Finding joy in the journey
Clearing karma is on the rise in our collective. The cosmos and the global situations of the past few years, have been setting us up to be able to take time to do this. Should we want to, that is!
My journey with clearing karma began in 2019...I had started my spiritual healing journey some time before that in 2013 with talk therapy. Following this initial start into healing myself by learning to not be a people pleaser and remove myself from the narcissists in my life; I began getting a strong call to go to Bali.
So instead of going to Bali, I bought a house, started my 2nd business that would keep me in Texas and tried to have a relationship with a man who refused to travel. I was doing everything I could to keep myself chained down because I was afraid.
Fear is like that isn't it? Keeps you chained down, paranoid, anxious, angry, living in guilt or shame...it really can block you when you let it.
And heaven knows I was letting fear block me.
This all went well for about 1 year...then quickly everything began to crumble. The relationship blew the fuck up!! The business I was doing well in, came to a screeching halt for 9 months of no sales despite my best efforts. The friends I had made were all too busy to catch up and I lost friends that I had for many years.
I felt alone, confused, scared, and angry that my perfectly orchestrated plan wasn’t working MY WAY… which was to keep myself in my comfort zone.
Suddenly this chain that I had intentionally tied around my ankle fell off and now I had a choice...
Bali or fasten another chain.
I had a call with my real estate broker at the time... I was in tears wondering what was wrong with my business...he said... “Johnna, I'm not sure what's calling you or what you're meant to do but it's not this and it's not here. So I think you should take some time to discover this, go travel.”
That very day I got an email ad for Yoga Teacher Training..something I'd really been wanting to do! I opened the ad...location: Bali.
I laughed out loud and said, okay, I'm in.
The next day I saw another ad on Social Media for a travel company called Remote Year...I browsed their travel programs and fell in love with the Asia trip...all countries that I'd wanted to visit since childhood...Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, and Malaysia.
Bali was only a hop, skip & jump to Vietnam...the yoga teacher training was one month long and ended 2 weeks before the RY trip began in Vietnam.
It was fucking ready to go!
I booked my one-way ticket to Bali. I was registered for both the Yoga Teacher Training and the 4 months through Asia with RY. I didn't tell a soul, I knew my friends & family would have reservations and backlash for me traveling alone with a one-way ticket to Asia.
Traveling to the other side of the world from where I grew up, I'd never left home that long or been that far. I was scared but filled with excited nervousness, so I needed to protect my energy and boundaries as I prepared to leave the States on my own.
I scheduled a call with my therapist and if memory serves, we both cried with excitement. She knew I'd been wanting to travel to Bali for years...she was over the moon for me. Her encouragement was more than enough.
This is the beauty and magnificence of having a strong coach or therapist in your corner...when you begin the healing journey, it takes you to places of complete unknown. It can be scary and unnerving, most of the time, while you may not leave your daily routines, you're traveling alone through this journey of healing.
Many people don't come with you on this journey so the support of those who have gone before you is key to your success!!
So with my therapist's encouragement, I started planning....I put my home on Airbnb and within one week it was fully booked for the time I planned to be gone.
The following week 2 real estate clients called with big deals that would take me close to my departure date. After 9 months of NO SALES, work was coming in to provide me with extra income while traveling.
I began getting my condo AirBnB ready...and prepared myself to tell my broker and real estate team members of my big life-altering plan. Their reaction was mixed...my mentor/broker immediately said, “OKAY! This is good for you”.
My working partner on the other hand was upset, YOU CAN'T LEAVE, YOU CAN'T DO THAT! This was her first response...seeing how she reacted she took some steps back to calmly share her feelings and gave her the space needed to share.
I listened with courage and compassion, stood my ground for what I was doing, and did not give a long explanation as to WHY because it was too much for me let alone others to understand.
It can be hard to embrace, let alone explain a calling that’s so deeply personal and spiritual…many people will have these experiences in life. We so often feel we need to overexplain to soothe the discomfort of others, but in this case, I let others be uncomfortable with my choices.
Why? Because we cannot control the reactions of other people. It’s our job as individuals to control our own responses and observe our own behaviour to see if we’re upset about the actions of others, especially actions that one takes to better themselves, then this is the time to look in the mirror. Ask yourself, what about this scenario is upsetting for you, and be aware of the response.
I was doing this for me. I was taking a radical leap of faith in my life to overhaul the patterns that I’d been stuck in with men. These patterns seemed so deep that it needed radical action, for me to leave the entire Western Hemisphere in order to heal.
How many times have you done this…gone out on a long limb of faith? Not knowing what’s up ahead, not seeing where you’re going, or not knowing what you’re doing…just that you have to go, you have to take this leap.
Whether you’ve taken the leap yet or not, follow along in my story as I share more of how to find this faith, take the leap, and find joy in your journey.
I found joy in my unknown journey…you can too.
~ Johnna