THE HARD TRUTH

... NO ONE WILL TELL YOU ABOUT REACHING YOUR POTENTIAL AND LIVING YOUR DREAMS.

Natalie Rivera

My deepest fear is to be overflowing with the manifestations of my dreams and feel unfulfilled.

To be surrounded by people I value and feel alone.

To have a life full of activity and feel empty.

To have a life that is unrecognizable but still see the same sad eyes staring back at me in the mirror.

I have a tendency toward worrying, catastrophic thinking, self-judgment, attachment anxiety, self-sacrifice, resentment, and compassion blindness. But, I also have absurdly big dreams and high expectations for my life. I am my biggest obstacle.

Despite this, I’ve created a highly successful lifestyle business doing what I love. I have a wonderful husband who is my best friend and business partner. We’ve been through hell and back together, and our curses have turned out to be blessings. I have had to wrestle my demons. In fact, I still am.

I tell you this so that I can tell you the truth: my success isn’t about what I have created with my business or that I live at the beach and make my own schedule. My success is about what I’ve done to develop as a person along the way.

It’s time for someone to tell you the truth. It might as well be me.

Going for your dreams is really f-ing hard.

Living authentically, releasing the need for approval, and disappointing others to be true to yourself is really f-ing hard.

Making decisions that leave behind everything you know, including the tightly held beliefs of who you thought you were, is really f-ing hard.

Making decisions to accept the unacceptable, stick with it through the impossible, and continue to believe that your dreams are possible is really f-ing hard.

No one tells this truth. This truth doesn’t sell books or courses or seminar tickets.

No one wants to hear that the only path to their liberation is through the deep, dark, messy internal torture chamber they’ve been spending their entire life trying to avoid, repress, and pretend doesn’t exist.

They tell you to hang your affirmations in the mirror and remind yourself who you want to believe you can be. They don’t tell you that beyond the post-it-note you would have to gaze honestly into the eyes staring back at you terrified at what the mirror of truth will reflect.

They tell you that the secret to happiness is making money, having freedom of time, traveling the world, writing your book, typing away on your laptop while sitting on an idyllic beach.

They don’t tell you that no amount of money will change how you feel about yourself. No amount of time will give you the feeling of freedom you’re looking for.