“In every aspect of our lives, we are always asking ourselves, How am I of value? What is my worth? Yet I believe that worthiness is our birthright.” Oprah Winfrey

Breathe. One in. One out. Just breathe.

I stand on the precipice of everything I want. My desire for a purposeful, passion filled life, creating projects that are driven in social enterprise, grounded in solid business principals & extremely profitable. Planet, people, profits. Serving my mortgage clients in a way that takes care of them, building solutions that solve problems, strategizing financial structures & helping them build wealth.

Running both companies parallel & intertwined, both supporting & feeding the other. Building the right team of strong, committed individuals that serve a greater vision.

I was put on this planet to lead. Have been bossy since the day I was born. Can’t stand to be told what to do. Makes my skin crawl to hear someone tell me it can’t be done that way. See possibility everywhere, strategy everywhere, solutions everywhere. Build business models in my sleep.

So why do I feel like I’m standing at the precipice….but I’ve got my hand on the grenade? Isn’t this everything I wanted?

Worthiness is a funny thing. When does it get beaten out of us?

Who knows what stories we all have about whatever our pasts are, really in the end they don’t matter. What happens happens, it is what it is – it’s what we make it mean about ourselves that does the real damage. And we carry that damage with us, sometimes for our entire lives.

I have my hand on the grenade because everything I’ve worked so hard for is happening, is manifesting, after years of struggle & successes followed by failures & getting up & dusting off & going again & the hardest most arduous journey of my lifetime. Here it is. The next level. And I can almost not stand my own success.

It terrifies me. It rests above the pit of I’m-not-worth-it-ness that is hidden deep below. Will everyone see how unworthy I am if I step into the light?

How can I let that amount of love & abundance & connection into my heart & still stay in control? I can’t. My vulnerability is triggered, my terror to let it all in & then suffer loss, have my heart broken in two, have my dreams ripped to shreds & chewed up & spit back to me – I’m not sure I could take it. I’m not sure I would survive. Need to stay guarded, stay strong, stay impenetrable. And yet I know that I can’t either.

How can I possibly let myself receive the immensity, the vastness, the greatness, the awesomeness of everything my heart desires? Aren’t I supposed to struggle, aren’t dreams fulfilled for fairy tales & fiction & not for me?

Just breathe. Time to call in my support systems, get on the phone with my mentors. Give myself some time to be nurtured & filled up & take care of me. Gently now. Slowly. It might take a few days, in fact it has been almost a week of this energy that I haven’t broken free of. But I can’t rush it, if I do, the grenade drops.

Breathe in. Breathe out. What’s the purpose again? Why am I doing all of this again? Connect with the purpose – remember what it’s all for Krystine. For the family you want to build, for the life you want to live, for the God-given purpose you are here to fulfill. Breathe it in. Visualize. Connect. Calm…

Now, slowly. Ever…so…slowly. Put the pin back in. Gently now. Put it down.

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

“If you just keep breathing, you cannot be conquered”. Oprah Winfrey

I am starving. Starving for something I can’t  describe. Food won’t fill it, wine won’t numb it, work won’t drown it out.

Its a hungering from deep within me. One I’ve long heard & past ignored, worked on top of, drown out with behaviours to numb it.

I noticed myself slipping recently. Reverting to some old behaviours – things I used to do to hurt myself. Goodness knows why – my I don’t deserve it units or I’m not worth it units having a field day in my psyche.

Picking apart my mind until I’ve fallen back far enough to satisfy that sabotaging voice.

It’s the subtleties that make the difference.

When I see those old thoughts & behaviours creeping in. It happens gradually – a compromise here, a missed commitment there, a deadline passed, a promise broken.

This is where failure happens – not at the finish line, but in all the subtleties in between start & end.

When the crossroads in my mind between my desire for a passion filled, purposeful life meets my deeper feelings of unworthiness.

Something is different this time though. Something has changed. My awareness has deepened, my support systems wide & vast, my team strong, my vision clear.

And my desire – to want something more, to be willing to confront the darkest parts of myself with compassion & conviction & deep surrender, to turn my life over to a greater service, to a higher path. It is insatiable. I will not yield.

I’m too committed. I’ve crossed the line in my own desire for a purpose driven life, for meaning, depth, leaving everything on the table, living on the skinny branch.

I am afraid – goodness how afraid I am, terrified really. The decisions I must make are hard, the road has been long, there is no sign of rest soon & I must remain highly conscious of myself so that I don’t become my own worst enemy. I must manage my mind & cannot trust my thoughts.

But fear & success move like the stream & the rocks within it. They are intertwined. They are inevitable friends not foes.

Lean into it Krystine. Feel the fear & lean in harder. Trust this path, this committed vision, this quest to guide me through.

