grateful for this alchemical journey.

One more note about how this belief that my life equaled other’s dying and how it started with a vanishing twin. In short, in utero there were two of us, and when I grew and my life force became full and alive, the other twin died. First experience of seeing my life=other’s death. It was set up way before mama, or sis, or dissociative coping (metaphorically sleeping/sick) in the family. This was a big thing I came into this life to amend. So here is my journey, and so I walk it. Dance it when I remember.

These healings alone were enough to shift me with a deep sense of gratitude over the sequence of events that had transpired. And yet, it didn’t end there. Nope.

I found myself reflecting on my ideas of the past year and visions I had. *BAM* there it was, I had a better plan. You see, Biz Birthing is a super advanced phase in a transformational professionals journey. It’s about being midwifed into your divine leadership role. It’s an initiation process and that has the grounded aspect of creating the curriculum or structure of your fullness stepping into the world. I didn’t change my line of work, its not some biz development course, there are so many great ones out there already. It is about the healing and transformation required to move into the world as your own AUTHORITY. Which is awesome. It is not, however, a first step commitment for someone integrating their intuition into their transformational practice. My vision a year ago was to offer a course I call, “Remembering Wisdom”. It is a 8-9 month, group program with retreats and virtual classes. It helps you develop your intuition and better access your guidance and ancestors, connect and use your Body Wisdom, and integrate your deep knowing into the work you already do. It’s about connecting to and sharing your truest self, remembering who you are and integrating that into your life. Biz Birthing comes after that point, it comes after you’ve integrated all of that knowledge, and you want to step out and say, “I’M HERE! I am a leader. You can trust me. I have embraced my responsibility as a visionary.”

Why am I sharing all of this? Because I intuitively knew what order I needed to offer this work to the world, but I kept hearing ‘supposed to’s’ from outside me and INSIDE me. “No, I should offer biz birthing. I’ve done all this work on it. It’s what I am supposed to do.” (Mind you I don’t regret it, I had healing #1, #2, I am describing #3, and there are more than I could even put into words. Learning is in the doing, its not a saying, it’s life.) 

HEALING #3 – Trust the vision, intuition. Even if it is not the ‘supposed to.’

and HEALING #4 was huge and redundant. JUST DO YOU!

This came from the circumstance realization. I can’t wait any more for things to be the right circumstance.

I was journaling, and I wrote. “Just do what you want” I thought, “but I don’t know what to do.”

And then I heard and wrote down, “yes you do. It’s everything you put on the later list.”

As you can see, I have gained a lot from this process. I am inspired everyday to listen more deeply. I have spent the past week with no email, no Facebook, little screen time in general. The next few steps I take I want to be in alignment with playing full out and listening deeply, and radically trusting in the faith that is so deep in my bones. I’m digesting.

Before we part I would like to share two things:

1) Because I have a few private clients I am Biz Birthing right now. I am still going to do the GEMing (Generous Enlightening Marketing) 3 session workshop course this January, and I am opening it up as a by-donation course (really just come and do it, no need to donate a thing, I’m just keeping pathways open). You are invited to do it if you’d like. I am integrating and learning and it’s a bonus for everyone, including me. There won’t be a formula I prescribe, just concepts and practices and exercises. Teaching is my passion and joy and the loss of doing that was one of the heartaches. If you want to participate email dreamteam@sophiawiseone.com and we’ll put you on the list and you’ll get the info.

2) I want to offer you a list of nitty gritty, down and dirty, launch, marketing, and general lessons learned.

LIST O’ LESSONS

• Listen to your intuition (after the fact you’ll feel better if you do)

• Boundaries are great when they make sense. Sometimes it doesn’t, but if it does it has so many benefits. Use them even if they are uncomfortable. (Having a closing cart day was amazing. I could see what has happened and make a new plan. There was no day by day wondering if and how it was working. Make a boundary and find out what is working and what is not.)

• Video Note: You can record the bulk of your teaching material in advance. Then you can add at the beginning or the end if needed to include any info or answer any questions from the comments thread. 

• Note the parts you love. Make sure you do more of that thing in the future. (I LOVED shooting the videos, and writing the little insights and notes in the emails. More of that for sure.)

• Know your audience or rather, get to know them. Find out where people are and what they want. Offer something that they’re ready for. Meet them where they are.

• I am an inner game coach as they say. The nitty gritty outside world stuff I get, but my real true gift is DEEP inner change. Get to know what you are selling, and then share that. Trust that what you have to offer is enough. Easy to say, deep to do. Good luck!

• ******* When you’re READY to start. START. Don’t wait for perfect timing.

