10 Lessons From My Last 3 Months (Part 2)

Welcome to the Clarity Corner, where you'll discover how to unlock and express the most authentic version of you and realize that this is exactly what you were looking for the entire time. I'm your host and your coach, Megan Siemens. Now let's make some magic happen. Hello, my friend. Welcome back to part two of 10 lessons that have been landing in over the last 90 days. For me, I did part one earlier this week, or if you're listening to this in a totally different timeline, the episode before this should be part one. But you can listen to these in any order. And I'm so glad you're here. I trust that if you're landing on part two first, there's a lesson in this swoop of lessons that you were meant to hear. So we're gonna dive straight into it today because part one had some bonuses at the beginning that, um, are delightfully took up a little more space. So we're gonna dive straight in so we can get through all five lessons. And I'll share with you what is coming up on the podcast. All right, so we are on number six. So lesson number six that has really landed over the last three months for me is there's a time for baby steps, and there's a time that baby steps continue our safety. This is like re anchoring. The lesson that I have been sharing over the last several years of our comfort zone shows up. No matter what level we go into, like, no matter how successful you get, there can be a comfort zone built. We can get comfort in our most extraordinary success as much as we can in our kind of settled place where we feel like we just kind of, like, got frozen in time. And the way this lesson has really been coming through is I think baby steps are so important, like taking baby steps being just one step at a time. I am such a future tripper, so I always talk past dwellers versus future trippers. We usually lean towards one or the other. We can fluctuate between the two for sure. But these are like the two main dynamics that hold our comfort zone in place because they take us out of our present timeline. So our past dwellers are ones that get stuck in the rear view mirror, only looking backwards, only remembering how things went in the past. And our future trippers usually tend to dwell in the what ifs. What if this happens? What if that happens? What if this, what if that? What if that spiraling. And both of those take us completely out of the present moment, AKA we're probably not taking action. And so our baby steps, our one step at a Time allows us to come to chapter one instead of being, like, all the way swept away in chapter 70 when we're not even there yet. And we also might not even get there because, hey, from the first, from part one, sometimes on our way to a dream, we get lost and find a better one. And so we can't live in step 70. We can't plan for step 70, because life is gonna be life in between. So there's definitely a time and place for baby steps. And I think they're so important for stepping into something new. And I had to really do this with the book. This book feels like an important book to get out there. I think most people probably think that about books that they're writing, right? I mean, in many ways, a book is often an essence of, like, your life's work so far and is usually infused with quite a bit of purpose. And so, yeah, this book feels important. And I was getting kind of swept away in the big vision of it of, you know, getting it published and all these things and getting all the words written. And I remember at the beginning I looked up. I think I shared this on the podcast, or maybe it was in a live that I did that I googled, like, on average, how many words are in a standard book. And I actually can't even remember the number right now, which is such a testament to taking the present steps in the moment. But I remember being like, oh, my gosh, I'm never going to finish because I was just staring at the cursor, like, blinking, blinking, blinking. I'd written, like, three sentences and erase them. And so those baby steps are what propelled me into going, okay, what do I need? Okay, from part one, I know I need some structure that's going to allow me to create some flow here. If I'm going to get to however many thousands of words are in a standard book, I'm going to need a little structure. This isn't. It wasn't flowing the way I kind of expected it to flow, so it needed a little structure. So step one, I got an outline. Step two, I needed a little support. I'd never written a book like this, and I wanted it to be different than the first book that I publish. And so I took. I bought a course by Gabrielle Bernstein, an amazing author in this kind of same crossover space. And I started writing and writing and writing and writing and making a lot of progress. I. I committed to opening my book document every day, even if I just opened it and looked at it, even if I opened it and I Fixed a typo. I had committed to opening it up. I also started doing co working sessions with one of my dear friends who is also currently writing a book which have been such a game changer for me to just be in space with someone else's energy focused towards a similar goal. A same project that's been really magical. The power of being held in space. There's something so potent about it. And so I was taking all these steps and the one thing I was kind of leaving on the side was that I have this vision of this book being traditionally published. I am still open to other opportunities. There might be something different. I am holding pretty strong to that vision though. I just have this vision of getting signed with a traditional publisher. It