What has the Law of Attraction got to do with depression and podcasting?

It’s been a really weird couple of weeks for me. You might have read my last blog called Are Your Struggling? That’s a Good Thing! where I wrote that having a hard time is a sign that you’ve gone off track…it’s a call to get back on track. I had well and truly wandered from the track and I’m only just stumbling my way back to it…this moment; in this decision: I’m going to start a Pod Cast…today.

The idea has been swimming around my mind for months but I haven’t acted on it for a few reasons. Firstly, I have a notion that I’m a ‘starter not a finisher’ and that I ‘use new projects to shake off depression’.

I didn’t make it up and it’s not something a teacher told me growing up. I read these lines in a personality profiling test I did when I started a very good graduate scheme in London aged 22. I answered a tonne of questions and my results showed me to have having high yellow energy (98%) followed closely by high red energy (92%). What this means is that I enjoy working towards dreams, I love the possibilities of tomorrow and I’m super optimistic! But that I’ll happily discard a project when I lose interest in it. They’re some of the ‘sunshine yellow’ traits in my personality.  As for the ‘fiery red’ elements of my personality, I’m positive, affirmative, assertive and goal focused! I want to lead and I love getting stuck into the action, in this moment: ‘let’s just start now!’.

I scored low on cool blue energy (planning, reflecting, precise, cautious) and even lower (7%) on earth green energy (still, calming, patient, caring and encouraging), which doesn’t make sense to me because DARETOGROW is all about empowering and encouraging people and I care a great deal about other people’s happiness. The planning bit kind of makes sense but here’s the really important part to remember about personality profiling: it’s not ‘the truth’. It’s an indication of what your most natural communication preference is in most situations.

I had clearly forgotten this at the time because there was a specific line in my profile that I internalised. Funnily enough, it’s the only line I can remember and it’s this: ‘Lisa is a starter not a finisher and uses new projects to shake off depression‘.

I think it’s the word ‘depression’ that scored it into my memory because I was just coming to understand at that time that I had depression and I was hyper sensitive to the word but these lines, this insinuation, has made me questioned a lot of my inspiration over the years.

Should I write a book or am I just doing that to shake of depression? Should I launch a Pod Cast or will that just be a project I never finish? 

These are what I like to now dub ‘acquired beliefs’. They’re not my beliefs; I just acquired them from someone else. Well, not even a person: an automated response bank based on my unique combination of answers in that moment, on that day. But I’ve carried these beliefs with me for nine years. NINE YEARS PEOPLE. And it came from fifteen words typed coldly and automatically on a print out based on 30 minutes of an online questionnaire when I was 22!

So, thank goodness I picked up ‘Ask and It Is Given’ last night; an incredible book by Esther and Jerry Hicks. Esther is a medium and she channels pure source energy, conveying universal messages so true that when you read them you say: ‘oh my goodness, yes, that’s so obviously true how could I not know that’. It’s the exact same feeling you get when you miss the Catchphrase – remember that TV show – and the presenter puts you out of your misery – it was ‘A bird in the hand’ – and you shout “Urgh of course!!” It’s so obvious but you might never have gotten it solo.

Anyway, reading my usual ten pages last night, I came across this paragraph…

“Your powerful beliefs were once gentle thoughts. Every thought that has ever been thought still exists, and whenever you focus upon a thought, you activate the vibration of that thought within you. So, whatever you are currently giving your attention to is an activated thought. But when you turn your attention away from a thought, it becomes dormant, or no longer active. The only way to consciously deactivate a thought is to activate another. In other words, the only way to deliberately withdraw your attention from one thought is to give your attention to another.”

And I had a major moment of realisation…

I AM using new projects to shake off depression and that’s bloody brilliant!! When I don’t give life to the ideas and work within me and when I don’t express myself creatively and in response to inspiration I’m receiving in that moment I squash myself, reduce myself, deny who I truly am and more so: I create space for negative thoughts to grow.

In other words, if I don’t proactively put my attention on exciting new projects that light me up and allow me to express who I am then I am making room for thoughts that hold me back, bring me down and keep me standing still. Of course, to act from inspiration bears totally different fruit than acting from fear. Am I right? It’s the Law of Attraction in play and to quote the words written by Esther but channelled from source:

“With your practiced attention to any subject, the Law of Attraction delivers circumstances, conditions, experiences, other people, and all manner of things that match your habitual dominant vibration. And as things begin to manifest around you that match the thoughts you have been holding, you now develop stronger and stronger vibrational habits or proclivities. And so, your once small and insignificant thought has now evolved into a powerful belief – and your powerful beliefs will always be played out in your experience.”

What this means is that everything has energy, including our thoughts, and our thoughts are creating the world around us. The way we look at a situation changes the action we’ll take and the action we’ll take changes our lives.

And so if that’s the case I’d much rather launch a project I (might) never finish and live in joy, excitement and positive expectation than sit idly while negative thoughts, fears and limiting beliefs run havoc in my mind. I’d rather build and create and sit and wait.

So get out of the way Insights…I’ve got a Pod Cast to launch!

This simple change in perspective has put me right back on track. The fuzz is lifting and my creativity is returning. I’ve found another key for changing my life: use new projects to respond to my own inspiration; to get back into alignment with source; with my purpose. Use new projects to drown out self limiting beliefs and put a stopper on depression!

It’s ironic really…The idea of starting a Pod Cast has been bubbling away in me for months, not weeks, and I’ve hesitated because I feared I’d never finish it; because I feared I was just doing it to shake of depression. All the while, the very denying of my inspiration and silencing my exciting new idea was moving me further away from source and would in fact lead to depression!

You see, I realised a few years ago that my depression came about because I denied who I was inside. I ignored my calling to coach and speak and write and to show people how to build their dream lives: I was too young, it was too silly, I couldn’t make a living from it etc. etc. The more and more I suppressed that desire, the more and more I distanced myself from my purpose and the more and more depressed I got. And this is the sneaky thing about depression: it rarely happens overnight. In my experience, it took years to manifest: years of denying my true self, years of not expressing myself, years of denying myself the little joys in life, years of not speaking up in conversations. I got lost, disconnected and it turned into depression. It was my body’s way of screaming: ‘Lisa you’ve gone off the track…your track!’. It was a call to get back in sync, back into harmony with who I truly am.

And so two years ago I made some radical changes to end depression; to bring me back into alignment with my voice, my purpose, my calling. I sold one company and downsized another, taking on £70k in business loans as personal debt to escape the life I’d built. I didn’t know what I was doing at the time – I didn’t know about purpose, source energy and the Law of Attraction – I just knew I couldn’t go on doing something I didn’t enjoy anymore…it was quite literally depressing!

When I started to align to who I was – running, speaking in front of audiences, blogging, writing, creating things people could use to change their life – my whole life changed. I got over depression, which I’d had for six years, I lost weight and I found my soul mate.

This Pod Cast isn’t just a new project: it’s an opportunity for me to express who I truly am. It’s a chance for me to give rise to that powerful voice inside me that knows the answer to the next Catchphrase! It’s a way to ‘shake off depression’ and I’m going to use it to that end and more.

It is therefore with pride, excitement and positive expectation that I declare: DARETOGROW The Pod Cast is coming soon!