Your Success is in Your Story.

Hello, Lauren here.

Our job is to show up each day, be authentically who we are, and trust that we are exactly where we need to be. 

But it is not automatic. It doesn’t just happen. That’s where I got it wrong. It takes work. Deep internal work. And it never ends. It is the journey to reveal, own, and speak who we are -- our truth. 

The truth is I had a stranglehold on my life, worried that I wasn’t doing enough, that I was too much or not enough. Today I am off the hamster wheel and in full surrender mode all because I started to pay attention to how I was feeling and my inner knowing of what is for me. 

I’m listening to the whisper that has always been there. I’m paying attention to what serves me and what does not. To what I feel and need instead of what I think. I feel free when I no longer live in the shoulds and suppose to. I tried that life for a long time, and it brought failure, discontent, frustration, and bouts of depression and anxiety. It was at odds with my inner knowing and purpose. Make no mistake, this is not a giving up. It is a giving over of what was and is to come.

Today I am telling my story while writing my new one. It’s a strange place to be. I find peace in what I once heard Ann Patchett say in an interview with Pat Conroy. When I heard her speak these words, I knew in my gut it was the truth, and it freed me from the feeling of it’s not good enough. She said, “At the end of the day, all writers really only tell one story. We just keep telling it in different ways.”

This comment holds no ego. It is almost a surrender. Here is the thing, my story has been inching its way to the surface. So is yours. You have one story to tell. What will it be? Will it be tangled with others? Or will it be your divine story? The one that is meant for you.