“Often we don’t even realize who we’re meant to be because we’re so busy trying to live out someone else’s ideas. But other people & their opinions hold no power in defining our destiny.” Oprah Winfrey

There’s a certain kind of loneliness that comes with diving head first into creating something with purpose & mission. It’s not the kind I could describe so much in words, it’s like a mist that slowly moves into my orbit, until it’s clouded my view & then I see that I’m immersed in it.

Most times, it’s not in moments when I’m alone at all, it’s in moments when I’m with family or friends, maybe a Saturday night with a few drinks, maybe out on a date with a new boyfriend – where I feel myself so separately from them, so far away. I see the compromises I make in order to stay where I am, the withholding of my own truth so that I don’t rock the boat in the relationships. And I feel the consequences of the derailment from what I’m creating as a result.

Where I say yes, & if I truly am committed to what I want, the answer was really no. Because it compromises me too much, derails me too far from my path.

Yes, I’ll have another glass of wine. And then miss a day that I need to focus because my head hurts. Yes, it’s ok that you’re disrespecting my time. No it’s not – & I’m wasting time that I could be focusing on what I want to create by even entertaining it. Yes, it’s ok if I work all weekend, even though I know I need a break to recharge so I can be filled up.  Yes, yes, yes – compromise, compromise, compromise.

I’m upset with myself for the compromises. It makes it abundantly obvious where my commitment is failing. Am I too hard on myself? Yes. But greatness demands 100%, not 60% because everyone else is comfortable with doing less.  I’m not. And I know what it takes. And right now, I’m failing.  It might not look like it on the outside, but I can see it. I’m off by 1 degree right now, we’re moving so rapidly, growing so rapidly that 1 degree will be 30 if I don’t adjust now. Move now. Crisis manage now.

I’m failing in my commitment, I’m failing in my determination, I’m failing in engaging my team at the level they need to support this company & these projects, I’m failing in being able to stand up, say no, mean it, own it & be totally fine with all the judgments & accusations, & misinterpretations of that that may come. Even if who they come from are those closest to me. I have to be ok being seen as a bitch, as demanding, as out of my mind, as stuffy, as “too much”, as angry, as mean, as cold, as unemotional, as a hardass. Whatever they are, I’ve got to be ok with that. Can I be?

Something has to give.

I can choose to keep doing what I’m doing – pretending to be what everyone wants me to be & suffering inside all the time as a result. Or I can choose to be who I really am, without apology, & become more committed to my path fully.

It seems like an easy choice, I know this too. But it’s not for me.

I try so hard to balance it all. I know something has to give – that something is me.  What am I committed to?

In these times, when that loneliness fog creeps in, it’s hard for me to know. I’m craving that kind of embrace that says “it’s all going to be ok, just stay here with me for a while”, that feeling of escape from the outside world to a place of comfort & ease. But what follows it is another voice that says “well, you tried your best”, then another “it just wasn’t meant to be”, and another “maybe next time”. Those are the voices of failure. And comfort & failure are great friends, they exchange notes in the back room I’m sure of it. Giving in to comfort, ease, escape – it’s like the voice of the snake, luring me away from what I know I need to do – as hard as it may be.

Hasn’t it already been hard enough? How badly do I want this?

It’d be easy for me to say yes & put my ambitions down & never pick them up again. Breaking through is hard. There’s nothing wrong with a comfortable life – I’d have a good career, make some money, take care of some clients, build a family, have a decent life. Why do I want more than that?

But I’ve seen it so often – those people, we all have them in our lives, who’ve done just that. Wanted to be something, wanted to create something, had a purpose or a calling deep within them – but the waters got choppy & the fear got high & instead, they chose a less-risky life, a “safer” life. I see those people & I know that that kind of life is a death sentence for me. Hallow behind the eyes, only in few moments do they show life again. Pushing down anger, resentment, hiding their real aspirations so far down they make themselves sick. No.

I know what I need to do. I know how hard it is going to be for me to do it. To lean into that loneliness & call it my friend. To not know how long I’ll need to stay there. To not know if I’ll ever make it out.

To crave the comfort of a family & a home & the smell of turkey roasting in the oven & children playing in the yard. And to know that I have to fight that craving, I have to fight through that desire for all that is comfortable to get somewhere I’ve never been before, to the unknown, to who knows what’s next.

Today, all I want is comfort. All I want is to know it’s going to be ok. To not feel so alone, so scared or so uncertain. For just a little while.

But tomorrow the sun rises & a new day begins. New choices are made, new people met, new opportunities moved forward. If I keep my feet steady, one foot in front of the other, leaning in hard to the wind, perhaps I’ll make it through….

Krystine McInnes is an accredited mortgage professional with over 10 years in the mortgage industry & a background in the legal field. She also stewards the vision for numerous boutique development projects between the Okanagan & Vancouver, British Columbia. Find more on her here: www.krystinemcinnes.ca

“Let your light shine. Shine within you so that it can shine on someone else. Let your light shine. ” Oprah Winfrey.

Am I brave enough to live my truth, fully in the light? Vulnerable? Wide open? Exposed for all to see – my flaws, my weaknesses, my intelligence, my power, my hearts deepest desire to create beauty & harmony & more love in the world with projects that matter?

