A number of years back, I was on a trip to Budapest with two close friends.

We were traveling from London on one of those budget euro airlines that offers mega cheap flights, but then charges you extra for every single thing. Rushing for the gate after realising we were running late for the flight, we were stopped at security. Here, my friend was told she needed to pay an exorbitant amount extra for her carry on luggage, which was just the teeniest-tiniest bit over the weight limit. 

This friend (who is one of the calmest and most gracious human beings you could ever meet), simply said ‘No thank you' and glided through security, hand luggage in tact. My other friend and I looked at each other and followed her through security without issue, as we ran for the plane and boarded just in time, puffing, panting and laughing with relief as we sunk into our seats.

~

The reason I love this story and bring it up today is because as we move into 2023, more than ever, I am deeply aware of the need to say a graceful and firm, ‘No thank you’ to much of what is presented as the norm in the world.

Something in particular that has arisen time and time again for me, that I have had to constantly say, ‘No thank you’ to, is this normalisation of force that the world tries to imprint on our beings.  

It is so deeply-rooted in our culture, that it creeps in everywhere.

This constant and exhausting undercurrent of needing to force ourselves into becoming. 

To force our businesses, our creativity, our relationships, our healing, our spirituality.  

To fix and solve and push and overcome. 

To place agenda and outcome at the centre of everything we do.

To contort ourselves and our organic pace and unfolding into something that is synthetic and rushed, rather than grounded in naturalness and spiritual heart.

To think that if things do not unfold in the way and at the pace that we have been subtly enculturated into thinking they should, that there is something inherently wrong with us.

~

When I first started Soul and Self, I noticed this force in the realms of the healing/self-development/spiritual industry. This sort of non-organic approach to excavating all of our wounds, and becoming intent on finding things to fix, unblock, uncover, transform, transcend. A state of striving that seemed to be completely in opposition to the natural processes of re-harmonisation and true being.

Right now, it is arising deeply for me in the business space, where every time I accidentally nudge up against the entrepreneurial matrix of online business, I get an overwhelming urge to close down my website and move to a wi-fi free shack on a deserted beach, never to hear the words ‘6-figure-business’ again.

The force that pulsates in the online business space can feel so intensely harsh to the feminine heart.

I wonder how many of us feminine beings with a desire for business and creation, are out there silently berating ourselves for not feeling equipped or inspired to “achieve” in the ways that this system purports we should. Or alternatively, how many women are violently overriding their feminine natures to survive in this frantic business landscape.

~

It’s funny, because when I created my Growing a Business Without Social Media course, it felt like a strange thing to be creating in the context of my business at the time. I did not really want to move into the ‘business strategy’ side of things.

Yet this course just flowed easily out of me, and everything that I needed to do to sell it online, just happened with such ease.

In retrospect though, I now understand that while the course is a very practical way to help women market their business to the right people, there was also a deeper purpose behind it. I see how this course was actually the perfect vehicle to connect me with so many feminine-fuelled, sensitive-hearted women who were seeking respite from the relentless push, force and distortions of not only the online business world, but the world in general.

Women who were craving permission to soften into something that could not be sourced through the millions of competing voices vying for attention on platforms inherently designed to fuel addiction and disassociation. Platforms that disrupt our physiological, emotional and mental health, and hook us into a relentless current of more, more, more. More information to consume, more pressure to create, more unnatural pace to keep up with, more conflicting and divisive ideas, more authorities outside of ourselves, more ways to escape being in our bodies and hearts.

It made me realise that this quiet rebellion from social media was just reflective of a deeper pattern of seeking to restore the organic, the natural, the softened, the anchored. A deeper desire to rest unapologetically in a way of being and creating and unfolding that does not require adhering to the hardened templates of striving and force that have been anchored in our subconscious as the foundations of success.

The distraction-free heart of Feminine Being.

 ~

In relation to my business, softening into organic unfolding and rebuilding trust in naturalness has always been at the heart of my work- in feminine healing, feminine business and in my content and writing services.

Yet in truth, I still get hit by waves of ‘shoulds’ at various times.

What I have noticed though, is that this arises when I inadvertently stumble into pace and expectations that do not belong to me.

It happens when I digest too much information, instead of allowing myself to properly digest and refine the knowledge that I have been organically pointed to.

It happens when I disregard the spirit-led nature of my feminine core, and try to contort myself into what is logical and seen as the ‘right way’ to do things.

All of this is personal to me- but it also reflects a deeper pattern that makes it very easy for our culture to steer us all away from the naturalness of Being that serves as the doorway to our spiritual hearts. To remove us from our distinct and natural unfolding, and the deeper connection to Life that is found in this quiet space.

~

So, as we move into 2023, I continue to say an inwardly firm, ‘No thank you,’ to the multitude of opinions, projections, shoulds and unspoken forces that attempt to impede on this quieter connection that sits beyond the hustle of the world- instead coming back to rest gently in the naturalness and heart of life.

Belinda x

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