is, it is, it is simply a vision I have. And I think sometimes, sometimes we just get to have those and sometimes they shift and they rock our world and they change and all the things. And I just have this vision. And I realized about partway through this project that I wasn't giving that part of the vision as much breath because I was writing the book and I was making a lot of progress and I was taking the steps, but I hadn't started the proposal. And to go to the traditional publishing route, you need to write a proposal. And so this kind of came into my mind. I was like, I should probably start on the proposal kind of came into my mind. It was like there I was, floating around. I took Gabby's class on proposals. I took Gabby's class on the traditional publishing process. I took her class on landing an agent. I went to a free webinar about query letters. So I was like doing these things, kind of like dancing around it. And then one day I was like, what are you doing? Like, you have to write this proposal. If you want to go the traditional publishing route, you're going to get this whole book done and then you're going to have to write the proposal. And the proposal might inform that you need to shift some things in the book that is true and it has happened. And I realized that there was a fear, There was a fear, there was a fear there, saying, one, when I send this proposal out, I'm putting myself up for rejection. And two, when I send this proposal out, it makes it real. People are going to read this book. People are going to read stories that I haven't shared. People are going to tune into some of the deepest, darkest and rawest moments of my life. And at the same time, I hope that people experience the most expansive lessons in stepping into their Joy. And so I started the proposal, and I realized that baby steps were no longer serving and it was time for me to run a little bit, maybe a light jog first. And so this has been a huge lesson that has. I would say this one is one of the more fully integrated ones because I started the proposal. It was such an excellent exercise for me in itself. I almost want to encourage people who are self publishing to write a proposal, because especially if you struggle with specificity, like, if you're one of the people that. And let's try and connect this, even if you're not thinking about writing a book, but if you are one of the people that struggle with, like, saying what you do or identifying who you are, and you're like, I just can't get really specific. Writing this proposal has allowed me to see how specific this book is and actually how powerful and needed the message is. And so let's say you're not writing a book. This one. The baby steps into walking, into jogging, into running, can definitely be something you can implement in anything in your life. I invite you to just look at, you know, where am I kind of dipping my toes in the water, but I'm not letting myself jump in. Have you ever done a cold plunge? That sounds so random in the middle of this, but I have. I have a point with it. If you've ever done a cold plunge, if you dip your toe in the water, everything in you is like, I'm not getting in this. Like, you are hilarious thinking, I'm gonna get in this. If you inch your way in, I think you might eventually make it in there. Depending on how committed to it you are, you could jump in and it doesn't feel great. It doesn't feel like the full intention. Or you could do, like, a fast walk into it. I've done all the above. And then there's this, like, sense of control where you have to hold the discomfort for as long, however long that you can. And I think that's like, the same thing I'm saying here is like, are you dipping your toe into the cold plunge and going like, oh, yeah, that could probably be really good for my body, for my whole system, but I think I'll just dip my toe back in tomorrow, and then I'll dip my toe back in the next day, and then I'll dip my toe back in the next day, and then maybe I'll do that enough times where my toe no longer gives me fear to get all the way in the pool. We're working with a Few metaphors here, but basically notice where you're dipping your toe in. Notice where you're taking the baby steps and you're being like, look at what I'm doing. I was doing that with the book. I'm like, look how many words I've done. But at the same time, you're hiding from the thing that you actually need to do to make that epic thing happen. So just take a look, take a look in your life. Where have you kind of tiptoed in? Tiptoed? We're starting a new metaphor. Just kidding. We won't go into a new metaphor. We're gonna go to number seven. The seventh lesson that's really landed in is on the fear of being seen. This is so much of what the book is about. It's not directly about the fear of being seen, but it is the journey to no longer dimming yourself down because of other people's opinions. And so the fear of being seen in turn has been delightfully, ever so present within my own life. And also the clients that have been coming in recently because I think we have the fear of being seen often because of the opinions that we're afraid of or the opinions that have been spoken over us in the past or the self created opinions that we have, which is a concept I talk about in the book. And so this fear of being seen has landed in, in new ways for me because I, I actively worked on the fear of being seen when I first started my, my very first online business, so before even coaching. And it's something that I, I definitely still navigate on like a large scale of what does it mean to be seen by more? What does it mean to go from the