Sometimes….I scare myself with how powerful I am, with the things I want to create, with how quickly I manifest them into being. It scares me & I pull back in fear. Should I be so bold? So daring? So audacious? Why can’t I be happy in a simple life with a simple home & simple goals? Why do I have this desire within me to build & create. It would be easier on me if I could just shrink down & pretend my life away.

I’ve lived that way a long time.

Am I brave enough to really do this?  Sure enough? Committed enough to quiet the voices that tear me down inside my own head like little mini-anchors all tied into me, holding me in one place.  I fight daily to rip myself free.

Lately, I’ve felt that freedom.  When I look in my life at my own happiness, I can see it clearly – where I am most happy is when I am fully accessing my capacity, immersed in pushing my potential to the next level, leading my ship, driving towards something I’m told I can’t do.  Not to prove something to anyone at all.  But because I have a knowing within me that I can solve this problem.  I have the key for a lock that is screaming for me to open it.  Most often, I have ignored it. Though it burns through me incessantly, begging me to pour just a little of the light I am withholding.

In these times, when I have ignored that deep knowing, I then push myself into places that are not so nurturing.  Maybe it’s a toxic relationship, bad eating habit, half-met commitments, disenfranchised, hardened outlook, poor decision after poor decision – until I am riddled in my own unhappiness desperate to find my way out.

The key.

I’ve always had it.  And in it – when I am operating at my highest capacity – I am my happiest, I am my most filled with joy, freedom, love, clarity.  Like the inside of a tornado, it makes me calm. I have peace there.  I am most clear there. I am my best version of myself. I am so filled with joy I can almost not stand it.

Give me a 9-5 job & I want to slit my wrists.  Put me mid-stream into 3 high-level projects while pushing my mortgage volumes to the next level of breakthrough – I’ve never been happier in my life.  And it’s a strange thing, I’m also the least stressed, the most relaxed, calm, centered.  I see with my whole vision there, there is no drama there (there’s no room for drama).  Things work there, structure holds, efficiencies met, profit made.  Give me the former & it’s like plugging 50,000 volts into a 10 volt socket – no comprendioso.  Circuit blown.

But I have been so frightened to live there.  So frightened of what others will think of me – of the judgment, the opinion, the ridicule.  The people around me who always show up to tell me I’m doing it wrong or it can’t be done that way, or roll their eyes & secretly tell their friends of my impending demise while smiling to my face.

My deeper knowing says that they are just reflecting back to me the demons that haunt my own mind, nothing more.  But that unnerves me deeper – my mind is full of these dark shadows lurking in dark corners, waiting for a moment of doubt to move for my jugular.  How quickly I would be my own demise.

I don’t know why it affects me so, such a silly fear really.  But all the same, in the end I really just want to be normal & loved & accepted.  That might sound……weak or disempowered or whatever, but really it’s just my truth.

Can I really do this? Facing the mountain of my own self-doubt head on.  We are taking on a new project launch with a very, very tight timeline for execution, our Athena Organic Farm & Eco-Retreat.  It’s a big deal.  We’re running a big campaign.  This project will be on a stage – I will be on a stage. Do I have what it takes?  Am I ready for this? To live my life wide open. To shine brightly now, not shrinking, not hidden, not talking but walking & living my truth out in the daylight.

There’s no turning back now.  As I have had a taste of the depth of my joy & bliss as I live more & more of my truth, I can’t turn back. To turn back & play small & pretend my life away now would be a death sentence.  There is no other way onward than forward. I don’t know if I will succeed or fail. But forwards I will go….into the blissful unknown.  Shall I meet my end there?  I don’t know…

Krystine McInnes is an accredited mortgage professional with over 10 years in the mortgage industry & a background in the legal field. She also stewards the vision for numerous boutique development projects between the Okanagan & Vancouver, British Columbia. Find more on her here: www.krystinemcinnes.ca

 

“You are built not to shrink down to less but to blossom into more.” Oprah Winfrey.

Leadership skill: Staying the course. I didn’t realize that taking the plunge to start a Blog & shout out to the universe what I wanted without fear or apology, not dimming it down, but being the full expression of it, would become a journey back to my Wild Feminine, back to my essence, my intuition, my Spirit.

That it would open me in ways I can’t fully describe, sacred ways…ancient ways.  That it would plunge me head on into a transformation that my Spirit has been calling to me, I think since I was put on this planet & return me back to myself – my Self.

And that I would begin to blossom, slowly at first, with a few scrapes & bruises, but slowly….to feel the blossoming of my soul into this Wild, Feminine, unapologetic creature with unbounded, relentless soul & a business mind to be reckoned with.  I used to hide these parts of myself.

How could I be taken seriously if I am so feminine?  How can I be a business woman & laugh & play & act a little kooky while putting a deal together?  How could I create win/win/win’s in everything I do without compromising my soul to do it?

I live in a world where so many things reverberate back to me the opposite of my deeply held beliefs.  Things like – you have to take what you can, there isn’t enough, to be in business you have to screw people over, get your head out of the clouds business isn’t personal, it’s just business.

