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Woohoo! Breakthrough!! Now what?

Ever experienced this?

If (like me) you love transformation you may know this cycle.

You go deep. You see the old story. Huge shift! Come out the other side with a glowing new you.

You feel your truth in every cell: My voice matters. I have wisdom to share. There are those who want to receive what I long to give. I’ve got this!

You return to your life fired up with new plans.

Then you realise. Your life is still your life. Your interactions with those around you haven’t changed.

Worse! Old habits invite you to slip back into their well-worn grooves.

When you take steps to show up in new ways, the old story still whispers in your ear.

Sh*t. No one responded to my post. See! I knew it was true that my message doesn’t really matter!

Doubts creep in. Negative voices grow louder. Procrastination. Paralysis. The weight of impossibility.

Shift your energy back into alignment with your deeper truth can be exhausting and frustrating.

What...

You
Are holy
And sacred
And utterly unique.
There are gifts you were born to give.
Songs you were born to sing
Stories you were born to tell.
And if you do not give it,
The world will simply lose it.
It is yours alone to offer,
No one can give it for you.

from Showing Up by Carrie Newcomer

I see you.
You have a dream.
A calling that whispers and urges you forward.
An ache that won’t let you settle for less.
A yearning to inhabit your essence.
A hunger to empower others.
A burning longing to forge a better world.

Maybe you created your own business to follow your soul’s path.
Or you aspire to transform your professional setting.
You’ve sacrificed a lot.
There’s plenty at stake.
It’s scary as hell.
Exhilarating too!

You discovered just how much you don’t know …
… about running a business.
… about being a leader.
There’s SO much to learn.

Fortunately, there are plenty of people who can tell you how.

You should … start a blog,...

The journey of embodying a poem, engaged with fully, is a transformative act.

It gives you a visceral experience, like a physical memory, of inhabiting your desired future self - now.

This enables you to step into your new story, beyond your current patterns and habits, and live into the vision that’s calling you home to your deepest self.

In this video I share a powerful and moving interview with my sister, Liadain Aiken, where she shares her inspiring story of embodying a poem.

She tells you how she brought the poem into her daily life to embody it deeply, the heart-opening, magical moment she stepped into visibility to share her poem with a group and what happened in her life as a result. 

You can also read her story below in her own words. 

Liadain's Story
"The journey of embodying a poem with Rionach is a beautiful one. The poems she suggested all hit a cord, but one pulled on my heart strings.

I stumbled over the words initially. The words felt...

Poetry goes deep fast. It opens up sacred realms.

Poems came to me at crucial moments when I was struggling to step into leadership and helped me break through core visibility blocks.

• When I was way off track, they brought me back to my soul's path.
• They've enabled me to access my own knowing when I felt lost or confused, and guided me to take the right next step.
• When I longed to find my soul’s purpose, they fuelled my desire despite my self-doubt, and called into being who I needed to be to take each next step.
• When I struggled to take up space, they melted my resistance and completely shifted my energy so I could inhabit my leadership.
• They’ve enabled me to create many spell-binding moments with groups, where we're captivated together into experiences of pure magic.

Many of us feel: 'Poetry is not for me.' Education may have taught you that it’s a complex puzzle that you often don’t understand.

But when you learn to embody a poem and surrender to your...

It was 4 in the morning. I woke again with the familiar ache in my heart. A physical pain - tension, tightness, an inner pressure.

For years I asked myself, what is this? Why does this come up, night after night? Waking each day with a sense of dread in the pit of my stomach.

What part of me needs healing, holding? What is this deep longing inviting me into? Everything in me yearned to know.

This is what a calling feels like.

An insistent knowing in your heart and in your bones that what you’re living is not it. That there’s more you came here to do. That it matters.

And yet our yearning is met by a sometimes equal and opposite resistance, holding back, holding on.

Fear. What if it’s not real? What if I’m not good enough? What if it’s not safe? What if I’m rejected? What if no one sees me, hears me, gets me? What if I fail?

Can I really trust myself? Can I really take up space? Am I ready to truly commit to my knowing? Invest all my energies in...

