Vulnerability is not a weakness

This post is part of a series based on the personal development work I have been doing in Danielle LaPorte's The Desire Map. To read the previous posts in the series, click here.

Thank you to all of you who commented on my last post on abundance and shared how it impacted you. I know that this series is a bit different than the recipe posts I usually share, and to be honest, I was hesitant about sharing it. The internet can be a scary place sometimes and being a blogger means that I am constantly putting my personal life out into the public. (The thing that lets me sleep at night is imagining that this blog is still only being read by three people and possibly a cat!)

Thinking about this willingness to be vulnerable inspired me to write today's topic on courage and vulnerability. I recently watched Brené Brown's TED talk on the Power of Vulnerability and Listening to Shame. (If you haven't seen these before, I definitely think they are worth watching. The first time I watched them I was so memorized by her message and her presence that I watched them twice.)

After working through my Desire Map, I realized that one of my core desired feelings is courage. I desire to feel courageous and bold. I desire to stand in the face of fear, push past it, and continue to grow. I desire to speak my truth, even when it's not easy.

I think where some of us go wrong when thinking about courage is thinking that courage is the absence of fear. Being courageous doesn't mean you aren't afraid. Being courageous means that you have the inner strength to embrace being afraid and still move forward.  

CLICK TO TWEET IT!

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Choosing Abundance

I've decided to start a new series here on For The Love of Food based on the personal development work I have been doing in Danielle LaPorte's The Desire Map. I mentioned The Desire Map a few months back at the end of the year as I was working through some changes around the direction of my business and life in general.

As a result of that post, I have received numerous emails from readers talking about how The Desire Map changed their perspective and helped them to shift focus in their life. I hope to use this series as a way to share things that I am working through at the moment while also connecting us as a community for those of you who are also working through your Desire Maps.

In case you are unfamiliar with The Desire Map, here's what you need to know: The idea behind The Desire Map is that most of us plan our lives around achieving certain goals. After we spend years working to reach those goals, we often find ourselves feeling empty when we finally get what we thought we desired.

Instead, The Desire Map helps you to discover your core desired feelings and use these feelings to gude what you want to do, have, and experience in your life. The idea is that when you set out to achieve a certain goal, it's not actually the goal you want, it's the feeling behind the goal, so, traditional goal setting is actually backwards.  Instead of focusing on the goal, we need to focus on the feeling we want that is behind the goal. This may sound simple, but this stuff goes deep.

One of my core desired feelings for 2013 is ABUNDANCE. Last year I began to realize how I mostly focused on what is lacking in my life -- it's "the glass is half-empty" mentality. This perspective often made me feel competitive, tense, and anxious because I constantly felt the sense of scarcity that surrounded me.

Is this how I wanted to feel in my life?  No, absolutely not.
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2012 & The Desire Map

Now that we're winding down the year, I have to get a little personal here and share some big things that have come up for me this year. 

This year was crazy.  In 2012, I launched an incredible health coaching business, worked with some of the most amazing clients I have ever known, and had monumental personal growth as I continually challenged myself as an entrepreneur, coach, food blogger, health writer, and wellness advocate. In addition to running my health coaching business full-time, this year I somehow managed to continue working full-time at a nonprofit organization that I love and write this blog, which is so very near to my heart. In all honesty when I look back at it, this year kicked my butt.

A couple of months ago, some things shifted in my life and something just wasn't feeling right. When I sat down to map out my 2013 business priorities and strategies, I realized that I need to make some shifts around my business and it boiled down to some really tough decisions. I began to see that things in my life were really out of alignment.  I then realized that I need to quit some big projects and walk away from a lot of things I had created this year.

Ooh man.  That was hard to stomach. 

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