meet hadley

I had to figure all of this out by myself with the help of my therapist, spiritual guides, and close family and friends. My desire is to put it all together to make it easier on others. 

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Waves - I’ve always loved the ocean. My dad was the first one I remember taking me to the ocean. We went to Popham Beach in a rural part of Maine. His parents, my grandparents, had come here camping in a tent for their honeymoon back in the early 1900s, and my ancestors landed here and even named Orr Island after themselves. My grandparents took their kids here most Labor Day weekends to celebrate their anniversary and enjoy family time together by the sea. This spot in Maine is very special to me, I have memories from very early childhood sitting at the beach, being mesmerized by the waves, walking for miles with my head down, searching for sand dollars, and having endless imagination of what I could build and play with on the beach. I can close my eyes and take a big deep breath in through my nose and smell the saltwater in the air and hear the birds' sounds and hear and feel the waves crashing.
 

I’ve always used visualizing the ocean as a metaphor and crutch in my life. I’ve used it as a metaphor when describing the ups and downs of life as if we are riding the waves of life and there will be times when we catch a wave and ride high and it’s so much fun, and there will be times where the waves tumble you and humble you and hurt you and you have to get back up after each time that you are tumbled so that you have a chance to catch a wave and ride again. Life is the same way. I’ve always been able to explain it that way, but I’ve never really understood why that analogy made sense to me or why it made sense with neuroscience and quantum physics. I’ve used it as a crutch when feeling like I needed an excuse for why something went poorly. I would tell myself this was just one of those times that the wave crashed and tumbled me. That didn’t make it hurt any less or feel any better, it just took away some of the self-blame and pain that I was feeling about whatever situation I was in.
 

As an adult, I found a feeling of peace and calm at the beach. I felt when my bare feet were on the sand that it was like I was receiving a charge from the universe to keep going. I would feel like a cell phone battery that was green with a lightning bolt to show that it was plugged in. I had these feelings long before I understood the science or mechanics of how that feeling was actually what was happening to me because I am magnetic and the Earth is magnetic and when I have my feet planted on the ground, I am grounded and charging, filling up with positive motivational energy.
 

Intuition - I stopped knowing how to listen to my body and my intuition and didn’t even realize it was happening. I stopped eating when I was hungry, kept eating when I was full, wasn’t sleeping when I was tired, etc. I was not listening to my body. We all have the answers inside of us, we need to relearn how to access it, how to access us, our inner highest self. I was always fascinated with how the human body could grow another human and then birth it. I was also fascinated with stories about mothers having superhuman strength to lift a car off of their children. How could these things be possible? As a kid, I was also fascinated with fables and stories like the Loch Ness monster and “Just So Stories” to explain topics such as how the zebra got his stripes.  
 

Perception - You’ve heard the saying, “Perception is reality“… well it’s true. What you perceive becomes real. So how can you change your perception so that when you are feeling down, you have the ability to see a brighter future ahead? These are the concepts and lessons that worked for me to help me overcome tragedy, hardship, traumas, and obstacles throughout my life. Optical illusions are part of understanding this.
 

Ikigai - Ikigai is the Japanese word that means reason for being – your purpose on this earth. Many years ago, a mentor in my life asked me the question “What makes your heart sing?“ I pondered that question for days months, and years. I loved being a gymnastics coach, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it and live a safe and fulfilled life. I could not figure out what made my heart sing because I had been conditioned to stop listening to my intuition, so I did not know how to hear what my heart was asking for. Fast-forward a few decades, and I was introduced to the concept of Ikigai. I walked through the exercise and found that my reason for being is “to help others become the best version of themselves while continuously becoming the best version of myself.” I love learning and growing, and I love helping other people. Voila! So that’s why I’m writing these things down, hoping that what helped me and my journey and path to personal growth and self-development will also help someone else along the way. I dream of a world filled with love and kindness and people who sing and play music and enjoy each other and have fun and smile and laugh and dance, we can create this world together by finding our true selves, our higher selves, the best version of our self that lives within us. I want to see everyone blossom into the beautiful flower they are capable of being.

Trust the Process - As someone who likes and feels safe and secure with predictability and certainty, the concept of trusting the process was very foreign to me and made me feel uncomfortable. I wanted to know what the process was, when it started and when it ended, what the expectations were throughout, what I needed to be successful, and any other bits of information, I could possibly know about the process. The more I pushed to understand the process, the more it seemed to elude me. And, each time that I made it to a milestone where I had to trust the process, it worked out exceptionally well. I did not understand this, and I was frustrated by this. We will dive into more detail about how it works and how to use it to your advantage. Fear is not real, it’s a product of the thoughts you create. Danger is very real, and fear is a choice, as it’s False Evidence Appearing Real. 
 

Neuroscience - In order for me to truly believe something, it helps me to have science backing it up to explain why and how it works. Throughout this book, I explain how different concepts are working with your brain. If you can understand scientifically what it is doing, you will be able to, generate more control of it, which will in turn, create more of what you want in life. Everything is energy. Thoughts begin with energy, emotions amplify the energy, and actions increase the momentum of it. It’s all connected and can be used for or against you. 
 

Karma - My mom always taught me that karma will always prevail. That good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. That karma keeps score, and it will get people who do bad things at some point in time. I almost viewed karma as a negative devil that was there looking for people doing bad things so it could hurt them in turn. It did help me maintain a stronger, moral compass as a child because I was genuinely scared of karma if I did something wrong. I now understand the quantum physics and the neuroscience around positive and negative karma. I use my knowledge of karma to both propel positive karma in my direction and to observe negative karma flowing by.
 

Loving Yourself - The most important relationship of your life is your relationship with yourself, as life mirrors everything you feel about yourself. In order to embrace your authenticity and let it shine, you must first learn to love yourself fully and wholly and heal all of the emotional wounds of your current and past lives. Think of your body and mind as a landscape. No one complains about the vastness of the sea or shames a mountain for being too big or a valley for being too windy. You are part of the earth and you are beautiful just the way you are. Get on your own side - the more you care about something, the more your inner critic screams - transition to becoming your inner support team and challenge the critic voice with love, compassion, and understanding. 

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Wholeness and true healing are so hard because it’s a constant battle between your inner child who’s scared and just wants safety, your inner teenager who’s angry and just wants justice, and your adult self who is tired and just wants peace - be gentle with yourself on this journey and imagine how powerful they will be when they’re integrated together to unlock your energy and purpose in a sustainable way. How to alchemize for love and healing: First comes self-honesty, then it’s self-acceptance, next it’s self-respect, then it’s self-worth, and finally it’s self-love.

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         “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within
        yourself that you have built against it.” - Rumi (13th-century poet and mystic)

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Reparenting Your Inner “Good Girl” - Reparenting my inner voice to be one that is filled with love, compassion, empathy, and understanding for myself has taken years, and the rewards are impeccable! So it turns out being the “good girl,” is learning to neglect yourself from a young age so that you can manage other people’s emotions that they don’t know how to manage on their own. You become completed disconnected from what you want and like so you can be completely attuned to what they want and what they like, so they can be happy, so you can keep the peace, all as a means to make you feel safe. 

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As you ride the waves of life, remember to stay on when things start going poorly, people’s natural reaction is to run away, remember when we had to run away from lions to stay alive? Now that we’re not running away from lions, we can stay on that wave and ride it to the next High Point.