Hello Sunshine,
This morning started like many mornings, with an early cup of coffee on my porch, enjoying the birdsong and the cooler end-of-summer air. However, on this very morning, it was extra special in my world of creations. While sipping my coffee, I held a book with pages that are filled with stories of gratitude. It is called The Gratitude Project.
But this is not just any ordinary book of stories. It holds something very close to my heart. It holds my authentic story and my name. Seeing your name in print is amazing. It is beyond amazing though to trust that the telling of your story has an opportunity to make an impact on someone else. So they know they are not alone in this world, especially in the not-so-good seasons of life.
When I turned to my chapter, among a collection of inspiring coauthors, I looked at the page and sat there longer to be fully present in the moment of gratitude. Then I took a picture of it, because that is what I do when something asks me to stop and notice it.
Here is what came next, and I did not expect it. The last time my name mattered to me this much, someone else was saying it, and I was losing everything I had built.
We have explored in this space the pebbles in the shoe, the small obstacles that are easy to name and easy to underestimate. This week is about the other kind of challenge. It is when the structure you have built for many years, or decades, gives way, and you find yourself standing in the open with no idea what comes next.
The only thing you can do in that moment as the hard season begins is hold on to gratitude for the next moment you move to.
#jenmoments
With gratitude I claim my story. With courage I share my story. With love I witness the ripple begin.
The net I spent a career weaving
I was very good at preparing.
That is not a small thing to admit, because for most of my working life I understood it as a strength, and in fairness it often was. Titles. Expertise. Awards. A reputation I could stand on. I am very proud of the career I built. The carefully crafted plan for every outcome, and the backup plan underneath that. I built safety into every area I could reach, and where I could not build it, I worried about it, which I had somehow convinced myself was a form of preparation.
I strategized and project managed every little detail of my career. I balanced all the plans with my family life too. Somewhere along the way I learned to think of it as a safety net for me and my family. Strung wide, checked often, woven a little tighter every year. If I am prepared enough, nothing can drop me.
I am certainly not going to tell you that preparation is a character flaw. It is not. Plans are useful. Backups are wise. There is nothing wrong with being the person on the team they can rely on to answer the tough questions and stay three steps ahead to lead the way.
But there is a question underneath a net that took me a very long time to ask.
Who did I think was going to catch me, if not me?
One minute
Then came an ordinary Friday afternoon.
It gave way in the space of a minute, when I heard my name and understood that I was no longer employed.
One minute. That is what it took. I had spent thirty years weaving, and I got one minute of notice.
In that moment I could have claimed fear.
When the space is created for us
When the net gave way, what was underneath it was not a fall.
It was space.
No one else was going to come catch me either.
In the most challenging seasons of our life, that space is created for us. By the universe, God, or whatever name your belief system gives it.
I found peace in that moment.
I knew everything would be okay because the spiritual side of me has always trusted my ability to create space for a journey of infinite possibilities. The only one who can move me is me. That is not a critique of the people in my life. It is authority. It is the difference between trusting your safety net, and trusting yourself to know the right next step on your journey.
It is in this space that we hear our own voice.
I no longer describe this as finding your inner voice, as though she were something misplaced. Trust is not discovered. It is returned to. My voice was there the whole time, underneath the mind chatter, underneath the shoulds and the what-ifs in the safety net, waiting for the noise to drop far enough that I could hear her again.
We hold our own answers. All of them. The work is not acquiring them. The work is getting quiet enough to admit we already have them.
I could have claimed fear. Instead, I claimed trust in myself. And I wrapped it in gratitude for the opportunity to discover infinite possibilities in the space created.
The conscious moment of your dream
In retrospect, I can see clearly how one of the worst days of my life broke open a way to trust myself again. It also cleared out the clutter of mediocrity so I could see the sparkle of a long-held dream.
That is what the net had been keeping out all along. Not the bad thing. The unplanned one.
The dream is unplanned by definition. You cannot risk-mitigate your way toward one. There is no contingency for it, no backup, no sequence of steps that guarantees the outcome, which is exactly why a well-woven net will quietly refuse to let it through.
In my chapter I share the specific dream that I reconnected to when I released my fear and the safety net. I will continue to share more here in this space as a way to hold myself accountable to living my creative life more fully.
Until then, get your copy of The Gratitude Project on Amazon. My chapter is called Create the Space, Not the Tower.
For six years I have quietly been sharing practices with close groups of friends. In recent months, I have started to grow the community of followers. Because what I know in my whole self is that there are more ‘Jens’ out there who need the courage and the belief that they can rely on themselves.
Your practice this week
Grab your journal and open to the safe space of a blank page. This week I invite you to explore your safety net, the space created, and your way through to the answers your own inner voice brings you.
The safety net
* Where are you preparing hardest right now? Name the area of your life with the most contingency in it. That is where the net is strung tightest.
* What is that preparing keeping out? Not what it protects you from. What it will not let through.
The space created
* Name a hard season you are already on the other side of. What actually got you through it? Sit with the answer, especially if the honest answer is me and it feels uncomfortable to write.
* What opened up in the space that season created? Something is always waiting there. Most of us are moving too fast to look.
The dream
* What long-held dream comes back to you in this moment? Write it even if it sounds like you cannot achieve it. Fill the page with words or drawings that build your belief in your dream. What is one simple action you can take today to plant the seed of your dream?
New Moonbeam Journey starts on September 10th
If you want to dive deeper into achieving your dream, you can set that intention at the new moon on September 10th. Join me on The Moonbeam Journey space to journal along for the next 29 days.
Trust me, you will love what you achieve in the space of gliding with moonbeams!
Infinite gratitude for the space we share
Today, I am so grateful to share this space with you. I entrust you with my story in the hope that it helps you reconnect to your truest self and the inner wisdom you hold.
Shall we celebrate our own stories and the gratitude we each hold in the moment, together?
Yes, yes we shall.
With love we shine,
Jen Granger
Creative Living Mentor and creator of The Conscious Moment and The Moonbeam Journey
P.S. If this resonated with you today, share it with one person who you think might need it. A friend who is searching. Someone who deserves a more intentional experience of their own life. The Conscious Moment grows one sunshine at a time.
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