When I first heard of Ted Talks I had a twinge of recognition.
The second time I heard of them, from a client who had it on her bucket list to speak on a Ted stage, I felt the call even more deeply.
When I bought my ticket to see TedxBend in 2014, I was so excited I could hardly stand it.
I walked into the auditorium and saw the stage and just knew I would be up there the next year. The energy I felt surging through my body was not just the excitement of the crowd or the day…it felt like “rightness.”
After the show I jumped up on stage and had a friend of mine snap a picture of me so I could hold my vision even more clearly.
People and opportunities came into my life over the next few months that felt familiar and significant to me. I didn’t know how or why yet, but I just felt that things were in motion in some shape or form as I took action throughout the year to build my business, make connections, speak at events, be seen and heard in the community.
I applied to be a speaker for the 2015 event. I kept the feeling of knowing it was so throughout all of this unknown.
In January I found out I was an alternate. They said there were a lot of strong candidates, but only a certain # of spots.
My response: “Bummer.”
Would I prepare my talk anyway and get ready as if, just in case they needed to replace someone or that person couldn’t make it?
My response to being an alternate: “Yes!” (I still just knew it was coming, and wondered how and why it was coming like this, but accepted this was the way it was working).
I signed the release saying I wouldn’t tell the world about Tedx and began thinking about my idea. A lot.
At the end of March I tried to back out. We had to move in April, my husband was traveling just before the event, I didn’t know where we were going to be living. After talking with one of the organizers and coaches for the speakers, I decided to stay on as an alternate.
This was hands down the hardest talk to prepare for. I didn’t know if I would actually be speaking, I had so many things going on in my life that I didn’t have time to write or prepare for the biggest talk of my life that I didn’t know for sure I would be giving. I had a couple close friends and confidants tell me “let it go – you can apply next year.” I thought that was the best thing to do, even my gut (or was it fear?) was telling me to quit, but something bigger was also at work-I could feel it too, and even though I was scared, and had no idea what I was going to talk about and no guarantee that I would be up there, I decided to stay on.
I just knew…and I had doubts that would creep in: “maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m just wanting it so bad, and it’s my ego that thinks I’ll be there, but I’m kidding myself.”
When I got the call 3 weeks before the event that indeed I was going to be on stage speaking. I was over the moon. Lots of celebration and joy in our house! I still, couldn’t tell the world though.
Joy quickly gave way to fear. What will I say? You can read more about how my idea changed me and what I went through to get ready HERE.
Fast forward to the day. I was so nervous. It was beyond any pre-talk jitters I had ever experienced. I was near the end of the event, so I had all day to build even more nervous energy!
I kept telling myself: I’m supposed to be here. It will be OK.
I knew this would happen. I chose it a long time ago.
Let it unfold.
This soothed me.
Even when I wanted to run away right before I went onstage and it took every ounce of willpower to move my body and walk out onto that red spot, I kept remembering that I just knew.
People kept telling me: “You manifested this!” And I found myself saying, “I didn’t manifest it, I simply worked hard to get out of the way of what was meant to be.”
Manifesting has this feeling of having to “make” something happen. Of having to create something out of nothing, of manipulating things to get one’s own way.
This experience (and others like it in my life) didn’t feel this way. It felt more like:
“I just know this is what is/will happen or is the path for me to choose, and in the choosing of it, my work was to simply keep walking the path in total and complete faith, even when others didn’t believe, or I faltered in my belief.”
Mostly, the work I did was around getting the hell out of the way. To let go of my resistance. To release what I thought it would look like or what my ego wanted…
Access Consciousness™ calls it “actualizing” instead of manifesting. It can be a foreign process for many of us, because we are taught to go out there and “make it happen”: visualize and get things done. But my experience has taught me that the biggest, most significant and amazing experiences (“manifestations”) in my life have been those where I followed my heart & soul and did the work of releasing my fear, my ego wants & needs and letting go of attachment or needing anyone else’s approval or OK, and just letting what I already chose, to be.
It can be easier said than done…until you do it.
What do YOU just know?
Get out of your own way, that’s all the work you need to do. 🙂
