Deliberate Receiving Read online

  This sense of failure, of not being good enough at something that was a part of my purpose, is what led me to become a total workaholic. Not only was it a wonderful distraction from my self-deprecating thoughts, but also I figured if I just worked hard enough I could finally prove my worthiness. (Spoiler alert: that doesn’t work).

  I started off by washing dishes in our family’s German deli aged 13 and progressed to managing multimillion-dollar restaurants in San Francisco during my college years. After nearly having a nervous breakdown from working 120 hours a week (yes, seriously, I only slept every other day), due to a complete and utter inability to say no (this is called ‘setting boundaries’), I left that town and profession, along with an abusive romantic relationship, to seek greener pastures and an easier life. (I don’t blame you San Francisco and I will always have a smooshy place for you in my heart!) After taking a bit of a rest and recovering my sanity, I was divinely guided (my manicurist suggested it) to go to Las Vegas. My insistence on doing everything the hard way left me virtually homeless after a few months there (I had to pay my dues, after all), but I eventually decided to become a dealer (cards, not drugs, I swear).

  An empath in crisis

  Living in Vegas was pretty cool, I won’t lie to you, but when you’re sensitive to energy, it can also be a devastatingly negative place. This goes double for those working in casinos in a profession that basically entails getting yelled at by drunk people whose money you just took. (They don’t tend to like that very much. Go figure.) I was earning the most money I ever had, but the desperation, depression and self-loathing of those around me really started to take its toll. It got so bad that every time the energy overwhelmed me, my body hit the reset button and I would faint. That’s right, I was a blackjack dealer who couldn’t keep from passing out. It happened so regularly that my pit boss actually caught me mid-fall on several occasions. (If only I’d been conscious to experience the chivalry.)

  As if that wasn’t a big enough hint, my health also started to fail in other ways. Despite a punishing three-hour session at the gym every day and a ridiculously strict diet (I do not recommend this, I was totally nuts – can you say ‘control freak’?), I began to gain weight rapidly and sometimes was so fatigued that I couldn’t get out of bed. Some 30 (I kid you not) doctors later and I was no closer to figuring out what was wrong with me. Nowadays, they’d probably label me as having chronic fatigue syndrome, but that didn’t exist back then, so they just told me that I was obviously making up all my symptoms and I should maybe see a shrink.

  Tired, depressed and out of answers, I quit Vegas and the casino business and moved to Germany to get the best rehabilitation there is – a mother’s love. Although I wasn’t keen on seeing any more doctors, I did eventually manage to find a naturopath who not only believed that I was telling the truth (I can’t tell you how much of a relief that was), but believed she could help me. Six gruelling months of treatments later, I had my energy back. In the meantime, though, I’d gone ahead and resumed my workaholic ways! Because as long as you CAN work, you might as well, right? (Sarcasm alert!)

  Never one to waste time, I was hired by a German distributor of telecommunications components just two weeks after my arrival. Originally, my job was to answer the phone. Two and half years later, I was visiting multibillion-dollar conglomerates as a sales representative for the company’s fibre-optic components line. (Admit it. You’re totally impressed). I’ve always been successful at pretty much everything I’ve done, at least by conventional standards. I always got promoted quickly, earned a lot of money, was given a great deal of responsibility and received huge amounts of praise. What I wasn’t, was happy. And when I realized that, once again, I’d given into workaholic temptation, I decided to do something completely different.

  I attempt to live the perfect life

  I quit my job and backpacked around Europe for four months. (Take that, corporate life!) I was going to teach English, be a hippie, possibly become a dive-master, stop shaving my armpits (OK, not really), live on an island somewhere, have sand from the beach permanently lodged in my body’s nooks and crannies, and drink everything with a little umbrella in it. Even my morning coffee. I did pretty much just that for four months. My plan was to finish the trip in Barcelona, Spain, get my English Teaching certificate and then continue my vagabonding ways around the globe. I got as far as getting the certificate, but after a month in Barcelona, I found myself drawn to staying there for just a little longer.

