Surrender is the Beginning, not the End, of the Journey.

At the end of last year, things in my business(es) were poised to integrate, transition and grow. I was clear; I was excited. I had this transition. I worked with the energy of it consciously. I created a simple business model that made sense—and that excited me. The energy was clear; it was powerful. It scared me a little.

I had leads from the Fall who wanted to create intellectual property revenue streams. January and February are historically slow, and I thought I’d use these as my bridge, both financially and fully out of my law practice and into Ompreneur.

None of that happened.

In fact, Nothing Happened.

So, I went into creation mode: I created videos; I created Facebook ads.

And, I went into strategy mode: I met with my coach. I identified hubs of my (potentially) ideal client. I wrote warm letters. I had lunch meetings; coffee meetings; skype meetings.

And I went into problem-solving mode (because there must have been a problem): I revisited my money story. I wrestled with (and finally made peace with) the underlying relationship that seemed to reward huge success-failure swings. I asked for an understanding of what was blocking my success. I meditated; I asked for specific guidance from my Higher Self; I called upon my Guides. I got sales and marketing advice. I got feedback from different potential ideal client markets.

Nothing moved forward in my business. (Okay, not Nothing, I engaged some recurring income clients in my law practice, all of whom I already knew, but a process of engagement that historically takes about two weeks took over 3 months.) Very little moved forward in my business . . . and it felt like a grind.

My quest for business guidance overtook my spiritual practice—which (listen up) is not what a spiritual practice is for. A spiritual practice is a spiritual practice, for its own sake.

(Yes, I’m a purist when it comes to this.) And, a spiritual practice develops, depends and sustains your connection to your Self, your Wisdom, and your Divine Guidance, which yes, I would say, is the most powerful guide in your life, including your business.

Here’s the mistake I made (and I see people all around me making—and being encouraged to make):

Our souls’ work is not to create us a successful business; it is not to get us a specific result, which we have defined and about which we asked a specific question. Our souls’ work is to learn what we came here to learn, and contribute what we are uniquely qualified to contribute. Our souls’ work is to evolve and to work out karma.

And there’s a big, whole hunk of a chance (a certainty actually) that we don’t know best what we’ve come to learn or contribute or how we’ll most heal and evolve. We have but a merely inkling, a glimmer of the possibility. But we’re certain—like I was—that we know, and we’re committed (because it takes commitment!). In our knowing, in our commitment to our vision (which we’re all insistently encouraged to have), we miss what we’re being told, what we’re being shown.

The energy around my businesses integration, transition and growth was clear and powerful heading into this year. Why didn’t it manifest that same way? (Isn’t that what’s being popularly taught about soul alignment and co-creation?)

I was so determined that THIS WAS IT that I missed a key message: it wasn’t fully formed yet.

Twice in January, I received the message of a field of possibility: once, on the phone with Lisa Berkovitz, when she asked me about Ompreneur, I saw a vast, clear field of emptiness; and again, in a Medicine Vision with Nona Jordan, she conveyed to me a “field of possibility.”

A field of possibility is quite different than a clear form or direction.

Again, I was so determined that THIS WAS IT (FINALLY), I literally said to myself, that vast field must be, energetically, the same as my vision for the form of my work. I found a way for this information to support what I was already excited about and committed to, because I did not want to hear that the transition I wanted so badly (and for which my mind had an answer and a strategy) wasn’t fully formed yet.

I was also getting messages of stillness and slowness (a rhythm beneath the rhythm)—and yet I moved forward, creating videos and Facebook ads, talking to people, asking those people who else I could talk to, getting sales and marketing advice.

The result?

Bone-chilling silence (nothing in terms of sales or business growth).

A dizzying amount of outside input (everyone to whom I talked had a different idea about what I should do with and through Ompreneur and whom its work—which each person had now defined for themselves—could best serve).

It was clear: it was not working. What if I accepted that? What if I surrendered to that, and all the unknown it presented before me?

That Surrender started this Journey.

Surrender is a hard word. We can equate to defeat, to giving up. We can equate it to self-sacrifice, to spiritual austerity. We can believe that it robs us of our agency, or very capacity to choose, to act, to take responsibility (that quality that seems to be the pinnacle value of the self-help meets entrepreneurial world). We think that Surrender is the End of the Journey. But it is the Beginning.

Surrender is accepting What Is, and we can only truly begin from there.

Surrender is admission that maybe we don’t know best—even about what’s best for us. It is acceptance and admission that we are not all powerful, we don’t call all the shots, we are not, in fact, the Doer. And it is faith that we don’t have to be, that there is an unfolding that can happen for us more that is more powerful, more profound and more fulfilling than what we can conceive, if we open ourselves to it and let it lead.