Q+A: if this is what I’m meant to be doing, shouldn’t it be easier?

It’s a scary thought:

If this is what I’m meant to be doing, shouldn’t it be easier?

This is a question an impassioned, courageous, and a little bit scared young woman asked me recently. I’d just spoken at an event, where my main message to the audience was this: “If ever you feel like you’re stuck in a tunnel without a light at the end, if ever you are seeking some illumination to bring you clarity, illuminate the spark in you.” One spark. That’s all it takes. And then your entire world is illuminated. One spark. When we re-ignite the light within ourselves, we gain the ability to re-ignite it in other people.

Leap of Faith

This woman had done this, had left her chosen field because she was filled with anxiety, her health was struggling, and she was drained. “You’re crazy,” people told her. “You’ve spent so much time, energy, and money on training for this career.” She didn’t listen to them. She listened instead to the quiet steady voice within, whispering “There’s more. There’s ease, there’s health, there’s contentment.” So she left her career, did her training in the field that lit her up. “I know it’s right for me, because of how I felt during my new training.” But, she wondered, a few months down the line from that training and without a job in her chosen field: “If this is what I’m meant to be doing, shouldn’t it be easier?” This is a dangerous thought. One that implies something that can stop us in our tracks on our way to our destiny if we’re not careful. It implies that if things aren’t easy they’re not meant to happen. That all things meant to be come easily.

Radical Truth

Let me share something vital with you: very often, what’s meant to be will challenge us more deeply, scare us more completely, and leave us feeling more in need of help than ever before. click to tweet: @lindsey_lewis: often, what’s meant to be will challenge us more deeply than we’ve ever been challenged. We may feel lost, unmoored, and completely uncertain. We may feel that we are meeting our biggest challenge yet. There’s a reason for this. What we’re meant to be is fully, completely, and truly unfolded. Fully, completely and truly expansive. If we’re holding tight to anything that doesn’t enable this, any limiting beliefs, any uncertainties about our own worthiness, or fears that we won’t be able to be or do what we want to be or do–our destiny will pull these to the surface. In other words: what’s meant to be is also meant to stand us face to face with our greatest fears, our most cherished “stay small” beliefs, and anything we’ve carried with us from our past that doesn’t serve our present or our future.

Throw it into the fire

Because destiny does this. What calls us, ignites us, and fuels our soul will also ask us to burn away anything that prevents us from living in this way. So here is the short answer to that very common question: “If it’s not easy, if it stands you face to face with anything that doesn’t serve you, if it asks you to be braver and fiercer than you’ve ever been before, then it’s more in line with what’s meant to be than what isn’t.” When we embrace this, and begin to feed any Self-shackles into the fire, then–cleared of the film that was clouding our shine–our inner spark can illuminate the path in a way that we’ve never experienced before. Much love, L