Success, failure and faith

I'm writing this after having gone deeper into my human design experience in my business. Human Design is a system, similar to that of astrology where it is based on your birth date, time and location. It brings together astrology, Kabbalah, i-Ching, Myers-Briggs, biochemistry, genetics and the chakra system all in one.

I learned about it in 2020 when a local friend got into it, and since then I've been doing everything I can to allow my most natural expression of my energy to come through, learning where I need to decondition my mind and witness my not-self themes playing out.

It would take a long time for me to explain it all to you, and I am honestly not the right source to tell you. What I think is important for you to know for the sake of the reading in this blog is that Human Design teaches you how to follow your intuition and natural God-given energy. When you do this, the gifts you have to share with the world easily work through you.

In regards to business, I have been learning from Phoebe Kuhn about my design in my business and it has been greatly illuminating.

When you begin a business you naturally end up doing all kinds of things that are "normal" in that line of business. For example - if you're a yoga teacher, you will likely teach yoga classes, workshops and retreats. If you're a reiki practitioner or healer, you will likely offer 1-1 sessions, coaching, workshops and special events. If you have an online business then you likely have courses, one-off classes and a coaching program over zoom. These are all the "norm" for these professions.

What Human Design has shown me is how to break free from the norm in whatever line of work I'm in. Where everyone says "this is how it's done and how it's always been done", I ask "Is that how I am here to do it? Or is there another way?"

It's time for a story.

In the last third of 2022 I found myself facing challenge after challenge in my business. I was trying different angles and approaches, often times still feeling like I was in the “test” phase of my business.

After a launch in September that was well planned and structured but didn’t land well, I felt like a complete failure. I did what I thought was right for me. Brought in some serious powerhouses, really affordable pricing, met with them and established a plan to execute it all, listening intently to what they intuitively felt would be great as well as my intuition, and...

It flopped hard in every direction it could.

Shortly after that launch I felt so intensely burnt out. My business was the one thing I greatly enjoyed in the last 3 years and now it felt like this final piece of my life that remained stable and thriving was falling apart. Mix that in with my fight or flight nervous system state from my personal life and I slipped into a big shadow in my psyche… I felt crazy!

I took a week to feel it all, the sabotage, the betrayal, the sadness, the bitterness… oh how I felt bitter. If there was ever a time I held a middle finger to the world, this was it.

I got a clear message in the middle of my intense feelings though… “This is also for you”

I’m always receptive to spirit, so even though this message was not soothing and helpful, I kept an open mind knowing that being stubborn in my bitterness would not help.

After a week of boo time, I put on my big girl pants and got to work. Breathwork, yoga, meditation, mindset, all the tools in my medicine bag.

I also did the one thing that pivoted me the most... you guessed it! I dove deep into my human design. I quickly saw why the launch flopped for me and started to rework my biz based on my own personal energy. What I learned was the opposite of what I had facilitated for that launch.

The program I had launched was in collaboration with three other women. We set the launch time for a month. The program required me to create a recipe and a meditation every week. There was a community forum for accountability and I was asking for regular content from the women I had collaborated with. I had to manage the community forum, and we hosted a big live freebie for it.

Here's what I learned:

My energy is not designed...
to collaborate
for long launches
to create consistently
for accountability
for group management
for live freebies

Everything I brought into the September launch was intuitively aligned BUT it was in the wrong format and delivery. None of it was how I was created to share my medicine with the world.

This was a profound and considerable permission slip in my business.

I energetically “burned my business to the ground” and started from scratch with this new knowledge, focusing on my original mission to help people discover the sacredness of their life through earth and energy medicine.

For the next launch I made a downloadable ebook, planned posts for a week, had a waitlist and my intentions were very clear.

Not gonna lie, I was terrified of failing again. It crippled me for a while… until I decided my mission, my passion, my LEGACY… was more important to me than my fear.

I did everything I could to recreate my business based on my intuition and natural energy, and then I hit GO. What happened next shocked me.

I had the easiest launch of my life.

I felt so aligned and intuitively guided in my business, and every person who joined me in that offer was exactly who I had intended to welcome. I sold out half of the spots to my waitlist while I was doing my shaman training in Scotland and the other half on my way home. I felt so free, excited, easeful and aligned!

This was one month after the “epic failure” I had that I thought I could never come back from.

This is the power of being intuitive, intentional and grounded in the knowledge and experience you acquire. Failure is a part of life here to help you see that you could never fail, you are just not fully embodied in your energy just yet.

This brings me back to the title... Success, failure and faith.

What is more fascinating to me is that according to my Human Design, I am here to communicate about failure, preservation and veneration (my conscious mercury, gate 32).

Human Design gives you a foundation, the true work is in exploring it within yourself and witnessing your own shadows, gifts and light. With this as my conscious mercury - my voice and my message in my work - it made complete sense.

I love talking about protecting and preserving what is sacred and worthy of respect. I love sharing with others how truly amazing life is and discovering what brings an sense of appreciaton to us. Reverence for life is truly at the heart of what I share. Preserving where we have come from and remembering that life is precious as we follow the gentle truth within. This is so me.

But failure as the shadow struck me...

I never really thought I had "failed" in my life by societal standards, but when I look back at the moments where I felt low, sad, defeated or in a blunder of some kind, it was always because I had lost faith.

That September launch brought me to my knees, and I questioned my faith more then than I had ever before in my life.

I realized that success to me was not what I had been taught was success - it wasn't lots of money or infinite amounts of people in my offers. My body tenses up at the mere idea of that.

Success for me was a whole different feeling.

The feeling of freedom, of joy, of ease, expansion, intuitive alignment, intentional living and being grounded in these experiences enough to touch them and witness them all in my life.

In simpler words, I discovered this for myself:

Success = Faith, Freedom & Heart
Failure = Unease, Mistrust & Tension

True failure in my life occurred when I severed myself from the divine... from the heart of my work, the truth of who I am in my soul and the trust I held in God.

I invite you to allow these words to be a reminder that we get to decide what the expression of these words looks and feels like for us personally.

Permission to redefine success and failure - granted.