Follow your bliss ~Gloria Vanderbilt

Dear Gloria,

It wasn’t easy to figure out how to follow my bliss. For years I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. There were so many twists and turns to getting where I am today that I don’t even know (really) where I started.

Truthfully as a child, I figured I would be an EGOT recipient. A thriving business woman living in the Hollywood Hills with my 4 boys and having a mutually acceptable, even happy ex-husband. Clearly I am not that person. Now at 48, the hope of that is dwindling. It’s not fully tamped out there’s still a flicker and I keep it lit with all my might.

I didn’t get on the plane, and that is my only life regret. Every other decision I’ve made since graduating high school I see as a whetstone, nothing to be sad about but reveled in as a tool that makes me sharp and successful. Don’t get me wrong, it was not easy. I mean nothing worth having is and I am so close to having it all!

What changed my attitude to one of gratitude? Well, it was one of those twists, or as my current Professor Dr. Lisa Miller calls it, a glimmer. One or many of the things that change your life and put you on a path of joy and fulfillment. I found and got grounded in my spiritual practice.

Even that journey has been a constant game where I am moving and changing directions. Being guided by a source outside of myself that helps me see the pitfalls and blocks in my way to the goal. Now, I am that coach.

Being a spiritual guide to others is not an easy task. You have to balance yourself between letting it all hang out and keeping your strategies for winning to yourself. Not that I don’t want to share the tips and tools to winning, but I don’t want to overwhelm or set people up to fail because they aren’t ready for that level of action. There’s also the issue of people not being ready to do the work. I often say “people want to be me until they see the amount of work that goes into it.”. That’s not to say I don’t think people can achieve the level of Eudemonia I try to reside in, but that they think it’s easy (since, again I don’t share everything).

Part of the journey has been finding out what I wanted to be since the dream of little me didn’t pan out as planned; AND still having the applause and accolades I need to keep going. I’m like Tinkerbell I need applause to live. 😊So I did a redo and went back to school all ready to get my teaching degree and change the lives of children. It worked! Sort of. I did go to school, I did graduate, I did have the applause and accolades, but being a teacher lost its glimmer.

And just like that, the program I am currently in that is setting us all up to change the world through Awakened Awareness. I get to do all the amazing things I wanted as a child. The EGOT, the kids, the happy ex-husband… ok maybe I’ll keep him.

Dreams only die when we give up on them, and I am not giving up mine. I hope that my clients never do either. I hope they find the power to keep going, even through the darkness and the uncertainty. I hope they find the place, people, adventure that makes them say “Dear Gloria, I followed my bliss”