How To Become & Believe In Who You Are

Who am I to tell you how to do that? I’m an artist, a writer, an intuitive, a creator of what has helped this world – what has helped heal the hearts of the people who are in it – but I didn’t know that before. This story, full of lessons sent to me by my soul, begins at the end of the life I had before I became who I am.

The shot above is of me from before. A woman who thought she did but really had no idea who she was. A woman who wouldn’t have believed she could do what she’s done from then until now – and what she’ll do from this point on – if God had come down from above and told her.

I was a 37-yr-old professional making six figures and living on my own in an area in New York City I loved so much I had its coordinates tattoed on my back. Then my career stumbled, and that led me to topple everything over so I could let what wasn’t serving my soul fall away.

At its simplest, this is a story about switching careers later in life. Diving deeper, it shows how one has to change what they believe about who they are inside of themselves before they can succeed at being who they want to be in the world around them.

In my last life, I wasn’t miserable but my career wasn’t making me happy, not the way it once had, and I knew deep down I needed to do more. I worked in Advertising. The face of the team, I answered our clients’ every need; moving projects forward while protecting those who created. I ran myself ragged – 12 to 15 hours a day, most days, plus time on the weekends – because I loved being a part of making campaigns that made people feel something.

Here’s what I didn’t have time to see – I wanted to create something. Here’s what I believed – I wasn’t capable of creating anything. I needed time to see the first, then a lot more time to believe I was someone who could do the second.  

I got lucky. I lost my job when my agency merged with another, but what I felt in those first few weeks was far from luck. I was devastated, scared out of my mind to lose my income. But below that fear I knew, like everything that happens in life, this was all happening for a reason.

Having gotten into energy healing a month prior, I was already searching for what was inside of me that had caused my life to manifest in the way that it had at every turn. I saw this loss in that light, as more than just a series of jobs that had ended with me nearly killing myself. I knew I had to understand what had led me to do that, and I had to do it before my next move, lest I do more of the same, so I decided to live on my savings and focus on myself for a few months. 

I learned what would end up taking me years to heal all the layers of in those first few weeks of introspection. I didn’t believe in myself, not really, not enough. I’d started off as a Junior Art Director but had taken myself off that creative track, despite my boss’s protests, because my insecurities had gotten the better of me. I went on to pour my love for creativity into a career where one of my jobs was to carve out space and time for others to create. I did it with a zealous passion, like a vigilante fighting for justice. With that dedication now focused on myself, I poured that same passion into learning what made me tick.

I picked up one mindfulness book and article after another and was astounded when I read what Carl Jung called the Golden Shadow. It’s the name he gave a person’s submerged creative potential. When we admire what someone else is doing intensely, whomever they are, and whatever that is, we’re actually looking at the disowned aspects of ourselves. Which made sense of the career I’d led. Going to bat for creative teams routinely, I’d stood in the client’s line of fire without a second’s hesitation for over a decade. Anything to give them the time they needed to create the work I admired. Meanwhile, I’d suppressed my own creative instincts. So the first life-changing lesson I learned is this...

– ONE –

See yourself more clearly by looking in the mirror being created by those you admire. 

Realizing I wanted to create wasn’t a huge revelation since it’s what I’d started out doing, but hearing my worship was a sign I had similar abilities was reassuring. Especially since I didn’t believe I could do what they did.

So what did I do?

I set that aside and took workshops to help me understand myself on a deeper level. I found them online and at a local energy healing center. They fed a part of me I’d never tapped into before, and once I started feeling the awe and beauty they inspired within, I couldn’t stop gobbling them up. Clearing my chakras, learning to love myself, and meditating to reprogram my brain – I was driven to take one after the other. Then a six-week course on trusting your instincts led me to uncover the dream I’d buried. 

The instructor insisted we write in a journal daily since putting one’s thoughts down on paper slows them enough to see things more clearly. Doing that changed my life. I’m sure I would have discovered it eventually, but it was while re-reading an entry written about an exchange with my local barista that I thought, “Wow. That sounds like a story.” Turning it over in my head, I thought back to when I’d sat down to write a book as an adolescent. Giving up before a full-page had been written, I’d gone on to read a thousand books as a teenager. That memory led me to think of something I’d read more recently, which became my next lesson...

