As you likely know, I am a ‘recovering engineer.’

Often times my mind plays out in maps or systems.
Give me an idea and I can see the way to leverage it, reproduce it, and work your life around it with great elegance.

I love systems because they really do lead to tremendous freedom.

And, this way my brain works can also be super annoying because my mind CONSTANTLY wants to plan everything out three years in advance and is sometimes at odds with the intuitive, creative part of myself that knows that the present moment is where it’s at, and control is an illusion anyway.

[Who can relate?] 

Last week I spontaneously made a post on social media:


As I’ve recently begun a daily practice to tune in to the soul of my upcoming CONNECT Retreat (the one with Liz Gilbert!), this thought is what came, and I shared it without thinking.

I loved the comments and the energy around it.

As the Universe has unfolded this retreat before my eyes, it has become something completely different than the way I’d originally envisioned it two years ago when I began to imagine the first one, and that’s what my comment was observing.

The core idea – a collaborative event in service of connecting the ideas a community – remains the same.

The ENERGY is completely different.

I originally saw this event as connecting “my” community. As I’ve grown into the fullness of what the event is, I see it is not “my” community at all. It is “our” community. It is a meeting of the minds of a certain type of person, and it is not about me.

This distinction has been unfolding for me over the past month. In between a few good cries, and packing moving boxes, I’ve begun to ask myself, “How can I create this event to be as little about me as possible?” And, “How can I bring even more vulnerability and real-ness to my leadership?”

This is the true energy shift I’d set about to create when I declared myself out of the “big event game” in 2015, and began to envision CONNECT.

I share this factually, but it has been an emotional journey. Being alone in Seattle while Kimmi has moved to LA to be with her father in his health journey (the journey which, with my step-dad, is what motivated me to create a freedom-based business in the first place) has created the perfect storm of emotions and space for self-reflection.

I’ve looked at where and why my ego had been holding on to the idea of “my event.” I’ve gone to the depths of continuing to heal my inner six-year-old who experienced a variety of abuses and boundary violations. I’ve “gone there” in service of what I know to be true about us as leaders in businesses that are committed to bringing light to the darkness on the planet.

That Spirit is always giving us exactly what we need when we need it. So this experience is clearly exactly what I need.

And…

That all of this work we do is not so damn heavy and it doesn’t have to be so serious!

I left corporate with a knowing that there was no rush to get to an end game and no reason to ever allow myself to be in a box that suppressed my own joyful self-expression.

In this time of being alone with me and my upcoming event, I was letting everything feel so heavy, including the event! It was feeling just like the old way of operating I’d consciously stepped away from!

I will share more details about how Spirit has been speaking to me and what’s shifting (I know it will liberate you too!) in an email tomorrow.

For today I am here to announce something that totally throws a wrench in my logical mind’s love of planning and systems and consistency! My intuitive, creative mind has taken the wheel and recreated and rebranded the upcoming retreat to speak right to the heart of what it has become!

It’s in just three weeks… the room is already more than half full of amazing attendees… and in the event this is the perfect energy for YOU, I am announcing…

Bad Ass Leaders AlignThe retreat formerly known as CONNECT 2017 is now Badass Leaders Align… a space for aligning energies as we co-create the future!

I am your host. Our community is the experience. Which aligns with everything I know about how transformation really happens!

Learn more about what’s changed (and apply to attend if it speaks to your soul) over here.

And stay tuned for tomorrow’s peek into my internal process.

Who says we can’t make a change!? (My Facebook Live last week foreshadowed this as I began to speak about the pitfalls of consistency when it comes to our own divine self expression! Did you see it?)

Love,
Darla

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