crowd of a hundred to the crowd of 17,000? How do I hold that? How does my energy hold that? And still I show up every day. Every day I show up even in the background, wondering sometimes still wondering, what will people think? I shared after the back to you launch, a message of gratitude. And I shared in that, you know, I've been showing up for launches for over eight years now and I still find myself going, I can just let myself be seen one more time, one more time, one more time. I still find myself navigating questions like, is this annoying people that I'm talking about this so much? And I still actively reframe. Like the people that are designed to be in my space are not going to be burdened by this. They're going to be empowered by this. And the other people can go, they can go forever or they can Go for a season. And so it's something I actively am reframing often. And I'm noticing especially the how long I've felt this, how long it's been anchored in that there is fear behind letting yourself be seen in a space. And again, even if you don't own an online business or aspire to own on an online business, how are you being seen in your friendships? Do you feel like you're allowing yourself to be your fully authentic self in your friendships, in your romantic relationships? Where are the spaces you're holding yourself back and what is the fear behind that? And something I've really been working on in with my clients is creating a parachute. So not just like, okay, and I'm just gonna like, go live. And like, here we are, we're live, we're doing the thing. It's like, how can I create the parachute? That's gonna help me to stair step. That's gonna help me to glide in to being seen in grander ways. And one way that I have really been doing that and really flexing that on my, this has been, I would say this started really in 2021, but I would say it's really landing in different ways in the last three months, which is to find safe spaces to be seen, to create safe spaces to be seen in. I think the women in Back to you have been doing this in such beautiful ways, sharing some of their projects first there in a space that feels really safe. That's something I did when I was in energy coaching school in 2021, which I said is one of the first times I stepped into this. I allowed myself to be seen in live coaching observation, which was terrifying. And spoiler alert, sneak peek for the project that's coming up on the podcast. And from there I noticed what it felt like to be held in a space that felt safe and what it felt like knowing not all spaces I step into are going to be safe. And so what does that look like to hold myself in that? And that's something I've been exploring since then. And this year I joined a peer to peer mastermind where I feel like I've taken this to a whole new level because I previously had been maybe dipping my own toes into this of being in spaces where I feel like there was, like a leader or someone I looked up to. And I feel like I've really been breaking down the barriers of, no, no, no, no, this is not. Let's let go of these hierarchical structures that we've had in place everywhere. How good does it feel to just be like there's no level, there's no one better than this peer to peer mastermind that I'm in. Along with just like deepening into some of my core friendships and allowing myself to hold friends in energetic space and in coaching space. I've just created safe spaces in whole new ways in these last especially 90 days and noticed what I'm still afraid of when it comes to being seen. And so yeah, I feel like there's just been a huge up level in this area and there's some really exciting things coming. I mean the book in itself is being seen in a new way and some in person things being planned and many other things like the new project that's going to be launching on this podcast. Okay, so take a look at where you might still be feeling the fear being seen and start to create your parachute to glide through instead of just like jumping off and then like hitting the ground smack and then your entire nervous system being shot and it not going well. Okay, number eight, we're getting to the end of our list. I feel like I could probably have about 20 more, which is maybe what I did at the beginning of part one. Number eight is all about trusting your inner authority or where you're not trusting your inner authority. This one I definitely would say has landed in for me in some new ways, particularly on deciding to leave our trip earlier than planned. And it's a big one that's been present with my clients recently. I've had big questions recently, particularly from those of you who have the sacral authority in human design. I've had a lot of clients asking me how do I or some variation of I feel like I actually can't trust my gut. Knowing my gut feeling, I feel like my gut feeling has led me in the wrong direction in the past and that really stumped me. And so when something really stumps me, I know that there's something big to be learned there. And I started to get curious with have I ever not trusted my own inner authority? And the answer is a hundred percent us. And I started to get curious with how this is maybe true in other inner authorities. And it's true with every inner authority in human design. Some flavor with the emotional authority. It's often my emotions have gotten me in trouble before with the splenic authority. It's that inner knowing has actually led me in the wrong way and so my logic has taken over. Self projected. My voice doesn't always say the right thing. True ego. I've been selfish in the Past, and it's burned bridges, environmental. I've