Write Down Your Calling and Your Assignment.

I have been a little negligent writing on my Substack. Not because of a lack of desire to write, or be a writer, but because I am in the middle of a transition and a lot of what I think about and think through is, well, boring because it is very personal to me. You don’t need to read the musings of a person in the middle when it’s straight out of their head. I used to tell my book clients this all the time - you are writing for you first, but at some point you have to take your reader into consideration. No one needs the first pass gunk.

I have made efforts in my edits of this column to spare you the mind drivel that stems from my current mid-life insecurities when it comes to not just career but a whole new life geographically and within an ever-evolving family system. I spend most of my day watching an internal pendulum swing from insecurity about my new career, to security about how divine it’s all working out.

The whole concept of I can have whatever I want is really appealing to me as long as I turn off the old narrative that I am being dumb and delusional. People rely on me being a motivator and thinker outside the box. To be like “Charge!” and run ahead of the line. So I have a responsibility to go for it. GO FOR IT. I know that’s in my bones, but I am here to tell you just because those of us born to motivate make it look easy, we are constantly thinking, “Really?”

Okay, let’s cut through the bullshit. Rationalizing not making any money while you build a new vision brings up a new level of faith and patience that I can be very unhappy about. Do you agree? Logically, I understand in mid-life better than ever before that we have no control over time and financial deliverance, but it still really plucks at the old messaging that without a dollar in and a dollar earned, you are not valuable.

Interestingly enough, the work I am finally doing in EMDR is to create new positive messaging that says “I have value, and I am important.” In other words, I have something to say, and I have power when I emotionally stand behind it without stress, or worry or insecurity. Or deep dark inner child emotions. So where does money come into the equation - meaning making it and proving your worth - and where do you allow yourself to let go of old money ideals. Chances are, if you are reading a Substack about permission, you have enough money for today to do what you want today. You have a roof over your head. You may not like the roof, or what you are doing, and you are looking to bail. I am here to tell you to lean the fuck into what you want to do for the next thirty years of your life, even if it means fucking off on a farm by a river in a remote town.

Yeah, that’s on my list.

When is there enough to say enough and try something new? What are you beholden to that you think you can’t live without? Pare your life down if you want to level up. We all have to do it. It doesn’t mean you are going to be without new underwear or the protein bars you love forever. It doesn’t mean you are going backwards. You are fine tuning the you inside that now knows all tons of shit, and you are getting smarter, faster all the while being happy.

Novel idea, right?

For me, I want peace. I crave quiet. Not with friendships, or fun or joy, but an inner peace that is designed to expand and educate me, not beat me down, exhaust me, and keep me in some rat race I have grown weary of witnessing. I don’t want thousands of people in my face every day. I try to hide by the beach, but it’s noisy here considering I live in Los Angeles. I allow the crashing ocean, and the beauty of the space, and the accomplishment of the bucket list to live in Venice Beach, to inspire me that I can have the next goal and dream. Which involves more peace and less people. I meditate, I pray, I embrace where I am at in life, but I also am building something else, and it doesn’t seem to be that solid yet, and I have to be okay with that.

Because here is the equation for permission when starting a business:

Year One - Build/Broke.

Year Two - Launched/Less Broke

Year Three - Bask in Evidence of Success/Tripled Income

Year Four - Arrive. Confident. Look to Future

Year Five - Expand to Legacy/Team

I have sat with hundreds of business owners, many successful, and heard them talk about their path, and based on my 11 years with a business, I can say, this is definitely a version of years one through five. So if you want to do something new, and are giving yourself permission to do it, the road can be long but I can assure you, in those years, you have come to you learning curves, opportunities and income you never saw coming. If you lean in and up level all the time, you will see success.

What is different for me now is I pray. Business two is going to be built on a deeper spirituality and a learning of the Bible. Whether you read the Bible or not, the text has letters from apostles like Paul who really drops the truth bombs on money. He says, don’t go after the dollar (I am modernizing and summarizing) but communicate and deliver. If I have a message (Delicious Life) and I deliver that in some form every day - whether it is through a newsletter, social media or a event, then I am doing what I am being called to do in God’s grace. Because you can’t orchestrate the career I am embarking on with charts, graphs, logic or coaching programs. It just happened, through the process of going where I could listen and hear, speak and learn.

Then I got the assignment.

In the midst of the assignment, people have shown up to support my cause. They have opened their contact books and invited people to my events. They have appeared on my podcast, jazzed about sharing. They have responded to me asking where their lives could be more delicious.

Look at what you are doing with your life and ask yourself, what is your assignment?

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Then watch little pings come in your life to test your faith. A tax return gets delayed. You need a medical procedure the insurance won’t cover. Your kid gets into trouble. The unemployment you thought you were going to get is in a government loop. Your car breaks down. Your menopause and hormones flare. Your partner decides to leave. That is when you know it’s even more important to push through your calling and your assignment.

Trust and believe and give yourself permission to get on the Delicious train to Georgia!

If you are still getting your feet wet for a new direction in your life, like year one - it’s all piddly business. Lots of confusion and stomach aches but your desire and drive will win at the end of the day if it’s your calling. You can maybe make $12k if you are lucky so buckle in financially so you can get to year 2. Maybe double. $24k. It shows evidence of being “something” so you keep going in the areas that paid off. Year 3, you want to see a big jump. Like $80k. Now, since no one gets any happier after $75k (read the stats on that), you better like what you are doing, because for the next 10-15 years, you are riding that clutch hard, to hopefully make $800k so you can sell the business as a legacy and walk away into your 70’s with dough. For me, I want to have fun the whole way. We could all die tomorrow, so I am not going to work my ass off to never benefit. So I may get there slower than I would have in my 40’s and I am okay with that.

Know that without fun, you are just slogging away till you die.

Trust, faith, communicate, express, show up.

If you do all those things from your heart, have your own time line of permission and joy and it will be fiercely your mission, and not someone else’s you borrowed because you had no idea who the fuck you were in the first place.

I may read this Substack on Thursday again before it goes out and think, “Nah, no fucking way, this makes no sense.” Or it could make all the sense to share for those people who like me, are in that place where they are giving themselves permission to muddle and think and wonder what the hell this all means when we make a radical change in our lives, but we still have an inkling its going to work out because we are smart and we look at the evidence.

The good news is, I also have a podcast where I bring on guests who share a lot of deep knowledge about a variety of pivots. I just published This Delicious Life with Intuitive Divorce Coach Kristen Noel. She shares so many wonderful nuggets about how to go about this big life change.

How about overperforming to prove your worth to others? Hello? Check out speaker and coach Laura Aura who shares about pivoting with desire. And to make this an even sweeter announcement, I just was on her Gutsy podcast sharing about the pivot.

All the knowledge is out there to be soaked in. We have all the answers. When we give ourselves permission to not lie in the muddy bullshit, life will open up to us in profound and amazing ways to share our calling and our assignment.

Are you ready?