I have an incredible little world around my in the town where I love, with my family and our friends on the coast in Australia, but close to the agricultural region because I like the bush too. Sometimes though, I have this tendency to get caught in a bubble of this world and in that not see everything out there. In the rest of the world. Small things at home can drive me #batshitcrazy. Cleaning the house can seem to be an actual, real life priority. I drive places on auto-pilot. Usually the gymnastics carpark and sometimes when I am going other places (although mostly I am actually driving to gym to pick up or drop off children). Sometimes I forget who I am.
This time about a year ago I went to the US to an event run by a coach I admired. I know how those events go and knew an opportunity would arise at the end of the event to invest. In the context of business coaching and getting my business to the next level and all the things I felt were justifiable to the level of investment (time, energy and money), I committed. It felt right and doable and some part of my being was certain. I’m growth motivated, so I was pretty sure I’d get a shitload of growth, and generally the return on investment is practical and obvious. And suddenly I was back in the world, extremely uncomfortable – challenged by the plethora of things I already knew, the huge impact on your physical being traveling 14,731km one way across the world and back again in a week, the financial commitment and the exchange rate, my children’s’ dislike of me being away for more than 2 hours at a time and the need to go away again and least two more times for a week at a time, my husband questions about the practicality of my investment, the time differences of training calls and coaching calls, being 1 of 2 Australians and in a room of people where I felt unsure of who I was in relation to who they were – and loving and hating the extent to which I choose to burst my safety bubble.
The same week I committed to a group coaching program in the US, I was also invited to guest at a women’s circle. It’s online so I guess I could call it a ‘virtual’ women’s circle, but in truth it’s an ACTUAL women’s circle – because it’s the most real, connected thing I have ever done with women (except maybe SheDance which you can read about here). Anyway, these women are from all over the world – at first just Germany, but now also Amsterdam and the US – and yet I see them every week (because I no longer guest on the calls, I belong on them) and talk about all the things and grow and learn and connect and somehow every week the world is in my phone. Opened right up.
And the more I opened to the world the more it changed me. Not into something I wasn’t, but into more if what I was. And somehow – even though the tangible results don’t make sense to anyone who is not me and are not very tangible in terms of justifiable business growth or return on investment (yet) – I know that my being was right. And even if my human form struggles in the face of things to communicate this, my soul knows. I saw the world. I saw what was possible. I had the US on my vision board at the start of 2018, and 12 months later I had been 3 times. The first time I have ever travelled internationally alone, and somehow entirely possible – supported by my husband and team at home, and my desire to expand.
It’s another funny contradiction in that I believe you have everything you need inside, but to find it you’ll need to make space and open, and sometimes the best and only way to open is to outside so the guidance can reach you. The universe, or God, or energy or whatever you believe in is conspiring to bring you what you dream of, but sometimes we get so caught in the bubble (of survival mode, of victim-hood, of stuckness or lostness or even just OKness) that we forget to open to the world and therefore we miss the messages. The magical things that unfold. The conversation with the person you end up seated next to on the plane. The friendship that grows with the only other Australian in the group, and weekly accountability calls we have that include everything and the time she got me into the first-class lounge in Melbourne when I was in transit during 24 hours travel. The people you connect with, and the ideas and creativity that happen in the energy of world-changers. How much you appreciate the lack of traffic and the clean air and beautiful beaches in your home town. And the validation of everything you already know and are already doing, and a pathway to expand.
When my year finished, and the group coaching program ended there was a lot of sadness from the people who had found a place where they could connect and feel at home and were not sure where they could find that again. I didn’t feel that sense of loss, more that I had only gained, and gathered some more people to become regular in my world. I realised that I have multiple ‘families’ around me all the time, all of whom help me feel more like myself – no matter where in world they are, or how frequently we connect.
This morning, in the dark trying to get my phone in my bag on the way to circuit class, I accidentally group called two of my friends, one snuggled up in her bed here and the other in LA about to facilitate the relationship event we do. And I thought how amazing the world is, and technology and that 14,000km is nothing. And until I opened to the world I couldn’t truly appreciate the expansiveness of it.
I discovered that beyond my bubble magic exists, and the only limitation is the size I restrict the bubble to. Because when I expand it to the whole world, the whole world is inside me.
Open yourself to the world and let the world open you. There is so much more than you could possibly imagine, and you don’t have to travel a million miles to find it.
