“Default living comes as a result of operating from a reactive place and making decisions from an unbalanced ‘fight or flight’ state of emergency and stress all the time. We are allowing programmed thoughts, beliefs and scripts to navigate and guide our actions. We are letting the unconscious drive our bus. (This is a big part of the reason why using The Law of Attraction isn’t as effective for us as we’d like it to be.)”
There’s nothing worse than watching life spiral out of control right before your very eyes.
Dealing with rocky relationships overrun with emotional turbulence, resentment and non-communication. Your spouse or partner is withdrawn. Your children are distant and acting out. Everyone is angry and dissatisfied. Chronic health issues, and tension rippling through your body, both largely due to the stress of working at things you don’t love doing. Coming home so late and exhausted, with no time left for yourself, no energy for self-care, leftover food and unpaid bills the only thing waiting for you. Living a less-than life of toxic relationships, toxic environments, and toxic patterns of thought and behavior.
Each situation is a challenge on its own. Combine any or all of these challenges, and you’re literally pushed over your threshold.
… Especially when you don’t see any signs of the storm ending in sight.
And while you’re usually the pillar of strength in your circle, always the one serving generous helpings of love and guidance to your friends, family, and coworkers, you don’t have anything left to support yourself.
You’re burned out. Mentally. Emotionally. Physically. Spiritually.
You’re tired of waking up every day feeling weak, powerless and out of control. You’re ready for some action. To prove how serious you are about changing your life, you’ve been doing everything you can to take control of your life, things like:
- Attending seminars by great spiritual teachers and leaders like Deepak Chopra
- Reading everything you can get your hands on by Hay House and watching Oprah’s Soul Sunday
- Clearing your energy with EFT, Reiki and Meditation
- Keeping a gratitude journal and coming up with your own affirmations
- Researching spiritual principles like those found in “The Secret”
Yet, try as you might, you’re still falling short of your goals. You’re tripping over the hurdles and letting them fall on top of you. You have no idea why, but you’re getting frustrated and fed up.
IMAGINE Instead… Consciously living each day with profound purpose, peace and connection — all by your creation. Yes, you can make peace of mind a reality.
How would it feel if you were able to completely detox your life from the negativity and nonsense, and then completely re-design it so that you can:
- Enjoy supportive, loving relationships with your spouse and children – and create lasting family memories full of love and happiness?
- Heal from past traumas, pain and negativity that hold you back from living successfully on – and in – your purpose?
- Develop financial wisdom that allows you to live in a spin-cycle of prosperity as opposed to perpetually a day late and a dollar short?
What if you created all of this – amazing family, career and financial prosperity – without someone else’s opinions or action imposing on your vision of how your life is supposed to be?
Here’s the reason I ask!
I was there, living in that place, until I made a decision to start taking control of my life, my emotions and my healing. Now, I’m a living testimony that you can transform your existence so you can experience life at its best. All. The. Time.
I’ve rebooted my life from miserable circumstances – including an unhappy marriage and draining career – TWICE. It wasn’t until I committed myself to learning how to consciously create life on my terms that I transformed my life for the better with lasting results.
Did “The Secret?” fail you? “The Secret,” otherwise known as the Law of Attraction, created a healing crisis in myself and many of my clients as we struggled to use this Universal Principle to transform our lives for the better.
It wasn’t until 2003 that I finally learned how to master it, and it wasn’t what I expected at all. Just as Peter Pan taught Wendy how to fly, “The Secret” was supposed to show you how to fly over and above your struggles and create an amazing life. Think positive thoughts and you’ll attract everything you’ve ever wanted, it declared.
And so we listened. We committed ourselves to making shift happen. We read the book and listened to the audios over and over again, and maybe even joined some groups to help us really make it work. We carried our rose quartz in our purse, tucked beside the gratitude journal, which we were updating daily as Oprah instructed us with “5 Things I am Grateful for Today…”
Still, after several weeks or even months of practice, we failed to manifest the new job, get the raise we knew we deserved or lower our work hours. Some of our marriages were still on the rocks. A few husbands threatened to leave. Children refused to behave at home or in school. The creditors and bill collectors continued to chew up the credit report, as things financially appeared to be going to hell in a handbasket, and pretty quickly.
I was working in mental health at the time, and saw so many going into what I considered to be a healing crisis. Having failed to get results, people were blaming themselves, the people pushing the solution, and even the world at large. It seemed to be working for some, but for many more, it was creating chaos and wreaking havoc in their lives. At that point, many gave up on becoming the Conscious Creators of their lives and decided it was for suckers, discarded their beliefs, felt jilted and resigned to living life as-is.
Much to my surprise, that’s where I found myself at one point. And since I’ve been there myself, and gotten through it, I can tell you from experience that the problem was and is not The Law of Attraction. The Law of Attraction works. You just have to understand how to work with it. Because, you can’t get what you want by just thinking happy thoughts about it. You have to take ACTION!
