My Eat Pray Love & Shit Sandwiches

Hello Gorgeous Souls,

  Something big happened today. If this is the first time ever reading my blog, first of all welcome, second I am about to host two in person retreats back to back in New Orleans this week!! I am beyond excited for them, but today I got hit with a bit of a shit storm when I found out that my COO for my company couldn't come help facilitate the retreat. She was held in Ireland and unable to fly to the US. She is safe, she is ok, and honestly, that's all that fucking matters, but now I have to host two back to back in person retreats by myself, which feels a bit overwhelming. 

But I have to laugh at this a little bit because of the irony that the Universe likes to play with. I was going to announce this next month on the blog since that is when I fully intended to start it, but this year I will be traveling up & down the east coast on my very own Eat Pray Love journey.

As you might remember from my word of the year blog post, I am really trying to focus on feeling safety within myself. Whether it's in my own health, my wealth, or in speaking my truth, I have dedicated this year to making sure that I always feel safe, no matter what the circumstances are. One of the areas I wanted to start feeling safer in is traveling by myself. Whenever I have taken a trip, it has always been with someone else. Whether a work trip or a vacation it is usually packed full of me and other people. This is because I am scared to travel alone. 

I am scared as a woman to travel alone and I mean how can't I be when we are hit with news of women being kidnapped left and right as they walk home, get in their car, etc. The idea of being by myself in a house terrifies me. In fact, there was only ONE time I lived alone in my entire life and that was only because my best friend lived in the apartment across the street. I have always relied on someone to be there with me to provide some type of comfort. When I went to Orlando this past year and had to stay in some random house by myself for a night because my team couldn't make it to the next day, I literally cried. I called Adam, balling, because I was so upset about it. I didn't feel safe and I didn't like it. 

On top of that, I am just not good being alone with myself in general. Whenever I am alone I jam pack my time with things to do so that I don't have a minute to realize that I am alone. I work non-stop, clean, cook, reorganize, paint, whatever the fuck it takes to not have to be alone with my own thoughts. When I was younger, I felt alone a lot. I felt abandoned by my parents and felt like when I was alone all I would think about was how alone I felt, how my parents weren't there, how I wasn't a priority in peoples lives, and so on and so forth. Being alone felt traumatizing and unsafe. 

Part of the work I am doing this year is to feel safe by myself with my thoughts, feelings, my soul. I want to be able to take a trip by myself, out of state, for a few days and not feel like I am alone or abandoned because of it.  I want to enjoy alone time with myself. I want to enjoy my own company. So this year I told Adam I was going to focus on trying to take a solo trip somewhere every month if not every other month starting in February (after my New Orleans trip) and already have my very first trip booked to North Carolina, but today the Universe said "nahhhhh bitch, this shit begins now. If you are serious, prove it." 

When we set an intention into the world that we have set before and not followed through with, the Universe takes note. This isn't the first time I have said I was going to do solo trips and yet every single time I went to do one, I would cancel it becoming surrounded by fear. When I set the intention this year to "start in February" the Universe decided I needed to start sooner. 

See, the reason I believe she did this is because she knows that I can not back down from going to NOLA. We have two amazing ladies coming for Bitchin Biz Retreat, we have four incredible women coming from Kings Court, vendors are booked and paid for, there is literally no turning back. The Universe is challenging me to hold to my intention, in a way forcing me to prove to her that this time, it will be different. 

So now my Eat Pray Love journey intention I have set out into this world, gets to start a month early. I get to truly experience going out of state by myself, and having to be by myself for two whole days before this retreat begins. I believe in my soul, that the Universe wants me to be alone those two days. She wants me to connect with myself before this jam packed retreat, she wants me to slow the fuck down and just be with myself before all of the ladies arrive. 

She is challenging me to show the fuck up in this intention this year, not to back down like years past, and she is forcing me to start tapping into feeling safe with myself when I travel by myself. This is her twisted humor gift that she is presenting to me right before two of the biggest weeks of my career. She is deciding the timing of this journey to begin, not me. 

This will happen to you in every aspect of your life whenever you set an intention, the Universe will hand you what I call Prove it Moments where she will challenge you to stick to your guns, to see your intention through, and these prove it moments, are always fucking rough. They are sticky, messy, difficult, moments that she is testing our strength and willpower by giving us. This is her way of not playing nice anymore. She is done with you setting the intention and not following through, so she will make it happen for you, to test you. 

In business, this happens all of the time. You set the intention to show up on LIVE video for 30 days and during those 30 days, your cell phone breaks, your light ring won't light, your cell service drops, people keep interrupting your video, you bomb a video, your dog throws up on video (this happened to me once), all of the things that could go wrong will go wrong. She is testing your resolve, your resilience, your grit. She wants you to show her that this time you aren't dicking around. 

And this is where we lose a lot of Entrepreneurs chasing their dreams because they let the Universe win, they allow her to stop them. They think to themselves "if this was meant to be, it would be easier. If the Universe wanted me to do this, she would help me rather than hurt me" but that is where you are wrong, my dear. She isn't doing this to  you she is doing this for you. She wants you to prove to yourself that you are capable of handling whatever shit sandwich she throws your way. She wants to see you push through the obstacles and not to give up. When you give up, you are just proving to her, again, that you don't believe in whatever the intention is that you set, that you do not believe in yourself .

Even though these times are rough, you've gotta push on through them. Don't get me wrong, they are terrifying. I am quiet literally shitting bricks thinking about spending two days in New Orleans by myself in some random house all while trying to prep for this retreat, but I also know, that she would not have gifted me this experience if she didn't believe that I couldn't fully handle it. She has absolute faith in me, she has faith in you, but she needs us to prove it to ourselves. 

She needs us to recognize how strong, brave, resilient we are. She needs us to recognize that we can adapt quickly, think on your feet, get whatever necessary shit has to get done, done. She needs us to recognize how fucking badass we are and so she will throw us the roughest or rough so that when we exit this shit show victorious we are able to see exactly what we are made of. 

I hope you join me on my Eat Pray Love Journey this year traveling by myself up and down the East Coast. Don't worry, my EPL journey will definitely have an Amanda King flair to it as always, but I hope that when I explore the idea of feeling safe within myself and the circumstances that 2022 throws at me, I hope you can feel safe with yourself in yours.

Because we both deserve it

Love your freakin faces,

Amanda