Misfit to Maven

Ebonie Allard

Description

A practical and inspiring book for misfit business rebels. Misfit to Maven is more sex, drugs and misadventure than other business books – reminding us all how extraordinary we can be, it will leave you inspired and ready to build a life as extraordinary as you are, that feels as good on the inside as it looks from the outside.

Misfit to Maven tells Ebonie Allard’s story - from feeling ARGH about business and life to feeling AHHH about it all. The book is part story, part handbook and shows you how you can learn to listen and trust yourself implicitly. Sharing all her successes and failures, mistakes and milestones – from working in the TV industry to homeless and living in a boiler room - Ebonie shares with candid honesty everything that has led her to where she is now – living a life by design.

This book is for you if you are unemployable because you are too creative, too innovative, too smart, too geeky or too full of heart to clock in and clock out of a job and or life. If you feel like a square peg in a round hole and want to move from a place of overwhelm and isolation to a place of clarity, progress and belonging. If you have felt stuck or unable to receive success. If you are self-employed, a micro-business owner, or an aspiring entrepreneur who wants to live a fully rounded, 360-degree life where there is space and time to work, rest and play.

Sujets

• Entrepreneuriat
• entrepreneur
• Carrière & Mobilité
• Carrière
• Mindfulness
• Employabilité, métiers et formations
• Emprendedor
• Entrepreneurship
• Mindfulness (Buddhism)
• Economics
• Business

Informations

• Publié par: Practical Inspiration Publishing
• Date de parution: 30 novembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781910056868
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

First published in Great Britain by Practical Inspiration Publishing, 2015
Copyright © Ebonie Allard, 2015
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
ISBN (print): 978-1-910056-32-5
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-910056-33-2
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced without the express written permission of the author.
For more information, see www.ebonieallard.com
 
 
 


THE RIDDLE
It’s all very simple.
Which doesn’t mean it’s easy.
You were born curious.....
.....and you have access to all the answers to all your questions.
You know how to love you. You know how to feel. You know how to think.
You also know how to process, to connect, to engage or to numb and to run away.
It is all here for you.
Everything you have ever had the notion to desire or want or not want for yourself, others and the world is all here for you.
There has also been a misunderstanding, and that common and widespread misunderstanding has led you to believe that all of this is somehow outside of you. It is not. It is inside of you.
You are constant. No matter what, there is always you.
You are born alone, you fear alone, love alone, joy alone, share alone, connect alone, live alone, die alone. And you are constantly changing. For some of you this is a scary truth. But it is not as scary as you think.
You have been given yourself as a wonderful riddle. Once you figure this riddle out, you are no longer alone, but part of the universe, and from this place of being not doing you can experience all that this adventure playground called life has to offer, from a place of wonder.
Don’t misunderstand me when I say this; you will still experience anger, sadness, and feelings of all varieties, but without suffering them. A life of AHHH is not about living in BLISS or about some kind of spiritual bypassing of human feelings. It is about experiencing it all with reverence.
You have been given a guide to help you understand the riddle that is you. It is an inner voice, a gut feeling, a sense of knowing. Learning to listen to it is all there is to ‘do’, everything else is ‘being’.
And actually, you are not entirely alone. Actually there are all the other people in the world who are part of the big riddle too. We all entangle and entwine and mix and meet and muddle, acting as mirrors and triggers and carers and preoccupations for one another.
Isn’t it fantastic?
Isn’t it frustrating?
Breathe.
Have you ever noticed what happens when you breathe? Everything calms down. Everything makes sense again. Nothing is urgent. Inside and outside become one. Breath is the link between inside and out. 1
 


1 . Our autonomic nervous system regulates primarily involuntary activity such as heart rate, breathing, blood pressure, and digestion. Although these activities are considered involuntary, they can be altered either through specific events or through changing our perceptions about a specific experience. The system is broken down further into two complementary systems: sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The sympathetic nervous system controls ‘fight or flight’ responses. In situations we perceive as threatening our sympathetic nervous system kicks in to prepare our bodies: our heart rate quickens to get more blood to the muscles, our breathing becomes faster and deeper to increase oxygen, blood flow is diverted from the organs so digestion is reduced and our pupils dilate for better vision. In an instant, our body is prepared to either defend or flee.
However once the threat has passed the relief we feel may be instant, but our body takes longer to adjust, the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in and returns everything to normal. This system is slower acting, and may take several minutes or even longer to get your body back to where it was before the scare.
Regulating your breath, making it smooth, slow and even, activates your parasympathetic nervous system and therefore calms down your entire body. In this information age so many things trigger our ‘fight or flight’ responses, we can often be in a state of high alert for prolonged periods, which is not how we were designed. Consciously focusing on and slowing down your breath really does calm you down.


