As I checked into the emergency room, the nurse took my vitals, and suddenly everybody went into a frenzy. I was dying.
As they brought a bed and helped me get on it, I passed out briefly. Once I was lying down, I saw the lights of the hallway ceiling passing quickly, one after the other, just like in the movies. I was in so much pain I couldn’t stop crying. But I was so weak that my body could only produce tears and nothing else moved.
The first specialist doctor that came held my hand, looked at me, and left the room crying. “Is this real?” How did I get here?” I thought.
They needed to put me on fluids as my immune system destroyed my intestines, and I couldn’t stop bleeding, but they couldn’t find my veins. “I am dying,” I thought, “what a sad way to leave this world.”
My ex-husband was so worried sitting near me while the nurses ran around the bed that I couldn’t bear to look at him. How could I possibly assure him everything was going to be OK? I had enough pain to only deal with my body.
Once the fluids ran into my body, the doctors put me in a room with other patients. I spent four days in the ICU, unable to eat, let alone drink water, and then I got moved to the hospital floor for treatment. I stayed there for one month.
I was three days away from kidney failure. I was unable to walk, and I needed assistance for absolutely everything. My hemoglobin was low and kept going lower. I needed two blood transfusions to save my life. I had five doctors looking into my case and an army of nurses taking care of me day and night.
The chief nurse came to talk with me and said I needed to come to accept that I have a chronic autoimmune disease and that it would never leave my body, that I would have other episodes like this in the future, and I shouldn’t wait too long once a flair up happens to come to the hospital for treatment. I was floored. I have been nothing but healthy, with barely one cold a year. I received the news as if being condemned to a lifetime in jail.
I cried again, but an immense force came from inside me this time.
“NO!” “I will heal myself. I will live a better life than ever before”, I thought as the nurse left my room.
The pain still came to remind me every few hours about my condition, and every time I had a bowel movement, an army of nurses came to assist me and later examine, well, I don’t need to explain it to you.
So phase one was denial and subsequently empowerment. The second phase was losing the sense of shame and embarrassment and gaining a renewed sense of humor and irony to handle the whole situation.
Having so much time alone at the hospital allowed me to go into deep inner healing mode, deep honesty, and compassion towards myself to find answers to the question:
How did I get here?
Nobody knows for a fact what causes an autoimmune disorder. Therefore, there´s no precise answer as to how to heal it. Learning this gave me the power to research the meaning of this disease in holistic medicine.
Holistic means considering all factors when it comes to an illness or a disease: emotions, mindset, biology.
I realized, step by step, that I had created this scenario for myself. Because of how I had modeled my life according to early childhood experiences and trauma that I had not processed, my body said “enough!”.
Because of being unable to communicate my needs and desires, I had bottled up decades of emotional pressure inside me. Because of needing to excel at all costs, I had put my career and my company first in my life, leaving myself forgotten along the way.
That hurt.
I decided I needed help, as much as I could get. I was willing to go through a genuine healing of myself from the inside out with effort and compassion. Putting myself first (just like the metaphor of the air plane oxygen masks) so I could help others in the future to hopefully not get so far down or close to death and to get a grip of life. However, life works in mysterious ways.
Early experiences
I was bullied from early in life. The bully lived with me, and it was my mom. She always compared me to other kids and always found a way to make me feel inadequate. Later going into my tweens, this situation mirrored at school.
Feeling awkward made me turn my focus on my studies, where I excelled.
Also, having a bully at home meant that for me to get the things I needed, I had to learn to deal with her. These tactics caused me to become very good at reading people, but a very toxic trait stemmed from there; I learned to compromise my integrity to fulfill my needs early on.
Please note that all our early childhood experiences get stored directly in our subconscious from zero to seven years old. We run on an autopilot of incidents that have not been processed but are adopted or recorded as a blueprint for our behavior in adult life.
At times things got better, usually by the weekend when my father had time off, and we were together at home. I realized that he was my “shield,” but because of the extensive hours of work he did, I was mostly alone with my mom at home.
