So often when I’m working with a client I find myself saying the exact things I need to hear myself.

Yesterday I was coaching a woman who applied for my Powerful Feminine Leader Mastermind (just two spaces left!) and what came up was the exact reason I began the mastermind … the hard/easy paradox that has so many of us trapped in the masculine way of doing business that can be oh so painful.

I hope that this post helps you see where you’ve been choosing hard because you believe it’s easier when you can choose ease, even though it seems so hard.

This paradox has left so many of us totally lost when it comes to making the right choices for ourselves in business.

In this case, my client was at a crossroads.  A crossroads I’ve faced more than once and you probably have as well.

Like many of us, she has always subconsciously associated business with fight, struggle, challenge and competition.  While doing business, she has often felt stressed and tense.  She thought that was  how it was supposed to be.

She’s a fighter and a winner.

And now, she’s beginning to realize she has a choice.

She is confronted with a clear choice – continue with a business that she has invested resources in, but that clearly traps her in at least three more years of push, struggle, fight, conflict, and disharmony or make a different choice.

A choice to let go of the old way of doing things.

Do what she has always done or open up to a completely different possibility – the choice to build a life and business on the principles of ease, grace, harmony and joy.

And yet it feels so hard to make that choice because it’s so incongruent with what she has always known.

It awed me to watch in her (and to recognize in myself) how hard it feels to choose to walk the path of the unknown, even when the known is so clearly a path of discontent and pain.

The old ways of doing things feel safe and comfortable.  We know they lead us to stress, fear, and pain and yet because we know that world and that we can and have survived it, it’s what draws us.

Choosing the unknown path feels so hard.

Can it really be possible to build a business based on grace and ease?  Can it really be possible to make a great living doing what comes naturally and doesn’t have to be fought for?  Can it really be possible to say no to a business that we know will and does and is causing stress in favor of a business of ease?

Yes.

But, we have to make the choice to stop doing what we’ve always done.

And making that choice is not easy.

The mind wants to suck us back into safety.  It tells us it is not possible.  It says we must struggle.  It says we must fight.  It says we must stay the course, dig in, don’t let go, fight, compete.

Yes, this is what feels safe.

But, it’s not really.  It’s simply what we’ve always known.

Here’s the paradox.

In order to choose ease, we must be willing to choose what’s hard.  We have to be willing to make decisions that look insane to the outside world because they are so free from the conditioned reality.  We have to be willing to make the choice to stop doing what we’ve always done.

In the short term, it will be incredibly difficult and frightening – not externally, but internally. Our mind will do everything possible to stop us from choosing the unknown.

But, it’s the only way to get to the ease and grace we truly want and in our heart of hearts know is possible.

What it takes is to stop choosing the challenge, the struggle, the hard … now.  See it and choose something different.

It takes trusting we really can build a business and a life around what comes naturally and easily without struggle or fight.

It takes believing we can be well paid for that which we love to do and that just because it’s easy, it doesn’t mean it’s not valuable (it is in fact the most valuable gift you have to offer).

It takes believing we deserve to have a life and to stop telling ourselves it’s only good if it’s a challenge.

The hard/easy paradox has had me trapped most of my life.

I chose to suffer through the hardest tax classes in law school even though my math background and training was limited; to go for the job at the firm that was known to be the most difficult to get a job at; to build not one, but two million dollar businesses (that were in many ways incongruent with the life I wanted to have); to stay in my first business longer than I should have because I was scared to let go, to end romantic relationships because there was not enough of a challenge;  to follow role models who kept me constantly focused on more, more, more … the list goes on and on.

From this day forward, I take a stand for ease.  Not easy, but ease.  Can you feel the difference?

You coming with me?

What hard choices do you have to make in your own life and business to choose ease?  What do you have to let go of to make room for a life and business of ease?

Imagine what the world would look like if we each chose to build our businesses around ease and grace and love and harmony and joy and let go of everything that was incongruent with that reality …. what would your life look like?

Let’s take a stand for ease and create a new paradigm of reality.

You feel bad about wanting it, thinking it or feeling it.  Or you’re embarrassed that you do.  Or both.  And more.

So you just don’t say anything. You hold it in.  Stuff it down, maybe. But then your mind twists it all around.

It wants to protect you from feeling bad and definitely doesn’t want to take responsibility for the feeling.

It wants to protect you from disappointment.

