Project Me

If I could pick an easier route at times, I think I would jump at the opportunity. That moment always ends up being fleeting when I realise how much I would have missed out on had I changed one moment of my life.

It’s been 15 months of blogging but it’s been 7 years since I started my personal ‘project me’ … but before that it was Jodene living very unconsciously. I remember sitting with my ‘spiritual’ teacher and telling her that I wished I had unlearned all that she had taught me. My family home and business had just burned down, family issues had be ripped open like a can of worms and I looked at myself in the mirror for the first time in years only to see the damage I had done to myself. Over the last few days I have felt like that again … wishing I could shove the lid back on the journey I have consciously chosen to live.

While I was flying down to Cape Town last week, I sat next to a gentleman who had done the same metaphysics course as I did many years ago. It clearly didn’t serve him very well because he was proving how the ‘law of attraction’ doesn’t work. He said that if it did I should be a very rich lady by now and clearly I wasn’t. Similarly, yesterday I was asked why I only had 16 people at my talk in Cape Town if I believed so much in the power of social networking.

At  time when my life is literally in turmoil and my family is going through the hardest thing next to my father’s passing, I have been faced with some interesting additional challenges. Surely by now life should be running smoothly? Isn’t that the impression of manifestation? That because I teach about manifestation I should be manifesting left, right and center? If I teach about sex then I should be sexually fulfilled every spare moment I have (and still finding time to sneak out for a shag between meetings)? If I teach about self worth and self esteem that I should have lost all the weight and been married with a perfect little life by now?

Is that who the world chooses to listen to? Those who make it all sound so easy and show you the pretty picture at the end of the long and winding yellow brick road that they have traveled?
Has anyone wondered why Charlie Sheen is getting the attention he is currently getting? Has anyone stopped to watch what the world is craving? Maybe it’s just me, but there are more people out there who are struggling to manifest those realities than those who have done an affirmation and ‘whoop there it is’! People are lapping up the madness and the chaos. So many of us live in chaos that if we can have confirmation that someone else is so much more far removed from reality, that we will be ok! I remember wanting a friend of mine to do one of my courses and he told me that only those who write the books on self help get rich and they only got rich because they wrote the book. I’m not agreeing with him, but I am agreeing that we all stare outwards to find the answers.

In my chaos, do you not think that I have tried to turn to every outside source I possibly could? I wish I could show you a glimmer of the frustration of waking up in the morning with the promise to have a healthy eating day and then ending it in chaos because I have no idea what healthy means to me. Should I shut down this blog and retract myself from the role of teacher because I am still amidst the chaos?

My answer is no! My realisation is that anyone who is striving to live life without the chaos has this journey very wrong. Of course there are issues that I want so badly to put to rest, but I don’t know how much I have to learn about myself before I get there. I don’t know my greatness but I know I’m great and if I need to hit rock bottom (with the whole world watching) then that is what I have chosen to do.

This space isn’t rosy right now!  I have cried so much in the last few days that I can’t even put my contact lenses in my eyes. I have to sell stuff to buy a bed for my new home that I am still sharing with my mother.
Have I failed at manifestation??? Hell no!!!!
There is not one moment of this journey that I would have given up on. There is no part of me that doubts my ability and my success. I have never felt as though I have stepped off the magical journey of my yellow brick road and there has NEVER been a part of me that has wanted to quit … alright, Saturday was a bit of a quitting day, but bowl of popcorn, a cup of tea and a precious mother pulled me through.

The more I experience of ‘project me’ and the more I wonder to myself what great lessons I need to share with the world, the more I realise that I just have to keep telling the truth. I don’t have to plan seminars or wait for my first book to be published or have a Ferrari in my driveway to be the voice of manifestation.
There is no quick fix! There is no single right way! There is no formula but the one you create for yourself! There is no escaping the magical chaos of life and there is no punishment in that chaos either.

I might lose a sponsor today because I haven’t managed to keep up the positivity movement. I have fallen off the wagon, but I am still on the yellow brick road. I do enough beating up of myself and choose not to face the wrath of anyone else’s judgement, but I also understand that if the world is driven by positive results and constant success without the allowance of the odd stumble off the wagon, that I might not be able to sustain the ride. Sadly, I believe in the very thing that might be taken away from me (or I might give up) but I also realise that I don’t have the ability to do things the way they are being asked of me right now and that’s not fair of me. Right now, if I don’t allow myself to be kind to myself and if I put on rose coloured glasses, I will do more damage than good. Half of the self help books in the world might disagree with me right now … but only I know me.

I know this has been a long post, but I have so needed to hear myself say this and I thank you for listening and sharing my journey with me.
Today I am packing up my dad’s office! Of all the spaces in the house, this one is the most heart wrenching. I don’t know what it’s going to do today but chances are that I will choose to end it with an overly indulgent meal that I will cook for some very special people in my life and I will shed another few tears along the way.

In all these thousands of words, this is what I’m trying to say about living a ‘project me’ life: No matter what, I get up every single day and I tell myself the truth. I honour my emotions, I speak my fears and I watch myself do a little damage with food or hold out for the wrong guy to call me. Every single day I still do one little thing that scares me and sometimes those little things are as small as saying ‘no’ to an arrangement that I choose not to attend. No excuses and no lies! Every single day I am grateful for all that I have and all that I have the ability to have … but most of all … every single day, I take responsibility for exactly where I am and what I do or don’t have!

For that, I am most proud and I thank each and every one of you for sticking with me when I walk tall and when I fall down. It is an honour to have your yellow brick road right beside mine!