Welcome to Prosperity Through Peace!

I originally started this site four years ago with the intention of helping conscious entrepreneurs create successful businesses out of their passions.  It was a wonderful dream that led me on all sorts of adventures and experiences and I am grateful for every one of the clients I worked with, the creative expression it gave me and the freedom I have now to let it go.

For almost two years I have inquired within, held a mirror up to my heart, mind and soul and I have been astonished at both the beauty and the folly.  I saw that though I had become a spiritual life coach with the cleanest intentions, what I had learned felt false and irrelevant next to self-inquiry.  I had believed that I could contribute to the world by helping people clear their issues around money and career and create prosperity for themselves in every aspect of their lives.  But in my experience, there is no prosperity without peace, and peace starts with me.  And while I believe that following ones heart in business is important, I no longer feel that facilitating that process is my path.

I began a new path early in 2010, when I met up with an old acquaintance I hadn’t seen in about 5 years for coffee.  Her name is Lisa Daley, a facilitator of The Work of Byron Katie and co-owner of KindMind.ca.   That coffee changed the course of my life.

When Lisa and I met at Starbucks, I was organizing a fundraiser/book launch party for Manifest Success Vol.2, the book I co-authored.  I was very stressed out about the party planning process and whether or not we’d have the books in time.  Lisa listened to me tell her that I was afraid nobody would come, I wouldn’t have the books, etc, etc.  I hadn’t seen her in 5 years and here I was verbally throwing up all over her.  Poor girl!

And her reaction was the pivot point.  She looked at me with serenity and kindness that struck me deeply.  She began to ask me four questions that stopped me in my tracks, opened my mind and led me down a path of truth.  The questions are simple and powerless in themselves, but the truth they prompted in me was very powerful.

The simple questions:

1.      Is it true?

2.      Can you absolutely know that it is true?

3.      How do you react and what happens when you believe that thought?

4.      Who would you be without the thought?

These four questions, accompanied by turnarounds at the end are The Work of Byron Katie.  (Check out www.TheWork.com for free worksheets and videos on how to do it.)  The Work is a simple form of inquiry that is thousands of years old and practiced by millions the world over.  But nobody had ever sincerely asked them of me.  I had never really stopped, went inside and asked myself these questions about my beliefs.

My experience of Lisa that day was amazing.  I remembered her much differently. She had transformed from the distant, fast, closed person I knew years earlier, into an open, loving, safe and awake being.  She inspired me in a way that I hadn’t felt before.  It wasn’t the kind of inspiration that came with a carrot or a stick.  It was as if she spoke to a deeper part of me that had just been waiting to hear those questions, to experience that level of honesty with self.  She held up a mirror that day to my ego and my heart answered with relief and devotion to that truth.

Once I experienced the space and freedom of that inquiry, I realized that I was done with “life coaching.”  I realized that in order to empower my clients, I needed to empower myself on a deeper level.  So I stopped coaching, stopped striving and entered the cave of meditation.

You could even say I went down the rabbit hole.  I am still in it, going deeper with each meditation, each inquiry, each breath.  I have taken The Work to heart, endeavouring to question each of my stressful thoughts.  It is a lifetime practice, one with ups and downs, for sure, but truly the only thing that has ever brought me this level of clarity or peace.

When I inquire, I thrive, when I don’t, I suffer.

I used to tell my clients that the way to gain the life they desired was to identify what they wanted, identify their limiting beliefs that held them back from it and then do what was required in spite of them.  I now see the folly in that.  It simply doesn’t work.   Not for long, anyway.

There is no goal in life that is not for the purpose of obtaining happiness or peace.  Both of those things cannot be attained if one believes their stressful thoughts.  Limiting beliefs are simply stressful thoughts one believes to their core.  They will suck the peace, joy and love from your life if you believe them.  In my experience, there are no exceptions to this.

By doing self-inquiry, I am able to see through self-sabotaging behaviours (yes, I spell it with a u, I’m Canadian!) more quickly, I am able to forgive more deeply and more importantly I am able to love more deeply.  I can see through my own bullshit in a way that feels kind, clean and visceral.

My personal evolution has been on fast-forward and that is the key to prosperity in my opinion.  We all know money doesn’t buy happiness.  We need only look at magazines in line at the grocery store to find that out.  Any success without inner peace is painful.

Motivation is either seeking pleasure or avoiding pain.  Both put you in relationship with pain.  The way to stop this pain is to question your beliefs to obtain clarity.  The kind of clarity that does what it knows to do without motivation.  That is called getting out of your own way.  When the mind, body and soul are peaceful and nourished, prosperity is a side effect.

If you think it will serve you, I am here to support you in the process of self-inquiry.  I will do so for anyone who is truly interested in the truth, regardless of finances.

Namaste,