Inspiration Lost and Found, a clean slate finally?

February 22, 2010 | By:

I have to admit that the last six months of my life have been profoundly challenging. The economy hit my family hard, Danielle (my right arm in the office) went on a leave of absence, all my interns left after taking the bar exam, a new friend and colleague was diagnosed with cancer, my mother has been very ill just at a time when we have become adult friends, my husband’s latest contract ended and we were once again worried about mortgage payments, my mother-in-law passed away suddenly, my back was really, really bad, and I was the victim of credit card or banking fraud . . . and out of all of this I lost my mojo.  I just couldn’t find a reason to write, a reason to work, all of my inspiration to go into the office was gone.  I woke up every morning feeling like I was climbing an enormous mountain just to get through the day.  It wasn’t depression.  I kind of just gave up.  All I wanted to do was knit.

Here I was on the brink of starting an egg donation agency (which has been my dream for years), and my law practice was surviving through an economic depression.  And I didn’t care.  I cared about my kids, my husband, my knitting . . . but work, my career . . . gone.  I even kind of gave up on having another baby.  And that you must know is a bad, bad sign.

I usually spend every morning meditating, reading spiritual books, or knitting (a form of meditation for me).  That time was instead spent staring out the window wondering what to do with my life.  Or more accurately, questioning what am I doing with my life?

One day recently, I did an exercise in one of my books.  The book was on the law of attraction and I do believe that our thoughts create our reality to an extent (I do not believe our thoughts give us cancer or infertility).  This exercise was about focusing on what I needed to do in the moment (in order to help me get something accomplished during my day).  In one column I listed the two or three things I really needed or wanted to accomplish that day, in the other column I wrote down everything I wanted someone else to help me with (if anyone reading is interested, I’ll give you more information on the book and the exercise at the end of this post).  I did this exercise for a few days because I felt it was very effective at helping me focus my energy every day.  But much to my surprise, the stuff in the other column — the stuff that I was asking “someone else” to help me with — started to get done.  The first mock-ups of the website for the egg donation agency came in when I had asked “someone else” to help me encourage the web designer to finish the site.  I started hearing from people that I had been meaning to call when I had asked “someone else” to help me re-establish contact with them.  I got emails about seminars on subjects that I had asked “someone else” to help me find information about so that I could learn more.  These may seem like really subtle and coincidental, not very meaningful events.  But it wasn’t so much the thing that happened, but the number of things that happened on that list of things I wanted “someone else” to help me with.  I don’t know how or why, but it jazzed me up.  Maybe I felt less alone in the business world (being a small business owner in the middle of an economic depression can suck), maybe I felt like things were just finally falling into place.  I don’t really know how or why but finally my mojo started to percolate, and then simmer.  Now we’re almost at a rolling boil!

So today, I am off to call someone about marketing the egg donation agency.  I hope to find time to work on my eBook on egg donation, I have some client work to do . . . it’s very cool how something as small as making a very focused list and assuming (even if it’s just for purposes of the exercise) that there is someone there who can help you.  Now if someone could just find way to squeeze an extra hour or two into my day!!

In case you’re interested, the book is The Amazing Power of Deliberate Intent by Esther and Jerry Hicks

and the exercise is called Turning it Over to the Manager (Chapter 41).

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