I don’t hold the belief in a La-La Land, but I do hold the belief that with some thought, care, love & a great group of intelligent people who have a desire to do things differently but also understand the way the world works & know how to create success can honest to goodness change the world.

That’s not a pipe dream & it’s not a fabrication of my imagination & I’m not some silly girl with pie in the sky ideas, which very honestly is what I thought of myself for a long time.  That is, until I started to see all the things in my intuition I knew were next start to manifest.

I saw markets shift before they shifted, I saw opportunities before they were recognized, I saw solutions where everyone else said there were just problems, I saw ways to make it work that were win/win/win with a few adjustments here & there to a model that could be effective & efficient.  But I didn’t trust myself.  I didn’t listen to my intuition, I wanted everyone around me to agree with me before I’d move forward.  And I did a great job at creating all the wrong people around me who could only see the negative, the can’t, the problem, to be extra sure I wouldn’t bloom too far forward.

And one after another, I’ve seen the market shift in exactly the way I predicted, the opportunity become recognized & capitalized by someone else, the solutions be built & the success be had – by others.  While I sat on the sidelines.

This journey, this return back to myself – to embracing my wild, my crazy, my moon-influenced behavior, my rational irrationality, my ebb, my flow, my razor sharp focus, my lightening fast connections, my deep intuition – it has led me further away from what I thought I should become &, miraculously, returned something I thought I’d lost long ago.  Something I had felt stripped of, ripped from, raped & pillaged of & never could really quite articulate.  My deep, feminine knowing. The truth beyond illusions, the deeper meaning of it all, the “what’s not being said”, the love withheld.

And rather than not trusting it, I am listening to it & following it….to some very interesting places.  Stay the course….steady this ship of mine, the waves of doubt are vast & heavy, the uncertainty is stifling, the air is thick & hot with fear & yet I press on.  What task to unfold in this next initiation – it could bring me to my knees….it could bring me to my feet….it could rip my heart in half & serve it back to me, it could take my broken heart & heal those wounds for me.  I don’t know….

 

Krystine McInnes is an accredited mortgage professional with over 10 years in the mortgage industry & a background in the legal field. She also stewards the vision for numerous boutique development projects between the Okanagan & Vancouver, British Columbia. Find more on her here: www.krystinemcinnes.ca

“I am a woman in process. I try to take every conflict, every experience, & learn from it. Life is never dull.” Oprah Winfrey.

Leadership skill: execution. It’s great to have a great idea, but if you don’t bring it across the line into being, it stays right there in idea-ville, where eventually it coughs & dies.  An idea is really just the first 10%, the rest is building team, solving problems, managing psychology & psyche & execution.

How many tries & fails? How many almosts but not quites? How many stories have you heard from friends or relatives or associates that tell you about their “great idea” that is “sure to make millions”.

Whenever I hear those ideas,that’s usually my queue to run.  Or turn on my polite & demure hat where I play stupid for 15 of the longest minutes of my life to listen, while every fibre of my being wants to poke bazooka sized holes in this idiotic rendition of an idea I’m painstakingly listening to.

The truth is, most people have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about, what it takes to bring the seed through to fruition or how much they will be tested, trialed, chewed up & spit out in the process.  I definitely know I would have never signed up had I had any full knowledge of what the ride was going to look like.  Words like perseverance, iron stomach, tenacity, determination, responsibility, commitment, ownership – they don’t even begin to describe it.

Today, of all days, I have been tested in my development company on one of our projects.  Two deals live, then collapsed.  Two important deals.  Two extremely important deals. Two, holy bananas thank God these deals came through because I was feeling on my last legs to stand here, have collapsed.  And I’m back at the beginning, further behind then when I started no answers, no new deals in sight, no solution. Scared. Alone. Uncertain of what’s next.

It’s easy to shout hurrah when you’re winning, but what about when what shows up is a loss, followed by another loss & another & another, until you feel so beaten up you’re not sure you can stand again? In my experience, this is really where the rubber meets the pavement in creating what you want to create.  And it’s not easy.

My frightened parts, emotionally immature self wants to vacate. Push the eject button, go on a 3 day bender, go hang out in pity party-ville, ignore the pink elephant in the room charging for me, pretend it’s all ok, sink down into a depression & give up because it’s just too hard.  And I won’t lie, I’m certain I spent quite a bit of time there for at least a day or 2, sometimes you just need a little permission to go on a pity party….as long as it has an expiry…

My empowered feminine self is quieter today, rocked a little, uncertain a lot. But as my pity party timeline expires (12am Sunday – clock runs out Krystine, pick up bootstraps now), I slowly start to hear her voice again.  Time to get it done. I don’t know the answer, I don’t have a solution, I don’t even really know where to start, I’m overwhelmed & understaffed, but I will pick up my ownership, my responsibility, my clarity, my supports, I will ask for help, I will seek out solutions & I will engage my team to help me find answers & get results.  I’ll go deep in my psyche & transform what need be, I won’t be afraid to face myself, even if what I see is ugly & dark & hard to look at.  I will move forward, I will summon my Warrior Goddess to bring these battled & bruised & weakened soldiers across the line & cry tears of joy when we do…or I will die trying.

