It Is Time To Stop Looking For Quick Fixes

Saying no to false promises and seductive solutions and savoring the slow process of your own unfolding instead

John William Waterhouse, Miranda,

I said to a client the other day: “You may want to rush this process, but the truth is there is that the subtleties and the intricacies in the details of this curriculum are happening now, they just may be quieter than you want.”

My first spiritual teacher Bobby Drinnon explained to me 25 years ago:

“You came to sit in different classrooms and learn things. Your soul has certain curriculums here. You can’t leave one classroom until it is complete.”

The “classroom” could be heartbreak, loss, abuse, conversely genius, wealth, beauty. Everyone’s curriculum is all around them. No one escapes having a healing curriculum. The genius may be celebrated, but feel terribly alone. The wealthy woman may have all the luxury, but live a life wracked with guilt about having it.

The soul curriculum is never just about the external. It’s about whatever deeper waters live within our life circumstances. And no one is immune to having one.

Nowadays I see a lot of promised quick fixes out in the world. Especially when it comes to money and sex. Some of this is helpful, but a lot of it is actually detrimental because it dupes people into thinking that the healing process and the soul’s curriculum is something that could be ploughed through quickly so we can get onto the “fun” stuff. On Freya India’s Substack GIRLS in her piece “Our New Religion Isn’t Enough” she speaks to this saying:

“Because look: our mental health is collapsing. Self-harm and suicide rates are on the rise. We feel lonelier than ever; we feel hopeless about the future. Despite the wellness industry being worth trillions now, despite the constant mental health campaigns, despite the relentless raising of awareness, none of it makes a dent. If anything we feel worse.”

Mollie Adler also deep dives into this in her podcast “back from the borderline” entitled “the new gods: how commercialized spirituality and therapy culture have become dogmatic modern religions.”

To me the issue is that people are looking for quick fixes, and when you pay a lot for a quick fix and you look around and things are still the same, you often feel worse.

Healing is a practice. Changing patterns is a practice. Transforming emotions is a practice. Nervous system work is a practice.

In both of my books I mention this: that the journey will continue on and on, that every moment of reclamation, of coming back to fullness, of feeling the depth of the truth of who we are, is incredible and IS our healing work. Does it mean it is an end in itself? No. You probably have heard at some point that the healing journey is a spiral, not an end destination. It’s your mythic journey. Not a to-do list.

The advent of social media, apps, programs, and fast courses has been to tell people that change can happen quickly. We see things like “Attract your king!” And “Become a millionaire coach!” mixing spirituality, new age philosophy, and marketing in a way that draws in many people, but will not usually not deliver on the promises at hand.

Perhaps it does for some, but in all of my years of working with people one on one and in groups, I’ve learned that insight can happen quickly, but the integration of that insight into a body that has lived into patterns for a great many years, this shift  requires time. This body can’t be forced out of its old ways. The nervous system’s grooves are deep. The way it knows to respond is out of protection and survival. The strategies that were once essential take time to disarm.

More and more in my coaching and mentorship practice I’m recommending the women I work with to go slow. To be within the subtleties. For me as a practitioner that means I no longer make broad strokes with my clients, but to allow the subtleties to be where the real transformation occurs. At the expense of my ego who says: “But I want to deliver results!” But instead, we go slow, and we stop and celebrate the small shifts among the journey to bigger change and expansion.

I’ve worked with women leaving marriages, getting married and dealing with doubts, leaving jobs, starting companies, dealing with body images issues, reuniting with their sexual desire, healing from sexual abuse, coming out of an abusive marriage, creating their dream job and facing fears, becoming mothers…the list goes on.

None of these transformations can be rushed.

It is noticing the subtle tones of the feelings, sensations and the voices within changing along the way that indicate: change is happening.

It is noticing that the grip of who you thought you were is loosening.

It is noticing that your old ways of proving yourself, or getting down on yourself, or over functioning for love, or taking care of everybody, or accommodating, or people pleasing, or never bearing the vulnerability of your heart…

It’s noticing that there’s a little bit of softness around those patterns. More space. That these patterns that have installed themselves in order to protect you and have been on duty for perhaps decades. They will not go away overnight and anyone who promises you that I think is someone to be wary of. Even the people that I know that I have sat in therapy and/or ayauasca ceremonies for decades are still integrating insights and attempting change in the body, in the nervous system, in the reactions, and behaviors. This is why healing and transformation are a practice and not a destination to arrive to.

There are teachers, transmissions, and books that catalyze big shifts on this journey. They get you pointed in a new direction. They put some fuel under your butt! Then the rest of the work you do: the unraveling, the blossoming, the descending, the traversing.

This work will take years, and these years are called your life.

This is the destination.

Let me say this again:

The years of soul work are what you call your life.

Your glorious, weird, heartbreaking, fun, alive, frustrating, beautiful life.

In today’s consumer world you are just always aiming to get “there.”But what if the “there” is just here. Now. “There” is acknowledging there is no quick fix. The soul lessons are the paint on the painting of your life. Your attempts at escaping your curriculum will always be futile. Instead of seeing it all as problems needing quick fixes, why not consider it all the mythic journey of your life, an ongoing practice, a spiral of meeting yourself again and again, and noticing if anything offers you that “quick fix” that it may be a waste of time and money, because perhaps you see that the longer, more winding road, is the one that has the most treasures along the way.

First draft written via voice note to self while on a stroller walk with my 11 month old daughter + on my phone as she naps beside me.