What are you waiting for?
Are you waiting for your big break? A book deal? A financial breakthrough? A promotion? Your house to sell? The love of your life to come and sweep you off your feet? Your daughter to respect you? For her to love and accept herself? To lose twenty pounds? For your roots to grow out? To get all your ducks in a row?
The legendary Tom Petty sang, “And the waiting is the hardest part.”
No one likes to wait. We live in a world of instant gratification and quick fixes. In today’s society, entitlement has replaced empowerment and as a result, our kids are suffering with depression and anxiety. We need to teach them persistence and resiliency skills, how to stop looking to everyone else for their sense of self-worth and how to stop being so damn afraid to fail.
There’s a worship song we sing at church that says, “Take courage my heart, be steadfast my soul… He’s in the waiting.” The first time I heard it I burst out crying. Why? Because I’ve been totally guilty of waiting on God for a miracle and also thinking He’s just not making things happen fast enough. Like waiting for a publisher to say “yes” to my book. That kind of energy will actually block the flow of whatever we’re asking for. And so I do my part (like offering a free chapter download and access to my VIP list for bonuses when it is published) and then I must surrender the outcome. Easier said than done,I know. But if we don’t, it will forever be like the carrot at the end of the stick. It will always be dangling out in front of us just out of our reach. 
What if, instead of waiting on God like a spoiled brat, whining at Him to hurry the hell up, and we actually served God like a waiter in a restaurant. Imagine standing straight, with a white cloth napkin folded over one arm. You would literally be waiting on God. What if each morning, we showed up with a servant’s heart and asked, “How may I serve you today?”
I’ve seen absolute miracles when I show up that way instead of feeling anxious and angry that what I want hasn’t happened yet. Like the proverbial pop heard round the world, when we pull our head out of our own ass and start showing up with a servant’s heart, that is the very moment God will use us in ways you cannot even imagine. (Check out the p.s. below to see how God is using me!) Isn’t that what we want for our kids? For them to use their gifts, skills and talents to be all they can be and to hopefully make a difference in the the world?
Just the other day I had a client text me, begging for help. She couldn’t stop stalking her ex-boyfriend’s instagram feed, and to see him happy with his new girlfriend was killing her. Begrudging your ex’s happiness is NOT going to bring you the love of your life. I told her to go help someone else and get her mind off herself. Call your grandmother and tell her you were thinking of her. Reach out to a friend who is struggling. In the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, it tells us that, “nothing insures immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when other activities fail.” Stalking your ex is a form of emotional cutting and is just as harmful as a razor or booze and drugs. But serving others will help you even more than the person you’re helping.
Another kind of waiting that prevents us from moving forward is inaction, also known as analysis paralysis. Not taking action is basically a decision to do nothing. And if nothing changes— nothing changes!
Recently I had an amazing Breakthrough to Confidence Discovery Session with a mother and her daughter. They were looking for solutions for the girl to overcome anxiety and to be more confident and comfortable in her own skin. They were both 100% on board with the decision to embark on my Unshakeable Confidence Coaching Program. During the call I asked the daughter, “what would be the cost of not taking action and doing the coaching?” Her response was, “I’d be afraid of it getting worse.”
I didn’t hear from them again for two weeks. When I reached out to inquire what was going on, the mother said, “my daughter’s anxiety has worsened and we’ve decided to wait until she is more stable before starting the confidence coaching.” Instead, they took her to a psychiatrist for medication. In just two weeks of waiting to start coaching, her fear began to manifest and get worse, thus becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I’m no doctor, nor am I against medication, but I believe it was Hippocrates himself that said, “The greatest medicine of all is to teach people how not to need it.” I do know that no medication in the world is going to teach that girl the resiliency skills and life strategies that will help her finally love and accept herself just the way she is. “Of course things have changed,” I told the mom. “Subconsciously your daughter knows she’s in for change and it freaked her out!” The expression, the only one who likes change is a wet baby is so true and rather than risk change, we often stay stuck in our comfort zones, which are anything but comfortable.
I’ve worked with so many girls who have had severe anxiety, several of whom I had to spend the first few sessions just teaching them how to breathe through it and how to trust they’re ok and safe. The results were astounding and the change in these girls after just a few months of coaching was incredible. One such transformation resulted in me hiring one of my clients to do the artwork for a new video series. I was her very first paid commission and since then her artwork has exploded. Her newfound confidence in herself as an artist inspired my recent blog post #HireAGirl.
This doesn’t just apply to teen girls, this affects all of us. When we hem and haw, procrastinate and delay taking action, unconsciously we have made a decision to wait and it’s typically fear that’s holding us back.
If we’re willing to dive into the fear rather than avoid it, we can often uncover the underlying cause of our pain and frustration.
One area of frustration for me lately was waiting for clients to show up for their free Breakthrough to Confidence Discovery Sessions. For the last two scheduled sessions, both of them were no-shows. One mother cancelled just ten minutes before the session and said she needed to reschedule – which she never did. The other one never showed up and didn’t answer my calls, emails or texts to let me know that everything was OK. I couldn’t believe it. Did I mention they were free? Didn’t they understand the value I was giving them? When I got past the anger and went deeper, I uncovered my unconscious fear and realized that I was the one who wasn’t valuing my own time and expertise. When there is no fee attached, people don’t place a value on it either. Talk about a breakthrough!
Want some help digging deeper into what’s holding you back so you can stop waiting for your dreams to become a reality?
In honor of Mother’s Day and to smooth the transition from free to fee, I’m offering a May special for only $99 for this priceless coaching session. Also, after the session if you feel like confidence coaching is your next right step, I’ll apply that fee towards your coaching package.
So what are you waiting for?
Sign up today!
