In my role as the Divine Hustler, I am an inspire-er, a teacher, an uplifter. I remind people who they are.
I offer tools to women who want to awaken the Divine Feminine in their creative entrepreneurship — including and especially other Interior Designers.
It’s my intention that by sharing my discoveries, the things I’ve learned and done (and learned from some more) while growing my design firm, I can be of service to others on this path.
As Interior Design principals and solopreneurs, we are whole beings.
The more we care for and express our whole being, the more we can bring ourselves to serve our clients and families, and the more we can be a person to partner with, one who has wisdom.
Interior Design is a higher calling.
Beauty is the closest thing to the Divine; it brings us close to Source/Spirit/God/Goddess/All There Is; it invites us to stop and pause, in reverence; even just scrolling through Instagram — curated beauty is an invitation to linger in the moment — take a breath; take it all in…
The more I have unfolded, bloomed, into my Self, the more authentic and beautiful my interiors have become. The more I have become beautiful on the inside, the more beauty is reflected in my design work; and also reflected in the beauty of my staff, that synergy, as we are all in our nature, in the Divine Feminine.
Why do I have the ability to create a multi-million-dollar design firm with a tribe of goddesses who love to come to work every day? It’s because of the willingness and courage to engage in personal growth work.
I am offering an invitation to use these practices, take them and make them your own. I believe that others can leapfrog the process of becoming successful businesswomen by 10 years, using the tools I am sharing here.
You don’t have to wait for the business to grow you — which is what happened for me.
It is my intention that others may bypass all of the unnecessary time I wasted believing I was less-than, that I couldn’t charge what I was worth, how I put up with crazy clients (just a few!).
Now, I am commanding fees that match my services and my talent.
Does this have to take 10 years or more? What if it only takes three years? How about right now?
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Let’s begin…
What I have learned as I have immersed myself in personal growth work is: Everything is thought.
Who would I be if I wasn’t having this thought?
This question opens the door to changing my way of BEING. I can understand that on an intellectual level, but when I started practicing it, I found I was able to embody it in a way that felt very powerful. It landed so deeply. I realized that I have found a tool that allows me to very quickly go through transformation.
And the corollary to that question, the key to being able to transform:
If I don’t feel it, I can’t heal it.
You’ve heard of spiritual bypassing, right? The idea that if we manage our thoughts (this is something that gets misused in the personal growth movement) somehow we will make ourselves transform.
That’s a misunderstanding; a distortion of the work that needs to be done.
Byron Katie is one teacher among many who has given me an effective tool to engage with around this concept, called “The Work.” The reality is that this kind of self discovery is a pathway to transformation.
Byron Katie’s “The Work” offers us a structure for doing the self inquiry and being-with that creates change.
So much of why people don’t heal or get better is because being in self inquiry really requires a willingness to be vulnerable; honesty; deep self-reflection — and for most of us in this culture, we haven’t been taught how to do that.
We’ve been taught: Don’t feel your feelings! Put a smile on your face! Suck it up and get through it!
So, we end up doing that, even with the Universe. We put a fresh coat of paint over our pain, we refuse to look at what is festering underneath. And then we wonder why the Universe isn’t complying with our wishes and plans. And meanwhile, the more we ignore the messages we are actually receiving, the louder the Universe gets.
Look. At. This.
Until your life is in breakdown, you may not pick up these tools.
This tool, The Work, it could be the keys to the kingdom. It really invites you to sit in mediation, it’s very doable; you can do it alone or practice with a friend.
In Network Spinal, we go through stages of Discover and Transform; this tool similarly guides the user through that process. And the combination of discovery and transformation (in either paradigm) leads to spiritual awakening.
But we need to apply humility, too.
There is not just one awakening and then we’re done. We’re always a work in progress.
The more we are willing to do transformative work, which means being willing to feel the grief of our losses, hurts, and suffering, express and feel the rage, we will see in the end that it was us all along, and our own thinking that made it so.
We decided to believe. When we see our part in the story, that’s when liberation comes.
Here’s a recent example from my home:
One Saturday, when I was enjoying being at home with Scott and Jett after working hard all week….
Jett was excited about her friend coming over, and didn’t want to sit down with us for dinner.
I had made dinner, and out of respect for that, Scott got us all to table.
During the meal, Jett wanted to text her friend who would be sleeping over. I had told her that this was okay, even though we usually have a no-phones rule at the table.
She pulled out her phone, and Scott immediately jumped on her and started yelling — instead of staying calm, slowing down, and checking in. Things blew up. If Scott had been in a calmer state, I might have had time to say that I had told her she could.
But, if this rupture hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have had to sit and do self inquiry.
Scott got angry and Jett cried. I sat down and went through Katie’s four questions.
This form of inquiry allowed me to get really clear about my PTSD from having grown up in a household where my father’s anger and efforts to control made my 12-year-old self feel shame and rage.
Sitting in meditation, my adult self could be with and feel all those big, scary, messy feelings. I wrote the whole story out and cried. I let myself have my experience, feel my anger, resentment, judgement.
As part of The Work, you write out all the things you wish the person would do, instead of what they did do. At the end of the process, I got to a place of such peace, and the awareness that what happened invited me to grant Scott his innocence, to have empathy for and get clear on what he was experiencing. That awareness healed my pain.
Now that I’ve been practicing with The Work for a while, I find that I can short circuit the four questions with a simple concept.
I ask myself, “Who would I be without that thought?”
“What would happen if I could just love that person and see how hard it is for them?”
No one can tell the thing that provides awakening.
We have to sit with and be in the discomfort and the inquiry and allow the answers to unfold. Awakening could strike like a lightning bolt or flow in like a trickle.
We want quick fixes, but that’s not how awakening usually works.
Does this post resonate for you? Have you started doing The Work? Share your reactions, thoughts, and experiences with me in the comments.