STAY WILD, STAY TRUE
Dear Mum, dear Dad, dear siblings, dear ex-lovers, friends, clients, colleagues, readers; teachers both knowingly or unknowingly, please know this:
I love you.
Forgive me.
I’m sorry.
Writing this book has been one of the most joyful and most terrifying experiences of my life! I have lived the hell out of my life, and yet this – sharing my truth – has been tougher than anything else I’ve done yet.
Fear that I may hurt feelings, fear of being misunderstood almost stopped me. However it is because this is a truth for so many of us that I want to share my story with open-heartedness and transparency, hopefully in some small way setting a precedent and giving you all permission and desire to share yours too.
So many of us carry secrets and shame and are reluctant to share these with our closest friends, and this saddens me. I hope that somehow this book enables you to open a window and let in some air and some light to the closed dark spaces that we are all afraid to look at more closely. I hope that through personal growth and awareness we get better at discerning who is trustworthy and upon finding those people trust them; sharing our vulnerabilities and allowing them to do the same, so that we may all experience the honour and connection of this kind of intimacy.
The story I am about to tell is my truth, and it may not be the same as yours. Both can exist, just because you remember it one way and I another doesn’t mean that one is right and the other wrong. The truth is that each minute of each day, each of us gives meaning to our experience differently, and so many times it is not the event itself but our reaction to it that colours our perception of a situation. Reading through the diaries and journals that made this book possible, it became really clear to me just how much our perceptions and memories change as we move through our lives. Please know this: I take responsibility for my life and I wouldn’t change a moment of it, for it has brought me to where I am now. If you have played a part in the tale so far, whatever that might have been, I am truly grateful.
The way I see it; life is a series of soul lessons, and as my father 1 once told me:
‘You sat up in the sky as a star looking down on earth and picked us, you picked all the players in your life and they picked you. You chose those souls to experience the interactions of life with, you chose the heartache and the joy, the frustrations and the ease, all of it.’
Thank you for picking me, I’m so glad I picked you.
To every single person who has supported me in writing this book, from the 50 or so people who generously crowdfunded it to those friends and coaches who listened while I wept in sadness, frustration and fear – Thank you. I particularly want to thank Alison Jones, without whom I may very well have given up when it got tough, all my clients who have shared with me their stories and offered me their encouragement – often explaining to me using my own words back at me why it is that I do what I do, and what the point of the book is – and in memory of Freya Marylin Moonbeam Murphy (I love you sis! You are in my heart always) and Claire Louise Hose (you were a huge inspiration to me and I often ask myself, what would Claire do?).
So, to YOU, the misfits and the mavens, I hold my hands up in reverence:
Let’s live our lives NOW, not waiting for a retirement, or for skinny, or for richer, or for permission.
The happiness we seek can only be granted to us, by us. The happiness we seek is also seeking us.
Each of us is unique and it is that uniqueness that is our gift to the world. In your weirdness is your wonder! Every one of you sees problems to be solved; it is not your job to bemoan them but instead to be a part of the solution. It is your duty to shine, to creatively bring your gifts to the world, and to encourage others to do the same.
I hope this book inspires you to do just that.
STAY WILD, STAY TRUE, XOXO EBONIE
‘FAITH MEANS LIVING WITH UNCERTAINTY – FEELING YOUR WAY THROUGH LIFE, LETTING YOUR HEART GUIDE YOU LIKE A LANTERN IN THE DARK.’
– DAN MILLMAN
 
 


1 . These are probably not his exact words: I was young, 7 or so when he explained how it all worked and where we came from, and 14 when he reminded me of it as I slammed the door in his face. Later as I read Caroline Myss’s Sacred Contracts I more fully understood what he had said and honed my beliefs about this.


INTRODUCTION
This book is not for you if you are looking to find the answers to your questions...
By which I mean that each of us has the exact right answers to OUR own exact right questions. The tone, context, and language you use to ask your questions are personal to you and so are your interpretation and understanding of them – the same is true of the answers. The person who has all of the answers to your questions is you. I am a big fan of talking it out and a big fan of getting a different perspective than my own but ultimately, I am responsible for me, and you are responsible for you.
It is far more powerful to figure it out for yourself, and self-gove