I went to see a psychic a few weeks ago. I had always been curious about them, but never followed up to see one.
It was a chance thing. A friend of mine mentioned that she had been recommended to an amazing one, and of course it got me curious. So I asked for the psychic’s contact info, shot her a quick text message and then she messaged right back to say that she had an opening the next day and to send on my birthdate, birth time and location.
The next day we spoke on the phone for an hour.
And I kid you not, this woman knew everything about me.
Told me specific things about my childhood (mom was sick, threw myself into school and sports as a kid to cope), should be running my own business (have been doing it for the last 15 years), had been betrayed financially in my last business (true story) and that something significant had ended January 2017 (a relationship) and that I myself had psychic qualities (creepy but true).
She also said that I have a very diverse friend group and hate drama in friendships and walk away quickly from any kind of negative situation (true story) and she said there had been a black cloud over my life the last two and a bit years and that November 2018 would be the start of a new chapter where a lot of amazing things would happen (thank you psychic, am stoked to see!). She told me other things, like scorpios were the source of the wisest friends in my life that gave me very valuable advice (later realized 3 out of my 5 closest friends are scorpios)…it just went on.
Finally she said that I should watch my back because someone that I had let get close to me would betray me in the next couple of months.
I was playing a guessing game in my head trying to figure who it could be, and after a few weeks forgot about it.
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This past year I decided to get back and start girlsCAN again.
For anyone that knows me this is a passion of mine that I built from scratch when I was 22. The key components for the last 15 years have been former professional players coaching girls in an all girl environment, and using soccer as a tool to empower girls.
I reached out to some former friends and players to see if people would be interested in starting girlsCAN with me in the various areas, and 2 women emerged wanting to be a part of things.
One in particular was local and very keen. I’d known and liked her for a very long time. We hadn’t necessarily been close but I knew her well enough and we started to become proper friends. She was very open and energetic about wanting to start girlsCAN in her area.
I spent the fall taking her out to dinners, sharing my game plan, being very open about the things that worked and didn’t work in the business. Invited her to come coach at the girlsCAN I started in my area, and basically gave her the business plan. We made an effort to start it in the fall in her area, but with not enough registrations we decided to try again in the new year. We had to work out some details of the structure, and I didn’t get her to sign any non disclosures, or non- competes because of it. Plus she was a friend.
As my other business grew quicker than I anticipated, I messaged her and the other girl who lived somewhere else and told them that I wanted to hold off until the Spring to get going with the program.
A few weeks later this local friend told me that she wanted to get things off the ground right away. Swamped with a huge event I was running in Toronto, I said ok without much thought, until I started to see her branding popping up on my social media for the clinic she was going to start.
Using the same branding that I conceptualized and developed over the last 15 years.
“Former professional female players coaching girls”
“Using soccer as a tool to empower girls”
Cotton candy pink as the branding of her new program
A friend texting me to tell me she was advertising and telling kids about her program while she was coaching players at my session while I was away in Toronto.
I felt my blood starting to rise and that familiar betrayed feeling starting to flush from the darkest part of my ego.
The thoughts started spinning fast.
This was a friend.
This was someone I trusted.
The knife cut deep as it wasn’t someone that was random but someone I had showed the playbook to, playing off that she was on the team.
That all being said, I have this little nagging voice in my head telling me that this is a final test of the lessons the universe have been trying to teach me over the last 2.5 years and challenging me to deal with it differently to what my instinct is telling me.
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The last 2 and half years have been intense ones for me, and I’m proud to say, a lot of growth has happened in them.
At the end of the my last business, I found out that someone that lived with me, that I trusted with all my finances, that I considered a friend, had stolen a lot of money from my business, and ultimately me, for a very long time.
Devastated and shocked are two words that come to mind when I think about that time.
It also taught me some really, really valuable lessons in how I chose to deal with it, lessons that will maybe help someone else going through something that can feel their energy getting sucked away towards the negative.
The betrayal that the psychic predicted and that recently happened to me, cemented the practice of these lessons, almost like a final test from the universe on if I’ve learned them, before I walk into this next (kick ass) chapter.
Lesson 1: Energy Management (The Finite Vat Each of Us Has)
I used to model myself after the Conor McGregor School of Energy Management, not surprising perhaps because of our shared Irish heritage.
This resulted in how I coped with anything or anyone that upset me: fight back with everything that I had and just punch til I had no more energy left to give (obviously not in a street fighting kind of way, but you get my point). Anyone and anything that pissed me off, I was game for a brawl.
One of the most growth inducing things that has happened to me over the last couple of years, is becoming very, very aware of how I spend my energy.
It is my life juice and what allows me to do things I am passionate about and have a positive impact. Or if I direct it towards the negative, it is the sugar that makes the tumor of negativity grow and takes me away from the good.
Realizing that this use of my energy is a mindful choice has changed my life completely.
Lesson 2: Revenge (And What a Waste of Time It Is)
When someone does something shitty to us, often our first reaction is revenge or justice (or at least those of us that subscribe to the Conor McGregor School of Energy Management). In fact, when that shitty business situation I mentioned had happened a few years ago, everyone told me to go to the police.
“He stole money from you” ...”You gotta make him pay” were a few things I heard again and again.
But again it came back to energy, and it came back to what was the end goal. Sure, did I want to beat the shit out of someone that I had trusted that had betrayed me so badly? Or at least force him to sit down with me and have the decency to look me in the eye, acknowledge what he had done and offer me an apology?
Absolutely.
But when I calmed things down for myself, I asked myself, “Ciara if you had a lot of money in the bank tomorrow, lots of love and happiness in your life, if things felt great, would you give 2 shits or thoughts about this guy or what he did to you?
And I had to answer myself as honestly as I could. And this answer was the source of a lot of wisdom.