• That being said, trust that you are in Divine Right Timing and don’t rush. This is a difficult balance to find, give yourself boundaries, focus, and don’t force it. It’s a mark to aim at. I don’t regret how it all went down, and I do know that everything takes longer than expected. If I had allowed our timeline to expand as we learned how much time we needed to do each part, as we got sick and our bodies told us to slow down, I would not have been launching on solstichristmahannukwanza. This time it was the perfect time. Next time I am learning a new lesson.

• Everything takes longer than expected. (Worth repeating!)

• Video rendering for a 30 minute video takes hours! Give yourself plenty of time to upload, render, and edit. I mean like 24 hours at least.

• Shoot it with your phone or computer, if you don’t have a nice camera and mic. Don’t wait for the “perfect” circumstance to share your voice, knowledge, and story.

• Check your planning calendar when you get excited and motivated. Sometimes you already had it scheduled in brilliantly.

• The commitment and price of your offering needs to be considered when designing how you make the offer.
  • For things that are $300 and under a sales page and/or a launch sequence can work really well.
  • The $300-$2,000 really varies, conversation is needed. Q&A in comments threads, emails, group calls, 1-on-1 calls, surveys, ways to be in connection with your clients is really important. Will what you are offering be truly helpful for them?
  • For things that are over $2,000 a real thorough conversation is required. A lot space for REAL conversation must be made available for the person considering the offer. 1-1 complimentary calls, multiple webinar and live Q&A calls, the important things is actual honest, open and safe conversation to look at if, why, and how this investment is a good fit for them.

• Things to make sure to clearly include in content:
  • Positioning, don’t be afraid to tell people why you’re qualified.
  • Tell what problem you solve, what THEY GET, what their results will be.
  • WHY hire a coach at all!
  • Address concerns head on. If a concern is too hard for you to talk about, change your offer. If you can’t address the concern yourself, you can’t address it for them. Ie, money, travel, time, logistics, whatever else.

• Value and respect the power of my/your/our/the work. We are transformational professionals, what we offer is the CHANGING of someone’s life (either in general or in a specific spot) and that is a vulnerable, precious, and potent thing. Don’t forget it or be trite about it. When you devalue your work, you are forgetting that you are devaluing their journey, and you don’t want to do that.

• Complete other things before starting a new HUGE thing. I am still wrapping up with some Biz Birthing clients, it’s like trying to unlock and open the door with your hands full, it’s possible but unnecessarily difficult. And, I hadn’t yet seen the full transformation from them (hence no testimonials in the launch).

• Include testimonials, let people share the impact of your work. (Legal note [not advise], laws are ever changing [so I would recommend looking them up], but in general you want the testimonials to share what most people experience, not the rare or special results.)

• Investment is worth it, even though it’s scary, so invest with your heart, your focus, your effort, your resources, risk the heartbreak. The heartbreak makes the heart stronger, and the less regret, the less shame in the short comings, and MORE learning and healing.

• Being vulnerable is sometimes scary and embarrassing. The connection is worth it 10,000 times.

• Don’t stop at general overview stuff, everything can get laid out in more detail. You’ll miss things anyway, so try to address as much as you can imagine ahead of time.

• Do the process for the people who register first. Make their experience top priority by plotting it out. Scheduling, email sequencing, how and when they get their information, forms, contracts, etc.

• Keep a running list of “Lesson’s Learned” during the launch, fill it in every day.

• Use templates, save time on design, use the simplified and tested models (like LeadPages).

• Launching is Awesome and Fun! Do it again!

Thank you for listening and loving and holding my journey in your compassionate heart. I invite you to take EVERYTHING I learned and integrate as much of it into your being as you would like.

I believe in miracles. My definition of a miracle is receiving healing without having to the live through learning the lessons. You just get it all. *BAM* So I offer you the miracle of getting it. Whatever IT you are longing for. I welcome those of you who are empaths to learn it through me as much as you can.

You know it’s really up to us whether what we go through is our healing or our injury. It is my full time job to see the unfolding of my life as a miraculous healing.

I couldn’t really move on till I came clean and let you all know what was happening behind the screen, it’s just my nature. So I’m off to rest and integrate, digest, listen, and create.

I am excited because the inspirations and reconstructions moving through me are evolving every day. What will come next? Some new adventures will be revealed soon. Is there something you’re hoping I would offer? Hit reply and let me know.

Lots of love and gratitude that begets gratitude that begets gratitude. Thank you for being part of this journey. Without your witnessing and your own healing this just wouldn’t be the same. Thank you.

Many blessings on this new year.

2015. It’s going to be great.
Sophia

P.S. Full Disclosure: I love affiliate links, so sometimes the links I give will give me a percentage if you purchase, that’s true for the one above. If you don’t want to use that link, you can do directly to Morgana’s page using this address. I only link and recommend things I actually really recommend. So do whichever suits you, Love. Sat Nam.