In October 2015 I received a Divine Download about something… I discovered that the business I truly wanted was one that operates mostly on autopilot. Meaning I have tons of passive income streams that allow money to flow in with ease, while I get to spend all of my time doing the things I love–writing, speaking, creating, entertaining, performing–without having to stress out about launching new stuff every month or worrying about where my money is gonna come from next.
At that point I was three months into having a consistent daily mindset practice and I felt on fire with motivation, inspiration and belief in myself and in what was possible.
So I hired a coach to help me start creating sales funnels for my business that would allow me to make more passive income, while helping more and more people, all on autopilot. We worked together for a month, planning out a sales funnel, putting the whole thing together and actually launching it and then doing Facebook ads to send traffic to the funnel.
I listened to the Divine Download, jumped into immediate action and invested in myself and in my business. Just as I always do. But right after that happened, I sabotaged myself.
The sales funnel didn’t work the first time around, but rather than fix it and keep tweaking it, I panicked.
All my bullshit about worthiness and being good enough and “who am I to have a business that runs on autopilot, allowing more and more money to come in with ease, allowing me to help more and more people with ease, all while getting to spend most of my time doing what I love to do,” came up. It hit me right in the face.
And I couldn’t handle it.
I ended up shutting my Facebook ads down, turning off the sales funnel, firing the coach I hired, and then I told myself I was wasting my time because it “wasn’t working anyhow.”
And that was that with sales funnels and with the deep desire I had to create a business that runs on autopilot so I can focus on my Zone of Genius (writing, speaking, creating, entertaining and performing). I just stuffed the desire down and ignored it.
It came back up over the next couple years, but I refused to even look at it or deal with it. I refused to even acknowledge that I wanted it.
And I made myself wrong for wanting it.
Because that’s not what business is “supposed” to be about. Business is supposed to be an active thing that you toil away at and work hard on and give your blood, sweat and tears for. It was “wrong” of me to want ease.
Ease wasn’t allowed.
If things were “easy,” then people would say I was lazy and not a real entrepreneur and that I didn’t deserve to be successful because I wasn’t working hard enough.
So I stopped focusing on wanting things to be easy and I continued to toil away, doing things that I didn’t really love doing, but that made me money, because then I felt like I was actually earning it. I even held a belief that said money had to be hard-earned or it didn’t count.
But that desire for ease, for things to be simple, for my business to run mostly on autopilot, to have most of my income be passive, was still there. It didn’t disappear just because I decided to ignore it or tried to snuff the desire out.
The fire kept on building. Getting hotter and bigger and causing more and more pain inside me because I wasn’t listening to it or doing anything about it. Because the truth was, I wanted ease.
So often we give ourselves such a hard time about the desires that we have. We tell ourselves we shouldn’t have them. We worry about what will other people will think or say if we were to achieve them.
I imagined myself being judged for having ease by every entrepreneur I was friends with, the ones who were working insanely hard, giving blood, sweat and tears every single day, just to barely make ends meet in their businesses.
I told myself that was how it was supposed to be. And anyone who had a business with passive income and using sales funnels wasn’t in it for the right reasons. They were just “in it for the money” and that was bad.
But my desire for passive income didn’t go away.
It just got stronger as the years went on, as I continued to do things I didn’t really want to be doing to make money, and as I reinvented the wheel every month just to get my bills paid.
The struggle was real. And it was painful.
But the most painful part was ignoring my desire.
When you have a dream or a desire inside you, when you get a Divine Download about what you’re really meant to be doing in your business and/or life, and you know in every cell of your body that it’s what you want and what you’re meant for, but then you don’t act on it? The turmoil begins and the desire and dream starts to fester.
Soon you’re feeling like shit inside because you know what you really want, but you’re not allowing yourself to have it or even to want it. You’re making yourself wrong for it.
You’re judging yourself so harshly for it.
But after years and years of feeling like you’re living in Groundhog Day, where everything just keeps on repeating even though you desperately want it to stop, you come to a point where you have to surrender. Where it’s time to let go of the fear, the “what ifs,” and the judgment.
Where it’s time to just fucking act on the desire and on the dream–without listening to the comments and judgments from the Peanut Gallery.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been slowly, but surely building a sales funnel for my business. One that gives my community insane amounts of value and then makes them an offer to buy something from me.
The thing us creatives forget about being in business is that you have to actually sell things and make offers if you’re going to make any money and actually be successful.
And it can be a challenge, because there’s that inner struggle going on. The struggle of confronting the limiting beliefs and thoughts that have been placed on us and the judgments that if we’re not doing things solely for the art that we’re wrong and bad people.
But doing stuff for free all of the time won’t get your bills paid and it definitely won’t allow you to move to the next level in your life and business, where you could potentially quit your day job and make a full-time living from creating and selling your art.
Judging yourself and making yourself wrong for wanting what you want (whatever it is you want) is only making things harder than they need to be. And they don’t need to be hard.
In fact, “working hard” and “giving your blood, sweat and tears” in exchange for what you want are just limiting beliefs holding us back. It doesn’t have to be hard. Success doesn’t have to come with blood, sweat and tears.
It can be easy.
It’s allowed to be easy. You’re allowed to feel total ease and bliss when it comes to your life and business and how you operate them.
But now you have to give yourself permission to believe that.
Now you have to decide that you no longer care what anyone else thinks and you no longer want to judge yourself or give yourself a hard time about it. Now you have to want to do things differently.
Now you have to choose ease.
And then you have to keep on choosing it, every single day. You have to stay focused on what it is you truly desire and dream of, and ignore what everyone else around you says, does and wants.
Just because you want something that other people don’t, doesn’t make you wrong.
I’ve given myself such a hard time over the last three years about wanting my income to be mostly passive. Such a hard time. I’ve called myself names and talked shit to myself and told myself that I shouldn’t want what I want.
But the desire hasn’t gone away.
And now that I’m acting on it, I’m annoyed with myself for not acting on it sooner. If I had just stuck with it in October 2015 when the deisre originally came to me and I began taking action on it, I’d already have tons of passive income coming into my business and I’d be able to focus 100% of my time on writing, speaking, creating, entertaining and performing.
Instead I’ve spent the last 3 years scrambling every month, creating tons of new products and programs and workshops, just to stay afloat and continue to grow.
Don’t get me wrong–I love everything I’ve created and I don’t regret any of it. I know everything happens for a reason.
But I’m DONE avoiding my desires and dreams for the kind of life and business that I truly want.
Now I’m not only allowing myself to want what I really want, but I’m no longer judging it or giving myself a hard time about it. Now I’m acting on the desire and the dream. Now I’m doing what it takes to bring the desire and dream to life.
With total ease.
And it became easy the minute I stopped fighting it. The moment I finally surrendered to it. The moment I gave myself permission to not only want it, but to take action on it.
What desires or dreams have you been suppressing and pushing down because of fear and judgment? It’s time to let that all go and give yourself permission to want what you actually want, whatever that may be.
It’s the only way to ever fully live the dream life you want for yourself.
Dream life or bust,
jen