What “The Secret” failed to reveal about the Law of Attraction is that it requires action. You cannot get what you want from any situation by just thinking about it.
To create change, you have to actively make changes – starting with yourself, and starting from the inside. When you change your energy, you change your life and create what you want powerfully and purposefully.
During the darkest period of my life, I had to overcome a whirlwind of painful experiences – including death, toxic relationships and an undiagnosed illness – in order to experience the life I have today. I had to change who I was in order to change my circumstances – including my understanding of the Law of Attraction and other Universal Principles.
Here’s my story:
I was living by default.
I married my high school sweetheart at the age of 20, but our marriage was anything but loving or happy. To be quite honest with you, it was actually toxic, and venomous. Our relationship should have been my daily source of strength and love; instead more than a fair share of dark moments overshadowed its blessings.
And although I was just starting out in my career, work was taking it’s toll on me also.
By nature, I’m a Healer, Helper, and Empathic Intuitive, so not only can I feel others’ emotions and energy, but I actively engage my energy to heal others from intense emotional and mental stress, as well.
I was great at my job. Maybe too great. I say this because I helped many people heal, but at the expense of my own health. I was emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually exhausted.
I was what you would call living by default. Living by default is when you’re living in reaction or response to your life instead of being an active participant, or co-creator of life.
I lived by default because I wasn’t in control. Everyone else was. Others called the shots; I just followed along. My husband controlled my emotions. My job controlled my work hours and paychecks. I submitted myself to meet others’ demands and expectations without regard to the effects it would have on me.
Clearly, I knew living by default wasn’t healthy. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to determine there’s nothing positive about “surviving” the turbulence of a rocky marriage, exhausting job and pressure to make ends meet each month on a check that barely covers the basics. My misery left no room for any sense of peace or fulfillment.
Despite the circumstances, I figured living by default was the norm. It was how life was meant to be – miserable and unfulfilling. We can’t all be happy, I thought, and others around me were more than happy to chime in. I felt helpless and hopeless. I didn’t understand how to stop living by default.
So, I left things as they were… until 1989, when I walked away from default living the first time.
Most of the time, you’ll only change your behavior when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of changing. In other words, no matter how miserable you are, you won’t be motivated to behave differently until things become unbearable for you.
My first taste of the unbearable came in 1989. It was a crazy year, the height of the AIDS epidemic. People were dying suddenly and painfully from this scary new virus. The outbreak, like my life, seemed to be totally out of control. It was in the midst of this global outbreak that my best friend told me he was dying of AIDS, too.
Death rattles you to the core. The brilliance in its darkness creates instant clarity in your Soul. Upon confrontation, you’ll gain an intense and immediate new perspective, come up against everything you believe. You’ll discover what really matters in life and purge the unnecessary.
My dear friend’s sudden circumstances led me to walk away from my life in Dallas; the husband, the marriage, the unfulfilling work, and the daily drudgery of it all, to be by his side in San Antonio and share this part of his journey with him. I provided company and comfort in his last days, never once looking back on the life I had left. This time of intense questioning, emotion and introspection led me into my first spiritual awakening.
Never once did I look back. I owed it to myself – and him – to put the past behind me and build a bigger, better life than the one I left behind. But my life didn’t truly and permanently begin to change until 2003.
After the death of my best friend, along with other friends I lost during that time, I kept to my word and rebuilt my life from scratch. By 2003, I had a new husband, new career and three children.
And I was miserable. I realized, once again, that I was living a “less-than” life. I had begun doing what was expected of me, doing what “everybody” does, putting up with what “everyone” puts up with, and I was miserable.
In other words, I succumbed to living by DEFAULT again!
I had marital problems, family problems, financial problems, work problems – and the whole house of cards was beginning to crumble.
Making matters worse, I was battling an undiagnosed illness that had been growing progressively worse for the past 7 years! Nobody knew what was going on. There was no diagnosis, no plan for treatment, and it became debilitating, slowly sucking away my vitality and my energy.
Now, remember, I’ve revealed to you that I’m an Empath. I am sensitive to others and their energy, and help heal them through sensing, feeling, reading, managing and moving energy. However, my career aggravated my health, because I was absorbing too much of everyone else’s emotional energy without managing my own.
Take that in for a second. Can you imagine – a lifelong empath, sensitive to the energy of others, helping and healing others, but clueless on how to help or heal herself?
I realized that in order to stop living in this constant state of misery, I had to do something. And, what’s more, I realized I was the only one who could do anything at all. I had to take action. In order to stop living by default, I had to step out on faith and take serious action.
Default living comes as a result of operating from a reactive place and making decisions from an unbalanced “fight or flight” state of emergency and stress all the time. We are allowing programmed thoughts, beliefs and scripts to navigate and guide our actions. We are letting the unconscious drive our bus. (This is a big part of the reason why using The Law of Attraction isn’t as effective for us as we’d like it to be.)
I decided at that very moment in 2003, when I awoke for a moment again and saw what I had created, to turn my life into an experiment for the Law of Attraction.