Maybe that’s a little over dramatic, but for those who have faced the harsh realities of their own shortcomings, their own failures, their own compromised integrity or biggest fears, they’ll know it’s not far from truth.

No one tells you that success is an inner game first, that having a great idea is really the easy part, that, for some of us, crossing the line in succeeding will mean confronting the darkest parts of our nature, our deepest fears & insecurities, again & again & again. Most don’t survive.  This is where ideas die on the vine.  Do you really have what it takes?

Krystine McInnes is an accredited mortgage professional with over 10 years in the mortgage industry & a background in the legal field. She also stewards the vision for numerous boutique development projects between the Okanagan & Vancouver, British Columbia. Find more on her here: www.krystinemcinnes.ca

“Surround yourself with people who will only lift you higher” Oprah Winfrey.

Leadership skill: owning your power & greatness. Lots of people think that if they make money it will solve all of their problems. If that’s you, stop it…immediately. It’s the single most dis-empowering thing you can do to yourself.  Here’s why.

If you’re a person who thinks “if only I made X dollars, all of the Y problems in my life would be solved” – you are not only delusional, but you are single-handedly keeping yourself away from the very thing you think you want. Money.

People who build success don’t just think or know, but vibrate in every cell of their being that they are absolutely responsible for their own success, they own their power, they create their reality & they fully commit to do whatever it takes, tenaciously, relentlessly, to cross the line.

When you make a statement like the pathetic & disempowering one I mentioned, you are a victim, you have given your power away & you are at the effect of “life” who “dealt you a bad hand”, “didn’t give you better parents”, “gives everyone else the easy road”, etc, etc, etc. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Everyone is dealt the hand they’re dealt, it’s what you do with it that matters.  People who build success know the only one responsible for their success is them, and they firmly take the reigns of their ship & own it – good, bad & ugly.  Nothing is more empowering than true ownership.

How do you know if you’re truly owning your power & your greatness? It’s simple – you’ll be creating results & those results will be nurturing you. And when you are owning your results, owning your power, owning your brilliance & your vision, the money will follow.

I always find it so funny how easily I can be derailed because someone makes a comment or has an opinion or a judgment. They want to tell me what I should do, or how they think things should go.  In those moments, I get angry.  Not because of what they say, but because I shrink, I give my power away & I don’t fully own who I am, my capacity, my brilliance, my absolute razor sharp vision & intuition.  I shrink, then I doubt, then I start to change things.  I’m angry because in those moments, I have given my power away & am not in my true Ownership.

The truth is, I am a brilliant manifestor of exponential growth, I build wealth easily for my clients, I have vision for what’s next that is incredibly accurate & I make connections that are unseen by others.  I am powerful.  I am a formidable opponent in a boardroom. I am so highly intelligent that it borders on mad scientist. And my capacity is massive enough to steward a global company worth hundreds of millions, if not into the billions. And I can do it all in balance with my relationships, my health & my sanity, from the calm & from the deeply, deeply feminine, while also having a deeply nurtured spiritual self & a family.

And in all of that, I am absolutely terrified to truly own it.  My fear is I’ll be seen as a tyrant, I’ll be judged, I will be alone because no man could stand beside a woman like that, I should play small if I want to have a family & hide my power so I don’t make a man insecure around me.  These are actual thoughts that go through my head….daily.

Its hard, for me, to be in my ownership all the time.  But every day I take another stride forward, another stand for me, another opportunity to thank the peanut gallery for sharing and direct them to the comment box of “I don’t give a shit” & just truly own that THIS is the way I do it.  I didn’t say it was the right way, but it’s my way.  And this is my life, my path, my terms and there are no scripts in life.

My Universe & I have a clear connection & I know my path.  Yes, it might look a little wacky, maybe even downright crazy. But I don’t believe we were put on this planet to conform, I believe we are here to stretch the wings of our creative potential, to break the norms, to bust the conformity wide open, to take a stand for our own uniqueness in a sea of the same & soar, wild & free.

Krystine McInnes is an accredited mortgage professional with over 10 years in the mortgage industry & a background in the legal field. She also stewards the vision for numerous boutique development projects between the Okanagan & Vancouver, British Columbia. Find more on her here: www.krystinemcinnes.ca

 

“Difficulties come when you don’t pay attention to life’s whisper. Life always whispers to you first, but if you ignore the whisper, sooner or later you’ll get a scream.” Oprah Winfrey

Leadership Skill – letting go of what doesn’t serve you…..fast.  Consciousness is a funny thing.  The more we grow & evolve & become more authentically who we are meant to be in the world, the louder the whiplash is when we step out of alignment with that & try to fall back into old behaviours, old patterns, victim mentality, etc, etc.  Sometimes, it hits like a freight train, just to be sure you’re paying attention.  I’ve said before in my Blog posts to the Universe that one of my worst qualities as a business woman is my people pleasing nature – I want to be liked & I can have a chameleon quality with my personality at times.  I”m sure I built it as a way to find calm & peace in chaos & disorder from a young age.  I like harmony, I appreciate peace & calm & ease.  In a lot of instances, it serves me.  In business, & often times in my relationships – it is my Achilles heel.