The early survival traits were so embedded inside me that they later translated into unbalanced relationships (to put it elegantly), mental health problems often applauded by society because sometimes they are considered as “character” and “fierceness.”
During those years, parallel to all difficulties, something amazing started to happen. A strong sense of self manifested, and I connected with my spiritual sense of being. That restored my integrity to a degree, and it became my axis. No matter how far I roamed, I´d always come back: my core, my resilience, my deep, loving, and creative self, worthy of all love and blessings.
It all became more patent once I became an entrepreneur.
Needing to excel at all costs, the stubbornness of moving forward until burning out, trying to fulfill my voids in self-esteem and self-value with alcohol and comfort foods. Isolating the relationship with my ex-husband because it hurts when I access my emotions, made me keep on running.
I was incapable of accepting criticism without a full-blown “show of force” or lashing out at my collaborators when they didn’t meet the standards at work, which sometimes I had set painfully high, as I did with myself all the time. I lived in a constant state of via-crucis, believing this was the path to success as society glorifies these traits: effort, sacrifice, better, faster, stronger.
But can any human being live up to that forever?
Does success mean anything if you lose your health on the way? The only thing that will allow you to enjoy even the simplest things?
After I was released from the hospital, a friend pointed me in the direction of a doctor who used holistic medicine combined with allopathic medicine. So, I started taking visits with her, and we got to work with more than just the biology of health but also the emotions, experiences, traumas, and beliefs I held that had made me so rigid over time; they broke me.
Doing this reminded me of who I am and all the good things I learned and experienced in my life that were tossed to the side. I never took love from friends and loved ones seriously because, deep down, I didn’t fully believe I was worthy of love.
The key to my health and the health of all that my life contains was there all the time. So, I picked myself up and started the work.
I revived my spiritual self which had been abandoned in the darkness, and with the darkness, I became friends with my fears and pain. This process gave me insight for further healing of myself and helping others.
I picked up on my Reiki training, updated my tarot techniques with personal evolution elements, and learned to become a better channel for the incoming spiritual messages from the soul. I became a hypnotherapist to help others heal their subconscious. I studied therapeutic astrology and many more things.
But I also used all these techniques to heal the motherboard of my mind, soul, and body’s software. It wasn’t a pretty process all the time, but it was a precious gift that life had given to me. And it all began with a close call to leave this life. I came to this Earth to be of service and help people like me to compassionately heal and re-create themselves when they forget who they are.
How do we apply spirituality in our entrepreneurial life?
We are, first and foremost, entrepreneurs of our own existence. Our lives are entrepreneurial endeavors by themselves. We market ourselves in our social and professional lives; we make deals, break deals, negotiate and always look for the best offer with the highest return for our life. Or at least, that´s ideally the case.
Spirituality could be as simple as taking a break when you need it at work or studies. It is taking a bath or going running when your body needs it. In this line, spirituality has a broad spectrum of meanings.
Spirituality, for me, starts with self-care. Why? Because when we take care of ourselves, we honor the divinity inside us, that spark at the center of our soul. Our true self.
And when we learn to take care of ourselves, we also become more empathic with the needs of the other. And then, we can understand the dialogue between the student and the Master where the student asks: “Master, how do we love another?” and the Master answers, “There is no another.”
When we bring spirituality into entrepreneurship, we conduct business more integrally. Whether we are a company with employees or just a one-person band, all the people we work with, from providers to workers within the company, we become collaborators.
When we make deals or negotiations, they start from the point of fairness and take responsibility for our decisions and consequences. And if the outcome is not favorable, we see it as an opportunity to become better and create positive change.
We shift our axis from exercising power over others to excelling at having power over ourselves.
When we have a lot to do, we learn to share the load with our collaborators, and by doing this, we empower each other by teaching and learning every aspect of the business. So, if something happens, the company can continue to run without a significant crisis.
We learn to see any given situation from all angles to find the optimum solution instead of reacting and probably creating a bad experience for ourselves, collaborators, and even clients. We learn not to take things personally but not dismiss everything because we separate ourselves from the outcome.
