How Dispelling Limited Beliefs Can Help You Find Your Purpose
From Emily:
Does the world encourage us to find our purpose, or are we held back by its norms and expectations?
This has been coming up a lot for me recently as I work with women to clarify their values and build a strategic plan for achieving the life they want to live.
I’ve found that we can be hesitant to speak our desires into existence, that we can fall back on old thought patterns to hide our own misunderstanding of ourselves, that our purpose journeys can be stunted because of the limiting beliefs that we’ve held for the greater part of our lives.
When Lindsay Schroeder was a child, she was told that she was too loud, too ambitious, too aggressive.
As she puts it, “I was that quintessential little girl that made people say, ‘That bitch is bossy, and you need to tone her down.’”
“My mom always said, ‘You can try, but it’s not going to work.’”
If Lindsay had listened, if she didn’t have a mother who was unwilling to shape her to society’s standards, she wouldn’t be who she is today.
An intuitive healer. A light worker. A Reiki Master. A spiritual coach who helps women tap into their divine feminine and work through their own limiting beliefs. A force of life whose gifts make you feel as if she can immediately see you for exactly who you are and who you’re going to be.
Lindsay is one of the inspiring facilitators at my upcoming event, THE DEEP. There, you’ll be able to work with Lindsay to share your stories, feel truly heard, and begin the process of healing the pieces inside of you that have been holding you back. Working with Lindsay is almost impossible to describe, so all I can say is that working with her allows massive, life-altering shifts.
The universe is simply a game of dominoes, where every action that is taken ripples into thousands of other actions and reactions, setting unforeseen events into motion.
Lindsay’s purpose journey hasn’t just affected her life. Her decision to step fully into her femininity and help others find their way will result in a ripple effect that will encounter hundreds, even thousands of women.
Even you.
Part Two
Here’s what not to expect from my purpose story: Simplicity. Ease. Roads without speed bumps.
Let’s get really real.
I was first exposed to energy healers, intuitive healers, and aura therapy readings when I was working at a wellness facility in Chicago.
I’d always had an intuitive gift, a natural inclination for the spiritual world. Once I was exposed to these practices in a more formal setting, I started working through these mediums for myself.
After years of working there and slowly taking on more and more responsibility, including hiring, I did an intuitive reading and energy healing with this woman who was interviewing to work there.
She said, “I have some things I’d like to say to you if you’re open to it. Have you mourned the child that you lost?”
We just stared at each other and started crying.
She asked, “How many times have you said that you’ve had a miscarriage?”
I’d never said it out loud.
“You need to mourn the loss of the child that is not with you, that would be with you right now, before you can do anything else.”
At the time I was telling myself, “I want a partner. I want to get married. I want to have a baby.”
But it wasn’t true.
She said, “You and your womb do not have conversations! You are so separated from it. There is so much healing to be done in this feminine area.”
The things she said to me gutted me. I could check off the to do list shit in life, but I was so disconnected from that feminine piece of me.
I had thought I was in a good place because I was working with crystals and shit, but holy fuck there was so much work to be done.
I finally realized I didn’t want to get married.
Marriage and monogamy go against the fact that I’m basically a polyamorous bisexual witch, and I didn’t actually want any of rigid walls marriage would put on me. I had to reform my entire identity.
Part Three
Looking back now, it’s funny because I didn’t want to start my own business at all.
I was good at work - it was fun and it was easy for me.
I got to show up for whoever I was working for. If I put in 60%, they thought I was crushing it.
Why would I ever want to have my own business? That seems like a lot of pressure. That seems like a lot of work. That seems like a lot of time and fear.
I created a really deep energetic healing program for one of my partners - though I didn’t know it was a program at the time.
At the end of this very intentional, prescriptive work, she looked at me and she said, “This is what you need to be doing.”
I didn’t question it at all.
Seeing the shift from where she was to where she ended in that initial coaching program - there was no way to deny her transformation.
There was no way that I could look at this person who sees me more clearly than anyone else has ever seen me in my whole life, who’d just changed everything that she wanted to change, and tell her, “No.”
She was more right than anyone had ever been about me in any working situation ever.
Two hours later, I was applying for an LLC and opening the business. I looked around and was like, “Oh shit, that just happened.”
But I didn’t stop. I kept going.
I liked structured work, but I LOVE what I’m doing now.
Part Four
I do this work because I’ve been where my clients are, and I had to get my shit right with being a woman myself.
I spent the most formative years of my life wanting to be a boy. I was better at being a boy. I was very good at assimilating into male culture.
I distinctly remember putting my hair up in my racing helmet to ride dirt bikes and hang out with my dad and his buddies and all their sons, and I would relish those moments...
...Until I got boobs. I could put my hair up all I wanted, but there was no sweatshirt big enough to hide that.
I feel called to work with women now because I spent the beginning of my life only spending time with dudes.
I was too aggressive to be a woman, not feminine enough to be a woman, and blurring all of these lines.
All the magic happened when I stepped into my femininity.
A lot of the women I work with are really strong, powerful alpha females who are attracting beta men, or are working 65+ hour work weeks thinking that’s the only way they’re going to get there.
