5 Reasons Why You’re a Hot Mess

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Pema chodron – when things fall apart image quote

This week I’ve heard the term ‘hot mess’ a number of times when I’ve been speaking to someone about their business. I always like to pay attention when I hear something multiple times especially when it’s something unusual or new to me.

It’s an interesting term and I’ve placed my own meaning on it because it sounds like something perfectly accurate to describe the state we can so often find ourselves in.

I’m only guessing at its true meaning, but to me, a hot mess is inevitable when you’re so passionate about something and so invested in its outcome and so attached to it being a certain way, that it throws you into chaos when the slightest deviation from your desired outcome occurs.  It happens when you put your dreams on fast track and watch things come to the boil too quickly without preparing your subconscious mind. It’s so often followed by a crash, a loss, a setback or a challenge.

The creative, innovative, entrepreneurial spirit that draws you into the uncertainty of your business, is the same spirit of chaos that can lead you to think that you’ve gone stark raving mad at the thought of truly having a breakthrough. This is especially so, if you’re not surrounded by people who are living on the same frequency of bad-ass dreams and hypomanic ambitions.

True holistic success comes from sustainable practices and ways of being that serve, support and nurture. We are not designed, as women, to work in a linear, bullet-out-of-a-gun way. Rather, we are designed to circle, honour our cycles, ascend gracefully and with a sense of glorious but heightened awareness like a slow motion film. But in a world focussed on instant gratification which often includes tempting ‘fast money’ strategies and ‘fast fix’ strategies, the slow cook method is not always the track we find ourselves on. How often have you been lead lately into believing the marketing hype that abounds the internet about fast riches, unsubstantiated quantum leaps and hyperdrive businesses? Do you allow yourself the luxury of understanding that ‘overnight’ success has often been decades in the making and that the sustainable platforms on which it is built (or not) will determine whether it lasts, or whether it fades like a comet? Are you here for the long haul or a short time with adrenal fatigue and burn out? When did you last listen to the small, still voice within you that felt uneasy about signing up to yet another course on ‘shelf-help’ that will, literally adorn your shelves or inhabit your hard drive until you forget it even exists without even utilising its content? I’m guilty of this myself, having invested in many e-courses and resources that I thought I would ‘need’ and never quite completing them. Sound familiar busy lady?

I’ve written about the 5 reasons why you’re a hot mess in the article below this week. If you’re creative, feminine, heart-centred and innovative and you’ve fallen into the overwhelm of your creative process, you’re not alone. There’s hope too. Sometimes just a simple reframe will place you back in the driver’s seat. Back in the position of leading lady of your life, which is where Sacred Women’s Business works tirelessly to support you.

Things are meant to fall apart sometimes so that they can come back together in new ways.

Success does not follow a linear path very often but it’s a spiritual path full of lessons and richness and deep soul work so thank goodness for that.

Please know I am committed to providing you a safe, non-judgemental place to fall apart into the messy, chaotic, clumsy, imperfect and irrational place that comes with being human.

Embrace the glorious hot mess that you are!

P.S. thank you so much for the overwhelmingly generous and extraordinary response you all gave to my recent call out for reviews for my book in exchange for a free copy. I have already been so over-the-moon to read the reviews that have been posted and I thank you in advance for your review if you were one of the lucky winners. Don’t forget to email me at sacredwomensbusiness@yahoo.com.au to let me know when your review is posted so that you can go into the draw to win a free coaching intensive valued at $295.

p.p.s if you missed out on a free copy of ‘Healing the Heart of Your Business – sustainable success for heart-centred women’  and would like to purchase one, it’s now available on kindle and kobo. Pick up your copy here:

p.p.p.s  You mean the world to me, no matter how messy you are!

ARTICLE OF THE WEEK

WHY YOU’RE A HOT MESS

There are a myriad of ways why you might find yourself with your back against the wall, sliding down onto your arse, wondering what on earth happened to you. There are thousands of ways you could be stewing in the tangle of your to-do list, completely paralysed under its weight, wondering WTF and how on earth you’re supposed to unglue yourself. Here are five reasons why you’re a hot mess and what to do about each one. Lean in, and let’s untangle you.

