I had rented a room for 50 people. 7 showed up. As I looked out over my handful of attendees, I knew that the most important thing I could do was lead a workshop that would honor the highest potential of every human being who had graced me with their presence. I quickly forgot about all the people who weren't there and focused instead on the ones who were.
Within about 10 minutes of starting the workshop, I began to be aware of a lightness, a flow, a connection I had never felt before. It was not necessarily verbal but the words I would use to describe the feeling would be: "oh, ok, this is what God created me to do." It was a pleasant, welcoming feeling, like returning from a long, tiring journey into a warm, nourishing home.
When the workshop was over, I knew nothing about my life was ever going to be quite the same.
The following afternoon, I looked at the cost of the room, the amount of money I'd collected and the fact that I had another workshop scheduled for 3 days later in an even bigger room with even fewer confirmed attendees. I was not feeling particularly nourished.
I called Keisha and told her how down I felt. She was encouraging but didn't have a whole lot of ideas for me as to how to deal with the gap between my expectations and my results. I learned a lot over those next few months--about leadership, service, risk-taking and, yes, logistics. Every workshop I gave (and I gave a lot of them) was a blessing to give. The fact that I was doing my life's purpose was clear every time. *And* every workshop taught me new lessons about the business of leading workshops.
On Friday night, Keisha told me, "I remember how upset you were the day after your first workshop. But you didn't give up. You kept at it--learning what you needed to learn to make it possible to do all the things you're doing now. It's really an example of everything you teach about staying true to the vision, getting uncomfortable, getting support and keeping on growing."
I was touched. Keisha mirrored my journey to me with such love and positivity. Her witnessing of the journey meant a lot to me.
But then, today, her words about not giving up really hit me. People give up all the time on their dreams. They get scared, overwhelmed, shy, angry or self-doubting. They hit a physical or financial obstacle or they hear unkind words from a critic or a loved one and they begin to doubt their ability to keep going.
And I was suddenly SO GRATEFUL for the fact that once I started leading workshops, the prospect of ceasing to lead them occurred for me like the prospect of ceasing to breathe. Why would I ever give up on my vision? That would be like giving up on my heart, my health, my regular showers. It would be like giving up on God.
At the end of the day, my vision is not something to be mastered. It is something to be served. Every time I get to serve the vision, I get to re-discover myself and my relationship to integrity, service and God. Now that doesn't mean that I'm not financially responsible for myself and my vision. Vision without financial integrity is a hallucination.
I'm beginning to understand that as long as I'm committed to integrity of all kinds (including financial and personal), I will be guided to whatever training, resource or business is the next step in manifesting my vision. It may not look the way I think it should. But it will always be better than I could have imagined.
How could I ever give up on that? How could I even begin to entertain thoughts of quitting?
Quitting is the run-away solution. Walking my vision through the doubts I have then coming out the other side is the most rewarding experience in the world.
It took me a long time to get here. But I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.
So what's your vision?
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