taken way too much advice from other people around me. Some same can be said for my reflectors. My wait for clarity to reveal itself. Or I've waited. I've waited and I've missed opportunities. And so what is this in not trusting the direction of your inner authority? Because everything in me believes the essence of the inner authority, which is where you're usually following our mind or our external world into decisions, and those often, more often, have led me in the wrong direction. So I've really gotten curious with, particularly with my clients over the last few months of, okay, let's explore this, let's get curious with it. And it finally landed. And there's this remembering of, oh, we don't just store beliefs in our brain, we store beliefs in our body. We store a lot of trauma in our body. And so just as our brain can have an old belief that's not serving us anymore, so can our gut. Our, especially our gut. This is why I think it's been coming really present with my sacral authority people, oh, especially our gut. And I see this within my own voice as well, where I think about the time that I hired the coach for $10,000 when I had no business paying $10,000. A podcast episode for another time. And I remember my voice feeling so clear and firm in that moment. And I also remember, if I really sit and consider, like, where did that decision actually come from? And I also remember the feeling of, if I don't do this, I'm not going to fit in. If I don't do this, all the fears that she voiced out to me are going to come true. And it was coming from this space of like, I need to be fixed, I need to be saved, which was so anchored into my voice in general because of various different things I went through, particularly with female friends growing up. And so we store belief systems in our body and our inner knowing, our inner authority from a human design standpoint can get so tangled up in that. And our mind particularly is so loud that it. And it's so logical, our mind is so analytical that it's so easy for it to take back over. I've been doing some energetic practices with clients that have been so magical and have created so many breakthroughs, some energy coaching practices where we actually go and explore that somatic part of you and clear some of the belief system from a somatic lens versus a mental mindset lens. Within my own experience in the last three months, I've really leaned into what does it actually mean when? For me, my human design authority is self projected? If you want to look up your human design, if you're like, I don't know what mine is, I'll put the link in the show notes. I have it on my website. It's free to pull your chart and you'll get some immediate insights on your design. And for me, I've been getting really curious with what does my voice feel like and what does my direction feel like when I actually feel that grounded clarity versus when is there a belief still tangled up in this? And what is my voice actually sound like? How do I speak? How do I sound? What is the tone? What words come through? What other inner things are happening? And the same can be said for any authority. It's almost an examination of what actually feels true. And it can get tricky and it can get messy and it can be confusing and even sometimes tuning into like the question. I've been really sitting with the question recently. Does that feel good? Sometimes our comfort feels good. Sometimes our old beliefs feel good. So I don't think it's as easy as going, oh, does this feel good? Because sometimes our most aligned decisions don't feel good. I'd say often our most aligned decisions don't feel good. So I don't think it's as simple as going, oh, does this feel good? Does this feel like airy, fairy and true? I think we have this, this tinted vision still that our authentic self is going to be like rainbows and butterflies and unicorns all the time. And it is in many ways. And there's so much discomfort in this path too. Oh, I didn't even tell the story of leaving early. So I say leaving our trip early was such an expression of both of our authorities in action. And actually our travel experiences have been such a clear expression of both of our authorities working together. Andrew is a splenic authority and I'm a self projected authority. So splenic is a quiet in the moment knowing and self projected is usually through voice. But also there's a directional piece. What direction are you called to move? And so there is often a more like talk it out element with me and big decisions. And I see this play out so often in our travel, whether it's the start of a trip. So one of my favorite stories of this is in 2018, we had just gone on our amazing trip to Scotland and that's where we fell in love with Scotland. I will not start talking about it because that will become a whole other podcast episode here. And I remember when we got back we started to plan the decision probably just a few months later of how do we spend more time there. And Andrew's inner knowing is so powerful. Like when he knows something, I can feel it, like you can feel it in the whole room. And I think the same is to be said about my talking it out. There's this moment if I'm making a big decision, if I'm processing through a big decision where my voice has this potency that I couldn't recreate if I tried. It just comes out and we're all just whoever is involved in the experience are just like, whoa. Like my friends will do it on Boxer. They're like, whoa. There it was. So I had kind of spent this time talking it out. I was just getting to that space of clarity. And I remember one day there's just that moment where I was