  After a year of teaching English and German, and partying harder than I ever did in my college days (I was determined not to fall into old patterns and figured if I acted differently, I’d be different. Spoiler alert: That doesn’t work either.), I realized that I loved Spain, and Barcelona in particular, but HATED teaching languages. I felt as though my soul was being slowly sucked out of my body. The only other job I’d ever had that rivalled this one in terms of boredom was working in retail: standing around all day, waiting for people to buy something. You see, I needed to have a fast-paced job, something to distract me from all the stuff I didn’t want to deal with; the stuff I didn’t think I could deal with. So, I decided to get a ‘real’ job.

  Enough is enough

  Five years later, I was the Operations Head of a technology service centre for one of the largest financial institutions in the world, based in Barcelona. I was, once again, working 18-hour days and slowly but surely killing myself. At this point you may be thinking that I’m a bit of a slow learner and you’d be totally right. My patterns were so ingrained it was ridiculously easy for me to fall back into them. Taking away my 18-hour workdays was a bit like taking away a heroin addict’s fix. I couldn’t just decide to stop. I couldn’t simply act differently (no one can). Something else had to happen in order to effect real change.

  One really good thing about this super-corporate job was that I was in charge of my own centre, which meant I was able to run it (within limits) the way I wanted. I couldn’t really give people as much money as they deserved, but I was able to create a much more positive, infinitely more productive and spectacularly successful work environment by applying many of the principles and techniques I’ll be sharing with you in this book. Without being consciously aware of it, I was teaching people about energy all along.

  After five and a half years of bureaucracy, poor health and never-ending stress, I’d finally had enough. When the company ordered me to lay off all the people I’d personally hired, trained and nurtured, I decided to leave right along with them. Although I’d already managed to make huge strides in terms of my work addiction – I’d reduced my working day to eight hours, becoming MORE successful in the process – I was physically and emotionally exhausted and heartbroken. Shutting down the teams I had helped to create was a bit like killing my own baby (it was also, in my eyes, a very bad business decision). The only thing that brought me relief in that moment was to get out.

  My moment of awakening

  And that’s when my life finally truly changed. Instead of taking a one- or two-week holiday, which served as nothing but a Band-Aid – a relief valve that allowed a bit of the pressure to escape – for the first time in my life, I made some serious time for myself. You see, even when I’d backpacked, I’d kept myself super busy: I changed cities every three days, ran around sightseeing and fell into bed completely exhausted every night. I left no time to really think.

  This time, I took off an entire year and planned to do absolutely nothing. I actually made space in my life. I considered it my sabbatical. The first three months were spent in a kind of coma-like state. I slept a lot, watched some funny shows, listened to inspirational audios by Abraham and Bashar (two channelled entities), meditated and spent some real, quality time with my thoughts. As the stress left my body, all the damage I’d been doing to it over the years became apparent. My back seized up; my foot went numb for two weeks; I had a pinched nerve in my hip. But instead of taking painkillers and just pushing through it, the way I’d al
ways done in the past, I actually rested. I allowed my body to heal. Each ailment took its turn and left. I was purging all the stress out of my system.

  After three months, as I was sitting in meditation one day, the penny dropped. I suddenly understood how the Universe worked. This was what many people call a ‘spiritual awakening’. For me it was the first of many. In that moment, it was as though a veil had been drawn back and I was given access to the Universe’s machine room. I couldn’t yet understand what all the levers and blinking lights were for, I couldn’t comprehend all the details, but the basics had become clear. And oh man, was it exciting.

