It may have started on Christmas Eve, or even long before that, but I want to be clear that I did not “attain enlightenment” at that moment during "It’s a Wonderful Life.” I h"ad an experience of direct knowing where I got a glimpse of another way to live. A way to live that would inspire me to become the highest version of myself. 

I wanted that; I did. But my life at the time was still dominated by my old way of thinking and well-worn habits. I was not open to receiving that new life. There would be a lot to unlearn, and a lot of layers to shed before I could receive it.

After the movie ended, I went to bed, woke up the next day, and stepped fully into all of the doing of the holiday season. The revelation of my life being a gift shifted to the back of my mind, tucked away for another day. 

The truth was, I wanted a break - from everything. I was exhausted and burnt out by the life I made; all the building, the striving, the fighting, and the struggling since I was a little girl had left me depleted and disillusioned. The slog had been rough. 

So, for the rest of the year, I just checked out. I let myself get lost in the busyness of the holidays, and immersed myself in shopping, celebrating, and vegging out. I didn’t care to read anything meaningful, and I especially tried to avoid thinking about what I was going to do next. I didn’t want to think, I didn’t want to care, I didn’t want to want. Underlying it all was the great uneasiness that I knew I would soon need to face, but I was determined not to face it until the new year began.

As the new year approached the dread began silently building. Turns out that the not doing, and the not knowing, began to wear on me too. My boredom began steadily gnawing on the nothingness I was trying to hold on to. I started to lose sleep, waking up with my heart racing, feeling fearful of something I could not yet see and did not understand. 

As I lay awake those last few nights of the year, my mind would race incessantly about what I was going to do. Would I write a book, or maybe start a podcast? Would I do a vlog or blog? What would I want to write about? What was the message I had to share? What if I wrote the book or started the podcast and no one read it or listened? Even worse, what if they did read it, what if they did listen, and then I had to be out there? 

My deepest fear was that I would not find the thing I was longing for. What if all of this was for nothing?

So, when the new year finally came, I felt relieved that I would finally have to deal with it. January 1st started with a pretty good hangover. One of those well-worn habits leftover from trying to deal with the slog. As I pulled myself together, I decided to set one goal for the year. That was the least I could do. I decided to go easy on myself by doing something on the spiritual side. That seems quite funny now that I reflect on it.

So, I set a goal to finally finish something that I had been putting off for over 15 years. I guess you could say I was in resistance. The details are fuzzy about how I was introduced to it, but sometime in my early thirties, a woman I trusted told me about “A Course in Miracles.” She mentioned it with great reverence and something inside me knew that I wanted to take a deeper look. I remember buying the book soon after that conversation. Shortly after bringing the book home, I started reading it and doing the lessons, but after a week or so, I put it down. I can’t remember exactly why, but I suppose it just wasn’t time. Over the years, I would pick it up again during particularly dark moments. I would scan the table of contents to find a lesson that I hoped could bring me some relief, some form of peace. It usually worked for that moment. But I never picked it up and attempted the course with any seriousness. 

But this time would be different, I made the sincere intention that I would finish it, all 365 days of it. I had no more excuses.

And so, it began. On January 2nd, I woke up and read the daily text, and did the lesson (which is a form of meditation) from “A Course in Miracles” (ACIM). This helped to calm the vast uneasiness I had been feeling and gave me some comfort that everything was going to be ok. I found some peace that day. That little glimpse of peace was just enough to motivate me to wake up the next day and return to the course. 

On Monday, January 3rd, after doing my ACIM reading and lesson, I was on fire. I felt so amazing, and I was excited to sit down and write. I didn’t know what I was sitting down to write, but within an hour, I had an idea. A BIG IDEA. And within a few more hours, to my great delight, I had a plan for how I was going to bring this idea to the world. 

Brimming with excitement, I practically tackled my husband when I saw him emerge from his office at the end of the day. I couldn’t wait to share it with him. He read it and got so excited that we spent the rest of the evening planning out the next steps. 

I remember thinking – wow that was so easy, what was I so afraid of? Of course, I was going to figure this out - just like I always had.

I went to bed that night elated and woke up in the middle of the night with more thoughts swirling about how I was going to make it happen. After about 20 minutes of plotting in the darkness, it dawned on me that this was the first time I had woken up in the middle of the night to solve a problem about my own business, instead of the business attached to my corporate career. That was so overwhelmingly satisfying that I immediately drifted back to sleep, rapt in the satisfaction of knowing where I was going and how I was going to get there, on my own, using my gifts, and helping a lot of people along the way. Ahhh, sweet certainty.

Each day after, during the first week of January, I continued to read the ACIM text and do my lesson. I also began working on my big idea, doing a ton of research about the wellness space, drafting a comprehensive build and rollout strategy, securing domain names, and on and on. I even made an appointment with a CPA to discuss the business and plan our tax strategy.  

Things were moving fast.

Then, toward the end of the week, I started to have a sinking feeling; something was not quite right.

It all started one morning during my meditation when a thought arose asking “what is this all really for?” It just came in and kind of hovered there in my awareness for a while. I didn’t know what to think of it, or maybe I didn’t want to know, so afterward, I tried to forget about it.

I pushed the thought aside and continued plugging along, determined to make progress each day on this idea. But each day after that, the thought grew louder. And soon, the certainty about my new venture began to slip away as I began to realize what was happening, and where the idea was coming from. 

As I studied ACIM, I was learning that the world is dominated by fear-based thinking. The course refers to that thought system as the ego mind. I was learning that while the ego is part of who we are, it is not the whole story, and operating in the world rooted in the ego alone can never bring peace or fulfillment. I was also learning that the glimpse of a new way to live I had on Christmas eve, was living from a thought system rooted in love or our spirit.

It started to become very clear that this big idea was not coming from my spirit or my love-based thinking. It was coming from my ego. I knew because I recognized that I was motivated by a picture of external success that was so familiar. The picture that includes the recognition, the money, the title, the insert any external desire here. All the things the ego tells us we need to be enough, to feel worthy, and to feel loved. 

The question that arose in my meditation began to make a lot of sense.

The one thing I knew for sure was - I didn’t want to be led by the ego anymore. The ego had brought me to where I was - successful and unfulfilled. I didn’t want that life anymore. I wanted to be fulfilled. I wanted peace. I wanted joy. 

So, there I was, again faced with the choice between two paths. Was I willing to commit to peace, joy, and fulfillment above all else? Above perceived comfort, security, and success? 

The answer was, thankfully, yes. I knew I needed to let go of the idea and wipe the slate clean. I decided to commit to the path of peace, and let go of the well-worn path, again. 

I also recognized I had a lot of work to do if I was ever going to find the real thing I was here to do. I mean, the next idea I came up with was surely bound to come from my ego, because that is the thought system I was operating under. 

Once again, I didn’t know where I was going to go, or what I was going to do, I only knew that tomorrow, I was going to get up and do my studies and my practice. And the next day I was going to do the same. And then the next day, and the day after that. I hoped that if I did this, the way would come to me, and a new path would be revealed. 

This was going to be an inside job, and no one could walk the path for me. I was going to have to learn how to just be for a while, and stop defining myself, and my worth, by all the doing - my goals, roles, and titles.

I intuitively knew that choosing being over doing was exactly what I needed.