Do What You Want! 

One of the quotes that I have shared with my clients this past month has been from author, lecturer, mythologist Joseph Campbell. He wrote,

‘It takes courage to do what you want.

Other people have a lot of plans for you.

Nobody wants you to do what you want to do.

They want you to go on their trip, but you can do what you want. I did.

I went into the woods and read for five years.’

Between 1929 and 1934, Joseph Campbell hung out in a little shack in Woodstock, New York and read. I often wondered as I studied Joseph Campbell in my ministry training how different his life would have been if he hadn’t taken those five years to do exactly what he wanted to do.

Is it easy to do what we want to do? No! It’s often much easier to NOT do what we want because we would much rather please everybody else, keep the peace, not stir the pot, and besides…we don’t always know for certain what we want.

I feel like there is a huge cosmic pot being stirred these days. I feel it in myself. I feel it in my coaching clients and closest friends. Every one of them is being stirred in their own unique ways to show up, to be authentic, to change course, some moderately, others radically. They are showing courage and plenty of it. My heart wells up with pride for their willingness to do whatever it takes to play large, to not always be safe, to show their vulnerabilty, to go down the road less traveled.

Life doesn’t always make sense and I have come to appreciate that the more I try to make sense of it with that logical, ‘I want my ducks lined up in a row’ type of thinking, I lose the magic of following my heart. Tama Kieves, my dear friend and author of This Time I Dance says, ‘the heart knows the way’ through the fog, the uncertainty, and the tears. We just need to trust our hearts.

I was trained as a child to not trust my heart because the scripture, ‘the heart is more treacherous than anything else and is desperate. Who can know it?’ was drilled into my head. So my heart was shut down and sealed tight. Strong opinions, a determined willfulness and wild desires came from the heart and that simply wasn’t allowed in my life growing up.

It’s taken some practice to view my heart as my friend, my guide, my confidante when all my life I was taught to view it as my worst enemy. It hasn’t been easy to open it up, to voice those strong opinions and not fear being cut down, slapped into silence, and harshly judged. I’ve had to work at allowing that willfulness and those wild desires out to play. In the past, I found it very easy to shut those desires away at the slightest sign of condemnation or disapproval. I have acquiesced to other’s wishes and dreams for me, ‘for their version of ducks being lined up in a row’, as my own inner voice needed to develop a stronger call.

I have felt like the heart’s calling that I have heard so loud and clear couldn’t possibly be right…could it?

This year I decided to listen to the voice, to my heart and quite frankly, to hell with the consequences and what everybody else thought. I really want to see what will happen if I just do what I know to be the truth for me. I am fascinated with what results I will see if I abandon the protocol.

Toward the end of his life, the literary giant George Bernard Shaw was asked what person in history he would most like to have been. His response was that he would most like to have been the George Bernard Shaw he might have been and never became. Oh, that gets me so excited about living the largeness of life!

As I work with so many incredible people in my coaching business, I am privileged that my role is to ensure that they show up, that they find their ‘Assignment’ for this lifetime, that they have the courage and the support to venture out on the tightrope of their wildest heart’s desires. I cheer them on, I kick their butt, I am relentless in my search for the biggest picture for them and I love them unconditionally. Now I get to do that with so many more women through the upcoming Wild Women workshops.

My dear friend, Kelly Nault repeated the comment to me this week, that someone was ‘having a hard time keeping up with what Jan Janzen was doing now. It seemed to be always changing.’ Kelly and I talked about the mosaic backgrounds we have experienced and how what has sometimes appeared (even to us) as mixed-up as a dog’s breakfast has proved to be absolutely perfect. I would never have thought 25 years ago as I scrubbed toilets, trained maids, and learned the franchising model for Molly Maid that I would be on stage 23 years later talking about it as I earned my right as an entrepreneur. Kelly never thought 12 years ago that her experience helping to raise two blind boys would give her credibility as an award winning author on parenting when she isn’t even a parent yet!

So many things, from my recent stint pole dancing, to almost four decades as a Jehovah’s Witness, to living in Ecuador as a missionary, to having my husband walk out on me after 18 years of marriage, have all made me the person I am today. Rather than think that any one of those events were wrong or bad or stupid or unnecessary, I am incredibly grateful for the wisdom and experience they have brought me as I work with others to find peace and purpose in their lives. I am in constant awe at the piece that person or event brought to the giant jigsaw puzzle of my life. So I suggest that you accept your past, love it for its gifts and treasures, and get wild about what you really want to do in your life.

I have sometimes prayed to God, ‘I will do whatever you ask of me, I will play whatever role you assign me, would you just give me the damn script?’ Sometimes it feels challenging to be the actress in a movie when you haven’t been given the lines. I too can feel frustrated not knowing the ‘big picture’, the ‘grande finale’.

One client said to me this week, ‘Jan, I just want to be able to see the other side of the shore.’ I had to tell her that once you move into that place of following your heart, there is no shore. This is about being in a place of radical trust, of listening and simply knowing with all your heart that you need to do it. It doesn’t always make sense and you need to live with that too. But it is absolutely magical. It is where the miracles happen.

So open your heart. Open your life to the possibilities. Get wild! Let the miracles happen in your life. They are there for the asking. Promise!

Have an amazing month!With love and light,

Jan 

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