Jodene is the co-founder of:
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Published August 27th, 2011
It’s been a busy week. It’s going to be a busy week again. Then it’s going to be one week until my best friend and business partner leaves for the USA. Then it’s going to be four weeks of doing something different every day just because he’s not here.
All that busyness made me think that I might just need a day of total nothingness.
One of my greatest ‘project me’ lessons is to learn that you might always be letting someone down when you put yourself first. It took a while to realise that it would have to be their perception of feeling let down and we never remember that perception is a choice. I know there were things people wanted me to do today, but I needed a ‘me day’.
It’s not that I haven’t been completely honest. It’s more that I haven’t quite figured out how to adjust to talking about my personal life when I’m in the midst of it and Mr Unexpected reads the blog every day. By far, this is the hardest challenge when it’s come to blogging. Well, the relationship feels like the hardest challenge, to be honest. I know he’ll read this in a few hours and a part of him will agree too. My mom described a relationship perfectly today (or at least ours seeing as though we are polar opposites). Mom said we are like trying to balance bipolar to find that happy place. I do want the happy place, but it seems that every issue I have ever had since I was 5 years old has surfaced in these two and a bit months.
Then there’s the conversation Greggie and I had last night that left me, well, lets just say it was another reason not to sleep. Oh, I haven’t mentioned that I’m not sleeping so well and you would only know that if you saw the odd Tweets at crazy hours.
I come from a past business partnership where I kept making one change after the other to try and make it work and I am finally settling into the fact that there is nothing I need to change. I’m on track. I’m getting it right. There’s a country song that I listen to often and it says: “Yeah, If you’re going through hell, keep on moving, face that fire, walk right through it. You might get out before the devil even knows you’re there.”
Then Greggie told me that we are both not getting something right or we would be in a better financial position or things would be happening differently.
No self help book can ever solve the quandary of you mind. I don’t believe there is a formula that can ever replace that ‘knowing’, which only you know and only you can learn to listen to. I knew. I just knew that I was finally getting everything right. I was being brave enough, bold enough, sassy and sexy, happy, honest … or wasn’t I?
Maybe today was more about trying to catch up on lost hours of sleep. Or it was about hiding away from the world. Either way, I kissed Mr Unexpected good-bye after telling him how every proud I am of him for all he is achieving. He’s created a brand for himself in under a week and his determination oozes. It also consumes … and usually happens as I’m trying to show him how proud I am and he’s telling me how it’s not good enough. So I shut the door, climbed into bed and went to my happy place … Twitter!
After making some awesome connections for #FollowSA and chatting to new and old peeps, I realised that I was in that perfect place of knowing. Sadly, as I thought about it all the doubt came rushing back.
What to do when that happens … me, I cook! Suffice to say the Mr Unexpected is getting a totally OTT dinner tonight.
I have a bond with Mother Nature. I have her tattooed on my back. I know she’s causing more waves (literally) and I wanted to see what’s going on in the world. When I turn on the radio, I’ll get adverts. When I turn on the news … adverts! How the …
I can’t do adverts but I can do the next best thing … CNN interviews.
Michael Wu? I’ve never heard of Michael Wu. Okay, maybe everyone else has considering he’s the CEO of Maxim, the largest food and beverage corporation and restaurant chain in Hong Kong. The program is called The Boss and he’s it.
I don’t believe in coincidence and every moment of my life I am reminded why not. Some stand out more than others, like this one. I literally got 10 minutes of the 1 hour program. The last 10 minutes. I don’t know what I missed, but I know what I didn’t.
I have read more self help books than anyone could imagine and then one day I stopped. Sometimes I worry that people are going to ask me what I think of this one’s book or that one’s formula … because if anyone is talking about it now, chances are, I haven’t read it.
Instead, I listen. A lot of times I listen to the most profound points that people have gotten out of those book. Other times, men like Michael Wu say one sentence that is more powerful than anything else I could imagine.
This is as close to what he said: I believed in my formula and I stuck to it. I just kept going when everyone told me to do something differently and that I was getting something wrong, I just kept going.
I could tell that he hasn’t had a day of thinking he was getting something wrong. He spoke of having to change strategic strategy, but that had nothing to do with him or his vision. He believes in himself and his vision … even when he’s going through hell.
Michael Wu put everything in perspective for me and made me realise that my greatest lesson in life might just be to feel unshakable!
With courage, consciousness & a sense of humour
Published August 6th, 2011
I couldn't have met Mr Unexpected's family on a prouder day! Well done to an incredible 12 year old champion for his 1st & 3rd place win in the dressage category of the SA inter-school national champions competing against 65 kids
To say I’ve had a roller coaster ride of emotion on a personal and career front over the last week is truly an understatement. It’s been the highs of yet another fantastic radio into to the lows of receiving the email that said my services weren’t needed again. The burst of confidence that got me making a call and having a meeting I thought I would only be making 3 years from now, to having serve communication breakdowns with Greggie that left me feeling as though I didn’t have what it takes to make dreams come true. I went from being so excited about meetings and opportunities to fighting with myself to climb out of bed and do anything constructive.
I had plans of hibernating … not the entire weekend, but certainly a better part of it.
New relationships call for new events and meeting the family is always a big one. Mr Unexpected got exposed to my family at my brother’s birthday, so it was all smiles and no kicking and screaming to spend the day with his sister and her family. Besides feeling just not myself, it felt so very couple like and the Libran in me revels in these moments.
Never count on a man (or is it just my man?) to know all the details of the event we are attending. Him, with his photography gear in hand, and me with the expectation of 5 horsies trotting around a field with little amateurs on their backs. He forgot the minor details, like it was the inter-school championships, his little nephew was being awarded his national colours and I was about to watch a little guy teach me more valuable lessons than most gurus, self help books and masters have managed.
