A Whisper to a Scream

We all know That Voice. The one that pops up in our heads but doesn't feel like it comes from our own brains. The one that feels like a secret someone else is whispering to us. He's not the one. You're going to get hurt. This job is draining your spirit dry. Maybe you could make a career out of that hobby you love. 

We hear it and get that sensation of "hmm..." and then we go on our merry way.  

Oprah likes to talk about how intuition begins as the softest of suggestions—maybe a gentle nudge—and if you don't listen to it, it gets louder and louder until it's like a brick upside the head. And if you continue to ignore it, eventually it'll be like an entire brick wall coming down on you. Catastrophe.

When I dated Mr. Redflags years ago, my first warnings about him came as quiet inclinations. Then they grew to cries and blossomed into alarm sirens and then into the brick wall of a night when I found out about the other girl and the potential baby.

What would have happened if I'd listened to the first whisper?

Caroline Myss says that intuition is the source of our greatest suffering because it points out to us when we are betraying ourselves.

Our intuition is trying to protect us from betraying ourselves. 

It's pretty amazing when you think about that. This powerful guidance system we have built in to help us stay true to our essential selves. If we're willing to listen, that is. Although even when we don't, we'll still get the lesson.

Sometimes the crumbling brick wall is rescuing us from some sort of worse fate. It would just hurt a heck of a lot less if we paid attention to it when it was a mere speck of clay.

The Starting Point of All Good Things: LOVE

It was the summer of 2007 and I was camping with Mr. RedFlags in a beautifully lush state park in Oregon. He had retreated to our tent and I was lying on my back, on top of a picnic table, staring at the sky wondering what in the world I should do.

Leave or stay in the relationship.

RedFlags and I had been together over a year at that point; the majority of the relationship spent fighting, mistrusting, questioning, knowing it was the wrong fit for both of us but ignoring our own instincts. That night he had shared yet another story from his past that I just wasn't equipped to handle. His load was too much for me to bear.

So I rested on that splintery wood and prayed to God and the Universe for an answer on how to proceed.

What came to me under the canopy of June starlight was a single word: LOVE.

I thought, "Okay, that's the answer. I have to just love him. Help him. Save him. Try to accept all of these things that my heart keeps instinctively rejecting."

So I made the decision to stay. And it was ugly. And trying to love him didn't rescue either of us from the inevitable fall we had lined up to take. 

What I know now was that the word that came to me from some otherworldly instructor that night was right, but my interpretation of it was completely wrong.

It wasn't Mr. RedFlags who I was supposed to love, it was myself. 

I'm not here to say that we should abandon the people in our lives during times of struggle or split when we feel uncomfortable. I don't think that's it at all. I do think we should give our love freely, but if we're sacrificing the love we have for ourselves in the process, it's a recipe for disaster.

You can't be happy and love anyone else if you're not madly in love with yourself. 

Not a little bit in love, MADLY. You've got to know that you are the #1 most important person ever and that you deserve the best—or else all those little doubts and self-defeating thoughts will catch up with you and wreak havoc on your relationships and your own sense of well-being.

I believe that to get everything you want from this life, you have to start from a place of love. 

Want to attract a guy who adores you? Start by adoring yourself. Want to land a job where you're challenged (in a good way) and appreciated daily? Start by knowing what an asset you are. Want to find the perfect dress for that upcoming wedding you have to attend? Focus on how much you'll love wearing it and how excited you are that it fits perfectly.

I'm sure there will be times in my future when I look back up to a night sky and ask for guidance on how to move forward, and I may get an answer like I did back in 2007. Only this time, I'll know the meaning of it may be more than I first think.

Love on.

Just Because You Make Your Manifesting Bed Doesn't Mean You Have to Lie in It

When my Mr. W and I were on our honeymoon last year in Italy, my suitcase was stolen on the third-to-last day of the trip. We were traveling by train from Salerno to Rome and as Mr. W chucked my bag onto the community luggage rack, a little voice inside me said, "You shouldn't leave it there."

I ignored it and walked the length of the train car to our assigned seats. Again, I felt uneasy but told myself I was just overreacting. I have a tendency to worry about my bags when I travel. In fact, I purposely packed only two carry-ons for our two-week trip because I didn't want to lose my luggage on the flight.