1. You lost sight of your values

This is by far the most common reason I see women falling apart. I had a client who was a creative woman to her core, a genius at the visual beauty of her domain and a queen at creating works that inspired by their delectable appearance alone. She was also achingly hilarious and could make anyone laugh out loud and feel completely comfortable to open up and share with her. During the session, she fell apart, in abject misery at how things weren’t working in her business. We identified her core values and found humour and creativity were part of her top 5. Values are those consistent emotional states you wish to feel on a regular basis in your business. They include emotional states such as love, connection, inspiration, peace, harmony and adventure. We identified the fact that she had not been honouring her values at all in the past 2 months, that creativity and humour had been sacrificed in the pursuit of serious consumption. When you’re not creating, you’re often consuming. So she was consuming and complaining way more than she was creating and humouring and having fun.

The consistent denial of your values, the lack of flexing the muscle of each and every value regularly, is so commonly a cause for dissatisfaction, turmoil, chaos and depression. Fulfilling your values leads to genuine feelings of satisfaction and inner peace.  Identify your top 5 values to see what turns you on and gives you deep fulfilment. I’ll be running through a values exercise next week, so stay tuned.

2. You looked out more than you turned inwards

You bought into the marketing hype that convinced you that someone else knew better than you did about your own deep truth. You listened to a guru, and then another and then another, in the pursuit of your own path. You forgot to keep tuning in to the voice of truth that inhabits you and speaks from your body’s wisdom (located deep in the pelvis and abdomen). You lost sight of the steady ground within you that is constantly being guided by benevolence, is so adored and loved by the divine that it would never forsake you.

3. You denied yourself the creative luxury of falling to pieces

We are meant to fall apart. That small, quiet voice of wisdom that speaks to you sometimes needs a cataclysmic shaking up and a splintering of the ego in order for it to be truly heard. Stillness and quiet are a thirst we can only sometimes aquire when we have been roiled about in the noisy monkey mind enough times to feel the truth of who we are. We are everything at once and nothing at the same time.

Besides that, the creative process is messy. It loves being irrational and intuitive and non-scientific and feminine. The patriarchal dominant paradigm has honoured rational, scientific reasoning. There’s a place for this, but there is also a place for the cyclic wisdom and the animist traditions. Allow yourself the creative luxury of falling apart and letting things be messy. You’ll find the homeostatic mechanism within you will always work towards bringing you back into balance. Trust yourself to toe the line when you need to.

4. You wanted them all to like you

Desiring to be liked is a natural part of being human. But when your decisions are constantly contingent upon what other people might think, it’s a fast track to derailing you from your purpose. It’s why so many people stay miserable, stuck in their quiet desperation and never really living to their full potential. Worrying what other people think and wanting them all to like you is a perfect storm for a quantum collapse. Instead, turn within. What others think of you is none of your business.

A friend who runs a marketing company related an interesting native American understanding about the weight of other people’s opinions. There will always, no matter what stage you’re at, be a balance of people with opinions which are proportionately divided into 4 camps – 25% will love you, 25 % will feel somewhat inclined towards you, 25% will be neutral and 25% will not be impressed. No matter what decision you make, there may always be the naysayer and the fans and those in between. It’s liberating when you realise this and can go ahead and live your greatest life anyway.

5. You stopped watching the cycles of nature

If you’ve ever had a lemon tree you’ll see that under the right conditions, the tree will produce an abundance of fruit. It’s often more than what you could ever need and the excess lemons will lie on the ground and rot. They create the perfect fertile ground for more trees. Everything that needs to grow depends upon the rot, the dark soil, the excess. The modern world is in danger of slipping so far from the cycles of nature that you stop connecting to and honouring the natural rhythms within you of pushing out into the world and pulling back in. Knowing when to produce the fruits of labour and when to consolidate and till the soil.

No matter what mess you’re in, the human heart can hold all the polarities at once. Light and dark, black and white, heavy and light, love and fear. There is no need to reject or repress your feelings even when they’re tangled, complex and challenging. Give yourself permission to be a child of nature and allow yourself to blossom without giving a flying fig what they all think of you!