They think that we have to measure ourselves up against this masculine scale of success.
I’ve learned, from personal experience, that we each have our own balance, and there is the Athena and the Aphrodite in all of us.
Aphrodite sits back on a shell while people feed her grapes and she gets all the shit she wants. We all need a little bit more of that in our lives.
I help women realize that they could accomplish their goals by pushing, by being assertive, being aggressive. to-do listing, and hustling.
Or, they could flow and magnetize these things to them.
Shit that they couldn’t conceive of, shit that they couldn’t plan is going to come together in a bigger, better, more amazing way because they chilled the fuck out.
We need more of that.
I look at the women that I’m working with and I watch their energy shift.
It is the most powerful thing, and it is addicting - it is the crack cocaine of work - and it’s unbelievable.
It’s like you’re elevating, you’re expanding, you’re growing, you’re more fulfilled, you’re making more, you’re affecting more people. I get buzzy and high off of it.
Part Five
I don’t know how you talk about someone who has passed, but still active in your energy field.
Is? Was?
My mom is a good woman. She didn’t know how to balance a checkbook or manage a household, but my sister and I always felt loved.
My mother passed away from cancer on February 19 of this year.
Last October, I said, “If you hold on until January, I will be able to tell you that I am pregnant while I am pregnant.”
I conceived my child January 17.
My mom put her hand on my belly, and I thought, “You’re not ever going to touch an actual pregnant belly of mine. I will never be able to call you up and ask you, ‘Have you gone through this?’”
She got really real with me at the end. We had conversations like I could never have with her before.
We talked about my polyamorous relationship and my two partners.
What my life is going to look like and how you raise a child when you have two partners.
What it means for me to be in love with a man and a woman.
What it means for me to just love a woman in general.
What it means to have a twin flame.
My mom saw me clearer than she had ever been able to see me for three weeks, and then that was it.
The month that my mother passed I didn’t feel that other soul, the baby’s soul, inside me at all. She took a step back and gave me space, and didn’t ask for anything, and they spent time together.
The lessons that I’ve learned about my mother through my unborn child have been profound. I understand my mother more because of this child, not just because I’m pregnant, but because of this specific child’s personality and interaction with my mother in a realm that I don’t understand fully.
I’ve felt a presence so strongly, that it will physically move things in my energy healing sessions. The temperature will change. The fragrance will change.
There’s just no way to bullshit this.
You have to be open and just say “I’m accepting all of these messages and all of this magic because why would I want to prove it wrong?”
It’s so right on, it’s so aligned. Why would I want to prove it wrong?
Part Six
There are going to be people who read this who have not asked themselves, “What is my purpose?”
If you are seeing these stories, if you are reading these words, if the word purpose doesn’t feel like “Oh, yes” when you read it - ask yourself that question. Have that dialogue. Sit in whatever form of self reflection that is for you.
If that’s meditation, if it’s journaling, if it’s fucking rock climbing, if you zone in when you’re cooking.
Start seeing that word when you’re in your safe space. Start asking yourself that question. Start closing your eyes and saying, “If I could do anything I wanted to do, if I could make money, if I couldn’t fuck it up, if everything were perfect and easy, what would it look like?”
What would it sound like?
What would it feel like?”
Start to do that deep work. It sounds like hippie woo woo bullshit, but do the fucking work. Have the conversation with yourself.
Look inward.
Deal with your shit.
Sometimes it’s great, sometimes it’s hard, but if you haven’t had a deep conversation with someone, with yourself about this, consider it.
There is just something about doing the work for yourself in a conscious, consistent manner that makes you reflective.
And one piece of advice to anyone out there who’s trying to figure out where to start? Build a personal practice. Personal fucking practice.
Learn concentration. Learn focus. Understand what it means to be with yourself, to be in your head, in your body, or in your energy.
Process when things are shifting, and when things are ebbing and flowing. When you’re affected by other people. When you’re affected by shit that’s going on around you. When you start to become more sensitive, and when you start to become more callous.
What are you telling yourself that you’re not even aware that you’re telling yourself? What are the stories that are pre-programmed in your mind?
It doesn’t have to be woo woo, and it doesn’t have to be a chore.
Just sink into yourself and listen. Listen for the truth that’s already inside you. And this time, don’t let it slip away.
From Emily:
Purpose is not a process that has an end date, another task on your to do list that can be checked off and filed away for future reference.
It is something that we must consider every day, in our personal practice or through deep conversation and connection with friends and family that we trust.
This dynamic iteration of our soul’s calling, the meaning of our lives must be molded and reimagined to fit our current circumstances without losing its essence. Without losing the pieces of us that are scattered throughout that succinct phrase or magical ikigai.
It’s tough.
But it’s worth it.
As an intuitive, Lindsay can instinctively tell when someone has found their purpose. She can feel their energy, see it in their eyes, *taste* it even.
Are you evaluating yourself this closely?
Are you aware of the energy that you’re putting into the world? Does it align with your purpose, your goals, your dreams?
What would your energy taste like if you could put it into words?
Tell me about your purpose, your energy in the comments below or tag a friend who could give you some insight. ✨