On Being Profoundly Human!

How to Show Up Fully and Receive What You’ve Asked For.

I’m sitting in the green room of the local morning TV show AMNW, waiting to go live for my segment. I’ve been waiting, manifesting, wishing for this day for months, years even. My new book Adventures for Your Soul comes out tomorrow. This is launch week—everything and all of me is wrapped up into this book.

I should be thrilled, but I am not.

All I can think about is the super cute girl sitting with me in the green room, getting ready for her segment. I am sharing the couch with actress Felicia Day, a comedian and New York Times best-selling author. She’s appeared in numerous mainstream television shows including Buffy the Vampire Slayer and garners more than 2.3 million Twitter followers. She’s here on book tour celebrating her new book, You’re Never Weird on The Internet (Almost).

I sit here thinking about her position in the publishing world, how easy it was for her to get into Powell’s bookstore (they turned me down), how easy it is for her to get around town in her escorted service (I drove myself). I can’t help but think how hard I had to work to find a book agent (it took me three years), how difficult it seemed to get a book deal, and to even to get this TV segment lined up. She is traveling with a publicist (I’m traveling with my dog), her tour is most likely paid for (mine is out of pocket), and I feel frustrated, unsupported, and exhausted from all my own efforts to make it in this business.

I can’t help but see the distinct contrast between our worlds. I am not a celebrity, nor do I have my own traveling publicity bodyguard. Before she walked in, I was excited—my book is coming out!—and then suddenly, without warning, I face-planted flat into comparison, the root cause of unhappiness. I have nothing more than a complete attack of ego.

As she shares insights from her book tour, all I can think about is that I want what she has, I am so far behind, I am not good enough. “Shannon, you are a loser,” my inner voice says.

COMPARISON HAS KIDNAPPED MY JOY!

Lucky for me, this just so happens to be an entire chapter in my next book. You know, the one coming out tomorrow, the stuff I am supposed to know because I wrote the book about it. Chapter seven, to be exact.

So I try to apply my own tools of pulling out of comparison. But I can’t seem to shake it. The detrimental feeling that I am a big loser author whose books don’t matter has crippled my every action. I am deep in the vortex of fear.

I leave the television studio feeling less than, not good enough … a failure. All this before 10 a.m. and less than 24 hours before my new book comes out into the world.

We all do this, compare ourselves to others. We put others on a pedestal (like I was doing with Felicia), which inevitably makes us feel less than or not good enough, or we compare ourselves to an ideal version of who we think we need to be.

Today on my way home, through my tears of sadness and suffocating self-pity, I had a moment of temporary relief. I said to myself, “Perhaps the problem isn’t that I am comparing myself to others, but the fact that I think it is a problem which is keeping me stuck. Staying a victim to this self-induced harassment in my life isn’t really serving me … or is it?”

You see, I feel like, as a self-help author, coach, and teacher, I am supposed to have this figured out. In 24 hours my new book covering this topic hits shelves all across North America. The guilt I feel for thinking I shouldn’t be jealous is almost more harmful than the actual act of being jealous. I decide in this moment to embrace my total emotional expression and allow myself to be profoundly human. Yes, that is right, embrace my humanness, 100 percent! Which means stop trying to fix, change, force a smile or pretend it’s all okay. Stop thinking I am bad for comparing myself, or not being as happy as I think I “should be.”

In this moment I will let myself feel everything; as the tears run down my face, the healing can take hold. I invite love in to show me the reason for this experience.

As I lean into love, I realize the jealousy was never about her or even the act of jealousy, for that matter. It was just my own old insecurity popping up to say hi, yet again. That’s the thing about fears and insecurities—they never go away fully. We can go on meditation retreats, seek out mentors, life coaches, read handfuls of self-help books—heck even write the books (ahem)—but it is not to fix or change ourselves.

The expectation is, if you are on a spiritual journey, or reading self-help books (or writing them) you should be getting better, you should have it figured out. But what if there is nothing wrong or broken that needs fixed in the first place? What if we actually miss the mark by thinking we need to reach some state of Zen enlightenment and never feel the raw humanness of life that is, as it is?

Feeling jealous is only bad if we allow it to take us down. But what if our emotions are pathways and opportunities for greater learning? In that moment I realize my profound humanness is actually just an answered prayer.

I can continue to look at the lack and what I still don’t have and have yet to achieve, or I can turn inward and see the blessing in the lesson (another chapter in my new book).

The blessing in the lesson is the invitation to see that everything happens for us instead of to us. Felicia, the famous actress with a gazillion Twitter followers, was sitting next to me. And I could have looked at that as the universe showing me what is possible for me.

But, in my profound humanness, I couldn’t get out of my own way to see that maybe this was a miracle, the one I had been praying for. Nope, my stubborn fear was in the driver’s seat. I was preoccupied with feeling inadequate, like a loser author, but perhaps the flip side is the truth. You see, fear has a clever way of making us perceive things as real, based on insecurities laced into the ego projection stories we tell ourselves. I was telling myself I am not good enough, but this was a story. I could flip the story and lean into love. It looks something like this:

For the past several months I’ve wanted to get my message out in a more mainstream manner. Reach more people, share the love in as many ways necessary. A dream of mine has been for a celebrity or well known public personality to share my content and read my books.

So, as fate would have it, do you think it was a coincidence that a famous actress was sitting in the same room as me the week my book came out? This was an answered prayer.

Leaning into love meant I could have hugged her, taken selfies and hashtagged our newfound friendship—but nope, not this time. I let fear get the best of me.

Lesson learned. The universe gave me what I wanted: a potential connection into the celebrity world. Perhaps I blew it this time, but the universe did its part. I just need to get out of my own way and be more present, be more open to receive.

Do you need to get out of your own way? Where are you blocking yourself from receiving what you’ve asked for?

We all have only one of two choices: we can choose love or we can saturate ourselves in fear. Fear got the best of me today, but I overcame. I learned. And I am moving on. I end the day with peace and a grateful heart, because I showed up today. I did the best I could with how I felt in the moment. That’s all we can ever ask for, just that we show up, and do the best we can. The best we all can do is just pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and try yet again.

The good news is, the universe is always supporting us. It will keep giving us the same lessons over and over until we accept the invitation and rise up to receive. This means the next time the opportunity comes, I will be ready. Will you? Can you see the blessing in your lesson?

In the experience of waiting for what we want, we can open our eyes a little wider to the potential that is already right here, available to us in the now.

What we seek is always on its way to us; we just have to get out of our own way and trust that everything is always in right, divine order.

How will you embrace your profound humanness?