We learn to take responsibility and lead by example when we take genuine care over every detail of our work, sharing a bigger vision and meaning with our collaborators who can then take this vision as their own.
We learn to take no fluff and create boundaries that help preserve the integrity of our endeavors.
We establish that empathy doesn´t mean “free for all” and that the most spiritual thing to say is “No.”
This description is the spiritual entrepreneur realized.
But how do we get there after years of trauma, early childhood programming, and experiences that probably taught us we are unworthy of love, abundance, and prosperity in life?
Prosperity and self-worth are beyond mindset.
It doesn´t matter how many affirmations you do every day or how much time you spend listening to or watching positive thinking clips if the real issue is deeply embedded in your subconscious.
We spend 97% of our day running on our subconscious and only 3% running on our conscious mind. Our subconscious mind always means well and tries to protect us, but unfortunately, it doesn´t understand when its actions affect our quality of life.
On the other hand, every thought and emotion we feel is a “thing.” These invisible actions inside us send a signal to our brain that creates hormones to match that feeling or thought. And when we have the same feeling or thought for an extended period in our lives, our body becomes addicted to that cocktail of chemicals even if that feeling or thought evokes fear, anger, sadness, or anything we might consider harmful.
So how do we start to make fundamental, long-lasting changes?
I can tell you how to start, but self-evolution never ends.
Let´s start with small but meaningful changes you can make every day
- Observe without judgment.
What does this mean? When we start observing our behavior in every task of the day, we will learn and understand a lot about ourselves. We will open the door to seeing those habits and behaviors that don´t represent us, although we can´t stop doing them.
This way, we will be better equipped to know where we need to put ourselves to work and heal.
Without judgment means that every time you catch yourself in behavior that makes you feel or do a “bad” thing, you don´t need to call yourself names or commiserate about it. Snap out of that feeling, step back with your body if necessary, and cool down. Make a note of that behavior and its reaction, forgive yourself, and stay present in your actions, so you know when you are headed in the “wrong” direction again. It is intensive work, but you will rediscover yourself in a new light.
This process is similar to a log. Every day you see your improvements and the constant dark areas showing.
By observing without judgment, you are already healing. By consciously finding a different way to deal with everyday tasks, you create a new, upgraded version of yourself.
And if you are struggling to change a few things, that´s when you can look for help.
- We teach others how to treat us.
Observe how you conduct your relationships and, if necessary, heal the relationship with your parents first. It doesn´t have to be a game of guilt. It is about moving on, releasing, and relearning to love by loving and respecting ourselves first, learning and relearning about being our number one nurturers first. Trust that you are healing. Just because your parents didn´t or couldn´t give you this doesn´t mean you don´t deserve it. They did the best they could with the tools they had at the time.
- Love those parts of you, previously unloved.
I´m talking about the pain and trauma we feel guilt and shame about.
Without having the proper tools, sometimes life takes us through challenging experiences. After going through the experience, we are often hurt or unaware of the trauma experienced, especially if we are talking about abuse.
It´s not your fault that this happened to you. Send love to that version of yourself that was going through the experience and doing the best that was possible to surmount it and survive.
It´s an everyday exercise: repetition and loving that part a bit more every day.
Find someone to help you or listen without judgment, a shoulder to cry on, a hand to hold. It could be friends or family or yourself in communion with soul. It´s about letting go and opening up, crying, and laughing if necessary.
You are stronger than you know. And when you allow yourself to be vulnerable in those intimate moments with yourself, you become stronger.
- Observe your environment and how it influences you
Start with the foods you eat. Are they fit for you? Are you investing in your health, or are you eating your emotions?
Move on to your activities: Do they energize you or take your energy away?
Do you need to control everything, even the weather? Allow yourself to accept and let go of the things you cannot control, for instance, what others might think of you.
Stop trying to show others how great you are. You are already great!
Observe when you are putting on an act about who you are, trying to be someone you are not or comparing yourself to others. The others have their way and journey in life; yours is unique and equally deserving of energy, love, and attention.
How do you spend your time?