But, whether I like it or not, Life keeps showing me that it’s just time to let it go.  To stand in my own empowerment & my own truth.  That although what others are going through & their reactions & their hurts & their struggles – although they matter, they aren’t MY responsibility & me catering myself to make others comfortable really doesn’t serve them or me.  I’ve been a people pleaser so long & so many people have gotten so used to it, that it is extremely uncomfortable for a lot of them now that I am standing up for what nurtures me & what serves me.  That I am standing up & saying although I appreciate you & wish you well – this situation doesn’t serve me, this deal doesn’t nurture me, this relationship doesn’t take care of me & so I choose something different, for Me.  And I matter enough to stand in my own life as the most important person in my world, that I love myself that much.  Selfish?  No.  Self-love.  Yes.

I’ve been working on this piece a very long time, but as I move my mortgage business & my green building projects forward – to share my gifts with the world – the last 10% of me transforming this behaviour or survival skill or whatever it has been is up.  And Life simply won’t let me move forward until I get the message loud & clear.

Am I going to lose some relationships as a result of standing fully in my Light?  Sadly, yes.  That part is always hard on me.  It’s hard to let go sometimes.  But why would I want any relationships in my life if they don’t nurture me?  That just seems like a terrible act of Self-loathing.  We are temporal, transitory beings, here for such a short while in this game called Life, why would I choose to spend my short time on this planet with people who don’t respect, love, care for & nurture me?  Why would I want to do anything or be with anyone or share my precious time in spaces that don’t fill me up?  Seems kind of silly really.

The part that makes me the most angry at times is when I see that I have let a snake in my garden, that I have allowed a situation or relationship or deal or whatever through my gates that really doesn’t serve me.  I’m not angry at them, I’m angry at me.  Because what that says to me is that somewhere inside, I have compromised myself.  I have said yes when I knew, if I really asked my Higher Self, I knew that the answer was no.  But that little martyr, self-sabotage behaviour shows up in sneaky ways – maybe I can help that person, maybe I can love them & nurture them & they will transform, maybe I can “make the deal work”.  What I’m really saying is, “please feel free to abuse me at your leisure, I’ll make excuses up for you about all the reasons why because I don’t really love myself either”.  And when I see that that is the truth, all my anger falls away & I see a deeper truth in it that just makes me so sad.  Sad for me, sad for them, sad for the world.  That we would treat ourselves & others this way.  If we are all Divine Beings, which I truly believe we all are, we are all God-incarnated, we are all God-essence, we are all Love….if that’s true, & for me it is true, then what are we doing to each other?

That I would allow myself to be treated with disrespect, with dishonour, like I don’t matter, like I’m unimportant & like I should be abused (really, in the end it is some form of abuse).  That I would tolerate that same behaviour in others.  That I would demand anything less than the purest, deepest love that I can give in this moment to myself & to others – it is a travesty of Spirit.  It is an epidemic on this planet & in all of our human hearts.  It is heartbreaking & soul crushing & brings in me such a profound sadness that my eyes fill with tears & my heart is torn in a million pieces.

The only thing I have control over is me.  I see, yet again, all the spaces I need to clean up where I have left that last 10% open & exposed & vulnerable to snakes.  That last 10% where I have been choosing, still, not to love myself fully.  That last 10% where I have allowed other people’s emotional neediness to take precedence over my own well-being.  I see people I have hired that aren’t a fit that I’ve kept a little too long out of that emotional attachment – where standing up for me means rocking the boat & maybe not really being liked that much, so I have been afraid to do it.  I see relationships where I am not being respected that have me hooked & I’ve played into that I need to let go of.  I see that every time I get caught in a web of this kind of self-abuse, emotional entanglement, it takes me away from being in my creative, empowered force, it takes away from the growth of my mortgage business, it takes away from the success of my development projects, it takes away from me being able to share my gifts with the world.

To stand in my Light & share my Light with the world through my gifts of making mortgages fun & creating beautiful green projects that matter, this is really my only wish.  And thanks be to Life for making sure I get the message loud & clear – that I can’t be my brightest Light & still hold on to this self-abuse program.  I have to let go of what doesn’t serve me.  People, situations, deals, clients – if it doesn’t nurture me, it has to go.  I don’t need an explanation, a rationalization or a reason.  Whatever the reaction is, it’s really not about me – the only thing that matters is that I be nurtured by my life.  Being my Light is being Love – & it starts with me being able to love myself completely & wholly, not 90% of the way, but 110% of the way.  And that is the greatest act of Self-love any of us can bestow, the greatest gift we can give back to the world.

Krystine McInnes is an accredited mortgage professional with over 10 years in the mortgage industry & a background in the legal field.  She also stewards the vision for numerous boutique development projects between the Okanagan & Vancouver, British Columbia.  Find more on her here: www.didyouknowmortgage.ca

“Stepping into a brand-new path is difficult, but no more difficult than remaining in a situation that is not nurturing to the whole woman” Maya Angelou.

