Love Letters from Lauren: Falling Behind Rachel Hollis

The following blog post is a continuation from the Love Letter inside VIP Supported Magazine for July. To get full access to the entire Love Letter, its audio file and all the features inside The Lauren of Love Membership --> https://www.laurenoflove.com/vip

 

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Rachel Hollis is not a reminder of what I have not yet achieved. She is not there to show me how I have failed. Rachel Hollis is a glimpse into my future. She is showing me where I am going.

 

She is me.

 

Maybe the desire I have in my heart right now to write a book is the same desires Rachel had before she started.

Maybe the year Rachel had a staff of four, she too felt like it was impossible to ever build to a staff of 39.

Maybe before she had all of these beautiful opportunities to speak on stage, she was a girl building a blog and struggling to be seen.

 

When you compare your step one to someone else's step seven, all you can focus on is “Why am I not there yet,” and “look how far away I am from my goal.”

 

If I took a guess, Rachel moved one step at a time like all of us humans. Would she be where she is today if she compared her step one to someone else's' step seven? Probably not.

Rachel is just showing me what my step seven can look like… but that doesn’t mean I should be at step seven right this second and that doesn’t mean I am a failure for not being at step seven with her at this very moment.

 I decide my rollercoaster ride is done.

“This is why you don’t scroll your social media, Lauren.” I tell myself. 

 

With a deep belly breath, I shut down my phone and release all of the energy I am holding in from this unexpected emotional trip to Six Flags.

 

I get out my journal and start processing what the fuck just happened in my brain and why my ego came in so loud on a Saturday morning. All because I saw a photo of  Rachel holding a freaking cupcake.

 

So I journaled and allowed my higher self to come back in and I worked through my ego.

 

If you don’t already know, there are two parts of your emotional space: Your higher self and your ego. Thoughts of love and happiness come from your higher self and the thoughts that are aggressive, mean, or fear-based come from your ego.

 

Some call ego the inner mean girl. My ego’s name is Pamala, named after a very mean lady that worked at a car dealership with me when I was 19. And she is a total bitch. Especially when it comes to my business.

 

“Who are you to try doing _______”

“What if _____ doesn’t work out.”

“You are such a ____ _____ and _____  and aren’t good enough to ____ _____ and _____.”

 

Told you. Total B-word.

 

While rude and condescending, the ego isn’t actually there to bully us. Believe it or not, she is designed to protect us and keep us safe. She pops up like an overbearing mother to make sure we are avoiding disaster in an uncertain world.

 

The ego wants us to get to our desired outcome, so she’s not an evil villain. She just has a really annoying F-ed up way of trying to help us get there.

 

In the ancient days of cavemen and women, the ego kept us alive. We would run to get away from a saber tooth tiger and our ego would scream, “run faster! Catch up with your pals! Get ahead before you die!”

 

Now, without a sabertooth tiger, our ego looks at someone like Rachel Hollis and says, “Run faster! Catch up! Get ahead before you fail! Don’t get left behind!”

 

Instead of a saber tooth tiger, we are running away from the saber tooth failure.

 

We are no longer running to save our lives but running to save our dreams and deep inner longings.

Instead of fearing death, we fear failing our desires.

Instead of feeling the pressure of being left behind to be eaten by a vicious carnivore, we fear being left behind by the people we aspire to be.

 

None of that is life or death, though it can certainly feel that way. 

 

Why? Because failure is everywhere.

 

Not to mention it’s extremely ambiguous, and we are always changing its definition, which is a total problem because how can you run away from something when you don’t know what it is you are running away from?

 

We know what a sabertooth tiger is, so when we see it, we run from it. But because failure is often vague and defined in many different ways, it can actually feel like failure is lurking on every corner.

 

Maybe failure is when I don’t hit my desired income goal for the month.

Maybe it’s when I hope to enroll people into an offer and nobody signs up.

Maybe failure is when a potential client tells me no, or when a customer cancels her order.

Or maybe it’s not having 39 employees or not having multiple speaking deals.

Maybe failure is not doing things in the same amount of time it takes Rachel Hollis to do them.

 

If we aren’t careful and intentional with ourselves, everything around us becomes a reminder of everything that we are not. 

 

If we aren’t aware, present, and grounded into our truth, our ego will get the best of us. And if we aren’t focused on where we are right now at this given time, we will look at everyone else and think we should be farther ahead.

 

We will see posts from people like Rachel and we start to think we are falling behind.

We will read beautiful narratives of her latest and greatest achievements and start to think maybe our smaller ones are no longer worthy of celebration.

We’ll watch Rachel already doing the things that we desire to do, and that will make us question if there is any room or any time left for us to do them too.

 

This is what happens when we don’t stand and operate in the truth of who we are. This is what happens when we don’t know how to take ownership of who we are in the present moment.

And for me, this all started because on a Saturday afternoon, I shut off my higher self and went on a quest to look at other people’s content to tell me how I should spend my free time.

Instead of trusting myself and letting intuition lead me to a place where I could find the answers, I looked outside of myself for the solution.

“I am not good enough to know the answer here, so let me look at what other people’s answers are.” The minute I opened the door for “how should I do this right,” conversation, I opened the door to see all the ways i could be doing it wrong.

 

And just like that, the floodgate of insecurity poured in.

 

I was on social media because I was avoiding spending time with myself. I didn’t know how to be in my truth, so I looked at everyone else’s.

 

Which of course shifted me into a place of comparison.

Which of course led to the rabbit hole of inferiority.

Which of course led to the most epic Love Letter in our VIP Supported magazine ever.

 

But that’s not the true point of this article.

 

What is the point of this article?

 

There are so many lessons embedded within the pages of this love letter, I am truthfully not sure where to take you in the paragraphs that follow. 

