Hello,
Welcome.
My name is Lou Redmond and please know that I consider it a privilege to have this opportunity to share with you.
This is my work and my favorite poem around purpose and work is by Khalil Gibran where in his poem called On Work he says,
Work is love made visible.
And I am so grateful that my work involves sharing to you from my heart attempting to make a piece of it visible to you.
That said,
Like anything doing work we love has its ups and downs and it demands that we look at all the sticky parts that show up.
And recently a familiar part has appeared and there's a great comedy special by Bo Burnham called Inside and there's this song that he sings you could search it up called That Funny Feeling and as the chorus goes,
There it is again that funny feeling that funny feeling and Bo in the documentary and in the song is really saying that funny feeling talking about his mental health and impending environmental and social collapse.
But for me this funny feeling that shows up again and again is around this sense that I'm doing something wrong,
Not morally wrong,
More like hey you put your shirt on wrong.
And questions that arise from this funny feeling are,
Am I doing enough?
Is this the right way?
Why aren't things happening faster?
Am I not getting the proper support I need?
This year I learned the Hokkien word kiasu.
Kiasu means having a grasping or selfish attitude arising from a fear of missing out on something.
This explains the funny feeling that I have,
This need to do something or I'll fall behind.
This feeling often gets triggered when I see people who started their spiritual entrepreneurial journey later than me yet they have more success than I do.
I began sharing meditation and teaching in 2015 and it took me five years to actually make it,
To actually earn a living doing this work.
And then another five years and I'm doing pretty well.
Don't get me wrong,
This is great.
Again,
It's a privilege to get to share this with you.
But then sometimes I meet people who started their business in 2019 but are wildly more successful and it triggers this feeling of lack and not enoughness.
And if you know the personality type being the Enneagram,
I'm an Enneagram 3 which is a fixation to achieve and which only fulfills this sense of deficiency that I sometimes feel.
And the other night I was losing sleep because of this feeling.
But then a thought struck that allows me to doze peacefully to sleep.
I remembered that the wise people I admire,
People like Michael Singer,
Father Richard Rohr,
Mirabai Starr,
Cynthia Bergeau,
Jack Hornfield,
Adi Ashanti,
And many,
Many others that are all much older than me in age.
I'm over twice my age.
Those are the people that I'm interested in emulating.
Not the online coach who made millions in a few years.
And what I have to remember is that I bet all those people that I mentioned,
They weren't trying to get where they are.
I'm going to say that again.
They weren't trying to get to,
Hey,
I want to be a famous spiritual teacher.
No.
Where they ended up was the unfolding of deep devotion,
Practice,
And humility.
I've heard it said that in some lineages that if a student badly wants to be a teacher,
That is a sign they aren't ready.
Yikes.
I definitely badly wanted to be a teacher.
Anyway,
Doing our spiritual work,
Our heart work,
Our purpose work is not about our success in five years.
It's about the elders we want to be in 30 years.
That is the real dream and vision.
When I started out,
I kept the journal.
I still keep a journal,
But I wrote in the early days of pursuing this path.
This was January 10th,
2015.
I wrote in my journal,
Remember,
You are not going to make your dreams happen in one day.
You're not going to make them happen in one week.
You're probably not going to make them happen in one year.
It's yet still unlikely you will make them happen in one decade.
Maybe,
Just maybe,
You'll make them happen in one lifetime.
So I exhale,
And remember,
There's nowhere to go.
I say to myself,
And I say to you,
You are exactly where you need to be.
You are doing exactly what you need to do.
All is in perfect timing.
Trust the process.
Maybe you can use those words right now.
It's about the long game.
There is no fast track to any success.
I love this mantra that I share often.
Slow,
Juicy growth.
There's no need to rush.
There's no need to force.
As we continue to do our work,
Whatever that is,
Both the inner work,
The spiritual work,
And the outer work,
Whether we're at a job or whether we're pursuing our own business,
It doesn't matter.
That as we connect to our hearts,
As we keep showing up from there,
As we keep trusting the process,
Good things happen.
And we have to remember,
Again,
There's nowhere to go.
You are exactly where you need to be.
I hope you found this supportive or inspiring.
If it calls to you,
If you're someone that is wanting to bring their work out,
Wanting to bring your life's work out in the world,
I encourage you to check out my course on Insight Timer called Five Principles to Build Confidence,
Create Momentum,
And Activate Your Soul's Calling.
We talk about kiasu a bit in that course.
Short,
Powerful course that is going to create a lot of momentum.
So if that calls to you,
Go check that out here on Insight Timer.
And again,
I so appreciate this privilege to get to share with you.
Thank you so much for listening,
And we will connect again very soon.
Lots of love.
