When nothing is working…

“Nothing is working. Like literally nothing.” This was me. This has been me. In a lovely, former season, my life felt like it was anything but blossoming (yet). Rather, I was in the thin veil of change that existed between fall and winter. Between letting go and hunkering down. The time when what's alive becomes barren which exposes its might. The seasons of our lives are always changing. The beautiful always follows the beastly, in time.

It's incredible to me how easy it is to lose sight of how long good things actually take. In a world where 75 minutes feels like an eternity for dinner to arrive at our doorstep, where waiting 20 minutes for a car to show up in front of my house would damn near piss me off, much less shipping that exceeds a few days...we're being unhinged by the immediate comfort of conveniency. Conveniency is a form of certainty, after all.

When did we begin to conflate convenience with payoff? When did we begin to expect amazon-shipment speeds for the most important changes in our life? Progress takes hard work, we all know that. But what we've forgotten...what I've forgotten...is that just because you work hard doesn't mean you reward hard, immediately.

Earlier this year, I had to laugh at myself when I realized I'd thrown a mini temper tantrum over the fact that two weeks of dedication to my health didn't have the exact reward I was hoping for. Turns out it came around the 5-week mark.

And when after 3 months of working on a really specific work stream, I wasn't seeing the conversion I had imagined. Turns out there's no silver bullet and these things take a long time.

So, I legitimately asked myself: should I just call it? Clearly, it's not working.

Cue a wiser Maxie: Girl, IT'S NOT WORKING <YET> It will. But only if you stay at it. Only if you drop your relationship to convenience. To instant gratification. To immediate payoff. To quick turn around times.

What is worthwhile is rarely convenient. There's so much truth in the fact that Good things take time. But we'll never experience those good things unless we exercise endurance. And patience in the payoff.

So, look at where in your life you're ready to throw in the towel too soon. Because it's not going according to your timeline. Because it's not happening as fast as you'd like. Because it taking ground-shipment speed, not prime-delivery speed. Instead, stay at it. Hanging in there doesn't mean that you can't change your approach or make adjustments. It just means that you stay the course even while the course bends and turns. It means you don't consider yourself a failure before you've ever given yourself a chance to succeed. In fact, you shouldn’t consider yourself a failure at all, because even if you don’t see the outcome you’re hoping for…the very act of showing up will take you to a new frontier altogether. 

What you want...what you really want...is on the other side of that often hard, completely maddening, journey. It's going to take way longer than you think. But I’ll tell you what I’m telling myself right now, let it take as long as it needs. 

The art of doing that means that you trust the process, which means you trust yourself. 

If you’re finding your “trust-thy-self” meter a little low these days, I’ve opened my You’re Not Lost LIVE course back up. Not only will you have a line of sight into where you’re going in your life, you’ll create a renewed confidence in your ability to take each step of the way. It’s why I created this immersive experience, and why I’ll be gifting 1:1s to the first three people who enroll and pay in full this week. 

You’ve got this. It’ll all start working, eventually. It always does.

Woman on xx