FROM HOPE TO HOW
FROM HOPE TO HOW……www.janicemariewilson.com email goddesslv@aol.com
We all have faced losses in our lives. Last week I talked about losing my million dollar stock portfolio, and I don’t mean I misplaced it in my desk files. I had invested for twenty years in stock and had accumulated a net worth of a million dollars. I came down one morning to check my stocks, and the number went from a million in change to sixty-six thousand dollars. Yes the awe and shock hit hard in my gut. A white fear came over me and I was nauseous. I had read about this kind of thing happening to others, but not to me. I was with a reputable stock broker. I had invested in reputable companies, Cisco, IBM, AT&T. This was not a get rich scheme. I’d been in the market for over twenty years.
I called my broker, and she had no answers. You know the part that they tell you just to sit tight and it will all come back. Well, it didn’t.
I’m not sharing this with you to tell you not to invest in markets, or businesses, or mutual funds, or to save for the future. I’m sharing this with you not to scare you. Although, I was scared, ashamed, guilty, and angry. And yes, I blamed myself. Why didn’t I listened to the sage advice of a gentleman I’d just met at the gym? Why did I trust my twenty year relationship with my stock broker? Why did I think I could be a millionaire? Obviously, I wasn’t smart enough, rich enough or worthy enough to be rich!
I thought I had done everything right. I saved 20% of my paycheck. I researched my investments. I went for long term growth. I did it according to the book. How did this happen? This self recrimination dragged me down and practically buried me alive. My sleepless nights were interrupted with cold sweats, hot sweats and migraines.
The pain was so bad that I didn’t think I’d ever recover. What changed? The truth was I did. I became choiceless. The only way out was through and so I started a personal journey of being Conscious to my own Truth. Not to anyone else’s truth, but to my own. The biggest lesson in finding this truth was finding my courage to “let go.”
I had to learn how to let go of everything I had ever believed about money, net worth, and wealth. I had to let go of my anger, shame, guilt, and blame. I had to let go of my attachment to every thing. I mean everything. My job, my home, my family, my children, my marriage, my car, my lifestyle all dramatically changed. I had to let go of thinking that my million dollars would create the life that I wanted. I had to learn to create my freedom and fulfillment without the money… not for the money.
Life as I had known it was gone. I had to “let go” of how I thought things were going to be and just let them “BE.” I had to let go of the anger, the betrayal, the lies, the anxiety and the depression. I had to “let go” of what I thought this portfolio was going to bring to me. I “let go” of my attachment to the “HOW” I would become wealthy. I had to learn something much more valuable. I had to see the truth about my own power. That Power that is within me and is GREATER than me. I had to discover what THAT was. I had to find the courage to trust it, use it and now share it!
“Without self-expression, life lacks spontaneity and joy. Without service to others, it lacks meaning and purpose … Conceiving of ourselves as artists in whatever work we do gives us a metaphor for a life of integrity, service, enjoyment, and excellence … I know of no better nutshell statement of the path to finding one’s true calling in life than the simple formula given by Aristotle: ‘Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation.’ These two, your talents and the needs of the world, are the great wake-up calls to your true vocation in life. To ignore either is, in some sense, to lose your soul.” - Laurence G. Boldt, Zen and the Art of Making a Living