–TWO –

Think back to what you loved doing, what you did all of the time when you were 12. Now, find a way to turn that into what you do for a living. 

I had the time, so I picked up where I’d left off. I wrote a book. And it was B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L. Every second spent spinning those words felt like I was weaving pure beauty. It was the furthest thing from work. I jumped to my feet by 7 every morning, eager to get to it. Hurrying over to my local cafe carrying my laptop, I’d order a coffee from the barista who had no idea of the part he’d played, then type for hours. I read over those first few pages in complete awe of what had flown out of me.

More words appeared daily. First while I sat at a counter overlooking trees that lined a park, then streaming out – glowing with the afternoon sun – as I sat on a bench set under those same trees, and later at night while settled into the comfort of my couch. I wrote 10 hours a day, every day of the week. Lost in my words, a deep and raw happiness radiated up from within. Eventually glancing up, I’d clock that what felt like mere minutes had been hours. I’d read about this phenomenon – called FLOW – and after experiencing the bliss of being in it, I would testify on any Bible that it’s like being on the best drug times a hundred. So this lesson was easy to learn...

– THREE –

While doing what you love, time ceases to exist; it flows by and the “work” flows out. 

I’d found my calling, and I was positive the world would welcome my words with a standing ovation. Why wouldn’t they? That’s what I’d learned in those classes on energy. Do what brings joy and stay positive about the outcome. Then you’re sure to manifest abundance. It’s the big secret, right? Wrong.

Or rather, it’s only part of it. I’d done everything I’d been taught. I’d given up what wasn’t serving me any longer and directed all of my energy into what brought me happiness. I’d made space for it by turning down jobs that wouldn’t have made me happy. I'd given up dinners out and all forms of shopping and entertainment so I could buy time to do what I loved. My travel plans were whittled down to which city park I would walk over and sit in for the hour or two a day I wasn’t writing. All was done with a smile on my lips and a bounce to my step. This new way of living made me happier than anything I’d given up ever had.

I was full of positivity. Positive that this was my calling. Positive that my book was beautiful. Positive that it would be rewarded. Positive that my new future was right around the corner. I could see myself so clearly, sitting across from Oprah, surrounded by trees during one of her Soul Sundays, discussing the beauty of what I’d created along with my spiritual awakening. And I didn’t just see it, I could feel it. But my vision didn’t manifest a call from anyone, much less Oprah.

Here’s what took me longer to discover – the internal blocks to changing your life go deeper than imagined. I’d dug, but I hadn’t gone deep enough, not yet anyway. Remember how I didn’t believe in myself back in the beginning? I thought that had been wiped clean but decades of programming doesn’t get brushed off in a few months. So I went deeper...and I kept going.

At first, though, I tried to rush things. After those six months spent blissed out on writing, I decided to self-publish. It was done before either the book or I was ready.

This (mis)step was made after a lot of careful contemplation. Not wanting what had streamed straight from my soul to be changed by anyone, I went the route that kept me in control, the exact opposite of FLOW. But here’s a theme you’ll see repeated – there are no mistakes, not if you choose to fail forward, which is the best lesson of all.

When I did that this time? It was the only thing I could do. This voice I’d found felt too new to place under the scrutiny of a professional. I wasn’t ready for that. I saw the beauty in what I’d written but didn’t trust someone else to, and I still didn’t know if this had been a fluke. I’d written a book, but was I a writer? I couldn’t see or say that I was. All that positivity didn’t include a belief in myself. So I put what I’d created out in the world, and the world turned around and ignored it. This lesson was harder to swallow...

– FOUR –

Look inside to see what’s unconsciously blocking you and your life, heal it, then go deeper.

This fall from happiness was rough and sent me reeling, leading me away from this new life temporarily. Almost a year since I’d gotten paid to work, money was tight. With no sign of the sales I’d been positive would hit the second I published and thinking I’d done enough work on my energy, I buckled and got a job in the most corporate environment I’d ever been in. That didn’t last long. I’d felt real happiness doing what I loved and doing anything less made me miserable.