When we reached our train stop and the suitcase was gone, (after panic and tears) I began to wonder whether I had manifested the thievery with my own worrisome energy or if my intuition had been trying to direct me and I had ignored it.

What I realize now is that it could have been both.

You can manifest crummy things in your life but your intuition will almost always swoop in and try to rectify the situation. 

I experienced the same thing when I was dating Mr. Redflags.

Sure, I attracted him into my life as I did every other person I'd ever dated. But when my intuition said, "This isn't right: proceed with caution," I should have listened to it instead of just rolling over and crying in my manifesting bed.

Most of us won't put out positive juju 100% of the time, which means we have to rely on our instincts to assess what we attract and guide us on whether it's smart to move closer—or run for the hills.

Heed those little voices inside your head. Pay attention to those twinges in your belly. However you've managed to make your manifesting bed, those little alarms will wake you up and save you if the house ever catches on fire.

July – September 2007: Climbing out of the Pits

After breaking up with the cheating Mr. Redflags, I made a vow to never again rush in, settle, ignore my intuition, or let myself feel diminished in a relationship. Even though I could recognize our affair for the mess it was, I still struggled in the months after we parted. I felt raw and betrayed and knew that I needed to take back control over my happiness.

So I made plans to climb a mountain with friends.

Something incredibly transformative took place inside me as I trained for our 17-mile hike up Half Dome in Yosemite. It was as though the strength developing in my body spread right to my recuperating heart and sense of self. Everything began feeling surer and more agile.

A couple weeks before our trip up the mountain, I signed up again for online dating and agreed to be set up with someone who worked at my company. Even though Mr. Redflags had hurt me tremendously, I didn't feel scared to get back into the swing of dating. I took full responsibility for how things had turned out with him and I knew my intuition would help me prevent that from ever happening again.

Accepting responsibility for your part in a situation is really empowering. It means you have a choice about whether you'll allow something like it to take place again. It means you're not a victim. 

The best part of this time was that I finally felt like I knew 100% what I deserved and had this amazing sense of certainty that I was going to get it.

It was like my worst relationship experience had given me the awareness I needed to find my best one. I was feeling choosier than ever—but thanks to my Wonderful List, collage, decoded dating patterns and defined deal-breakers, I was totally clear on whom I was seeking. I felt confident I would be able to distinguish right-fit from wrong-fit in terms of the men I met.

About a week before I climbed Half Dome, the man who would become my husband contacted me online. It took me 15 days to write him back. I was going slow with the guy I'd met at work, had been chatting with another nice guy online and wasn't sure I wanted to complicate things with a third prospect. But after I wrote him back and he replied, I was pretty instantly intrigued.

My gut had a good feeling, but I kept my pace cautionary.

Mr. Wonderful-to-be wrote me an email just about every day. We talked about Half Dome and a big hike he'd done in Canada a few years prior. We traded stories about family and  music and our favorite HGTV shows. He told me he had a trip to Italy planned with a friend and would like to take me out when he returned.

I think we talked on the phone only once before he left for his two-week vacation. I was so excited when he came home because it meant we finally would get to meet face-to-face. It had been five whole weeks since I first responded to his email.

On November 11, 2007, he took me out for fondue. I hope it was the last first date I'll ever have.

February 2007: Some of the Best Money I Ever Spent

In the midst of my mess with Mr. Redflags, I decided to start seeing a therapist—at the time because I thought it would help me repair my relationship.

What it did instead was completely change the way I saw myself.

Sitting on a couch having someone point out the real way I was talking about (and to) myself was one of the most eye-opening experiences I've ever had. My doctor would catch me in a statement and say, "Listen to yourself. What you are saying here is not true."

What are you regularly saying to yourself that's not true?

One of the lies I let get me down was that I was boring and unworldly. Mr. Redflags had lived in Germany and traveled all over Europe and had tale after tale of adventure. Coupled with the memories of a childhood that didn't include air travel, my self-comparisons to Redflags made me think I was totally inadequate in the life experience department.

Completely a lie.

