Just like you. 

When I began my journey as a business coach ten years ago, I was excited about the idea of giving advice and direction to fellow creatives who were seeking success and prosperity. Being that I’ve had a gift for marketing and communication, it was a natural next step for me to take after selling my design firm. 

What I quickly discovered was that most of the business challenges that people were having were personal problems in disguise. It wasn’t that people didn’t know what to do. There was plenty of information out there on how to grow a business and how to market. What was present with everyone I was coaching was fear. The voice of fear was leading their lives and the choices they were making were not aligned with their authentic selves. People pleasing was rampant and there was very little self-love present. 

Self-love? What does that have to do with running a business, you may ask?

Well, everything. 

Everything stems and gets created from the way we love ourselves. 

When we love ourselves, we make choices that are healthy for our growth. We don’t compromise our talent, we aren’t afraid to ask for what we want and we experience a level of self-confidence that allows us to be truly creative. That also influences the people we attract. The clients that hire us. The employees that want to support us. 

 Teaching people how to better love themselves has become a core theme in my coaching work. This is the hardest work for people to do. Doing self-love work means that we are required to face our dragons and heal our wounds. That’s a scary space for most people. But it’s work that changes everything. Everything. 

Last weekend, for three days at Joshua Tree I became a student again. I attended the Human Awareness Institute’s workshop on self-love and learned from highly skilled masters about how to bring more love and intimacy into my life. Leading edge work, unconventional exercises and powerful insights helped me get healthier and more aligned with my higher self.  This was hard work at times. Scary. Surprising. Challenging. But so worth it. Here I was with forty fellow men and women, naked the entire time, facing our inner dragons and liberating from old ways of judging and seeing ourselves. 

One evening, while soaking in the outdoor hot tub of the retreat centre,  I looked up at a Joshua Tree nearby, as he stood tall against the landscape of electric wires, these words came forward:

I asked the tree
“who are you?”
and the tree said
“I am one of
God’s creations.
Just like you.”

I asked the tree
“What are you?”
and the tree said
“I am what I am. 
Just like you.”

I asked the tree
“what do you do?”
and the tree said
“I exist, I love,
and that is enough.
Just like you”.