  In that one moment, it was as though everything I’d known since I was a child came back into my conscious understanding. I saw the underlying reasons why people acted the way they did, why we hurt each other and what it is that we really want. I understood how reality is shaped, and how we can control it, how we DO control it and why most people seem consistently to create what they fear the most. It was like being handed a technical manual for how to be truly human, how to realize my greatest potential and how to actually get the life I’d always wanted. You’d think that all this information would’ve come in with a bang, hitting me like a ton of bricks. But it was much more like remembering something I’d long forgotten but always sort of knew. Instead of a ‘Holy crap! Who knew?’ moment, it felt more like ‘Oh yeah… that’s right!’

  A few months later, I found myself in the Peruvian rainforest, working with a shaman, participating in ayahuasca ceremonies – ayahuasca is a potent jungle vine and powerful plant teacher. I’d always been sensitive to energy, I was even already able to sort of communicate with my spirit guides, but my connection was suddenly ripped wide open. It was as though I’d gone from a 1930s telephone connection to high-speed fibre-optic video. I was given access to the Universal database and every question I’d ever had was answered. And, most profoundly, I was shown in nitty-gritty detail how not even a second of my life had ever been wasted. Every moment I’d experienced had been perfect and had led to me being exactly where I was. None of it had been a mistake, not even the difficult parts. Of course, the suffering had not been necessary as far as the Universe was concerned (that was all me), but none of it had been a mistake.

  These insights led me to an even deeper understanding of why people feel the way they do, why they think, act and react the way they do. I was able to review not only my own life in a way that made sense (along with all the people I’d encountered on my various workaholic adventures), but the lives of others, as well. And what’s more, I was able to explain it.

  I’ve always loved breaking complex systems down into simple components so that others could easily understand them. I’ve always been a teacher. When I was seven, I would teach my stuffed animals and later, when I was in the corporate world, I spent a lot of time training others to be much more effective in their roles. But now, I had found the ultimate topic, at least in my view.

  This crap really works!

  I stopped blaming the crappy jobs, the shitty bosses, the government and even myself. In fact, I stopped blaming altogether. I took responsibility and full control of my destiny. (Blame and responsibility are not the same thing, something I’ll explore in detail later in this book.) I started making changes on an energetic level instead of trying to change things through action. And my life started to quickly and, even better, easily improve. I understood fully why I had finally been able to reduce my workday successfully towards the end of my corporate career, and was able to give up having to work non-stop. I brought balance into my life; I built an awesome six-figure business without ever investing in advertising, lost over 100lb, stopped dating abusive men and started dating amazing guys, learnt to truly love myself and turned into a Happy Shiny Puppy. And, best of all, I now get to help people every day without depleting myself. In fact, it energizes me.

  I have the ability to raise myself to a very high vibration (this term will become clear shortly), connect with my clients’ higher selves (who they really are) and translate that energy back to them. This is a type of channelling, although I don’t ‘leave the room’ or go into trance, so I prefer the term ‘translating’. As I put all my focus on a person, I am able to feel their vibration and the emotions that accompany them (even if they, themselves, are not aware of how they feel), and receive the energy of a person’s Higher Self, translating it into words (I take full credit for the sarcasm, though). I get to connect with who they really are (which is always an amazing, powerful creator) and help them find the path to what it is they really want (an awesome, joyful life beyond their wildest dreams). I get to be a conduit for their self-empowerment, hold the vision of their true potential and, more importantly, help them see it too.

  In order to do this, first I had to connect with who I really am, which is what this book will teach you how to do. My life now is full of joy, awesomeness, love and adventure, and it’s only getting better and better each day. I wrote this book (or ‘translated’ this book), because I want the same for you.

  When I launched my blog and, a year later, my coaching practice and began to apply what I‘d remembered (and helped others to do the same) and teach how the Universal Machine actually works and how to apply it, my clients’ lives began to change dramatically for the better, too. The fact is that much of what I do is really about helping others to strip away the BS we’ve been taught about how reality works and who we really are (which some call the ‘Higher Self’), and to remember what we’ve always inherently known.