Do you spend time with yourself, alone?
There are so many distractions around us; why not just turn the TV, the laptop, and all electronics off for a period of time. Spend time on things that bring you joy and inspiration. It could be something creative or a craft. It could be picking up that hobby you had a long time ago that made the time fly when you were doing it.
- Are you surrounded by people that constantly remind you of past mistakes?
Even as a joke, that should not be tolerated. You can change the environment, leave or say: “I have grown through that situation; please stop making comments; it makes me feel uncomfortable.”
Our past mistakes are to be owned but also let go. We can learn from them and add a deeper dimension to that experience, making it go from negative to a lesson learned.
- Are you having enough rest?
When we sleep we give space to our subconscious to organize itself. Having a good sleep when we are working in our healing process becomes very important for our development and integration of all new behavior.
- Are you having moments of silence by yourself?
It is essential to spend time alone in silence. When we do this, we become closer to our soul and we can listen to the messages life wishes to give to us. Sometimes being in nature and observing the nature around you will reconnect that line between you and your soul. Spending time in nature is very important as well. In Japan, doctors prescribe their patients “forest baths.” We constantly receive positive ions from WIFI radiation, our phones, etc. By spending time in nature, we get the right amount of negative ions to help balance our energy body. You will see you will feel more inspired and energized after a moment outside. If you live in a big city go to the nearest park. When I lived in New York, I´d go to Bryant Park after work and spend time there before catching the metro back home. It always felt like a beautiful way to recycle the energy inside me and all around me.
- Consciously redirect your go-to´s
Emotional eating and drinking? When you realize you are doing something out of compulsion, immediately bring your awareness and attention to why and where it is coming from. Find ways to redirect or replace that with a new “positive” trait.
By consciously redirecting our go-to´s, we are learning more about ourselves and opening to the opportunity to make a change from the real root of the habit. These changes might take time but try this exercise, especially after being exposed to situations that can be triggering.
These actions mean taking responsibility for yourself and your actions, not in a severe way but lovingly and compassionately observing and helping our lives to become more significant in meaning.
- Express your needs healthily.
This one is a big one for me.
Coming from a home where I couldn´t, or felt I shouldn´t express what I felt, thought, or went through, left me in a space where I figuratively “swallowed” all my needs, wants, and wishes.
And when the time came to express my emotions, I was usually under a lot of inner pressure and just blurted out the most horrible things I could say. This reaction was a survival mechanism.
How do you express yourself when you don´t know how? Start practicing with yourself. When screaming inside your head, pull yourself back and re-articulate what you feel.
Are you feeling frustrated because you had an awful day at work, and when you come home, the first thing you hear is your partner´s problems from that day? Instead of blowing your mouth out, take a second and articulate a different response: “I am sorry I cannot help you right now, I had a bad day at work, and I don´t want to lash out at you because I am feeling very frustrated. Can you give me a minute to shake it off first?”
Or, on the opposite end, you had a wonderful time alone and quiet, and when you get home or to work, there´s a whirlwind of lost phone calls, messages, and information waiting to be given to you as soon as you cross the threshold. In this instance, take a second, pull back, and maybe you can articulate something like: “I just had a quiet time for myself because I had a tough week. Can you please give me a few minutes before I get these messages?”
In these situations, you can always express that at this time, communication is difficult for you and that you need a moment to put the words together correctly. Also, it could be tough to have a straight face when you are being vulnerable when expressing feelings. Also, sometimes because we haven´t articulated our feelings, needs, and wishes appropriately for a long time, it might sound awkward the first time the words come out.
Always state that you will try to do your best to express yourself and that if there´s anything complicated to understand, it is OK to ask questions (if you feel comfortable with this, of course).
Another way is to write a letter. You can write a letter and give it to the person you would have the conversation with and explain yourself in a kind and compassionate way. Sometimes this is easier when it is about a subject or a situation where it might feel overwhelming to have a conversation person to person.
You are not broken; you are just like Tetris when the pieces fall a little unorganized. But believe me, the more you learn to articulate your feelings, wants, and wishes, the better that inner Tetris will fit together.
