Request for Guidance and
Insight
I've always flipped back and
forth between my creative careers and my corporate careers. I have a cycle that
when I'm in a corporate career all I do is think about creating.... painting,
flowers etc. Then when I make a change to do something more creative I feel
pulled back to corporate sales where I can make more money and have more
stability.
I'm a single parent and need
to take care of my 6 year old. I'm so tired of the tug of war. Please help me see clearly! Thank you!
Michelle
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Carla's Response
Dear Michelle,
It sounds like your key to
happiness is to have a creative career that supports you financially. A commonly held belief is “You can’t do what
you love and make a living at it,” but that is only true if you believe it's
true. Plenty of people succeed at
generating money while engaged in their passion, so we know doing so is
possible. The question is: what keeps you from what you want?
To gain insights into your
situation I drew a card from the Divine Demons deck. Here is what came up: Betrayal
You can read the full
description by clicking on the link above, but these words caught my attention:
The key is to restore the
sense of power and trust we have lost. By releasing the fears, emotions and
beliefs our experiences have brought, we can recover a sense of love and trust
and uncover our true selves. And we will come to know that with or without experiences
to back it up, we are worthy of honesty, love, happiness and respect.
My guess is that early life
experiences led you to believe your survival (physical, mental, emotional) was
dependent on doing things the way others wanted versus the way you wanted. In other words, you had to sacrifice your own
wants in order to get what you needed.
A simple example of this is, “If I want to be loved, I have to do what
Mom wants me to do.”
The way we are treated early
in life often becomes the norm for how we treat ourselves later in life. In your case, the tug of war you feel is the
either/or pattern that developed: either
I get what I want (creativity) or I get what I need (financial support). When you do creative work, you feel like you
won’t survive, and when you do money-making work, you feel like you are
betraying yourself. Overall, you
probably feel like you can’t win – and you can’t – until you break the patterns
causing this.
The way to break any pattern
is to delve into your past, resurrect the memories and feelings where this
particular self-betrayal began, identify the subconscious beliefs that have
been running your life, and express/release the trapped emotions (frustration,
anger, hurt and un-forgiveness) buried deep within you. From there you can choose new, more
empowering beliefs like, “As long as I am true to myself I will always be
supported.” Once you do this work, I
think you will find two things:
•
the courage to pursue work you truly love
•
the faith to commit to it until it supports you
You always have the power to
transform your life. For exercises that
guide you through this process, go to Transformation Exercises.
Best to You,
Carla