Leadership skill – managing massive scale.  Be careful what you wish for because you will most certainly get it!  It’s easy to ask for something.  It’s a whole other world to move your state of being to be in the place that you need to be to actually receive it, steward it & own it fully.  I am definitely struggling with the transition….my workdays are melting one into the other, I’m up so late I can barely keep my eyes open & just when my head hits the pillow, I swear my eyes are opened again for a new day.  I’m balanced, in the chaos, & I’m having a heck of a lot of fun.  If there is one thing I’ve learned in my years & with the support of my coaches, it’s that the nurturing of me comes before anything else.  How else do I expect to hold the enormity of what I want to create if I am not fully filled up, healthy & deeply nurtured in my day?  But still, I stretch to hold it all & it’s trying on me.  Stretch to carve out the time I need for meditation, connection, spiritual practice, yoga.  The wolves are loud today.

As my business scales, I notice my relationships deepen, become more authentic.  This is a beautiful consequence, one I hadn’t anticipated.  Maybe a result of having absolutely no room for BS anymore, who has the time for anything petty when you’re moving at the speed of rapid growth?  No drama, no games, no inauthenticity, no gossip, nothing that isn’t a 10 on the scale of connection, depth & love in my life – if my time is stretched than I want to ensure that where I do spend it is authentic.  Who knew this would be a result of scale?  Gratitude fills me.

Delegation – not only do I need to become better at it, I need to scale it & I need to deepen what ownership means to me in it.  I need to become a master at discerning fit within my team.  It’s not enough to just delegate, I need to delegate to people who I trust, who are committed, responsible, own their results & create results.  They are masters of their field & I am honoured to have them work with me.  But there is a big gap between delegating & just passing it off & dropping them because I’m overwhelmed.  Just because it’s delegated, doesn’t mean I drop them – I need to connect more deeply with my team once I’ve delegated to them.  Support them.  Communicate with them, often.  Particularly at first.  Until we are so rock solid in our structure & in our level of communication we move as a unit.  Right.  Ok.  Deep breathe.  Lost a few deals learning this one, time to pick it back up again.  We are rapid growth & rapid growth demands deeper connection, more communication & communication & communication.

Connection – to my support systems, to my mortgage clients, to my projects, to my contacts, to my yoga class, to my music, to my workout,  to the trees & the flowers & to my dog, to my family.  Get on the phone with my mentors & my coaches often.  I didn’t realize how uneasy the depth of connection would make me feel.  To scale my business, I need to be connected to what I’m creating with much more depth than I’ve ever been.  It unnerves me, I’m not quite sure how to be there yet.  I still feel a little uneasy there.  To connect with that much depth, I feel vulnerable.  My defense mechanisms want to eject me back to the safety of control & separation & disconnection.  Scale feels vulnerable, wide open, exposed.  It means I have to let go of micro-managing, I have to let go of debilitating control.  This is hard for me, it’s hard to let go of control.  Slowly, as I inch a little closer.  Make some mistakes, inch back again.  Slowly though, I start to feel it.  As I move towards scale, I start to feel the support of my universe behind me.  Things I am forgetting, I am reminded of naturally, I don’t need to control them.  The right situations manifest, the right people are easier to discern.  I am asking for what I want & what will serve me & unafraid if the answer is no – I’ll just keep going until I find yes.  Freedom is flowing, but I feel nervous.  Can I trust it?  Slowly though, no need to rush this one.  Keep moving, keep communicating, be closer than ever to my support team & my mentor team to shore me up so I can move through this one with ease.

My structure needs to change again, an ever evolving process.  I need better systems, better tools.  My inefficiencies are becoming loud, I quickly need to adjust & adapt.  Streamline, systemize, create efficiency through structure & manage the structure effectively with commitment.

I’m tired today.  But inspired.  The Late Maya Angelou was a warrior of Spirit & I dedicated my work today in her honour.  I must continue forward.  In her honour, for my honour & for the honour of all the women I want to inspire in what I am creating in the world.

Krystine McInnes is an accredited mortgage professional with over 10 years in the mortgage industry & a background in the legal field.  She also stewards the vision for numerous boutique development projects between the Okanagan & Vancouver, British Columbia.  Find more on her here: www.didyouknowmortgage.ca

“Be more splendid, more extraordinary. Use every moment to fill yourself up.” Oprah Winfrey.

How to manage exponential growth?  If you haven’t experienced what exponential growth feels like, I’ll give you this visual.  For me, it feels like I’m standing in a pile of rubble on top of a bed of quicksand at the bottom of a well.  The small glimmer of light at the top is my freedom & there is only one way out, up.  Every motion forward is a stumble as the rocks in the rubble are unstable & shifting all the time.  And each time I get a foot forward, the slip of the quicksand underneath pulls me in.  I have to move, quickly, I have to be agile, adaptable, fast….so fast.  I have to reach for the next hand hold, the next foothold one after the other after the other, never stopping.  Can I rest?  If I do the quicksand will swallow me whole.  I am fatigued, I am riddled with doubt (will I ever make it out of this?), & the only thing that is driving me forward is my commitment, my tenacity, my absolute unwavering belief that what I am creating is my destiny & the only life I want to lead is the one that exists on what I hope is the other side of this.  As each small victory moves me closer to that glorious light, I hear the birds chirping & feel the warmth of a ray of sun on my face.  Those small moments, although they seem so insignificant in the course of a lifetime, they are my everything in this.

