When Guidance Goes Awry

I was reading a blog post this morning of a Healer/Coach/Intuitive that I love and have a ton of respect for. I happened to spend this past weekend with her for a mastermind near Boston.  She is one of the few successful coaches I know who exemplifies transparency, modesty and genuine interest in her clients beyond trying to up sell them.  Her ego doesn’t battle with those of her clients and her intuitive insights are uplifting and spot on. She was sharing a story about a medical issue she has and her search for finding Professionals who would honor her while helping treat her concerns.

“I’ve been searching for doctors who take me seriously, don’t minimize my personal feelings and emotions about the situation, and who understand that the knowledge of myself I’ve developed as a living being, is actually a valuable part of the discussion.”
Danielle MacKinnon

What struck me about what she said is that it’s very relevant for finding any professional who provides guidance to their clients from coaches to therapists to physicians, lawyers, accountants and financial planners, etc.

We are taught to seek others out for their advice when we want to advance ourselves. Of course we can’t ‘know’ everything so it makes sense that we would use professionals who have experience and continued education (hopefully) in the area of their expertise.

But often times the person giving us advice has been practicing their standard pitch for so long that they’ve perfected it into a One Size Fits All delivery.

They don’t stop to connect into the wealth of knowledge and self-experience a client has in “knowing themselves,” in what has worked or failed them along life’s windy road.

Experts are trained to give solutions.  They immediately want to jump into that mode instead of dialoguing with us about our feelings (often not seen as relevant or labeled in the coaching world as ‘our story’).  Yet our Soul communicates to us through our emotions and lets us know when we are in alignment or not.

Not all emotions that surface are due to resistance, fear, our ego or a shadow.  Sometimes, it’s just not the right trajectory for us and the discomfort we are feeling is for a good reason. It’s our Soul System communicating valuable information to us.

The fact that your life is YOURS is actually a big deal and handing the navigator role over to someone you don’t know that well who also probably doesn’t know you, is crazy. Yet we do it every day!

The less we trust ourselves, the easier it is to become confused or manipulated. Many of us have a not good enough, smart enough or worthy enough dialogue running that sets us up to be an energetic match with someone who will give us exactly that experience.

Our intuition is useful and necessary for helping us navigate our life.  We have to be mindful of the tendency to abdicate our responsibility for steering the ship. This is done when we hand that role over to someone else to make the decisions for us or to tell us which direction we should go in.

Often this is a carryover from organized religion which has taught us to not go inward but rather to give our power to someone or something outside of ourselves which knows better than we do.

This is when guidance goes awry.

No one knows your life better than you do.

No one knows the level of insight and wisdom you’ve gained from the experiences you’ve had. 

No one knows your financial situation better than you do.  Not all expenditures and investments are sound and in your best interest.

When dealing with the consequences of the choices you’ve made, that expert won’t be there to carry any of the weight of that choice and help pick you up.  They will quickly remind you that it was your life and your decision to make.

Now more than ever it’s important to feel into the energy of the person giving you guidance.  What is their motivation? Do they truly have your best interest at heart or are you just another transaction for them?

Danielle concluded her story with “Because I acted consciously and examined what was going on within me, I’ve now aligned myself with a great team of doctors who accept me for me. I’m a lot to deal with (I’m sensitive, emotional, intuitive, and a little bossy ha!) which isn’t a problem for them. In fact, each person on this team laughs about it with me.”

In summary – it is important that your truth be a valuable part of the discussion and if the person giving you guidance isn’t okay with that, maybe it’s time to find someone who is.

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