At the time, I was a mental health therapist, and I saw person after person going into a healing crisis, trying to apply these principles that sounded so simple and then feeling as if they had failed, or worse yet, feeling victimized and taken advantage of. They were either writing themselves off or writing the whole idea of an abundant Universe off.
I felt that if I focused and really did the work and observed my results, I’d be able to crack the code and change my life, right?
Once I served up my life as an experimental testing ground for The Law of Attraction, I accepted the trial and error that accompanied the process and really engaged fully in this new way of living, doing and being.
Only then did I figure out how to stop living by default and how to start living by purposeful and conscious design.
In order to change your life for the better, here are two things you must know:
1. You must understand the spiritual components underlying your current conditions and experiences.
Spiritual undercurrents exist beneath the surface of our physical reality. You don’t need to ascribe to any particular religious belief – or even believe in God – to accept this. You just have to accept and acknowledge that there’s always a spiritual component that ripples into your physical reality and your experiences and affects your life at every level.
2. You must learn to master your energy in all of its forms and manage it at all times.
You are always in energetic exchange with everything in your world. Your energy is always interacting with everyone you come in contact with. Other people will boost, attack or siphon your energy. They’ll also pull your energy into their programs, beliefs and ideas – which may not serve to elevate you to your highest potential. To consciously create a powerful life, you must consciously detach and release from unsupportive energy sources and learn to be the only one in control of your energy. You must learn to discard the programs, patterns and thoughts that threaten your sustainability. You must learn to master your own energy and manage it in your daily life.
Your intuition and your energy are your two most powerful tools for transforming your life into what you most want it to be. It’s about learning to master the art of taking action, but not just any action, inspired action that comes from an empowered and intuitive place. It’s about learning how to take solid age-old spiritual principles, understand them, and ground them into a tangible and practical way so you can implement them in your life, no matter how busy, complicated or overwhelming it appears to be.
In fact, do you know what the biggest roadblock to success is? Taking in too much information without taking action. This common obstacle has caused so many of my clients to stall in manifesting change in their lives. You’re probably familiar with this experience also. Your life won’t change through consuming information alone. You have to create change, and it starts with changing yourself. When you change your thoughts and master yourself in all areas of your life, you can become a powerful magnet for the very things you want.
Your thoughts, habits, actions and energy must be in alignment in order to achieve your best results.
How about you? Are you aligned with your purpose, your vision, your mission, your dreams and your truth, or are you stuck in a negative spin cycle?
Every so often we come in contact with one of our big dreams and start taking action to achieve it. We set intentions and goals, strive for things like freedom, prosperity, abundance, health and success. Ready to live an authentic life filled with purpose, we invest ourselves and our time and energy to do what it takes to get there.
Suddenly an obstacle throws us off course. Everything comes to a screeching halt.
We lose momentum; we trip up and get lost in an old habit. We start to question ourselves, our “silly” dreams, and the emotional rollercoaster ride that seems to accompany the pursuit of happiness.
Negativity penetrates our system. Before we know it, we’re back where we started: safely nestled in our comfortable misery. Even though it no longer serves us, we remain comforted by the fact we know what to expect.
Does any of this sound familiar? Do you keep committing to your path over and over, only to get stuck time and time again? Or maybe you’ve been nudged and called toward something, but you just can’t imagine how to get started?
When you are living a life dictated by where you’ve been, toxic emotions, sad stories and negative self-talk hold you back. As a result, you create a lot of what you don’t want – along with feelings of anger, frustration, hopelessness and powerlessness.
You may not be aware of it, but when things like this happen, you’re not in alignment with all levels of your being. Not all the parts of you are on board. You start playing against yourself, and the stronger part of you starts to win.
When conflicting energies collide in your life in this fashion, you negate your chances of success. This is why mastering your intuition and energy is so important. Because it helps you get in full alignment so you can effectively change your life.
My Coach’s Challenge To You: It’s time to become fully aware. There are different levels of awareness within you. Among those are particularly troublesome ones that don’t buy into your Vision. These parts of you are scared of change or feel threatened and uncomfortable by your expansion. As a result, they bring about self-sabotage or neutralize your results on the path to personal transformation. You’ll have to seek these levels out, then adjust and realign them so they’re fully aware and open to the possibilities. The things that are unconsciously driving your bus need to be brought into the light of your awareness so you can deal with them head-on. Once they become conscious, they will lose their power to control you. Creating a better life, a life you love that supports and sustains you, is all about filling your toolbox with the right tools, mastering your mindset, and exploring the underlying beliefs and programs blocking your way. Are you merely interested or committed? This is a Yes or a No.
If you want to know how I’m living my life now and how to create a better life now for yourself, visit my website. I’ve got a lot of free resources there for you. And if you want to see the work I do that I love and that allows me to create the life I want to live and supports and sustains me, visit my website and find out how you can create a better business now.
Wishing You Absolute Joy In Your Journey!
Michelle Barr, Intuitive Success Coach
Let me know how I can best serve you.