The Gift of Despair

You’ve been working for months crafting an offer (or even a business) to share with the world. Then in that moment right before you put it out, you’re… Downright devastated!

“What the heck am I doing? Am I on the wrong track? I don’t even know if this will work! Maybe I should just give it all up and go back to [insert any baseline / security / old way of being here].”

Sound familiar?

If you’ve felt this before, you’re not alone. Most of us have. In fact, I think there’s a good reason for it, too.

The Transition Moment

When I was birthing my first child, I was all set for a natural water birth at home… And I remember how excited I was when the labour finally began. About 14 hours in, the excitement was wearing off… Giving way to exhaustion and despair. I started to feel like it was never going to happen. What the heck have I got myself into? I even thought, I can’t do this! And began to consider hospitals, drugs, anything to “get the baby out!”

Thankfully, I had a seasoned midwife by my side, who knew a thing or two about birthing.

When a woman is in labour, there comes a time, right before the baby descends into the birth canal, which is called “Transition”.  At this time, it is typical for most birthing women to lose it, to feel like it’s all too hard, like they can’t do it anymore.

This is usually a sign that the labour is progressing well. It’s a midwife’s job to know this and to support a woman through that difficult moment without too much fuss. In most normal, healthy births, the Transition moment of deep despair is followed quite directly by birth… when a whole new person enters the world.

Like birthing a baby, birthing a new business or offer is a creative process. You’re bringing a new being into the world, where there wasn’t one before. And, you hope, it will touch your life and others in a good way.

Will it really be okay?

Actually, not always.

In the birth story I told above, my midwife wasn’t just wearing rose-colored glasses. She calmly explained to me that what I was feeling was normal. Based on 20 years of watching women in birth, she knew that most times, women who experience the despair of Transition go on to birth healthy, happy babies shortly after.

She also knew that sometimes they don’t.

So she also took action. She checked me and the child in my belly to make sure everything was going okay, she gave me a homeopathic remedy to help me with the emotional stuckness I was feeling, and she reminded me that I had choice, and that if I felt that we needed to go to hospital, we could. Soon after, things got moving again, and my daughter was born.

Despair… Like a little dark night of the soul… is Life’s Gift to us.

I’ve come to believe that despair serves it’s own special purpose in our psyche. Despair can work us like a baker works dough, kneading us, softening us, preparing us for change.

When we truly hit rock bottom, we admit that what we have been doing hasn’t been working. We soul search. We are humbled. We are willing to take a closer look at ourselves, to admit mistakes.

This often forces us to let go of something we might have been attached to, whether or not it really served us.

For me, it was my rigid ideas of what a perfect birth looked like. When I was able to let go of these ideas, I became much more present with my body and the process, as it was happening, and things got a lot easier.

For one of my clients, it took despair for her to recognize that she had, in the past, been burned in her business, and was afraid of failing. When she took the time to be with that, she saw that it was okay to be gentle with herself, to acknowledge her past, and still move forward – it wouldn’t have to determine her future.

When another client hit despair in his business, he discovered that he had become attached to using his creativity to avoid really feeling the fullness of life, including his own sensitivity. Of course, his urge to create something new was a beautiful, powerful part of his work. But when despair brought him to his knees, he became ready to let go of using it as a crutch. As he made space for his own tenderness, it actually allowed his creativity to come from a cleaner, truer place.

Defeat precedes Surrender, which precedes Possibility

It’s no coincidence that a birthing mother feels like giving up, right before her whole world changes completely.

When you feel like giving up, you begin to surrender.Very often, without realizing it, you are beginning to surrender an old way of being and opening to the possibility of a new one.

And then there’s Time…

As a mother of a gorgeous seven year old, looking back, that difficult moment of despair, that seemed insurmountable at the time, is like a tiny, but important, dimple in the fabric of my life. It was actually a key turning point, an opening, a letting go.

Likewise, a few years from now, you may look back at the despair you are facing and see it for what it is. A gift. A passing moment. An invitation to surrender. An opportunity to reflect. A doorway to something new.

And here’s the kicker… even if you already know this, have experienced it a dozen times, hear yourself telling it to others, you’re likely to forget when it’s you right there in the thick of it. Leave it to say, it’s best to have someone else there with you sometimes. Which is why we always love
to remind folks – hey, you don’t have to do this alone.

So, beloved, have you ever faced despair in your business? What helped you through?

p.s. A Remedy for Despair- Foundations 1: Clients and Money

You don’t need to isolate yourself in the despair of learning about business. Join a healing, learning community that combines open-hearted, spiritually-based principles with the nitty-gritty of what you actually have to do.

Foundations 1: Clients and Money is the program to immerse yourself in if you really want to learn how to bring in clients and money without hurting your heart.

Take a look and see if it’s for you: Foundations 1