I’ve read so much self help in my life I had to promise myself to JUST STOP! That’s one of the main reasons I started ‘project me’. I had to learn these lessons for myself and not believe anyone said, including anyone who was a guru … self proclaimed and labelled. The journey has been a tough one because whenever I mention what I do or what my life purpose it, the first question I’m asked is “Have you read this person’s book?” Chances are … the answer is no!
I never manage to truly settle my confidence and even though I was truly brave during my Radio Metro FM interview with Carol Ralefeta, where I spoke about ‘project me’ and gave my women’s day message, I still had moments of worrying that the world would punish me. I’m out there saying that our understanding of affirmations, visualisations and even mediation have been skewed by the interpretation (or explanation) of these things that I don’t believe can every be taught.
Yes, thought becomes form, but sometimes the process of creating that thought in the hope that it creates form, if far too mechanical and our birth right of creating our realities flies out the window. But then a little boy gets onto a big horse and reminds me just how important me my work is. He reminds me why I do what I do and why the call I made to Helen Holyoake of Helco Promotions wasn’t 3 years too early.
Today was my first experience of being in the horse world and besides treading carefully to step over a whole lot of horsie poop, I had the most amazing time. I didn’t know how the scoring worked, or what I was looking for, but I watched Mr Unexpected’s nephew and I knew something was different. Only once I was chatting with his mom and I learned that most rider’s have someone else school their horses into doing the dressage routine and they just do the final stages of practicing a few times with the horse. Yet, here was a 12 year old boy who took a horse and taught her how to do the routine himself. Yes, he got thrown from that horse and practiced for hours on end, but he did something that no self help book or guru can ever teach. He did it his way!!
That’s all I even want to teach the world.
I’m faced with it all the time in the social media world. Blogs about how to Tweet or behave online. Guru’s in social media that have hardly any followers. People asking me if I went to this seminar or that talk and most of the time I stutter when it’s time to say … NO! No, I haven’t and no I don’t intend to. Of course I panic about what someone else might be able to teach me or what I’m missing by not attending a talk by a self proclaimed guru … but then a 12 year old does it his way when there’s a much easier route … and he sets me free to realise I’m on the right track.
I have known Helen from Helco Promotions for a while and I have wanted to chat to her for ages. Every time I thought about talking to her about doing the ‘project me’ book, I have told myself that it’s years down the line. I’ve thought about the oceans of books and convinced myself that no one would publish it or that it would get lost in the sea of books if I self published. But then a 12 year old boy gets on a self-schooled horse and competes against 65 children, where most of those kids will have had someone else school their horse for them … and he reminds me …
‘Project me’ has been just that … self schooling! ‘Project me’ will be just that … self schooling!’ I don’t have the ability to tell a person what to do or do anything for them to make their lives a happy. I can only tell them that they can do it … and tell them my story to guide them along the way.
I watched a little boy take a formula and make it his own … I watched the very essence of what I was born to teach win his first little gold medal today and I realised that the only thing he wanted to do was keep having fun … not proclaim himself a guru!
So that’s it … doubting myself for not reading or following in someone else’s footsteps in way over … it’s self schooling time and it’s starting with the first page of the first chapter of ‘How to live your Project Me story’ (or something like that …
With courage, consciousness & a sense of humour
Published March 23rd, 2011
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!
With courage, consciousness & a sense of humour
Published August 26th, 2010I have this little obsession. Alright, I admit to having a few of them but that’s for another blog. Today it’s about the obsession with my stats and social networking followings. Some might think it’s unhealthy but I think that it drives me to achieve more, write more and connect more. On the other hand, it has made me realise that I need to grow a thick skin … and fast! Continue reading
Published August 16th, 2010Today’s blog is about good news, secrets and taking one step closer to my life purpose.
The good news is also the secret and the tale behind the secret is a about a little part of the personality that we call Ego.
So, I’ve been keeping a secret because I’ve been waiting for good news that was finally confirmed today. Greggie and myself had a meeting a good few weeks ago where we were asked to pitch our writing for an awesome new online news site called NewsTime. It was such a thrilling honour to be asked and an exciting time putting the pitch together, with even more thrills and ego moments trying to work out whether we would be accepted as contributors to the website.
Now it’s official and only now I’m blogging about it and trying to pull the wool over your eyes Continue reading
Published May 14th, 2010
The new look of jodene.co.za
Yesterday finally signalled relaunch day for my website and big reveal day for my second blog. Behind the scenes I’ve been secretly working on branding my specially designed products and preparing the first blog posts.
I’m the worst at having a surprise and not being able to share it. Christmas time is a nightmare for me because I have to buy my presents early to avoid the shopping rush, but then I’m forced to sit with the secret of the gifts and not spoil my friends for days … Continue reading
abundance, consciousness, create your own reality, ephineah, life journey, lifeology, manifestation, manifestation myths, oh god knows, organic orgasm, Project Me, relationship, relationship help, self esteem, self help, sex, sex and the single, sexuality, sexy self esteem, south african blog, talks and courses, Universe | 
9 CommentsPublished May 5th, 2010So, things are getting a little scary in my paradigm. I’m beginning to be conscious of how long it really takes to get a new business off the ground. Well, I know I’ve said it all before … I’ve mulled over the money issues, the frustrations, the fears and doubt that manages to slip through the cracks of a great self worth and self love. Continue reading
Published April 10th, 20101. I can’t believe it’s been 100 days of putting me first, having fun and living goallessly. Continue reading
