Inner Work

When Playing by the Rules Won’t Help You Win

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Kayla MacArthur

Following rules has always been your strong suit. Whether that means following your own rules, others’ rules, or a combination of both. Following rules is safe. You know what’s expected of you, therefore, you know exactly how to avoid messing up. Rules keep your life orderly and neat. The same goes for your goals. You dream up a vision, break it down, and work out a system to create what you want {complete with a thick volume of rules to govern the game and WARNING labels to denote when you’re off track}. As long as you’re playing by the book, you feel good—you feel like you’re making progress. You witness...

How You’re Keeping What You Want Out of Your Life

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Think about the thing you want, but you never seem to get. How are YOU keeping it out of your life? When I ask my Clients this question, they tend to get confused. “Why would I keep what I want out of my life, Kayla? I want it! I wouldn’t do that.“ Then, they try to convince me that the REAL reason they don’t have what they want is because of someone else or the circumstances they’re chained to. Other people can be a bitch. Circumstances can be a bitch. But they are not the reason you don’t have what you want. It can feel like other people or circumstances...

What If Your Short-Comings Were a Gift?

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short-comings

How often have you beaten yourself up for your perceived short-comings? Short-comings meaning: Things about you that do not fit with the image of who you should be or who you think you need to be in order to succeed. Think about your short-comings right now. And ask yourself: What do these things tell me about myself + what I’m really gifted at? On the other side of a perceived short-coming, there’s always a parallel and equal strength. But only if you choose to see it. Sometimes out of curiosity, I’ll open a LinkedIn email that lists job openings suited to my skills. I’ll peruse what the companies want in...

What Do a Guru and a Jerk Have in Common?

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You know better than anyone else. AND—you know better for everyone else. You see what other people can’t see for themselves and you use this gift to tell them how to close the gap between where they are and where they could be. Half the time, they praise you. Half the time, they don’t. {Half the time, they secretly seethe behind clenched teeth or become outright defensive and pick a fight}. You’re either a Guru or a Jerk, but underneath who they see, who you’re being is Fixer. Now before you become offended {if you’re feeling charged thus far}, I want you to know: Me too. My natural tendency is...

A Reminder For When Life Feels Messy

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Your mind is scrambled eggs. It’s confused and messy and unsure of anything. Everything it’s ever known is being yanked up and challenged. What’s true or real? You’re yearning for solid ground to stand on, for the smoke to clear, for the hidden gem to shine through, but right now—you’re just a swirl of incoherent thoughts and feelings. It’s similar to what a seed must go through as it bursts beyond the confines of its bud and pushes through layers of darkness, unaware of where it is or what’s going to happen. Growth is a place where nothing makes sense. And sometimes, all you can do is make peace with...

What Would Become Possible if You Stopped Stopping?

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You’re either all the way on, completely off, or somewhere in the middle, revving up the momentum you lost from the last time you decided to stop. You’ve chosen greatness because greatness is who you are. And yeah—sometimes the journey gets tough and uncomfortable and like day fading into night, you want a break. You move from actively making your mark on the world back into yourself and the quiet stillness of an ordinary human life. You choose stillness because stillness is who you are too. The thing is though: Stillness will never be enough on its own. That’s because the other part of yourself—the part that’s here to lead...

Read This When You’re Feeling Stuck

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feeling stuck; New Hampshire; girl between two trees

The world is falling down around you.Negative thoughts cloud your mind like thick fog in early morning.Your chest is heavy with feeling. Lead weight. It’s hard to breathe. It’s another one of those days/weeks/months where you can’t seem to catch a break. You work hard to create what you want and just when things start to happen, an unseen force yanks you back to where you don’t want to be. Now you’re feeling stuck—as if you’re treading water in the middle of a lake and the fog is making it impossible to see the shore. You spend so much time here, treading water and searching for the shore, that you...

The #1 Mindset Hack for Making Your Dreams a REALITY

Business, Manifestation, Travel
making your dreams a reality; Mountain View

Identifying what you want in life and business is easy.Making your dreams a REALITY is an entirely different story. How do you reconcile the two? There was a particular day four years ago—October 1st, 2013 to be exact—when the U.S. government was forced to shut down, and all of the national parks were closed until further notice. While this typically wouldn’t be an issue, that day, it was. It just happened to be the day my best friend and I were leaving to go on our eight week road trip across the U.S. Our intention was to visit all of the national parks 🙈 From the moment we decided to...

What If Awareness is Actually Keeping You Stuck?

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Awareness is awesome. Until it isn’t enough. You can rattle off your resistance and describe every inch of how you hold yourself back. You can paint a picture of your patterns and how they keep you stuck. Yet, for how well you see your shadow, you don’t know how to move beyond it to create what feels impossible. You’re stuck IN IT. And all you want is to be free of it. That’s because awareness doesn’t cut it. You have to USE IT. When you’re aware of how you’re blocked, you’re not actually blocked—you’re choosing to be. Where it looks like you have a problem, what if there’s simply a...

4 Ways Expectations Are Killing Your Dreams & What to Do About It

Relationships
expectations

Expectations are the kill joy of your dreams. And they are as vital to you as the air that fills your lungs. Expectations are the stuff you use to construct your perfect world. They are the measurement of choice when it comes to deciding whether things are going right/wrong or good/bad. When things measure up, all is calm and great. When things don’t measure up, your world turns upside down. Anger, frustration, disappointment—they feed on the fantasy in your head, tearing it to shreds along with the last ounce of power you could have used to create what you actually want. That’s the thing with expectations—they steal your power away....