• Express your emotions healthily
When you feel sad, allow yourself to express it. Cry, spend time alone, talk to someone who will support you, or give yourself space to express that sadness.
Emotions are healthy when expressed healthily, meaning: not to explode with emotion, swallow it or dive into it for an extended period. Or they will become energy drainers. The key is not to get stuck in that space.
Same with anger, anxiety, grief, or any other emotion considered “negative.” These emotions are there to show you something, and you must allow yourself the space to “see” what´s behind that emotion.
When we are sad, what are we actually sad for? When we are mad, what are we furious about? This journey will take us to work with ourselves and hopefully find in that dark night of the soul the inner light that never goes out.
• Ask for help when you need it
Do you want to become better at life? Ask! Think of as many questions as you can. Think of quality questions to ask yourself. Ask for help when you feel, see, or think you can´t. And if you are alone, ask the universe to bring you all the help you could need in all forms possible. The universe will answer in divine timing.
• Beware of toxic positivity
Toxic positivity suppresses any emotion considered negative. Is living in a forced state of fake happiness.
Here we circle back to expressing those needs and emotions that are considered “negative” and allow yourself to navigate through them but not let them steal your energy.
You can work with that dark side and become better at life by allowing yourself to feel.
Become a positive, happy person by looking at all that’s happening inside and around you from an observer’s point of view, taking responsibility for your actions, and setting healthy boundaries to preserve your precious life energy. Become positive by realizing that the glass is always half full and half empty at the same time. And be grateful that there’s a glass to contain that water and water to pour into the glass.
• Practice gratitude
“The more grateful you are, the more you will have to be grateful for.”
If you usually forget about this, don’t worry. Grab a notebook and a pen, leave them somewhere you can see them. Maybe by the breakfast table so you can do this simple exercise while you enjoy the first meal of the day.
Start simple: make a list of 10 things you are grateful for. Do you have a roof over your head? You don’t need to own it to be thankful for it. No job? Write down gratitude for having another day alive to possibly find the job of your dreams.
And if you are having a tough time, be grateful for the air you breathe, the sunshine and its energy, and the rain and its nurturing effect on our precious Earth.
Are you unhappy with your body? Give thanks for receiving the awareness that something needs to change and ask the universe for self-compassion and energy to take care of your body in the best way possible.
Giving thanks each day is like working a muscle. The more you work it, the stronger it becomes. The more blessings you can count every day, the more miracles manifest in your life.
You can add more items to your list and make 100 things to be grateful for. It’s all up to you!.
When we put together spirituality and entrepreneurship, we have a purpose.
When we are entrepreneurs without a deeper purpose, we think the purpose is to have our company on the Forbes list or be the best, the most successful, most shark-like, and be praised, to overpower others. Is that purpose?
Becoming a multimillionaire could have a purpose. But what service or value are you bringing to the world, so the energy of the money moves towards you and says: “Let’s work together.”
We all wish to have wealth and be prosperous. But at the same time, we all want to have peace, be happy, loved, and healthy. When our single purpose is to have X amount of money in the bank account, we betray ourselves.
Where are you in that equation? And most of all, how do you suppose you will get that result if you are not even counting on yourself?
What kind of treatment will you give to your clients?
What kind of treatment will you give to your collaborators?
It is essential to keep this in mind. The first person that must connect to their inner source of power and wisdom is you, and it comes from the heart. It comes from the soul. Purpose comes from spirit.
But what is the role of the mind then?
The mind can be advantageous in practical things if we wish to learn something that will help us in our career and profession. Some information that we may need to apply to get a specific outcome.
But most of the time, the mind is the one that has control over our lives. And that translates as a lot of mindless chatter and often harmful thinking, always finding a negative comment, no matter how favorable any situation might be.
We will always find something that won’t resonate with us, making us think we are unworthy, not good enough, or unsure of ourselves. When we connect to spirituality, we do it in a way to reconnect with our inner power and inner peace. We reconnect with our true self: spirit, which is above the mind.