I just LOVED this deep dive conversation with the wonderful Kate Wolf about why stories are so powerful for communicating the depth and value of your work.

And we got to bring forth our magic and play with our wands! (Literally! You have to watch it! And this was totally unplanned :-)

Learning from Kate how to write transformational stories was a game-changer for my business.

It’s the most powerful way to invite people into your world and create magnetic connection with them.

As Kate says:

'Once Upon a Time, putting a shingle outside your door was enough to let the neighbours and passing villagers know you had fresh eggs to trade.

These days, with ‘the market’ existing not just in the local square but on every street and url imaginable, to sell your wares you need to stand out.

In a day-and-age where 'marketing' is now a verb, doesn’t matter how good a Coach you are, how ethical your hand-made lamps are, or how delicious and nutritious your cooking –...

I was four years old, sitting at the dinner table, tears rolling down my cheeks, my face wretched. Distressed by the cutting exchange of terse words. Feeling their anguish as if it were my own. As if I had no skin.

Then their frustrations turned on me: ‘Cry baby’. Mortified, I wished for the ground to open and swallow me. How could I disappear, become invisible?

Mostly I had my head stuck in a book, even as my siblings whirled noisily around me. My mother told me I had the gift of invisibility. I didn’t join any groups as a child - no Brownies, no Guides, no after-school clubs, no extra-curricular lessons.

I kept my head down and built my wall of quiet reserve.

For decades I avoided scenarios that would put me in front of groups. I didn’t share how I felt even with my closest friends. I’d built my wall well.

And if I did have to step in front of people - do some teaching, presentations, speaking - I was filled with gut-wrenching anxiety, sleepless...

I didn't trust it for a moment
but I drank it anyway,
the wine of my own poetry.

It gave me the daring to take hold
of the darkness and tear it down
and cut it into little pieces.

- Lalla, translated by Coleman Barks

Have you ever come across an amazing poem, read it once or twice and then returned to life as normal?

Yep, me too.

Maybe you have sensed that a poem can offer you a much deeper transformation.

But perhaps you’re not sure how to fully enter the invitation, the delicious promise, it holds. Or feel you don’t have time to go deeper.

But what if it was simple?
What if it was a practice that didn’t take any extra time?

The right poem at the right time can be a powerful catalyst for change.

When you work deeply with a poem over an extended period, you begin to call in the new story that poem offers you.

In the beginning, the invitation the poem offers feels like a stretch.
Over time, you speak the poem into being through yourself.
And you speak yourself into...

I sat by the hospital bed, his hand in mine, morning ‘til evening, day after day. (It was a different era!)

When not camping out in the hospital, I dealt with my CEO responsibilities, cooked healthy food to bring him, and dealt with my stress by decluttering cupboards.

I received daily messages of support from family and friends.
And I was still running around like a headless chicken. Doing everything myself.

After a few months, I reached the edge of burnout.

When people asked, I said ‘I’m fine’ and focused on my husband’s recovery instead.

I didn’t know how to ask for support.
I didn’t even know what to ask for.
I couldn’t think of anyone to ask.
It felt weak to ask for help. Vulnerable. Helpless.

My beloved was my main source of support. I was appalled to realise just how little I had invested in building my own support network.

Fast forward 6 years. I’ve so many wonderful support structures in my life now.

I’m so grateful...

To be human
is to become visible,
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.

To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your 
true inheritance.

- David Whyte, from What to Remember When Waking

So often I see coaches, facilitators and those who are at home in the invisible realms, struggle with conventional forms of becoming visible. 

I get it. I’ve been there. For decades. 

How about you?

Do you love facilitating deep transformational work, but find it hard to get in the zone when it comes to sharing your message? 

Perhaps you love holding an intuitive or healing space for others, and just wish people would find you so you could avoid the icky marketing stuff. 

Do you ever find yourself wishing that your messaging was as in flow for you as the transformation you bring to your clients or groups? 

How would it be to infuse your posts, stories, videos, blogs, emails, webinars, interviews with the deep wisdom that comes through when...