If You’re Fantasizing About a Different Life, Become Someone Willing to Risk Having It
In early 2017, my dad unexpectedly passed away.
I was thirty-seven years old and I had spent thirty-seven years repressing and numbing my feelings, mainly through undereating and overexercising.
But the grief was so profound that it was impossible not to feel my feelings. And because I had no tools for processing my grief, I felt like a numb zombie for the rest of that year. I felt like life was happening to me and I was helpless against it.
With the turn of 2018, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. For the first time in almost a year, I felt a spark of inspiration, which felt like a grand finale fireworks display in the grief void of my heart.
For the first time in my life, I started thinking about what I wanted from life and what would make me happy. My dad was only sixty-three years old when he passed, and that was a wake-up call that life is too short not to do what you want to do.
For years, I had been telling myself that “one day” I wanted to move to Hawaii and “one day” I wanted to write a book.
Why not now?
Abundant Energy Asks, “Why Not?”
Moving to Hawaii and becoming a writer seemed like a deranged fantasy that would be impossible to pull off. I had a stable Corporate America job, I owned a condo in Chicago, and I didn’t have any friends or family in Hawaii.
I kept trying to ignore the urge because not changing anything felt way safer and more comfortable than turning my entire world upside down. But my soul couldn’t ignore the call, and I couldn’t stop thinking about moving to Hawaii and being a writer.
I was too terrified to make the first move and felt like such a fraud for even having that goal, so as an alternative, I decided to go to a motivational seminar to light a fire under my butt to start taking some action, any action to get out of fear paralysis. The event was called “Fear Not!” It sounded fierce and exactly like what I needed.
The event was awkwardly horrible, confusing, and whatever the polar opposite of motivational is.
BUT at that event, I learned about a motivational seminar taking place in Denver that had Gary Vee and Tony Robbins as the main speakers.
Below is an excerpt from Chapter 9 of Running in Slippers, where I had an identity crisis in the aftermath of the lame Chicago motivational seminar:
But there is one good thing that came out of this event. The visions of the Denver Lollapalooza of motivational speakers have me so excited that, in the morning-after hangover from the organic food rant, I book a trip to Denver and buy my seminar ticket. The lowest-tier ticket is fifty dollars. The mid-tier ticket is five hundred dollars and includes a Q&A lunch with Gary Vee and close-to-the-front floor seating. The top-tier ticket is an opportunity to meet Tony Robbins and first or second-row floor seating. This is a heftier one thousand five hundred dollars.
I don’t deserve to meet Tony Robbins.
I don’t even deserve to be at that event.
I am not worthy of spending that much money on myself.
Despite the barrage of my critical inner voice, I click on the lunch with Gary Vee option, which is terrifying and not something I feel deserving of. But I am determined to make changes in my life. From now on, I’m playing at a higher level.
In that moment, I made a decision. I decided to be the kind of person who moves to Hawaii and becomes a writer.
And because that was my new identity, the decision not to buy the Tony Robbins tier ticket felt like playing small. Deep down, I knew it, but I kept resisting it:
I wake up in Destin with an intuition hit.
Upgrade your seminar ticket to the meet and greet with Tony Robbins.
I email customer support and ask for assistance in upgrading my ticket. They respond the same day with instructions to call a phone number.
I don’t deserve to meet Tony.
The critical inner voice is awake. I delete the email. About a week later, my intuition hits me over the head.
Upgrade your seminar ticket to the meet and greet with Tony Robbins.
I am now my intuition’s bitch. I retrieve the email from Trash and call the number.
What am I doing?
I don’t even belong at this seminar.
I wonder if the lady on the other end can tell what a fraud I am and how undeserving I am to be in the VIP tier.
I am terrified at the thought of spending this much money on myself and being in the VIP section, but I am ready to uplevel. I am ready to make some changes in my life. I am ready to move to Hawaii and be a writer, no matter how terrifying.
*end of excerpt
After the Denver event, I flew back to Chicago so delirious with motivation to change my life that I asked my manager if I could work remotely in Hawaii.
Mind you, this is 2018, so it was like asking if I could work remotely from outer space.
The request was so outlandish at that time that I was almost certain that he was going to fire me on the spot for being such a dumbass.
But because my energy was so abundant, I didn’t give a shit what his answer was. If he said no, then I was determined to find a job that would let me work remotely in Hawaii. There was no other option.
He said yes.
But I wasn’t in the clear to pack up and move. I still had to sell my condo, and I didn’t have enough money to move.
So, in Part 2, I am going to tell you about how I manifested $100,000 to move to Hawaii and be a writer.
But for now, I will leave you with this:
Going to Denver was never about meeting Tony or shaking his massive hand.
It was about proving to myself, before I had any evidence that it would work out, that I was the kind of person who moved to Hawaii and became a writer.
That is what abundant energy looks like in action.
I was scared shitless, and everything seemed uncertain. But it didn’t matter because I decided that I was the kind of person who gets to have a life that lights me up.
It was a terrifying, irrational, wildly uncomfortable decision to stop living like my desires were ridiculous and start acting as if they mattered. Because they did.
I was no longer available to live by other people’s rules for life.
Broke energy waits for the sign, the guarantee, the right time, the moment it finally feels deserving enough to take up space in the front row.
Abundant energy retrieves the email from the trash, calls the number with total imposter syndrome, and upgrades the ticket anyway.
Abundance is not just about having money in your bank account. The upgrade had nothing to do with the price of the ticket itself. It was about becoming the woman who buys it.
And that woman, the one who decided she was worthy of the front row before anyone else validated it, is the same woman who ended up moving to Hawaii later that year.
It wasn’t luck. I stopped waiting until I felt ready and started intentionally moving like I already was.
Your next level starts long before your external reality catches up to it.
Your next level is waiting for you.
Are you going to treat your desires like a fantasy? Or treat them like an instruction manual?
And if you want to read all about the lame Chicago motivational seminar, here is the excerpt: https://www.runninginslippers.com/motivational-seminar
Glow Tip:
This is something simple you can start implementing in your day-to-day life.
The next time you feel the urge to talk yourself out of something you deeply want, and you feel your brain starts listing all the reasons it’s unrealistic or all the ways it could fail, ask yourself:
Are my desires the source of resistance? Or is my identity?
And before you scroll away and return to your regularly scheduled overthinking, then ask yourself:
What would the version of me who already has the life I want do next?
Then make ONE move from that identity.
Not because you feel fearless, have proof that it will work out, or suddenly become fiercely confident overnight, but because you decide your desires matter enough to act on them.
So you:
• text the woman you admire and ask her to coffee instead of spending another year surrounded by friendships built entirely on gossip, complaining, and “can you believe what he did?”
• say: “No, that actually doesn’t work for me anymore” instead of abandoning your own needs in real time because you’re terrified of being called difficult, selfish, dramatic, or “too much.”
• start dressing, speaking, posting, and showing up like the version of you who already trusts herself instead of waiting until your confidence, body, bank account, and life are “perfect enough” first.
• become the woman who participates in her own life instead of endlessly consuming content about confidence, abundance, self-worth, and fulfillment while secretly remaining exactly where she is
Because abundance is not just about money. It’s about becoming the kind of person who stops waiting to fully participate in their own life. And when you start moving that way, your entire reality starts responding differently.
That’s what abundant energy looks like in action.
And that’s what it means to shine from the inside.
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