So it makes up a story and projects it out on the people around you.

They would never have given you what you wanted anyway.  Never could have understood you.

You begin to believe the story and then you begin to see evidence of it everywhere.

A-ha, your mind says!  See … it’s a good thing you didn’t say what you wanted because you would never have gotten it anyway.

Suddenly, you are sucked in and life sucks.

You are trapped. Can’t say anything because of the story. And yet you can’t stop thinking about it, that thing you wanted a little bit before, now you really, really, really want it.

And you are more convinced than ever that you can’t have it.

Then it starts to scream.  Mine sounds like a child who hasn’t had its needs meet.

The negative self talk kicks in.

“You are trapped.  You’re screwed. How could you let yourself get into this situation … again?”

And, of course, your mind tells you it’s not your fault.  It’s their fault.

Ready to be free?

Stop playing these mind games with yourself.

There is a solution.

Just say it.  Stop judging what you want and what you feel.  Express it.

Allow the expression to be without charge.  Express it from a place of stillness and without emotion.

This thing you want is not right or wrong, it just is.

Your feelings. Your thoughts.  Your innermost stuff  you don’t share with anyone.  It’s all okay.

As soon as you say what you want, think and feel and take 100% responsibility for those wants, thoughts and feelings, you can drop the story about how “they” are keeping you from having it.

Drama will drop away.  Maybe not immediately, but over time as the people in your life who can’t handle your truth drop away.

Start by saying what you are not saying.

Feel free to practice here in the comments.  What is something you haven’t been saying because you think you shouldn’t think it or feel it, but you do?

Let’s experience some freedom together.

That’s really how I’m seeing this blog.  It’s where I give myself the attention I need.  Attention to explore the crazy experiences that are coming along through the process of waking up.

Yes, waking up.  That’s what’s happening here.

I haven’t talked about it publicly that way because it sounds so freakin’ presumptuous.  But, it’s true.  That’s what’s happening.

Or maybe it’s not true.  The crazy thing about this entire experience is that feeling of sometimes having no idea what’s real and what’s not real.  Or maybe I should say recognizing that nothing is real and everything is real.

See, what I’m discovering about waking up is that the truth is always both.  It’s everything.  It’s all of it.  And none of it.

Just tonight, I heard myself talking about how I was done tolerating certain things.  And that it felt really good to know now what I’m willing to tolerate and what I’m not willing to tolerate.

As I heard myself saying that I became aware of the part of myself that is infinitely tolerant.  And a little argument started up in my head.

Listen to you talking about what you will and won’t tolerate.  I just heard you say how happy you are that you are becoming less tolerant.  That’s not right.  You don’t want to be less tolerant.  You want to be tolerant.  What’s wrong with you?

As I observed the conversation, I recognized that yes I do want to be tolerant.  And, I want to have clearly defined limits on what I will tolerate.  Both/And.

I’ve never before given myself the attention I need to explore what those limits to my own tolerance are.  I’ve always worked to become tolerant of everything because I thought that would make me a good person or that was the “right” thing to do.

Today, I am aware of the falsity of that notion.

Becoming clear about what I will and will not tolerate (which is the same as establishing healthy boundaries) is an act of self-awareness, self-acceptance and love.  And when I am self aware, in total self-acceptance, and loving to myself that love will overflow to those around me.

When I am striving to tolerate everything and not giving myself room to be intolerant of certain things, I am denying something within me, I am striving, I am not in acceptance and therefore not feeling the love – for myself.  And therefore, not spreading it.

So there you have it.  I am intolerant.  And I’m a better person for it.  Lovingly intolerant.

Oh, as for the title of this post – that’s something I’m hearing a lot of lately.  “Wait, stop the train!  I want to get off.” comes a voice from inside.  Things are changing and shifting so rapidly that I can hardly keep up with myself.

If all goes well with my new landlords, I am moving to Colorado in a month.  Moving. In. A. Month.

I cannot explain on a logical level why I want to move.  My life here is incredibly great.  I live in my dream home.  It’s 15 minutes from the airport.  Driving distance to many friends from Ojai to the North to San Diego to the South.  And my sister is here.  I have a view of the ocean.  And a workout regime, I absolutely love that I’m willing to do 2-3 times per week.

And yet, my soul is telling me to move to Colorado.  Where it’s cold.  Very cold.

But, it looks like we’re going.  And the beat goes on.