Expecting the Good: There is Much We Can Learn from Our Storms

By Paula Kawal • on April 18, 2009

My guides are telling me to write about some of my experiences in the working world before I became a life coach and a professional intuitive.

Let me just start off by saying I’ve had a lot of jobs in different industries and I’ve been fired, given a “time out” and told that I had to work from the office or resign just to name a few of the “highlights”…LOL!  I guess this could be looked at as a major catastrophe, or that I had somehow failed.  Closer to the truth was that these were opportunities and they kept me moving in a direction that was more in alignment with who I am.

I was really out of alignment, for example, when I got fired from the Downtown Hilton shortly after I moved to Seattle.  The hotel did not treat people the way I thought they should and their policy of overselling rooms put me in a values conflict every single day that I worked there.  As a result I drug myself to the hotel day after day and couldn’t show up on time to save my life – my inability to be on time was a sign and symptom of how wrong a match this job was for me and so when the manager fired me because I was habitually late there was almost a sense of relief mixed in with my hurt and fear.  I knew I didn’t belong at this place but needed the job and didn’t know what I was looking for.  The motivation to go find something else wasn’t going to come without a little outside help :)   To some of you this will sound very familiar!!!

I had other experiences that were similar – however, the next example I am going to give you is a little different.

I had a job I loved more than any of the others (up til that point) working for a man I respected in the floor coverings industry when I became pregnant with my first child.  We decided that when the baby came, I would work from at home.  I told him that my husband and I had looked into the cost of childcare and decided that I would need to work at home if I was going to stay in the job.

I was a one woman office whose time spent as a manager allowed me to “mind meld and anticipate needs” it was the big joke with his wife who would come in and ask if he had consulted his brain (me) for permission to place anything on his schedule or tamper with anything else going on in the day to day business of the office.  As you can imagine, being so highly dependent on my skills, my boss wanted to give the working at home thing a go.

Spirit had other ideas for both of us – because neither of us would have made a change as long as we were together.

It wasn’t long before the Higher ups intervened through the office phone system.  The parent company refused to ring the phones over to my home number and my boss who was always on the road was left with no one to handle the phones while he was in the field.  Soon no one could get through and I was given a choice.

He called me in knowing what my answer would be but didn’t feel there was an alternative, he had to have someone for the phones and didn’t have the budget for another salary…I was going to have to come back into the office and daycare my son (which we couldn’t afford to do) or I was going to lose my job.

I felt so trapped and betrayed!  Why was this happening to me?  I wondered, signing my resignation, I stuffed my tears down as far as I could get them to go and wondered if we would make it financially.  While at home with my son I started to explore my interests and eventually started a handmade soap and lotion company.  Two years later, while I was pregnant with my second child that same boss called me to say he had a job that he thought I would be good at.  I asked if I could work from at home and he said, absolutely.

I worked side by side with this man for years and didn’t know anything about his passions.  He was inviting me to help him live them by promoting his family’s Southern Gospel group.  I was shocked that he could sing – and when I listened to the recording I felt my Spirit pull strongly toward the position.  I didn’t know anything about Southern Gospel Music, booking a singing group let alone managing one but before it was all over I would be a marketer, promoter, booking agent, publicity agent and band manager all in one.

I sold my soap company, Elysian Dream, in record time and started working for the group.  Within a few months, Spirit manifested a contact with one of the top 3 recording studios in Southern Gospel Music, a year later my boss and every member of his group took a leap of faith and moved from Washington State to Tennessee, almost a year to the date after their move they recorded a project at the studio with whom we had the contact and I found myself helping them negotiate a 10 year recording contract with the Producer who had been our greatest mentor for the last two years.

After helping my friends achieve their life purpose I realized I had hit on something that resonated deeply within my Being and started exploring myself from the inside out to more fully understand how to manifest this calling outside of the role of a marketer (as Spirit was calling me away from my ego, which was deeply embedded in that aspect of the job).

This experience was the pointer for what I do today – following the passions and purpose of my own Soul.  What looked like loss through the previous experiences was really an opportunity to sync up with something greater – my Highest Path and Purpose.  With each experience I learned and grew and began to understand where my Soul was trying to go.

If I hadn’t been fired and given my other experiences,  I would have been complacent and happy to stay where I was.  However, what looks like a terrible event may just be the push that you need to have the freedom to explore what you really, really want in life because all of a sudden you haven’t got as much to lose.  Many, many of my lightworker friends who were hearing their purpose but were paralyzed like a deer in headlights by the security of their income are facing similar pushes and shoves as the universe urges them to awaken!!!

I wonder if Susan Boyle (the latest unexpected superstar of Britain’s Got Talent) would have auditioned for the show if she had been comfortably employed with her life completely on track?

Susan Boyle – Britain’s Got Talent

Is it scary??? Yes…but it is also exciting and if you breathe into that fear it will transform into an energy that moves you toward the path you are meant to be on!

Nowadays I expect good to come from my storms…how about you?

Comments

By Winnie Lim on April 20th, 2009 at 4:42 am

They say everything happens for a reason. I’ve learnt to appreciate seemingly negative events over the years. I particularly like this article by Erin Pavlina as well: http://www.erinpavlina.com/blog/2007/10/when-life-appears-to-be-against-you/

Thanks for sharing your experiences. If everything went smooth and peaceful for us, we’ll not progress and learn much. Adversity serves as a good reminder. Citing a personal example, my parents almost perished in the China quake while on a tour if not for a difference of few minutes. If this didn’t happen, I wouldn’t have realised how much time I’d spent on my work and neglecting my family.

By Paula Kawal on April 24th, 2009 at 10:41 am

Hi Winnie,

The phrase, “it’s all good” pretty much sums up my approach to life and learning. As I’ve gotten further and further away from Duality, I’ve realized that Spirit only concerns itself with the learnings we take away from experiences and that judgment can keep us from those learnings that are so precious to our Souls. As a result we are often presented with invitations for greater spiritual revelation.

Thanks for sharing your personal story – it is a beautiful realization, opportunity and invitation to love, honor and cherish our loved ones!

Many Blessings,

PK

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