The answer was no.
I wouldn’t care, what this guy had done, because I’d be in such a good place myself. I recognized that a lot of my anger and shitty feelings came from the bad spot where I currently was personally, financially, all of it.
So I made a decision in that moment to put no more energy or thoughts on him, and everything into growing my new business from scratch.
2 years later it was the best decision I’ve ever made, and allowed for more growth than I ever thought possible both financial and personal.
Lesson 3: Victims Don’t Learn Anything
When I decided to grow from what happened to me 2.5 years ago, I knew I had to take it a step further, a step more uncomfortable and a lot harder then just casting the blame somewhere else. I had to look at my own actions, that had little to do with him, that had put me in that spot in the first place.
When someone does something shitty to us, its easy to play the victim. Yet in every situation, we likely could have done something better. I can blame my friend that stole from me, but when I look a little closer at the situation, there is so much I could have done better and there were SOOOO many valuable lessons that I learned in stepping back and asking myself how I could have been better.
There were many lessons, but the biggest one I learned was:
I should have treated my finances with more respect and care.
With this most recent situation:
I should have learned from what happened to me before and protected myself with a signed non-compete before sharing anything about my business
On one hand, I could say that the 2 situations I’ve outlined are pretty shitty. But also, in both situations I was lax and I paid the consequences. The first financial one, I wasn’t monitoring things at all. This was my money, my future savings, my business that I was pouring all of my own finances, time and energy into, and I just blindly trusted someone else and maybe deep down had issues with money where I didn’t feel worthy of receiving it. Big mistake and a really really valuable lesson to learn. Secondly with this recent one, I just trusted that a friend wouldn’t do this and shouldn’t have been so trusting after knowing first hand how people can act when money is involved, like the situation before.
I could say another lesson I’ve learned is a lot of people suck, but I choose to be a bit more optimistic.
Instead, I’d rather frame it as these situations and others providing a magic marker showing the true colors of those around me and cementing the people I do want to be putting my time, love and energy into, and elucidating those that I should let go.
The quicker we find that out is a gift because time and our energy are the two most precious resources we have on this earth.
Delving into any painful lesson and asking ourselves what we could do better, is the lifeblood of growth that for me has become one of the most important things I want to get out of my time on this earth. This growth is what success will be measured in the end for me and it only comes from looking at what we could do better in any situation, no matter how wronged we feel, as painful as that can be at times.
Lesson 4: Set Your Boundaries and Walk Away
Boundaries are something that I’ve also learned in this period of time, and I think boundaries are found in self-worth. Boundaries establish that my health and well being is the first priority, bigger than how any ramifications of how me setting my boundaries is going to make you feel.
Tied in with energy management, boundaries let us quickly establish in a situation that it’s not ok what someone has done to us, and with as little time and drama wasted we walk away.
The ego sometimes makes it difficult for us to let go, but ultimately, tied in with the vat of energy, our time on earth is also finite and if someone isn’t treating us properly or acting in a way that we’ve clearly established to ourselves is ok or not ok, then we are allowed to walk away.
In fact, we should, as quickly as we can, so we can reroute that energy towards more positive feelings and the kind of people that align with us.
Lesson 5: My Rules and Definitions Are Just … My Rules and Definitions
This is the human race and every day we all make choices about how we are going to take steps forward. Just because character and integrity are big on my list, doesn’t mean that its a part of anyone else’s, and I can’t expect that because I don’t make the rules on how other people choose to live their lives. My definition of character and integrity may be different as well to what yours are as well. There’s no right or wrong. There just is.
That being said, one thing I have learned, is that all of us, make decisions from a place of justification. Not one person I’ve met in any capacity, many of whom have done really shitty things to people whether professionally or personally come from things at a place where they are like, I’m going to be a total asshole and completely hurt this other person and own it completely. Rarely at least. Including myself. We always have justification as humans because the shame of taking responsibility for our actions and how we made people feel would be too much to bear.
We like to think we are good people. And we like to be right. It’s a safe place to operate from.
The cheating partner says, well he/she just didn’t make me feel loved, so that’s why I got together with this person.
The business person that steals, convinces themselves that it was a piece of the pie that no one would miss, or that they somehow deserve.
It goes on and on. If people acknowledged what they were doing was shitty, most people wouldn’t do it in the first place. Because when you own your behaviour, you have to take a look at the shame in what you did, and the hurt you caused and most people aren’t willing to go there (including myself for a very long time)
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My point going back to again, the biggest lesson I’ve learned in the last 2.5 years: where are you going to choose to put your energy?
And here I answer the question, so far from the ego and everything that our world tells us about righteousness and justice.
In this situation in particular if I can drop the ego, I can see, that there are worse businesses to be copied then one that is based on empowering girls and putting women in charge. And maybe I don’t get the credit of the idea, but can my ego allow for gratitude on focusing on the message that is being spread?
Dropping our ego (and the energy attached to it that will suck the life out of us if we let it) and saying thank you to the person for showing us where they are at on their path but it doesn’t align with who we are or where we are, and letting them go and wishing them well, is the best gift we can give ourselves.
Its the gift of time and energy to put towards the positive and good and powerful.
The universe and karma is a far more strength-filled weapon than anything our own ego and energy can manufacture and we are all on this path teaching each other lessons, and all doing things to the best of our ability. We are not asked to be the purveyors of righteousness and justice, mostly because we are busy, doing shitty things ourselves (cue some glass houses).
The best part with all that leftover energy that we let go is that we can now place it all towards reaching the deepest of love, the richest of friendships, and the abundance of blessings.
Its been a long 2.5 years, but I am grateful for these lessons (and ready for the f*cking chapter to close). #letthegoodtimesroll
Essays on Life 