I am a weary traveller searching for my way home, lost a little as night has fallen & I am nowhere near – listen to the wind, let it guide me. Let the trees give me shelter & the land nourish me. Lean in. Lean in. Lean in.

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

 

“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

“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

 

As a woman entrepreneur committed to running a purpose driven business, I noticed how often I struggle daily with these 3 questions

“Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new center of gravity. Don’t fight them. Just find a different way to stand.” Oprah Winfrey.

When you’ve connected a company with your spiritual path & purpose – anything that is not aligned & vibrating at that level of spiritual integrity needs to be transformed.

If I am not aligned in my personal & spiritual integrity to be able to steward my vision, then I will keep bumping up against my own issues, inadequacies, low vibrational consciousness again & again until I either transform it & breakthrough or I fail.

Its a fairly simple natural law – one I think most women entrepreneurs often overlook.

For me, my vision of making mortgages fun & building green projects that matter is not lightweight by any means & whether I knew it or not at the time, some of the challenges I would need to overcome to steward this vision have been more difficult then I could have ever imagined.

My business is seasoned, but not mature, rapidly growing but still moving through growing pains, scaling from my current level to the next level, but constantly dealing with the challenges of a start up.  At this level, the 3 questions I face on a daily basis are:

1. How committed am I?
2. How disciplined am I?
3. How badly do I want what I want?

When I am confronted by all of my insecurities, failures, inadequacies, when I’m working so hard but the scales keep feeling like they’re tipping away from me, when I’m overwhelmed & overloaded & pulled in so many directions I can barely keep my head above water – how badly do I want what I want? And am I willing to go the full distance, not knowing if the answer will be yes?

I see so many women stop here, fail before they cross the line because of the fear of failure.  I want to say that one more time, I’ve seen so many women entrepreneurs fail because they are afraid that the answer will be no, that they will fully commit, they will put their hearts on the line in their business & they will fail.  So instead of fully committing, being disciplined, being focused, they fail first.  Save the heartache & devastation of what would happen if they really committed their hearts & passion & purpose & they were destroyed.  I know for me, it is a survival mechanism, built out of wanting to protect my fragile emotional self from pain & heartbreak.

Some of the things I bump up against have nothing to do with the world outside but everything to do with the world inside me. My own self-doubt, my negative self-talk, my fear of success, my unsupportive belief systems. Some of those things are extremely difficult to look at & even harder for me to own. Where I fail, where I come short of the whole distance, where I’ve compromised myself, where my personal integrity has been out of line. It’s painful to look in that mirror, see what I have done to create a situation, own it & then vulnerably open in surrender, not knowing what the answer will be. More pain? More to transform? Or a breakthrough?

It feels like a long, dark tunnel, with little wins here & there that have kept me going, but this journey has been arduous, wrought with so many difficulties, so many fears triggered, so much to face at times I don’t know if I can do it.

And when the tunnel is dark & the fears are many, & the last desperate hope that I’ve been clinging to to get me through falls away & I am left alone, in the silence, with no answers…..it is the mirror I face. To look within.

At this level, I have done a lot of inner work & outer work to become the leader I want to be…but what’s left inside of me to transform….it is the terrified bits of myself, down to the brass tax. What I am up against is my own terror to be vulnerable, to be authentic in the world without armour, exposed, naked, real, honest.  To be my truth. And my deep horror & fear that when I look within at this depth, what I see is that I am not being as authentic as I think I am, I am not being as honest, as integrous, as truthful. When I look within, I see my own compromised integrity, manipulated emotions, behaviours originally built as defence mechanisms that have now imploded & become saboteurs of my success.

My heart can’t take it, my stomach feels nauseous & I don’t know if I can do it, I am so terrified to face myself, so terrified to own these dark parts of who I am. The voice inside me, the one that drives my passion forward, is quiet & I feel alone, at the edge of a cliff, no supports, no bridge, no rope. Just me, all alone, facing the depths of myself……back to those 3 simple questions:

1. How committed am I?
2. How disciplined am I?
3. How badly do I want what I want?

As a woman entrepreneur, committed to running a purpose driven business, I must be solidly rooted in the answer to these questions, connected to my purpose, my passion & my reasons for wanting to create what I want – otherwise, I might give up, I might give in, I might cave to the fear & the pressure & the overwhelm.  Today….I feel those walls caving in a little….and as I write this post, I ask my readers to share this with women entrepreneurs they know who are building purpose driven businesses.  We all struggle in our movement forward, sometimes it feels very lonely, my commitment to my vision is growing deep roots as I move gently through these frightened bits of myself & I want to share my movement forward with other women entrepreneurs, to connect, inspire & relate.

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 believe the choice to be excellent begins with aligning your thoughts and words with the intention to require more from yourself.” Oprah Winfrey.

