Last week my husband and I moved. And I got a PhD in Magic.
For the past six years, we lived in a magical spot: a log cabin nestled in a cedar forest alongside a roaring creek. We had found the house in a “magical” way. Our mortgage person told us she’d done some “magic” to get us approved (back at the tip-top of the market). We had big magic dreams for all the retreats and gatherings we would hold on this land. We built a sweat lodge with friends. People described the house and its setting as… yeah, you get it.
Magic was a word that got bandied about a lot these past few years…
Fast forward to this past January. After a lot of stuff happened–from stepping into my business full-time to not being able to sell a piece of land or refinance, from a few expensive medical crises to two layoffs, we’d tapped out everything in order to keep our magic house afloat. Though we kept trying to make it work, it was slowly choking us.
And yet for all these years, I had kept believing that there would be some magic solution. That something amazing would happen.
After all, the signs pointed to that, right?
A piece of me stopped living in the real world and started living in this world that would begin when my ship came in, when the lottery paid out, when an unexpected inheritance landed on our doorstep. Magically.
Exhausting, constricting and unsustainable, you say? Yep.
So… in January we got real. We decided to sell the house and land.
Then, weirdly enough, it was like the magic did start to happen.
We created a vision of the people we wanted to buy the property, and two weeks after it went on the market, we had a full-price offer… from a family who seemed to have every quality on our list.
I mentioned (to just one person) our desire to find a small house or cottage where we didn’t have to sign a long lease… and she just happened to own such a cottage. And that’s where we are living now.
While packing, I found all kinds of stuff I thought was long-gone, including that little “Freedom” bottle in the photo. Someone gave it to me long before we bought the house. It was almost like I had tucked away my freedom all those years ago–and then found it again… just in time.
So, what does this have to do with anything? Well, for a while now I’ve thought about my work as a kind of alchemy. It’s about taking what you are and what you’ve done and where you’ve been–as leaden as it might feel–and turning it into your gold.
This alchemy transforms what is real about you, your shadow, your story–into something you work with, instead of hiding. And in doing so, you release the burden of hoping and praying that people hear about and like you. You give up the glued-together-popsicle-stick, fingers-crossed version of doing your business–and get REAL about what your foundation really is. You put an end to doomsday thoughts like, “If only I had a masters degree” or “If only I hadn’t married my first husband” and instead see how all the threads of your story and your life matter and have prepared you to be exactly who you are and serve the clients only you are meant to serve.
Then and only then, so much clearer and lighter, are you FREE to experience the real magic… Putting your message out to the world. Doing the work you are meant to be doing. Experiencing freedom.
That’s alchemy. And it can’t begin until we put away all that old magical thinking.