[Tools] The Happily Ever After Handbook – Ch. 4: THE WORK

I don’t think anyone else is teaching Happily Ever After‘s and if they are, they are shortchanging you by not giving you the hard parts.

The Hallmark Movie Channel would probably have me killed for releasing this material – which openly admits that there is WORK involved in a Happily Ever After. 

What work is involved? Whatever the hell you do NOT want to do most – that will pretty much be it. Guaranteed.

To Keep Your Happily Ever After You Need to Do Your WORK

I am using a very personal example to my life and my heart today. I’m sitting in a small café that I’ve never been to before. It is gorgeous and peaceful and I can hear bubbling water in the background. And…

I am exhausted.

Remember I told you if you want to keep your Happily Ever After, you need to do your work? Everybody has some work to do, even us Alpha Life Coaches.

The work it took to sort, donate, trash and pack my entire life (as a pack rat) to reach Australia was the biggest undertaking I’ve EVER done.

It took EVERY OUNCE of emotional reserves that I had. And I arrived in Australia kind of a fragile shell. 

I leaned heavily on my mate during this time because my own back ups were down. I came back to life but…

Imagine if you have a car and you leave the lights on all night, every night for three weeks. Eventually you don’t just drain the battery, you can damage it so that it doesn’t hold a charge the way it used to. 

Once I got here, I had a whole New World to adapt to, new friends and places and 1000 other logistics to deal with, including the planning of two weddings (US and Oz), and  the management of transporting my remaining worldly possessions 10,000 miles across the planet into my new home. 

I’m now under three weeks to my wedding, and fate has conspired to have my container with everything I own arrive one month late, so I go 3 hrs to get it Friday! This is during the time when I am working hard on my spouse visa application (let’s just say that’s so hard that even as a 21 year lawyer it’s stressful) and finishing planning my May 11th wedding that I just started working on ~2 months ago. 

I’m sharing this with you so you can see a real life example of a lesson that I need to do to protect and nurture my happily ever after.

Your Mind WON’T Like Your Lesson

I have been leaning ever more heavily on my wonderful soulmate and he’s been pushing himself to give me the emotional support I need to keep recharging my battery – which isn’t holding a charge the way it used to.

Please note, part of HIS lesson is learning to give better emotional support – but what is MY lesson right now?

My lesson is in doing the HARDEST thing available, which is the recognition that, even though I spent all of my emotional capital for our relationship, I am STILL 100% responsible for putting my own battery back to level.

Ouch right? It’s the Alpha rescue fantasy. Isn’t this Alpha owed an “even up”? No. Our base, level emotional charge is ALWAYS our responsibility. Always. No matter how, why or WHO we used it on!

I literally caught myself and noticed just today – after a heartfelt prayer – that I needed to aggressively take time out to recharge MY OWN batteries. It’s my responsibility to recharge my batteries REGARDLESS of the NOBLE reason why I expended them. Regardless of who or what else needs me – see the hard part?

Your WORK is Always YOURS

On the eve of my marriage to a man who feels like the other part of my soul, when I have another seemingly impossible set of simultaneous tasks, I have to make sure I’m not wanting HIM to fill me up to ‘level’. His job is only my extra, my overflow! In other words, I have to fill in the hole I had to dig to reach him!

My Lesson – My admission to my Happily Ever After? To happily resume full responsibly for my own happiness until I’ve restored my own battery health to pre-move levels.

(I actually suspect Alphas do this same battery depletion in pregnancy/huge crisis and don’t notice that they are charging a debt to their spouse that is NOT his.)

I shared this with you to let you know that you are capable of determining what your lesson is it any moment. The only question iswill you do your hard shit?

I depleted myself doing nearly impossible things to make my time frame to get here.

I NOW NEED TO PAY MYSELF BACK WITH INTEREST 🙂

Once I do that, I can use my battery again safely. And I will need a full charge over these next weeks.

Do your work. If your work is scary or frightening or counter-intuitive or kind of looks impossible – then you are on the right track. 

The “cost” of our Happily Ever Afters is not cheap but it is always worth it.

I’ve done 80% of my lesson simply by recognizing the lesson and feeling the relief that I know WHAT to do next and that I am WILLING to do it. 

I’ve already begun…and a white butterfly came to my corner of this garden as I wrote this.

If you are willing to believe, and you are willing to support others, and you are willing to recognize when your miracle begins and do the work for it to continue – you too have a Happily Ever After. 

In Joy,