I have this big vision for my life – maybe it’s crazy, maybe it’s not crazy enough.  I’ve spent a lot of years scaling it back so I don’t overwhelm people – it’s hard for others to support you when they are confronted by their own fears & their own inadequacies, their own issues around why they hold themselves back from being audacious & wild enough to share their deepest vision & live their dreams.  Maybe someone shut them down once so they spend their lives shutting others down.  Maybe it hurts too much to look at where they’ve given up.  Maybe they believe in lack & don’t think there is enough in life for everyone to shine & so they block out others for their own gain.  I don’t really know, but it’s one of the hardest things I find about human nature – our desire to drag people down rather than build them up.  I’ve learned how to hedge this my whole life – play small, cover up that crazy infinite possibility space that is as natural to me as breathing air, hide in the shadows.  Rather than shining my bright beam of absolute creative possibility that you can have, do, be anything if you work at it, if you are committed, if you go the distance, if you drop fear at the door & fail a whole lot & make a bunch of mistakes too – no one said it was going to be perfect.  But you pick yourself back up, dust off those bootstraps, have a few laughs, learn & go again.  It doesn’t need to make sense to anyone else – it’s between you & your Source & your path through this crazy game called Life.

When I think about requiring more from myself, it’s not about doing more, it’s about being more.  Being an absolute, unapologetic, bright as the Sun stand for my own creative force, for possibility, for wildly colouring outside the lines, stretching the norms & busting through limitations.  Holding the line without mercy or apology – that there is absolutely no greater truth than this.  That we were all put on this planet to fulfill our creative potential & that I stand in my truth to be a beacon for others, to absolutely destroy the “norm”, the “expectation”, the “way it is supposed to look”.  And that, above all else, we are ALL abundant – we were born of abundance & when we shine our light it does not take away from anyone, it does not overshadow but it empowers & it adds to & it is exponential in it’s creative force.  Abundance is our birthright – it is our minds that are sick & impoverished, & so we see lack everywhere.  When we own our abundance, not superficial egoic greed, but our TRUE abundance, we bestow a gift on the world.  The truth unlocks the power of our destiny & our lives become more real, more relaxed, more at ease.  We give more, we open deeper, we attach to less because we know we are enough & because we know this, we want for less.  We strive for purpose & meaning, not control & power.

To expect more from myself – that when I want to shrink because I feel someone getting uncomfortable around me, that instead, I tell the truth.  That in relationships with men, I don’t hide my gifts or pretend to be less than so they don’t feel inadequate, instead, I own them fully, not overpowering to overcompensate for my own insecurity, but in my own empowerment & that I hold the space for their empowerment too.  And if it’s too much for them, that I don’t make that mean anything about me & I don’t use it as a way to beat myself up, but that I look forward & onward to find other shining stars that are shining just as brightly.  That I don’t just know my truth, that I speak it, that I live it & don’t compromise it, not for anything.  That I can be everything that I want to be at the expense of nothing – an incredibly feminine woman, a lover, a wife, a mother, a ferocious business woman, a powerful leader, a brilliant steward of green living projects that make the world a more beautiful place, an advisor for clients who want to strategize mortgage solutions, a wild & fun City girl, a grounded & down to earth country girl, an artist, a muse, a yogi & a sage.  That I can be beautiful & smart, sexy & a brilliant leader, wild & fun & fiercely intelligent, that I don’t have to compromise being a woman for being a business-woman.  I can be all – in fact I am all.  This is an expectation that is worthy of living up to.  That is grounded in truth & authenticity.

I see my life again, a little clearer this time – not a scaled back version.  So many tries & fails, slowly, over time, they chip away at possibility.  They chip away at beauty & magic & settle down in practicality & normality – places my Spirit goes to die.  I am suffocating there, lost in a sea of Sameness, in different shades of grey blending, bleeding, into a life of complacency.  No.

Today, my strength in my conviction is renewed.  I am afraid, sometimes I feel alone, I don’t know what is around the next corner, I’m scared to open my heart lest it be broken yet again.  But then I think of the Goddess Athena – I think of her strength, her wisdom, her vision, her femininity, her capacity to love & the devoted men who would give their lives to protect her, the devoted citizens who praise & honour her guidance & the powerful, masculine God who stands beside her.  And I know that in the fog of what lays before me, I can hold on to the whisper of Her voice calling from within me.  To not settle, to not give up, to claim Her in my heart & let my life open in depth to find Her again….like I once knew, long ago…but like the faint remembrance of a dream, I had forgotten…

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

 

“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

“I trust that everything happens for a reason, even when we’re not wise enough to see it.” Oprah Winfrey.

“I trust that everything happens for a reason, even when we’re not wise enough to see it”  Oprah Winfrey.