  Since then, I’ve worked directly with hundreds of clients and have reached hundreds of thousands more through my blog, and have had the great pleasure and honour of witnessing them deliberately receiving the lives they’ve always wanted. Like me, they’ve left behind depression, sadness, workaholism, false obligation, a sense of failure, self-criticism, never-ending stress, the feeling of being trapped, loneliness, powerlessness and anything else that stands in the way of pure joy.

  These are real people, living in the real world. No one I know has changed their life by sitting on a mountain for six months and chanting ‘Om!’ These are people with jobs and businesses, partners who don’t necessarily have any interest in inner work, kids, PTA meetings, judge-y neighbours and chocolate addictions. What’s more, these are intelligent people, well educated, with strong minds that won’t just accept any old theory on blind faith. Any new paradigm that has a chance of being adopted into practice has to make sense, dammit, or it’s going in the bin. In short, these are my people.

  Not one of these individuals was required to give up the comfort of their iThingy, go vegan, hug trees (you may want to, but you don’t have to), talk to their partner about their chi, or switch to green tea against their will. The point of all this ‘work’ is to get the life that you truly want, not the life that some guru (or the TV or your mother) thinks you should want. And that’s exactly what you get when you finally understand how the Universe functions and begin to live your life according to a completely different set of rules (the ones that actually work). You get the life YOU want.

  I know this sounds like a lofty promise. But trust me, whatever challenges you’re currently facing, I’ve been there. Crappy job? Check. Shitty relationships? Check. Weight and health problems? Check and check. Poverty? Checkaroony. Rejection? Checkadoodle. Not being understood/being the weirdo/discrimination? Checkilicious. Yeah, I’ve got you covered. But not only was I able to leave all of those experiences behind, I’ve helped tons of real-life people do the same. You can actually get the life you’ve always dreamed of. And it’s not even that hard. You just need to understand how reality actually works, that’s all. Or rather, you have to remember.

  And that’s where I come in – I’m here to help remind you of what you already know, what you’ve always known deep down. It’s that voice calling ‘Bullshit!’ several times a day. Like me, you may have done your best to ignore that little voice, to shut it up, but the very fact that you’re holding
this book proves that you weren’t all that successful. Thank Gawd!

  So, if you’re ready to have some updated ancient knowledge dropped on you, if you’re ready to be (lovingly) slapped with enlightenment, if you’re ready to remember who you really are and how the game actually works, keep on reading.

  Let’s start with the basics, shall we?

  Chapter 2

  Welcome to the Game

  At some point, you’ve probably come across the idea that ‘you create your own reality’. And, sure, that sounds great in theory, but how exactly is that supposed to work? I mean, if you actually do create your own reality, if you create everything that’s in your life, then why in the hell is your world filled with a bunch of crap you don’t want? Wouldn’t you have created it to be more awesome? Wouldn’t you have created a life that’s easier, more full of joy and with way fewer idiots? Well, of course you would have, if only you knew what you were doing, if only you knew how it actually worked. But you were trained out of that knowledge, encouraged to forget, and therefore weren’t consciously shaping your reality, which is exactly why you’re reading this book.

  The truth is you do create your own reality; you’ve just been doing it by default. We all have. And it’s not because you’re not capable of more; it’s just that you’ve been living according to some very limiting ‘rules’ based on some very limiting and mostly false observations and assumptions.

  Imagine entering a world full of vending machines. Only you can’t see what’s in them, and there are no labels on the buttons. You begin to push some of those buttons randomly, and stuff starts squirting out – some of it very tasty (wanted) and a lot of it really gross (unwanted). After a while, you may begin to notice some patterns; for example, every time you push a certain button, you get this nasty mushy paste that tastes like old feet. So, you mark that button with a red dot, and don’t push it any more. When other newbies join you, you pass on what you’ve learnt so far. You teach them which buttons to avoid. Those newbies then teach other newbies and so on, until after a while, the newest newbies don’t even know why they’re avoiding the buttons with the red dots. They just do.