Once you’ve felt the high of what you love, going where that love doesn’t exist is unbearable. So I took a leap and quit without the safety of a lot of savings. To the outside world, it looked like a helluva mistake. For my soul, it was the only choice I could make. It was either leave this place where creativity wasn’t valued or crush my heart. My next lesson was a scary but necessary one to overcome...

– FIVE –

It’s hard to do but choose happiness over money because only one can lead to the other.

So how did I survive? I lived on what little I had until it ran out, then I lived on credit. What’s more important is – what did I do?

I started learning to believe in myself.

I considered the credit a loan for a do-it-yourself graduate program on how to live right, how to live with a healed heart leading your life. I was lucky, and I knew it. I didn’t have a husband or kids whose lives I had to worry over, so I could dedicate all of my time, energy, and borrowed money on becoming who I was meant to be.

To caveat, anyone and everyone can change, but everyone’s path to doing so is different. I chose the full-on method and went back to the full-time energy work I knew would help. That’s what I had to do, to go on and create what I was meant to, what would help others. But your path may – and can – be milder. You can choose to integrate what I’ve done into your everyday routine without having to put anything on hold.

Now, back to what I did. First, I came up with every activity I could think of, all scaring the hell out of me, to promote what I still believed in. Full of raw truth, my book traced my broken patterns and feelings of inferiority back to childhood. Facing the fear I’d always had of being seen as flawed, I stood up and read from it in front of strangers. Walking up to other strangers, I handed them postcards that quoted what had been broken in prose that could make the heart melt. Then I posted everything online for everyone who’d ever known me to see. To sell copies – yes – but also because doing it made me quake straight to my core. That’s how I learned this lesson...

– SIX –

By doing what you fear most, fear loses its power over you.

Barely any copies sold but that didn’t stop me. I knew what I was getting went deeper and was giving me exactly what I needed most. I was becoming someone who wasn’t afraid of what others thought of me.

Setting the efforts that had gradually become easy aside after a few months, I wrote a short story about a date I’d gone on. Creating something out of nothing, for a second time, showed me I did have the power to create beauty, but I still couldn’t bring myself to say that I was a writer.

How could I? No one who mattered had confirmed it. Despite all of my work, I still needed the validation of others. This is that fourth lesson creeping back up. How to combat it? Keep going deeper and find more of what’s unconscious within that’s limiting.

While I did that, a fear for my survival got the better of me and led me on a detour. My next move wasn’t a mistake – because remember, there aren’t any – but I did choose to shelve my writing and go back to work. Five months had maxed out my credit so for the next six I worked a freelance job at a start-up that was also birthing something healthy into the world.

I kept up with my inner work, as well as eek’ing out a few more stories, but after a couple months there I gave up on the idea of being a writer. The flop of that book had hit harder and deeper than I’d realized. I no longer believed I could make money writing, not soon enough to keep living in a nice apartment in New York City, which was the one thing I couldn’t give up.

This might seem to counter the earlier lesson on choosing happiness over money, but it doesn’t. The money I made paid for more classes and let me keep the apartment I still needed, and I used the triggers of office life to heal more of the wounds inside that needed my attention. I did what I could and that’s the next lesson...

– SEVEN –

You can only do what you’re capable of in the moment, so don’t beat yourself up if you need to pause while pursuing a dream.

Eventually, that job, like everything that isn’t meant to last, ended. The contract expired and since unemployment kicked in, I had a breather, but I felt lost, and I don’t mean in my words. I had no idea how to make money and be happy. So I did something that seemed logical. Since I loved energy work, I trained to become an energy healer. Early on in all of this, before I’d started writing, I’d gotten certified in Reiki but had stopped after a couple of sessions bored me to tears. Choosing to forget that, I dove in and spent a few months learning another modality that was similar in nature. Then I got a few clients, but I couldn’t bear it. I felt every tick of my internal clock in the 60 painful minutes spent in a session on someone. Grateful when each was done and dreading when the next was booked, I tried to work through it. My mind mulled my situation over for a couple of months but it had no idea what I should do. I just knew I couldn’t spend my life doing that. So I did the only thing I wanted to, I went back to writing. Lesson eight is one I loved once I learned it...