Leadership Skill – forgiveness.  How do you live a life of freedom without forgiveness?  Like a bird in a cage, when we hold on to grievances they keep us trapped.  Sometimes we don’t realize that the door was open the whole time, we just had to let go.  It’s funny though, forgiveness really has nothing to do with other people, it’s always about Self.  I’ve never felt the need to run out & ask for forgiveness of anyone & I’m certain I’ve done some things to warrant it over my years.  But I’ve always understood that someone else’s interpretation of an experience or their digestion of a situation really hasn’t got a lot to do with me – it’s their process, their journey, their experience.  I’m on mine & I interpret or misinterpret my world & it leads me on my path.  I don’t feel like anyone needs to ask for my forgiveness for anything, & I’m certain there are many things that have happened in my life that would warrant it.

But my belief is that life is a journey, & a perfect one at that.  Every experience we ever have is divinely orchestrated, moving us from one miraculous moment to the next on our way back to God.  To wholeness, to divinity, to whatever it is you believe.  So I don’t hold grievances towards anyone for anything, because I believe in the perfection of life & that even if I don’t understand the reason now, it will reveal itself eventually, in this life or the next.  That definitely hasn’t been an easy skill to master, taken a ton of hard knocks to land that one.

What I find so funny though is that although I have been through some serious atrocities of the human spirit, horrific situations, I’ve been betrayed in the most vile of ways, had my heart crushed into a million pieces again & again, & yet I hold no grievances, no judgments, no grudges & no ill will towards any of those who have inflicted those things upon me.  Yet, in spite of my depth of forgiveness of others, I find that the person I am the hardest on is myself.  In business, if I make a mistake, I use it as ammunition to beat myself up with.  It’s quite astonishing how incredibly harsh I can be on myself.  And if I’m not quite on top of the beat-myself-up-for-not-doing-it-perfectly program, I always find I’ll attract someone who feels the need to tell me exactly how I’m doing it wrong.  Way to manifest Krystine.  If it’s not on the inside, create it on the outside.  No escape.

As my business scales & my ability to control things becomes unmanageable, I have to let go of mistakes.  I have to forgive myself often.  There’s just no other way for me to scale without having some stumbles along the way, stumbles that will be my responsibility, I will own them & some of them, I won’t be able to repair.  Can I live with that?  Can I allow myself to let go of the handrail to learn how to walk on my own, knowing I’m going to have some screw ups along the way & not stopping to use those mistakes as a place to beat myself up, but as a stepping stone as I push through to the next level of stewardship of this crazy vision I have for my life & for the dent I want to leave in the universe when I’m gone?

Some days are better than others.  It’s hard to feel like a failure, even though I know my business is moving forward, my mortgage volumes are rising, we’re launching new divisions of our company to serve our clients with our gifts of making mortgages fun & helping our clients create wealth, new investors are showing up for green building projects, alignment is happening, the right team is showing up.  On the outside it looks like success.  On the inside, all I see are all the places I am failing & I am so incredibly sensitive to it.  I can’t remember if I brushed my teeth & my hair some days.  Did I leave the iron on?  Did I remember to pay that telephone bill?  Did I remember to call that client back?  Did I forget to add a decimal on that feasibility report?  Failure, failure, failure, failure.  So hard.

What I’m learning, gently now, slowly now, is that forgiveness comes when I implement structure to solve the problem.  It’s time for a personal assistant, housekeeper to take on more duties, bookkeeper to manage personal expenses, project manager to review my feasibility reports – get myself out of details I am not good there, I can’t succeed there.  Structure, system, implementation.  Structure, system, implementation.  Each mistake, each “failure” is a chance to learn.  If I don’t implement the change, then I am doomed to keep repeating the same things.  And each pang of “failure” in me is a sign that I need another piece of support so that I am nurtured again by what I am creating.  And I need to be gentle with myself, love myself more, nurture myself more as I move through this growth spurt to a new platform.

Yes, I’m extremely hard on myself.  A perfectionist in my nature, although sometimes you’d never guess it in the creative chaos in which I sometimes (ok, most often) operate.  Learning, slowly, how to be ok in mistake-ville, to let them be part of my process in growth.  To let go of control & to own those mistakes when necessary & implement new structure to support me when necessary & to laugh so hard my belly hurts sometimes & just let it go when necessary.  To let myself lean into a place of “I’m going to screw it up-ness” & to forgive myself anyway, implement new supports & keep moving forward.

I feel the bars of this cage getting wider & my suffocation slowly releasing.  I know that there is no way to scale & hold on to every minute detail.  I know that even a perfectionist, control-freak is going to need to learn to trust her team & her structure & her universe to let go fully into surrender in order to grow in stewardship.  All of my history has me triggered as I get to see how hard it is for me to trust when I’m not the one in control, how hard it is for me to let go in surrender.  Back to forgiveness.  Let it go.

I close my eyes, for a long time……& I hear the creak of the cage door open, as my wings ever so gently take flight….

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