The journey isn’t really just about the big wins, it’s about every little pebble that lifts me closer along the way.  Am I having fun?  Abso – frickin – lutely.  I don’t fear the quicksand or the rubble, I don’t even fear the well.  I see them as my allies, my teachers, my trainers – to make me fit & strong & able.  To push my limits, to test my resolve & commitment.  I love them, & I receive their gifts to me – as my commitment wasn’t to stay where I am, however there would be nothing wrong if I did.  But my commitment, the thing I said I wanted more than anything, the thing I said I was willing to take on this journey for – was to stand in the warmth of the sun & feel the heat on my face, to feel the sense of accomplishment, pride, love, joy & openness at having made it to my journey’s end….I wonder what new adventures will greet me there?  To start again.

Exponential growth, for me, is not just about growing my mortgage business or taking on new projects, although those are part of it.  But it’s about expanding my consciousness, growing my capacity, refining my leadership qualities, becoming so tuned in to my intuition that my discernment becomes borderline psychic in predictive abilities & that I learn how to fully trust myself in it.  Exponential growth means me, as a spiritual being having a human experience, growing myself, in every way, to become the person who is able to steward the expansion of what I have created.

What does that mean?  I think of it in terms of relativity.  When you make a new hire, someone fresh out of college, you can’t put them in the position of CEO.  They’d break in a day.  It’s too much, they simply couldn’t handle it.  They must learn in their trade, grow in their experience, in their decision making abilities, in their business & leadership skills, their knowledge & wisdom, their consciousness & belief systems, their confidence.  They must be mentored & experience success as well as failure along the way.  Until one day, they have grown to a place where they can take on that role & be successful in it.  Having a BComm really doesn’t mean anything when you don’t have these other skills in place.  These are the skills they don’t teach you in school, these are the same skills that most people don’t really talk about much.  But when you look at success versus failure – they are the skills that are the difference.

Overwhelm is a great place to be.  Overwhelm is a sign that you are moving to the next level.  Everyone who has ever built anything great has felt overwhelm.  I bet Oprah is no stranger to it either.  But what I admire about Oprah is that the way she handles her own growth is to address it with increasing consciousness, capacity, responsibility, commitment, integrity & love.  To become more extraordinary, more splendid in every moment.  Not to cave in to the overwhelm because it’s all too much – that’s what your mind would have you believe.  But your heart & your Spirit know all too well….that overwhelm is a choice & instead of allowing it to push you further into the quicksand, allow it to fill yourself up, thank it because it’s a sure sign you’re moving to the next level in what you want to create & receive all of the gifts it has to bring.  Keep the heart open, the mind tuned in, celebrate every small motion forward as if it was a mountain moved & let it fill you up fully.

A small ray of sunshine can fill me up with so much gratitude you would have thought I won the lottery.  I appreciate every moment, for as long as I have that beautiful ray of sun on my face, for every second I am connected to the joy & gratitude in my heart for it.  In the moments that I feel it slipping away, I can sense the panic inside (will there ever be another?  I have to hold on to this one as long as I can), then that soft voice reminds me to let go.  Be present.  As I move back to the motions forward, brick by brick, stone by stone, until the Grace of God sends me another little miracle – the fragrance of lilies on the wind….how blessed am I?

Krystine McInnes is an accredited mortgage professional with over 10 years in the mortgage industry & a background in the legal field.  She also stewards the vision for numerous boutique development projects between the Okanagan & Vancouver, British Columbia.  Find more on her here: www.didyouknowmortgage.ca

“In order to be truly happy, you must live along with, and you must stand for something larger than yourself.” Oprah Winfrey.

Leadership Skill – Commitment.  I love musicians & artists – to stand on a stage & share your heart with the world the way they do.  Whether the canvas be lyrics or paint or photography.  I believe we are all artists of something.  Be it a business deal or a sandwich or a fresh latte or a beautiful piece of music.  It’s all art.  Life is art.

And to produce your best art, you need to be committed.  That commitment is deep, it’s soulful, it’s a bigger purpose – one that very few share the intimate details of, how do you put it into words?  How do you take the etheric, the inexplicable, the God-essence of the Source of inspiration, the deep resounding “Why” & communicate it into words – they seem so utterly unholy.  Words simply can’t explain.

For some, that commitment is to music, it’s to sharing more love with the world, it’s to a canvas, it’s to celebrating God, it’s to inspiring others, it’s to a mission, a corporate direction, a deep purpose that is so difficult to communicate we try & force it through the voice of words that always seem to fall short in describing this endlessly aching depth.  To some, that commitment is to darkness, drugs, alcohol, ego – when they can’t find the voice of what is larger than themselves to be truly, genuinely happy, they settle for the voice of what is the illusion of these things, wrapped up in a package of trickery, claiming to be happiness for just those few short moments until you need more, & more, & more to find it again.  Slippery slope.