When the mind is at the service of spirit and the soul, everything changes: how we look at life, feel about ourselves, and we can catch ourselves red-handed when we are going to that dark side, when we start overthinking, talking negative to ourselves and going in that self-destructive, procrastinating direction.
When you have something valuable you bring to people, it doesn’t matter if another fifty thousand people do the same thing. There will be a differentiation with you: your energy, your fire, and how you offer your product and service in the world.
But first, to move that tremendous amount of energy out into the world, you need to build that power within. And that’s when we need to address our mind chatter, our self-talk.
What do we truly believe about ourselves?
What do we truly want?
What are the mechanisms we usually go to when confronted with a problem?
What are the usual mechanisms we go to when we don’t feel satisfied?
We need to work on ourselves and put ourselves first.
If you don’t take care of yourself, what you eat, consume, TV shows you watch, podcasts you listen to, the kind of music you listen to, what you’re reading, what are you stuffing into your subconscious?
John Lennon said, “We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight.” Look at all the most successful shows, TV series, or movies. Realize the kind of violence that the whole world is consuming and collectively manifesting.
So let’s keep this in mind. Let’s be conscious of everything we consume, everything we put in our minds, everything we put in our bodies.
What kind of experience are we subconsciously programming ourselves to have in the future?
What are your concepts, ideas, and beliefs about business?
What’s the purpose of your company?
What do you gain when you are successful?
Why do you want to be successful?
How do you want to be successful?
Who do you want to be successful for?
Success comes from within. And people will feel attracted to you and your business once you bring this incredible energy from your spirit out to show it to the world.
Reconnect with your spirituality, be in a better flow, and be in a better mindset regarding abundance and self-worth.
Reconnecting entrepreneurship with spirituality is learning how to be in a state of flow from within, to establish the power inside you and to shine and achieve lasting success in all areas of life.
Happiness is like a line made of many dots.
I always say: Every once in a while, stop and observe your life. Look at your achievements, how far you have come, all you have experienced, good and bad, and see yourself here today like a living testimony of a life that is unique, immense in value, an absolute miracle, and be grateful.
One day I was cleaning up my documents, and I found pictures of my life, travels, and places work took me (I used to work on ships). From the Antarctic polar circle to the Arctic polar circle, I have crossed every meridian on this Earth, and I felt moved to tears.
I laughed, ate delicious stuff, met incredible people, loved, cried, suffered, and lived to tell the tale.
Never forget who you are, where you come from, your victories and defeats; they are all you. They are the stepping stones that brought you up here where you are now, alive and breathing.
Investing in your healing and restoring your self-worth will directly affect and reflect on your business. Thank you for allowing yourself to open the doors to change. If you read this far, I believe you have already crossed the threshold to a new kind of curiosity: to get to know yourself more deeply, the love affair of a lifetime.
Once a boss told me that happiness in life is moments.
When you begin to be your true self, those moments of happiness become longer and longer because you know that happiness is not euphoria or getting a kick out of something but a constant practice of appreciating and loving every little moment in our lives.
A line is composed of many dots put together tightly. We don´t see this because we look at the line from a perspective.
Exchange the concept of the line for the idea of a lifetime. The dots are moments of happiness, and we can decide to make a difference in that broken line of the past for a steady and streamed line towards the future.
By the time we must leave this Earth it is my hope that, looking back, the line will be consistent and made of many colors.
Life is indeed like a box of chocolates. We can now decide if we want to keep on taking the gas station´s bonbons or some luscious organic Swiss chocolate bonbons.
This metaphor means we can decide to begin a revolution of change to re-create and reveal the real power within us or continue to be trapped in a “comfort zone” that is not truly comfortable.
When we work with ourselves, heal, re-learn and unlearn, we give a service to the world.
When two objects vibrate together, and one starts vibrating higher, the other will follow almost instantaneously. This principle of science applies to us as human energy beings.
When one of us does something to vibrate higher, the people around us will start to vibrate higher as well.
Let love take you higher; let the love for your life multiply and lift humanity.