like, well, what if we just like moved there for a little bit and just gave it a try? What if we moved there for like five months or something? And he wasn't quite landed there, but it was out there, the seed was planted and he was playing in it. And then one day I was on a work call and I once I get excited about something, particularly something like Scotland, I definitely bring it up continuously. My voice just gets really ignited with me. And so it was very much a decision that was super clear between us and our relationship. But he wasn't quite there yet. I want to make that clear that it wasn't a pressure and I was like just trusting that he's going to get there in his own time. And so one day I was on a work call and when I came out he was like, I did something. It's like you did what? He was like, I, I, I got plane tickets, I got one way tickets to Scotland. And I was like, what? And he was like, it was just, I just had this feeling that I had to get on and look. And that was our time that we got absurd 100 tickets, which is wild all the way over to Scotland. And so we went for five months and it was magical and it was everything we needed in that season of life. And so there is just a special energy we have around travel and our authorities really operating well. Whereas in other areas of both of our lives it gets a little more hazy. But travel has always been one that's been easy for it to be experienced. And this time it happened but in an opposite way that it usually happens. Often it happens in setting off on an incredible adventure. Something new happening very Exciting. And this time it happened in leaving and going back home early. And that's never happened for us. But I had started talking about it and I started to have that moment of clarity of like, I think I want to go home from Scotland. It's just like that was a very new feeling for me. Every time we're there, I'm like, I'm ready to move. Let's buy a house. We could buy property right now. This past time, we had intended to go look for property, which I think is very much still on the table. But there was something that just happened in this trip and I had voiced it, put it out there. Some other things came into effect. Like we had some things get canceled, various things like that. And there was this instant moment where he was like, I think it is time. And we got on the Internet and looked for flights back and there were two seats for. We used airline points to get back and there were two seats and we had just enough points to do it. And it was like in two days. And it just lined up so perfectly. And we came home and everything was easeful. And there is this. Yes, there's still. When we are stepping into our life of alignment, there's still going to be hard. I want to make that very clear. And when we're actually following our true authority, there's an ease that happens. It's not to say that there's no obstacles. It's just things fall into place differently. It's. I think that's the best way I can explain it. And so we left early. We had, I mean, recording this podcast right now. Our plan was to still be there, but we're home and magical things have happened, of course, and we're happy with that decision and we know we'll be back. So notice where your inner authority gets a little blurry. And if. If you're so new to human design, two things. One, you can just notice, like, where do you not trust your intuition? That's another way you can just ask yourself, or where do you. Where does your intuition and your mind get a little blurry? And secondly is I'm going to be running a workshop on this this month. It'll be a paid workshop. It's is part of what back the Back to you members get. So it'll be kind of like a taste tester into Back to you. So if you want to join that and experience one a workshop with our Back to you container and also breakthrough in this space a little bit, it's definitely an invitation for you to lean into we're going to go through that somatic experience that I was talking about earlier that I've been taking clients through. I'm really just looking forward to this workshop. I think it's going to be a really needed one. I don't know if it's. Well, I'll leave it at that. It's a really needed one. All right, we are at number nine. We'll run through number nine and ten fairly quickly here. Number nine is what it is to sit in, amplify, and most importantly, to trust joy. I've definitely been untangling, unraveling the story for a while that when everything is settled, I'm kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, like, the chaos to set in. And I've been unraveling that story for a while. I worked with a therapist on that story. I worked with coaches on that story. I've worked with myself on that story. And recently I've really been. I think I've always been really good at sitting in an amplifying joy. I'm a very joyful person in my core essence, thanks to many things. Won't go into that right now, however, I've definitely had to flex that over the years, especially with losing my brother and going through waves of grief and losing friends and losing businesses and so many different messes. My joy has definitely been tested, but I would say over the last three months, I've really been leaning into what does it look like to trust joy? What does it look like to trust that joy has its own direction? And what does it look like to trust that joy has some of the same depth of lesson that some of those other contrasts teach us? Like I always say, death is one of my greatest teachers. Like, losing Kirk was one of my greatest teachers in life. And what if joy has those same kind of lessons? And what