What does it mean to be committed?  That in the darkest of times, when the path seems grown over & the direction unclear, that I stay the course.  That I listen deeply, that I connect authentically, that I love as deeply as my human conditioning will allow me in the moment.  What does commitment mean to you?

I see myself, in the quiet of my meditation, slowly letting go of the last bits of playing small & compromise & being a victim & not speaking my truth authentically & blame & shame & defeatist mentality & poverty consciousness & doubt.  And what I see is that all of those things are just ways for me to not have to fully commit to what I want.  Commitment – true ownership, truly walking my path & standing for what I believe in, no matter if I am standing alone, no matter if the track looks barren & the signposts unclear, no matter if I don’t know the answer, as hard as I try to control the outcome.

Like an artist on the stage sharing their gift with the world to an audience that is unknown.  Will they love it, will they hate it?  It doesn’t matter – it’s about the music.  Fully committing, doing your best with what you have at the time & letting the chips fall where they may after.  Win or lose, it really doesn’t matter.  Did I share my music fully today?  Did I sing with my heart to God?  Through my commitment to my bigger purpose, did I share as deeply as I could in every moment?

I was so inspired by these women from The Voice, I had goosebumps.  Young, ambitious, talented, beautiful – they sang their hearts out & created magic.  In the end, who won or who lost may be remembered, maybe it won’t.  But I know that I’ll remember the way they made me feel.  And I’ll return to watch it again & again & again – their commitment was to something larger than a contest, larger than an award, larger than recognition.  In the moments of this beautiful piece of music – they sang with a higher purpose & it was beautiful….

Krystine McInnes is an accredited mortgage professional with over 10 years in the mortgage industry & a background in the legal field.  She also stewards the vision for numerous boutique development projects between the Okanagan & Vancouver, British Columbia.  Find more on her here: www.didyouknowmortgage.ca

 

“What we’re all striving for is authenticity, a spirit-to-spirit connection.” Oprah Winfrey.

An amazing coach I have said to me once, “Krystine, if you want to create what you want to create, you’re going to have to be OK to risk being misunderstood”.  Something about that really resonated with me.  I’ve often felt misunderstood – & something about it has felt unsafe.  I spent a long time in the place of people pleasing, playing small, catering myself to try & keep the waters calm.  Don’t shine too bright – you don’t want to make others uncomfortable or insecure.  Don’t communicate the depth of what you really see, people will think you’re crazy.  Wait until you get older so you don’t alienate yourself from your friends when they see what you can really do & it threatens them, or intimidates them.  Now all of that is probably just a made up story about life that I continued to tell myself.  And as much as I want to say it’s not the truth, often times (not all the time) it has been.

I know the answer in those situations – it’s not to shrink so I can stay in the mud pond of being misunderstood, it’s to find other eagles that want to come & soar with me & play in the skies where I don’t have to explain myself & fight against the grain of perception & judgment.  People of like-mind.  Often easier said than done.  This is the part I’ve always been challenged with in life – how do I own my power, how do I soar through the skies unabashedly, unapologetically, blissfully wide open when so many times the depth through which I want to open is misinterpreted by those I care about.  You see, it’s easy to say in theory just let them go & find other eagles to soar with.  But sometimes, it’s just so much harder to tell your heart that when you’re in it.

All I want, all I’ve ever wanted was to live my truth with depth & authenticity, creating these crazy visions I have in my head, maybe having a family one day & being an amazing wife.  Reaching new heights, changing the world, changing lives for the better.  I’m a humanitarian at heart & my compassion for humanity has often times been the same thing that has created my desire to want to be understood by them.  Honestly, to be liked, to be loved, to be accepted.

When I’m wide open in my truth, I am empowered.  When I communicate that truth & it’s misunderstood – I feel deflated.  I feel alone.  And, unconsciously for sure, I shrink.  I start to doubt myself.  I start to wonder if I am crazy, if I should just give up.  It’s this self-defeating cycle that actually keeps me stuck.

Through this process of stepping on the stage & really owning what I want to create with the world, I am starting to give that up.  I am standing in misunderstood-ville & owning my own power even more deeply.  Somewhere in me I know that if I’m misunderstood it may be hard to let go, it will hurt my heart for sure, & I may have to stand alone again for a little while….waiting.  But slowly, out in the distance, I hear the call of those eagles searching for me too.  It gives me strength, to continue to let go of what doesn’t serve me, to communicate my depth even if it scares people or they don’t understand it, to own my truth & my power & shine brightly, even if it is ridiculed & judged & pawed at by those who are threatened by their own inability to shine their light.  As I stand in the sun, feeling the heat on my face, those eagles come closer….& I wait…for those that would stand in the sun with me.

A life that is inauthentic is no life for me.  To live a superficial existence, pretending to be what I think others want me to be so I don’t rock the boat, so I can keep the smile on my face & the likability in their minds.  Well that would be a death sentence for me.  I will not live my life that way – how did I let it get this far?  Spirit to spirit & nothing less….

Krystine McInnes is an accredited mortgage professional with over 10 years in the mortgage industry & a background in the legal field.  She also stewards the vision for numerous boutique development projects between the Okanagan & Vancouver, British Columbia.  Find more on her here: www.didyouknowmortgage.ca