Courage Is Standing Safely On The Trappings of Success And Leaping Anyway

I used to schedule my day in fifteen-minute increments. Have you ever run to the bathroom at the absolute last second just because you were so busy? Well, that is how my life was. I was a business leader building a growing consumer product company, which had more employees than I knew how to manage. We were listed in Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the top fastest-growing companies in America. I was twenty-eight years old and on my way to being burned out by thirty. The road paved with success was proving to be less fulfilling than I had imagined.

One day, I did something completely out of the norm, and it changed my life forever. On this particular day, I was feeling trapped and needed a break to just be alone. I remembered reading an article that said taking your focus off your routine, even for a short time, could get your creative juices flowing again. I was hoping for a little more than creativity-I wanted to feel free again. So I told my staff I would be gone for the next two hours, although I had no idea where or what I was going to be doing in those two hours. At the time, this seemed crazy, even to me. There was always something to do and never enough time to do it in, but this compulsion to escape for a while was strong enough to pull me out of the office.

I climbed in my car and began driving, even though I had no idea where I was going. This was even more ridiculous to me. My mind questioned my actions, asking, Why am I wasting my time? There was some other part of me, however, that was suddenly separate from my mind that said,Keep driving. So I did.

I listened to this small voice that seemed to be me, but I hadn't heard it for a very long time. It kept saying, Drive this way, keep going. I would stop on occasion and ask, "Are we there yet?" like a child on a long car trip, anxious to arrive at their destination. This has been symptomatic of my life, always wanting to get where I was going. Then, when I got there, I was not completely satisfied, so off again I would go to the next place.

I was driving through a neighborhood in San Francisco that I was completely unfamiliar with and saw a Starbucks on the corner. I heard,Pull over. You can imagine my relief. Starbucks was a place I could very much relate to and feel comfortable in. In fact, it kept me going through my sixty-hour work weeks.

I ordered my usual grande soy latte and sat down in a chair with a view of the street outside, enjoying some familiarity in this strange experiment I seemed to be participating in. After several minutes passed by, I noticed a homeless man walking across the street toward Starbucks. As I studied him, I realized I knew him. He was a man from the neighborhood I currently lived in; however, I hadn't seen him in at least two years. He looked very much the same as I remembered him, dressed in very elegant, preppy-tattered clothing, as if he came out of a J. Crew catalogue and never changed his clothes again.

I was elated to see him because I thought he had died. For many years, he had been a fixture in my neighborhood. I would often buy him coffee, and he would smile and mutter incoherently. There was something about him I could relate to, something that attracted me to him. He had something I wanted, which seemed absurd, considering he lived on the street and was mostly incomprehensible.

Without hesitating, I jumped out of my seat and ran out of Starbucks to greet him. "Remember me, remember me?" I shouted. "You hung out in my neighborhood. I am so happy to see you. How are you?" Before I could finish, he turned and looked at me with a clarity and certainty so powerful, it was as if a wind came and blew right into my face and said,Wake up, child. Needless to say, I was paying attention. Staring deep into my eyes with a power beyond the physical, he said, "You want to help people, but you do not know how." Then he walked away.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. I could hardly breathe. There was a resonance there that was so deep, it made me stop in my tracks. In that moment, I knew there was some greater vision for my life that I had been willing to ignore. I was meant to help people, and he was right-I didn't know how. This encounter made me begin to ask those deeper questions of myself: What is success? And do I really have it if I don't know who I am and how I am meant to contribute to the world? Yes, I had what I had always thought I wanted: a wildly successful business, appearances on national TV, magazine articles written about me, woman entrepreneur of the year. My business success was my dream. Here I was living it, and yet I didn't feel fulfilled. It felt like a deep hole inside of me that was longing to be filled and everything I had thought would fill it did not.

This strange encounter led me to do the bravest thing I have ever done. I walked away from "success" to find my true path; it was as if I had to leave where I could fit in to find where I belonged. I left my career, my relationship, my home, and my life as I knew it and went on a spiritual pilgrimage of sorts despite my fears of ending up homeless on the street (how ironic). I sat with a shaman in Bali, studied with a medicine man in California, and channeled healing energy with John of God in Brazil, among many other seeking experiences. Each time, I asked the spiritual teacher what I should do with my life and what my next business venture should be, desperately hoping one of them would tell me. Looking back, I bet this was comical to these enlightened masters. Each gave me a variation on the same answer: "Jenai, it is not about doing; just be." This infuriated me because I had no idea what they were talking about. I went from one teacher to another, attended countless seminars, and read piles of self-help books, hoping that the next teacher, workshop, or book would somehow change me. It's not that these things didn't help me-they did-but it was in the seeking that I was never really able to find my own truth (the spirit within me). I was like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, never recognizing I always had the power to go home. I was looking for the great Oz to tell me what to do, when I had the answers within me all along.

Today, all I have to do is look at my life and the people I serve and I can see the evidence of what following my truth, what I call a spirit-led life, can do. I now have a career doing the work I truly love to do, teaching and coaching others how to access their own answers so they have a more direct route home than I did. I call this the Spirit Coach Method and certify those who are called to the path of being Spirit Coaches. I lead spiritual retreats in beautiful places with amazing people and also take groups on spiritual pilgrimages to see John of God in Brazil. At the Foundation for Spiritual Development, I teach healing, intuition development, and living from spirit. In addition, I help run a weekly center that offers free energetic healing to the public. I have the privilege of blessing babies, marrying people, and helping people cross over. All of these things and more are an extension of my true path. If you had told me fifteen years ago that this is the life I would be living, I would have said you were out of your mind. As it happened, "out of my mind" was exactly where I needed to go to find my path, the one that led me to exactly where I belong. Now this is the kind of success I can live with.

From the new book, Spirit Led Instead: The Little Tool Book of Limitless Transformation. Order Your copy today on Amazon.