– EIGHT –

Let your heart lead you, even if your head can’t figure out how it’ll all work out.

With no idea of what would come, I committed to doing what I loved. Taking the stories I’d written, I wove them into a second book. Less wide-eyed but no less beautiful, I reveled in every second of its creation. Using the knowledge I’d gained from the first, I felt more like a writer. But at the end, fear pushed me to rush it, again.

Unemployment ran out right around the second edit, and I jumped to send it to agents, which might have been fine since it was pretty tight, but I’d forgotten my fourth lesson. I believed in the book, and I thought I believed in its success, but I still didn’t believe in myself. Not deep enough.

Sounds crazy, I know. I would have scoffed at anyone who tried to tell me that in the moment, but I couldn’t fool the universe. I wasn’t ready, and if I’d gotten what I wanted, my deeper insecurities would have made me flounder. Maybe not immediately but eventually. And from the word go, they would have kept me from fully enjoying any success. My next lesson was one I struggled with for awhile...

– NINE –

A dream can only come to life once you’re ready to live it.

Here’s how I got ready. First, I lost everything, or better to say, I gave up everything for the dream I believed in. Probably fair to say both. I’d buckled and gotten a roommate to help pay rent, but I hadn’t been able to take a job doing less than what I once had. I couldn’t. I hadn’t done all of this to wake up every day dreading my life. I knew that would kill my soul faster than anything. I needed time to see this all through, to see where my heart would lead me.

But the bills kept hitting, until I ran out of the money I’d saved back up. I’d been sure my second book would come through in time. After a few months without any sign of that happening, I started scrambling. Scared to lose my home, I went back on what I’d decided and searched for a full-time job, but the universe knew better and it wasn’t going to let that happen. I still hadn’t fully found or done all I needed to, so I couldn’t do something else, not yet. I needed more time. And a lot more space.

That led me to give up the apartment I loved in the city I adored. Initially, I was devastated. I felt like a total failure. I moved everything into storage and went to live in the town I’d grown up in. Back with my family, who I was lucky to have the support of without any added judgment, I chose to use the experience to my benefit. I took time to notice every trigger and heal every wound from childhood that I hadn’t been able to see when I lived at a distance from those I’d grown up with. This next lesson is one that stays on repeat...

– TEN –

Use every experience, even when it looks like you’re stuck, to move yourself forward. 

After healing a bunch of what had been buried, I became a writer. How?

I wrote. A lot. Not a third book that would collect dust while it waited to be read. I already had two of those that I loved. I wrote short stories. But I didn’t just write them. I put them out there to be seen by everyone, which might sound easy, but as I found out, definitely wasn’t. A fan of artists on Instagram, I used it as a tool in this effort to believe in myself. Pairing titles with images, I pasted my stories below and drew on all of my courage to post them. Eyes averted, I then waited. Believing deeply in their beauty, I was shocked when barely anyone liked them.

It hurt, but I didn’t let that stop me. I used it. I wrote about the pain, what it told me on a deeper level about the human condition, and I kept writing and posting despite it. Then I expanded by switching up my style. I turned out short inspiring phrases, placed on top of images, two or three times a day for weeks. I did it for myself, and I soon cared less and less about who or how many liked them, or if anyone thought I posted too many. For me personally, this lesson was a major one...

– ELEVEN –

Find the support you need to keep doing what you love independent of others; find it inside of yourself. 

From there I went deeper into the next fear – the one that had been there from the beginning – having someone else edit my words. I added Medium to my channels and submitted pieces to a few of its publications. They didn’t pay but did have editors who selected from the submissions. Editors who might choose to change something I’d written. The thought of both hammered my heart with fear, but with the first story accepted my spirit skyrocketed, and it didn’t plummet when my words were changed. I felt more like a writer, but I knew I had more to do before truly becoming one.