if by leaning into that, we created space for more people to experience joy there? The whole book that I'm writing right now is about joy. It's mostly about getting over the opinions of others. But there's times where I'm writing about experiencing immense joy in my life, and I'm noticing how uncomfortable it feels because there is this, like, weird backwards paradox that we do in vulnerability where we're, like, be vulnerable, and we celebrate when people are vulnerable with the raw and the dark and the depths of, like, yuckiness. But then when people are vulnerable with something they're feeling so joyful about, I find that there's so many more attacks on it of, like, oh, how dare you express this joy when other people are suffering with X, Y, and Z. Or this is so not relatable. Or so many other things that I see, especially, like, publicly online, but also just feeling it internally with myself. And so how much can I trust Joy? How much can I trust Joy in a season? How much can I trust Joy to stay around? How much can I trust Joy to hold me? And just various different layers of trust. Okay, and then number 10, and definitely connected to the book is on the opinions of others and how long we've been letting people speak over us. And I talked about this a little in the Intro of Part 1, one of the big stories that has been coming up for me to work with, sit with. And clear, not clear, go away completely, but clear, clear. The lessons that are here for this season is when my lung collapsed when I was younger, and I had all of these doctors telling me that there's nothing wrong with me. And I go into this in depth in the book, and I'm feeling right now that that part of me just wants me to take a stand because those were opinions that were being spoken over me and put me in a really dangerous place. And so I'm noticing how long I've been letting people speak opinions over me, how long I've been letting people have a greater authority over me, and how I'm ready to just really take a stand for. I hear you. I'm open to so much wisdom. I will never stop having guides and mentors and coaches and people in my life that are here for so much support. And I ultimately get to decide. I ultimately get to decide, period. We'll stop. And so that has been anchoring in, in big ways and also is everything that the book is about. So I hope you're looking forward to that with me. Okay, let me tell you what's coming up on the podcast as I come to completion, and I would love to hear from you in part two, if there was one that really landed with you today. It will help me to feel I'm not alone and also help you to remember you're not alone. Okay. Coming up on the podcast is a very exciting project, so I'll share a little bit more about how this came alive in the first episode of the new project. It was very much a projector invitation, which just felt so good to lean all the way into. But over the next several episodes, I guess over the next three months, you will be experiencing a full, unedited, unstructured, scripted coaching series with a client. There is so much magic in hearing other people be coached, it's I've had some of the most immense breakthroughs. Hearing someone else be coached and knowing what coaching is, if you've never experienced it is like I remember this is a quote that an early mentor taught me. It's like knowing what a strawberry tastes like if you've never tried a strawberry. And so to have someone open up, be so real, so raw, so vulnerable, which Jessica is over this entire three month series is such a gift and I think it's going to open up so many doorways for you listening in. We treat this completely as a coaching series, as if we were stepping in and no one else was listening. And Jessica moves through some such healing themes in this series. So how it'll work is I'll air the series, I will pop in throughout the episode to give you integrations to place into your own life. And in between the episodes probably so we did our sessions three calls on one week off of integration. So we'll probably on the podcast here, do three calls on and then one week will be like a lesson for you to really deepen into. I might bring some guest experts in as well based on the topics we're talking about. So that's what you have coming up for the next three months on the podcast. I hope you're so excited and if you're like, I don't know about this, give the first few episodes a try because I think you might just be surprised on on what can unfold for you in something like this. I'm so I have the biggest smile on my face. It is. It has truly been such a gift to hold this space and I can't wait to bring it to you on here. So I will see you next week with our first session with Jessica. It will launch on Tuesday. If you're listening to this live in real time, if you've come from a different timeline, you can just go find the next episode and enjoy our coaching series together. And again, thank you so much for tuning into these 10 lessons. This has been such a nourishing way for me to process some of the things that happened in my own integration period and my own spaciousness. So I'm so grateful for you being here and I'll see you next time. Bye. Friends sending you so much love and gratitude. Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you're ready to get unstuck and on with a joyful life, you're ready to be magnetically you in life, relationships, business and everything in between. I invite you to Apply for coaching together. It all starts with a clarity call. If you thought this was magic, get ready to blow your mind through your own possibilities. Apply for coaching@megansemens.com coaching.