Leap and the Net Will Appear
By Betsy Gutting, JD
Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. ~Johann von Goethe
“You want me to do what?” I vigorously protested. Little did I know, I was having my first of many private conference calls with my intuitive guidance, or “’Spirit,” as I will refer to my own intuition and higher power herein. Just the night before I had signed a contract with Spirit. In this contract, I solemnly swore to follow my dream of finding meaningful work I passionately loved. Now, less than a full night’s sleep later, I was already balking.
“Just tell me what to do!” I had begged, “give me a sign, some … any … direction.” The universe quickly obliged. That night I got my first assignment.
It came to me in a sleeping dream so powerful it woke me up mid-stream: there I was, in vivid Technicolor, delivering a stand-up comedy routine for a real, live laughing audience! It was all there: a small, black stage backed by a red velvet curtain; a dark, smoke-filled bar; and me, spontaneously connecting with the audience.
Me -- doing stand-up comedy? Ridiculously impossible! Especially given my background. Nearing 40, I was a former lawyer, who’d left a hard-won law career to find my passion while parenting to two active girls. Part-time freelance writing had jump-started the creative juices. But I had never contemplated being a comedienne, and no, I was not funny as a kid. Clearly, nothing in my past had prepared me for this gigantic leap into the comedic unknown. I was simply not qualified. “NO!!!!” I quietly shouted at 2 a.m. as my husband lie peacefully ignorant next to his frantic wife, “I cannot do this!”
“Too late,” I felt Spirit gently nudge, “you’ve already signed the contract.” Inspired action was calling, as it always does once we commit to walk through the doors of our dreams.
“Marching orders,” Julia Cameron dubs these frightening yet passion-inducing calls to our creative destiny. In her spiritual-path-to-higher-creativity primer, The Artist’s Way, Cameron urges readers to take the leap, act on their marching orders, and expect a creative breakthrough to follow. Have faith that “if you leap, the net will appear,” she encourages.
Next came a wave of “exhilarated fear,” a feeling that appears only when one contemplates doing something unfathomably scary. I call it “exhilarated fear” because it’s an odd mixture of delighted passion and tremendous trepidation about what you are about to do.
Too restless to return to sleep, I began scrawling raw joke material onto the pages of my dream journal. My whole body buzzed with the excitement of taking on this challenge. My passion came from the pipe-dream possibility that maybe, I actually could make an audience laugh. What if this were possible? I wondered. What if I could, even momentarily, succeed at this? The more I imagined myself being engagingly funny on stage, the more I felt the sense of who I was, expanding. I didn’t realize it then, but the small act of writing down a few… ahem …. “attempts” at punch lines, actually began moving me toward my dream.
What I’ve learned since that fateful day is that inspired action is the act of saying “yes” to our dreams. “Yes” -- in spite of seemingly contrary circumstances. Like gathering design ideas for your dream home in the stark face of an empty bank account. Or signing up for the voice class even though you “know” you could “never” sing for an audience. In fact, the tell-tale sign of an inspired action is that it fails to make logical sense.
That’s because our deepest callings come from our heart, and our heart wants nothing to do with logic. Our heart is here to serve our soul, and our soul’s job is to wake us up to who we are … to who we came here to become.
The voice of our heart speaks to us in many ways. And though the voice is always trying to get our attention, we often don’t hear it in the humming-along-busy-ness of our everyday lives. It speaks to us through our dreams, a friend’s poignant words, or a strangely gripping ad glaring at you from the back of the city bus. The heart always uses our most deeply felt emotions to get through to us.
Inspired action may not make sense, but it does make you feel passionate. Passion is the heart’s deepest language. It’s your soul’s calling card, the inspired medium your soul uses to wake you up to your destiny. If an idea or a new endeavor inspires the mix of passion and fear I mentioned above, it is worth paying attention to.
You know you’ve taken inspired action when doors begin opening for you. As W.H. Murray writes about his own discoveries in his book, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition:
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one that would otherwise never have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man would have believed would have come his way.
My “stream” of wholly unanticipated events began the morning after my comedy dream. I “happened upon” a local university extension course catalogue. The catalogue listed a course entitled … you guessed it … Beginning Stand-Up Comedy. On the fourth and final day of class, my fellow students and I took turns walking into the fire, each delivering a 3-minute routine to an almost-full house at Seattle’s Comedy Underground.
By some amazing miracle, I left the stage with my body and mind still fully intact. I had almost no memory of what I spewed on stage, although as the days passed, bits and pieces did surface in my memory, much to my chagrin! Despite or perhaps, because of, the imperfections, my loved ones gleefully cheered on my performance. Encouragement from seasoned comedians and many amateur open-mike nights followed, and soon I was landing professional gigs.
You might want to hear that I successfully took my act on the road, or landed an appearance on Leno. But I am not writing to tell you about my professional success as a comedienne. At the risk of sounding like a heretic in our results-oriented culture, what I gained from my comedy adventure has nothing to do with the outcome. What I learned is this: Spirit gave me the experience to wake me up to my passionate, unbridled nature; to encourage me to grow into the fullness of who I am; to expand in ways I never thought imaginable.
I’ve learned that we all come into being with a blueprint etched on our hearts. Our blueprint, like our DNA, is utterly and beautifully unique. Like an inspired itinerary, our blueprint carries clues to awakening our passion and living out our destiny. All we have to do is ask to know it, and it will be revealed clue by clue. But as the saying goes, be careful what you ask for!
When you ask to see your blueprint, you are also committing to honor its design, in whatever ways you are led. But here’s the catch. In this treasure hunt for who you are and what you’re meant to do, you are only given one clue at a time. Like most of us, I would much prefer to see the entire itinerary in advance. I would like a guarantee that not only will my efforts pay off, but that I will arrive unscathed, wealthy, and well-loved at my originally intended destination.
Ha! Of course that’s not how the game works. If it were, we would already know how the movie of our life ends. Why would we even show up to see it?
Instead, on this journey of manifesting our deepest desires, we are asked to be willing to embrace and solve the mystery of each clue, without knowing where the treasure is hidden. Committing to your dreams means letting the divine mystery of your unique destiny take its own course.
My comedy adventure turned out to be a stopover en route to my passion as a career and personal coach. I now happily guide and help empower others to realize their dreams and passionate life purpose. How could I have known then that taking the comedy stage would give me the confidence to lead groups in career workshops? Or that painful nights of “bombing” would force me to let go of my stubborn perfectionism so I could more fully embrace all of who I am?
We simply cannot know what will be, because the process of life is about discovering our heart’s blueprint, clue by glorious clue. And it’s the “not knowing,” which actually creates our hunger for more new experiences. Saying “yes!” to the hunger calls on our passionate nature to rise up -- and move us forward in the direction of our dreams.
Betsy Gutting is a career and personal coach based in Seattle, WA. She is passionate about helping lawyers and other professionals find true success and fulfillment in their careers, businesses, relationships and lives. For a complimentary coaching consultation to discuss how Betsy can help you achieve your goals, contact her at betsy@betsygutting.com. By phone, 206.605.2900.