 

So let me summarize. 

 

First, we all need creative time off to disconnect, heal and be human. In my zen den on a Saturday afternoon, I was resisting time to myself even though I deeply needed it. Every creative professional and top performance athlete needs time to rest their muscles. And if you are in a line of work where your life is the vessel for your teachings, you need to treat yourself to professional and routine-scheduled rest. We need to give our bodies time to relax and we need to give our souls an opportunity to disconnect from our work so we can serve in a higher vibration. 

 

That space to ourselves and that time away from serving others often sparks the creative ideas that have a major impact on the world. Just think about it, if I didn’t give myself time off, this beautiful Love Letter would have never been created.

But on a deeper, and more compelling level, perhaps the lesson of this love letter is about owning the space we are in when we are in it and loving who we are and where we are. We spend so much time comparing our timelines to other people’s progress that I think sometimes we forget how amazing our own journey truly is. We need to spend more time becoming experts in our worthiness and spend less time becoming experts in studying other peoples’ resumes, milestones and narratives. After all, if you are too busy collecting all the information for someone else’s biography, you will never carve out the time to write your own.

 

Next, and this is probably the lesson that inspires me the most if I’m being honest: Time is not something to be afraid of, and it is not something that quantifies your success. The truth is I used to feel like a failure anytime I saw someone who was doing things quicker than I was. “Self Made Millionaire before 30 or a “New York Times best-selling author” posted in someone’s Instagram bio would send me into a tailspin and throw me in a rat race to get ahead. It made me feel like I was completely behind schedule.

 

Our limiting beliefs come from somewhere right?  My Uncle, who received more love from my grandfather than my father did, graduated high school and college in a shorter amount of time than it was supposed to take. My grandfather would boast and brag to me about his wonderful overachieving son as my father, who was also in the room, would shy away in the background. Seeing this at a young age I formed the belief that the faster you do things, the more successful you are and the more love you will receive.

 

This is simply untrue. Time is nothing. All we have is the now. And we need to spend active time choosing to be there. Not in the now of someone else's' life, but in our own personal now.

 

Take more time to slow down and feel proud of yourself. Spend less time searching for all the reasons you shouldn’t be.

 

And speaking of time, limiting belief and egoic reflection takes time to work through. This Saturday in my zen den seeing all of Rachel’s achievements, my old stories about time and rushing to get ahead totally resurfaced. My limiting belief is that the quicker I can achieve something, the more worthy I am of success. Having walked this limiting belief through my subconscious work with the Good Enough, Reprogramming process, course-correcting my path is easier now.

 

But correcting a limiting belief is not a one and done sort of process. Limiting beliefs are part of your life’s work. They will continue to come up, and you will continue to work on them.

 

My very first coach once told me, “You know you are growing when you stay stuck in your story for a shorter amount of time.” But I see a lot of people who feel shame and guilt when an old story pops up. Women bully themselves with thoughts like, “I should have overcome this by now,” and “I can’t believe this is still coming up.” I have been working on this limiting belief about time and success since I first learned about it in 2009. I’m not a bad student for not “getting the lesson” yet. I am a great student who is mastering the message. The story never goes away because it is part of who you are babe. Don’t be afraid to love it for what is teaching you. 

Finally, you are enough for everything. Even though your greatest fear is that you won’t be. And while you're over there thinking, “Awe that’s so nice of you to say Lauren,” I am telling you it is the truth. Not because you are special. But because you are human. ALL of us are enough.

 

We are enough for our goals

enough for our dreams

enough for our husbands and our kids and our parents

enough for the money we want and the love we crave

 

All of it.

 

Now let me ask you, what would life be like if you lived believing that truth? 

What if, instead of running away from failure, you showed up to believe that success and your desires were a God-Given Birthright? 

 

And how would you live differently if you believed that success was not a matter of IF but a matter of WHEN?

 

Would you cringe when you saw someone else achieving big things? Or would you shine your light bright with excitement because you knew big things were happening for you too?

 

Would you see a post from a Rachel Hollis and think, “I am so far behind,” or would you see her posts and think, “Cool. So that is what I have to look forward to.”

 

All because at one point in time, she shared the same desire as you.

 

And what if you didn’t judge those desires. What if you believed that your desires were actually downloads from the Universe of what you were SUPPOSED to be doing in life.

 

Would you feel guilty for wanting the things you wanted if you knew they were actually Universe speaking through you?

 

In case you are wondering, the word desire comes from the two Latin words; “de” meaning “down from,” and “sidus” meaning “heavenly body or stars.” 

 

Ashley Gordon, our VIP Mentor for June put it so well in last months magazine when she wrote, “Your desires are not wrong, they are sacred!”

 

Treat them that way.

 

Stop bullying your desires when they don’t arrive on time or when they show up on someone's door doorstep before your own.

 

And stop making your desires about you and whether you are good enough for them or not. 

 

Instead, let the things you are calling in feel connected to something bigger than you. And watch how powerful and moving you become.

 

Because if we believe our desires are coming down from the stars and into us, then our longing to do big things in this world isn’t really about us is it? And what would be different if you believed that it was all for a purpose bigger than you? 

 

We need to look at success as a God-Given birthright for all of us. Wealth and prosperity isn’t a game of she or me. Like breathing, success is something we all can have without taking from the other.

 

There is plenty of air to go around. 

 

It’s time we start embracing the idea that we are exactly where we are supposed to be.

 

We need to look at our Rachels who are up ahead on the road of life and say, “Thank you Rachel for showing me I can walk this way too.”

 

There is plenty of time. For all of us.

 

So, to my darling sisters: You are worthy. And you are exactly where you are supposed to be.