I kept writing and submitting. I got hundreds of claps and some meaningful comments, but no one story went through the roof. I soon got bored with what had become easy and wasn’t giving enough back, so I turned my attention elsewhere.

I started writing pieces for themed contests that had cash prizes, as well as publications’ requested submissions. To write based on what someone else wanted and would pay for was a giant leap forward. And here’s the truth about that leap. I might not have done it if my social following had satisfied me. All of my focus and energy would have stayed there, and I wouldn’t have taken this next step – believing my work deserved to be paid for.

None of what I submitted came through, but that didn’t matter, I got what I needed. I began to know, to believe on the deepest level – I am a writer.

I got there thanks to all of these lessons, especially this last one...

– TWELVE –

Not getting what you want in the moment is setting you up for something better, so stay the course. 

Here’s something interesting about this last lesson. I keep learning it.

When my submissions didn’t get accepted, I turned to a new channel. I started creating videos on YouTube to find an audience for my books. Videos where I told stories about the energy healing I’d done and how much it changed me. Guess where that led?

I started helping others through energy healing. Leaving behind what I’d learned that I didn’t like doing, I did what intuitively came natural, what I enjoyed. Deciding to build a practice to help people, which I never would have done if my words had skyrocketed, I set writing aside for a moment to focus my energy there. 

Then lesson twelve hit again. The videos caught the attention of a few thousand, and in came clients that I was helping, but then the views started to dwindle. I felt what I needed to do. I was on the wrong channel. It was time to head back to Instagram, where I could combine both things I loved doing — writing and energy healing.

While doing that, I hit a month of silence. All of my clients had gone quiet. At first, I was stumped. Then guess what happened? That’s right, lesson twelve. With all that space and solitude, and while on a channel where I saw others doing what they loved, I discovered a new love.

It was kicked into gear by a rejection. I had reached out to an artist I admired, to ask if she wanted to collaborate on bringing one of my poems to life visually. She ignored me. So I did it myself.

I started painting, and this time, from day one, I called myself an artist. I’d found a deeper belief in myself and that belief extended to whatever I chose to do. With that rooted within, I kept picking up a paintbrush and using it on one blank canvas after another. Then, I combined all of the things I loved into one.

Creating art that drove a deeper awareness, I used it to tell stories about what’s within all of us. Then, I used it to create tools and programs that help people dive deeper. Sprinkled throughout, I wrote longer pieces that drew on my experiences, to show how to navigate the deeper depths. This was everything I had never even dreamed of doing when I hadn’t believed I could create anything, much less so much that carried so much meaning.

Lesson twelve. It’s a big one. Now that I know it, nothing that’s tough to experience bothers me because I know everything is happening to help me get where I’m supposed to go next. To become who I’m supposed to be. To do what I’m meant to do. To create. More and more that brings more and more beauty and harmony into this world. Now that I believe in my ability to do that, I’ll continue to do it in different forms because I intend to constantly evolve. To do more, to create more, to become more.

This all may sound specific to someone who wants to do something creative, but it’s not. These are lessons that can be used to change any life – from and to anything – because for that to happen a solid belief in yourself has to be rooted in the core of your being.

For anyone taking their first step towards change, those already in the midst of one, or anyone my story inspires to make a change, I’m here to say...

KEEP GOING

The struggles are all worth it. I ask anyone who doubts that to consider this...

Why wouldn’t you do whatever it takes to be happy? Three, four, even five years spent learning to truly and deeply believe in yourself are worth it...

AT ANY AGE 

...for the next five to six decades of happiness it leads to. It’s tough at times, there’s no doubt about that, but diving deep within to learn about oneself is a rewarding experience in itself. I promise. It’s worth every sacrifice. To become who you are meant to be. To believe in who you have always been.

— — —

If you want to see and heal what’s hidden within, I’ve created tools that help you do that. Through 70+ HEART Alchemē Kits or The CORE reBUILD Program, you can clear out what’s weighed you down for way too long.

With, In & For LOVE…