Action

If you are just joining us on All About the Voice journey, please take the following action: listen to the first three episodes of All About the Voice podcast Intro, Awareness, and Alignment. As misaligned action often leads to devastating results. And we are here together to create a life of genuine fulfillment and abundance.

As our awareness expands and we practice conscious alignment, the rubber meets the road with us either taking or failing to take action. Or, worse yet, as happened more than once in my case, sometimes preventing someone else from taking that action!

Being a parent puts you in an authority role whether you are ready or not. Being a mom to my two super-amazing kids is by far the greatest blessing in my life, which, of course, has also been the greatest challenge and growth opportunity. I was 22 when I had Lydia and 25 when I had Ray. When they were about 7 and 4 correspondingly, we were flying to Utah for a winter family reunion. Kids were excited to start packing!

Lydia said, “Mom, I feel like I should pack my swimming suit.” I quickly pushed away a gentle subtle feeling inside and responded with great logic instead, “Honey, it’s winter. In Utah. With snow! And we are staying with family!” A prime example of when your reason trumps your awareness. Instead on pausing and focusing on what she was experiencing and that subtle feeling inside, I shifted to expected reality.

Outside of my stubborn ego of a trying-to-know-it-all parent, there really was no good reason not to bring her swimsuit. I mean, they don’t take too much space in the suitcase, that’s for sure! Nevertheless, I prevailed in preventing her from bringing it.

Of course, upon arrival in Utah, we found out that our family had extra unexpected family members arrive just prior to us, so there was no room in the house for us and we now needed to grab a hotel. Our hotel had a heated pool and a jacuzzi… which my kids could not enjoy because of my unaware and misaligned action. I did ask Lydia for forgiveness, and seeing that it was heartfelt, she graciously granted it to me.

However small, this incident became a huge awakening for me. I made a deeper commitment to follow the still small voice, the Spirit, the divine intuition. At any cost. And especially at that of my ego. This commitment to take aware and aligned action has been nothing short of a miraculous journey of abundance in my life.

Gratitude is the energy that keeps us in alignment until it is time to act. For many years our family has taken a beach vacation. Every year we have stayed in the same home on the beach, enjoying our time together at a beautiful place. While I indeed had a beach house as one of my dreams, I have noticed how what I noticed shifted over the years of our vacation time together. I went from “It would be nice to have a house like this one year” to just an immense feeling of appreciation and gratitude for being able to vacation together with my family at someone else’s home. I felt grateful for them sharing their home with us. Even though of course we were paying rent for it, I genuinely felt they were gifting us with a beautiful opportunity that otherwise was out of our reach.

The gratitude and the appreciation for the house grew from year to year. So much so, that we would buy and leave some foil and spices for the next tenants. It was in July of 2019 that on the way down to the beach, I told my mom, “You know, I think we will buy a beach house…” The reason I said so was that quiet feeling inside, the Spirit prompting, the same voice that earlier invited me to eff off marble and be free. I felt it in my guts. I did not know how. I just knew it would happen. I know you have experienced this many times. And, when you listened to that voice, when you followed it, amazing and even miraculous things happened. And… well, when you allowed that voice to be shushed by the doubts of your overthinking brain, you found out later the reason why you should have listened. We all have done it. Notice what you notice, for what you notice is what you create. We either notice the small voice of inspiration or the loud fear of desperation. And then we create exactly what we notice, saying, “See, I told you so!”

I did act on the voice of the prompting. I drove down with my mom and dad on Saturday to join my brother and his family, with my husband and the kids arriving on Sunday. My Sunday phone call with my husband Randy on his drive went approximately like this, “Honey, you know that feeling that I get. Well, I think we should look for the beach house on this trip. Actually, I have already found an agent and a few homes to look at.” And that I did. Full disclaimer here, I did sell real estate in the past and knew the basic steps of the process that are similar in each state. I have gone on Zillow and identified a few homes of interest. Those of you that are looking to buy a home, here is a practical tip for you that will remove some anxiety and arguing with your significant other. There are three main things to consider when buying a home: location, style, and price. And, unless you have unlimited resources, you need to decide the priority of those three factors. What is most important to you. They do say location, location, location – and with a beach house, it could not be truer. Location was by far most important to me: I had to have a home right on the waterfront. I wanted to be able to wake up and step on my deck to see the ocean. My dream.

It wasn’t until very recent that I realized that that love for being by the water came from my childhood. I grew up in Ukraine, then Soviet Union, in a small two-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a nine-floor apartment building. Right by our building, there was a small artificially dug lake, surrounded by beautiful willow trees and with a small, lush island in the middle. The lake was more decorative and not used for swimming, but the peace of the water and walks around the lake must have created a deep inner desire and yearning to be by the water. If I were to have a beach house, it would have to be right on the water.

This choice of location limited our choices. The next step was the style. For most beach properties, the kitchen and the main living area are usually on the very top level. I was looking for the one with the elevator. Sounds like a luxury, but I was thinking more of aging family, friends, and guests with limited mobility being able to enjoy the top floor and the view of the ocean. This limited our choices even further.

Finally, was the question of the price. Having done my math in the best way, I had the maximum we could afford, which brought our selections to just a few homes. Now, here is an important distinction, because we were going to buy this home as a second home for us off season and as a rental in season to help us pay the mortgage, I also needed to look at investment potential. These were my requirements that I gave to our agent on Monday.

On Tuesday he showed us a few homes with one more scheduled for Wednesday. Very much like I was advising my past clients, I had my husband and me have separate evaluation sheets from 0-10 for each home (0- would never buy, 10 – this is mine). Most people settle on a home between 6-7 for both. But when we walked into our home to be on Tuesday, I felt an immense confirmation that I was standing in my house. A complete 10! I need to add that seeing homes during the week in the summer is very difficult as the tenants are enjoying their vacation and most sellers are under contract that does not allow the properties to be shown any other time other than during change overs on Saturday or Sunday. Our realtor had to plead extra hard to get us in, for which I am so very grateful.

Even though we could not stay long, and it was the only time we could see the home that week, we both felt that it was the right home. On Wednesday we submitted an offer. On Thursday we received a counter from the seller. On Friday, we continued our negotiations and ratified the contract! Just in time to head back home on Saturday after our one-week vacation.

We were set to close on the house a month out in August. The lender we were working with kept making mistakes and finally a day before closing told us that we did not qualify for the loan as per her guidelines. Awareness. I noticed what I noticed. First anger and disbelief. Then, back to alignment, “Wait a minute, what about that original feeling? It felt right.” We looked for another lender. Gratefully, because the process was now dragging and we were very open about it with the sellers, who have agreed to postpone the closing by a month to give us more time to qualify for a loan and them to collect more summer rent, the interest rate for a jumbo loan dropped significantly, and not only were we able to get qualified, but we also were able to get an amazing interest rate!

But wait, there is more. 2019 is the year before COVID lock downs. Because of listening to that quiet unrealistic impossible prompting to buy a beach house, we now had an amazing safe place on the quiet beach for most of the lock down. An unexpected blessing. Why am sharing all of this? So that you could notice what you were noticing as you are listening to me. What are the thoughts going through your head? Are they any form of questioning whether this or any other one of your dreams is impossible for you? See, often we believe abundance and prosperity is possible … for someone else, just not for us… Any and all of those thoughts of impossibility are your limiting “marble.” And what do we do with that marble? We eff it off!

Affirm with me, “Eff off marble! I am free! I am aware. I am aligned. I am taking action!” And this is how we open the door of abundance in our life! See you soon for our next episode on Abundance!