As my therapist pointed out, I had been to Europe twice, hitting 3 different countries. I was continually trying to plan fun outings with friends. I sought out adventure—even if it wasn't always on a grand scale. With his help, I started telling a different story about myself, inwardly and outwardly. And that helped me see me for the person I really was: someone who deserved happiness.

Going to counseling had so many benefits, it would probably take me hours to list them all. 

I am wholeheartedly convinced that every person on earth could benefit from chatting with a therapist once a week. It really does help you unravel all the tangles that have tripped you up in the past and get to the core of who you are.

If you're considering it, I highly recommend forging ahead. I truly believe it was some of the best money I've ever spent—and I don't think I'd be where I am today without it.

May 2006: No Gut-Feeling-Trusting, No Glory

I met Mr. Redflags at a point in my online dating journey when I was desperate to spend time with someone who was outgoing and self-assured. I may have even said, "I just want someone confident," before we had our first date. Darn that "just" word. I already knew what could happen when I used it the wrong way...

At the close of our second date, Mr. Redflags launched into a big speech about how I was the girl he'd been waiting for his entire life and that he wanted me to take down my online profile and date him exclusively. It was only our SECOND DATE. And it wasn't like we'd been having a big 'ole email love affair for months leading up to that.

My gut told me something was fishy. Either he was trying to get me in bed or he was a relationship addict who didn't really care about getting to know who I was at all—he just needed a warm body to fill the role of girlfriend. Maybe it was both.

But my hopeful head said, "Well, maybe this is the way it's supposed to be. Maybe this is right." So I ignored the pit in my stomach and agreed to make a go of things.

A couple weeks later, the gut again went into overdrive. After holding my hands across the table at a sushi restaurant and telling me he promised to give me a life of adventure if I stayed with him forever, Mr. Redflags disappeared. At least for a night.

I thought it was strange to not hear from him, given our exclusivity talk and his vow to give me an action-packed life. My stomach felt twitchy.

The next day when he explained that he'd been out to dinner "tying up some loose ends with a girl he'd been sort of dating before me," my gut punched my kidney and yelled GET OUT!

But I ignored it.

I ignored it over and over again. For fourteen months. Through highly suspect behavior. Through my own feelings of wavering attraction. Through fight after fight. A move in and a move out. A half-hearted confession I didn't recognize as such at the time.

And then, in July 2007, I found out that Mr. Redflags had cheated on me with his (married) ex-girlfriend from college and there was a baby and a potential paternity test mixed into the equation.

The night I hacked into his email and discovered the news was not my proudest moment. But it was the justification I'd been needing for over a year.

My trusty tummy had been right all along.

Intuition doesn't lie. It doesn't have an ulterior motive. It is a manifestation of our most genuine instincts. A gift. 

Mr. Redflags' and my relationship officially ended a few days later after I'd processed what I had seen and told him I knew everything.

From that moment on, I promised my gut I'd never again discount its warnings. And it has never once let me down.

January 2006: Visual Roadmaps and the Importance of Red Flags

A friend of mine had started investigating the Law of Attraction and, knowing that I was a fan of all things manifesty, suggested that in addition to my List I should try making a "man collage" as part of my effort to find the right guy. Always up for a night of crafting (wine and Sex and the City included), I took the idea and ran with it.

I used the Wonderful List I'd made more than a year prior to guide me as I scoured magazines looking for images that epitomized my Mr. Wonderful. Thankfully, the List was still totally accurate, so it provided the perfect foundation.

My final collage product was a work of art. When I looked at it, I really felt like there had to be a guy out there who matched it.

Certain that I could now find the man who my collage represented, I signed up for online dating (again) a couple months later—just weeks before my 30th birthday.

I was doing pretty well using my List and collage as inspiration. I went out with about ten different guys in two months (including an ex-professional ice skater, a "waterfall hunter" and the Vice Mayor of a neighboring town...no joke). And then I got bamboozled.

I found someone who, on the outside, seemed to match my collage pretty darn well. But inside, he was an arsenal of red flags.

Never ignore the red flags. They will always come back to bite you.

Thanks to Mr. Redflags, my next lesson from the Universe was all about trusting intuition and recognizing that actions speak louder than words.