Hey Reader,
2pm, 27th April 2015.
I was supposed to be saying "I do."
Instead, I was sitting in a quiet pub, nursing a drink, surrounded by my almost-bridesmaids.
An elderly lady leaned over, smiling warmly, and asked, "What are you celebrating, love?"
I burst into hysterical tears.
Broken.
Cancelling my wedding felt like the end of my world.
Within a few months, I also lost my job to redundancy and the home I'd fought so hard to own due to my own limiting beliefs of not being able to pay my mortgage as a freelancer.
I had zero self-worth and didn't trust betting on myself, so I sold it out of fear I wouldn't earn enough to pay my mortgage (spoiler alert: my limiting beliefs were lying to me).
My whole life - the one I thought I was building - had crumbled.
Maybe you know what that's like.
Maybe you're standing there now, ankle-deep in the rubble of the life you thought you wanted, wondering what comes next.
Or maybe it's more subtle than that.
Maybe you're standing in a life that no longer feels like yours.
You tell people you're fine but you're really not: you're exhausted and feel like you've lost who you are and what life should be.
Sometimes the Universe shoves us off a cliff to get us back into alignment; sometimes it's more gradual, as joy seems to remain elusive no matter what you do.
If that’s where you are right now, here’s something simple that helped me start again:
Your Permission Slip
Back then, my biggest struggle was in letting go of what I'd thought my life should be - and the irony is my chronic people-pleasing meant I hadn't even been living the life I even wanted.
Once I stopped looking back and actually started thinking about what I wanted for the first time, positive changes started happening quite rapidly: new friendships, discovering a passion, freelance opportunities.
So, try this:
Write yourself a permission slip: I hereby give myself full permission to build a life that feels good to ME. Sign it like a contract with yourself.
It sounds a bit silly, I know.
But the act of consciously giving yourself permission (to choose or validate yourself and/ or your choices) is POWERFUL.
My Toolkit
Three months ago (today 🎉), when I started i-Unbound, I was choosing again too.
I'd hit rock bottom once again.
Every area of my life had crumbled and I again found myself standing amongst rubble (I wrote about it here)
But, this time, I had the knowledge that I CAN bet on myself, and all the learning of the past 10 years to be sure that, whilst it will suck for a while, this too shall pass.
I'd also discovered Stanford University's life design framework a few months earlier and this gave me a tangible toolkit to speed up what had taken me months of trial and error last time.
i-Unbound is actually an example of my own Odyssey Plan (we'll be covering those soon): I've done the same life design activities I've been sharing with you, gotten real clear on what I want in this next chapter of my life and this newsletter is one of the ways in which I'm testing out if I can bring it to life.
And here we are.
Our community is growing every day and I'm grateful for each and every one of you; I'm exited for the journey we're about to go on, because we're just getting started!
Over the past three months, I identified my health was my most urgent area of focus and I've gradually been making small, achievable, changes and building habits around my sleep, step count and protein goals.
I've been really unwell, likely as I was so run down, but my anxiety's its lowest in two years and I'm seeing small, but tangible, progress.
My second area of focus is to help introverts like myself get clear, unstuck and unbound so that they can stop masking and burning out and start living, not existing.
The me who should have had a wedding anniversary yesterday had zero self-worth. No confidence. The me writing to you now? I'm my best, most authentic self - and it's because things fell apart, not in spite of it.
We will all face hard times in life: it's inevitable, no matter what we do.
Being able to find happiness and a way forward no matter what happens is, I believe, a form of wealth and I'm determined to make us all rich.
I'd love to hear where in your life are you feeling called to realign right now? Just hit reply: I'm always listening.
In your corner always,
Sam 💛
