After selling my businesses in Iceland and moving my family to America in the late nineties, I settled into my new life in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and took up skiing. On many occasions, I sat next to a stranger in the ski lift at Santa Fe’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains’ ski resort and was asked the question, “So, what do you do?” All my life, I had been doing something. For the previous twenty years, I would have answered the question by, “I am a CEO.” However, that was no longer the case, and I found myself saying “I am learning to balance my ‘being-ness’ with my ‘doing-ness.’
I said those words because — as I had discovered to my horror while still living in Iceland and running my businesses — I was a workaholic! I felt I had become a slave to the habit of doing — a robot on automatic — programmed to do, do, do, produce, produce, produce, to have, have, have. Have a tangible outcome — product, service, budget, marketing plan, business growth, and so forth. I was an entrepreneur, and building businesses takes constant time and effort to succeed — or so I thought — like so many entrepreneurs who have burned out from becoming slaves to their doing-ness.
As I started on my healing journey to eradicate the workaholism (my Warrior path towards wholeness), I quickly learned that I had the creative process of the Universe — that which is needed to build a successful business, or create anything else for that matter — up-side-down and backward! Most people in most cultures believe that we first have to “have” something — time, money, love, confidence, influence — in order to “do” something — write that book, take that trip to Iceland, start that business, jump into politics, or whatever the vision is. And then, and only then, the belief tells us, can we be happy, loving, creative, joyous, and abundant. But guess what? Having-ness doesn’t create being-ness. Have you heard of the rich and famous who seem to have it all but are still miserable and disconnected from their being-ness? They are following the “Have-Do-Be” paradigm that doesn’t result in fulfillment or personal sustainability.
What I have learned is that instead of working against the creative power of the Universe — pushing, efforting, striving, forcing… I can choose — yes, consciously choose — to enter into the flow of the creative principle — the “Be-Do-Have” process — with the knowing that whatever I want is already available within me. I just have to believe that and trust it, and allow it to emerge easily, gracefully, and as if by magic.
What I have struggled with is to accepting and trusting that my Being can be valued in a culture that is all about tangible results. I have had to replace the limited belief that my Being isn’t enough, with Knowing that my pure Being is, simply, the most precious gift I can offer the world. I have learned that my Being — my presence — is my power — my TRUE Power.
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Written for and first published in my monthly column BE Power — TRUE Power in the Luminous Wisdom: SOPHIA magazine by Sibella Publications on August 1, 2019.
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