My hair is flying in the wind.
I’ll never get the tangles out, and give slightly less than two shits.
I peel down the road in a rental car fetched in Miami, a white clone of my own yellow Jeep. The particular road I am peeling is the legendary Tamiami Trail on my way to Naples, straight through the Everglades. Interesting birds, alligators, trees adorned with massive garlands of moss, and lots of water line the little highway, and my only regret is the lack of time as I fly by signs advertising LARGEST ALLIGATOR IN THE WORLD!, TAKE OUR AIRBOAT TOUR!! and COMIDA PARA FIESTAS PAN CON LECHÓN, but I don’t have time to visit Samson the 12 Foot Alligator or see the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters so I can find a Yeti.
Thoughts of the last few days spin through my head. The second day we spent a lot of time practicing body positioning, and I must admit it really is kind of amazing, how great you feel when you walk around like fucking Superman all day. As I practice my new posture, I begin to understand something.
When I would sit at the bar, or wherever I happened to be, and have my head tilted down, eyes looking up, I was giving a message to everyone around that I was a victim. I effectively communicated a strong nonverbal signal to the more balanced people around me that I wasn’t very confident, and telegraphed to the players and the predatory that I would put up with anything.
I think back to the time Fundude called me a “Wounded Fawn”. I now know exactly what he meant. Oh, look at me the poor helpless girl and BOOM here sweeps along a crafty fox to take what he wants. Only this isn’t about Crafty Foxdude, it’s about me, and I never really understood what was happening to me, or the fact that I had control over it all along. I was manufacturing Dudes by the dozen in the way I was handling myself, and one single exercise we did at the conference blew the lid off the whole thing in a way that ensured I would never be the same again.
An exercise he had us do, was to introduce ourselves to another person as if you feared rejection, and be aware of exactly what we were portraying. It was difficult introducing myself to another woman this way, as I am accustomed to being confident in that situation, but when I had to introduce myself to a man, Wounded Fawn waltzed in, all ready and decked out for showtime. I got all coy, head tilted down, shoulders forward, looking timid and meek.
WHERE THE HELL IS THIS COMING FROM???
Subservient, bashful, pathetic. Well, this explains a lot. This was most likely leftovers from training in the stricter churches, the ones who didn’t allow us women to do much of anything other than make her man a sandwich and breed.
Something shifts and clicks in my mind. I can’t unsee the way I’ve been doing this. I never realized how this came across.
Right then and there, I resolve to NEVER introduce myself this way again (I really never did).
In a single moment, I transformed from wounded fawn to apex predator.
And NO ONE fucks with an apex predator.
I had been living like roadkill, come along and take what you want!… but I am no longer even Monica the Phoenix, risen from the ashes.
I am becoming Monica the Lion DO NOT FUCK WITH ME.
Or Eagle, love love love the idea of flying above, aware of everything, above the noise, able to see all that is going on beneath.
Okay wait, I’ve got it. I’m a Ligle, a flying lion! It’s perfect! Hear me roar up in the sky…
I determine where to go.
I decide what happens with my life.
I don’t have to allow anyone in my life who doesn’t bring something to the table.
And now I know why I’ll never wind up in the wheelbarrow again.
NO ONE carries away an Apex predator.
We really do have more control over our lives than we ever think.
Tony Robbins, with the books, and the lifestyle, and the helicopters, and the following, standing here telling 13,000 people how to make their lives amazing…
…was a fucking janitor.
Well, shit, if he can do this… suddenly I realize that my mind is the only thing that has ever been limiting me, and ideas explode into existence. In a stark moment of clarity, everything I have been through, from my somewhat abusive past to the church, to the divorce and the loss and simply the all of it, has a purpose and a meaning.
I’m going to tell the fuck out of my story.
The rest of the conference is a whirlwind of inspiration that leaves me knowing the things I want. I feel amazing, and stick around for only the beginning of the fourth day. Tony Robbins is no longer present and there are just some weird pseudodoctors promoting expensive things that sound suspiciously like top-shelf snake oil. I call bullshit and I’m out, and march my Superman self out the door into the blazing sunshine. I want to do one more thing before I leave Miami.
I want to run. So off I go, through various upscale neighborhoods, over bridges and through tunnels, but there’s one that stuck out, a gem in the already opulent landscape.
I run across a bridge onto Brickell Key.
This is a triangle-shaped island packed with luxury condominiums, most with a spectacular view, very expensive (Well, except for the tiny place I found for 1300 per month that had one teensy hitch– no windows. Not kidding.). It’s beautiful, but here’s the thing that got to me.
It’s manmade. There’s a guy who actually created this little Paradise island, a guy who’s no better than me and has the same 24 hours in a day.
Maybe it’s just because I just left a conference by the original go-get-it Guru, and this isn’t my goal at all, but I guarantee you people told this guy it was impossible.
So, I’m going to set out to do the impossible. If he did it, so can I.
I return to my hotel, shower and Uber to the car rental place, and I’m off to Naples, directly across the peninsula. And that’s where you find me at the beginning of this chapter, fucking up my hair with the wind and thinking about all that has happened.
I pull into a bougainvillea-lined driveway in Naples and check my messages… one from my daughter, a few from clients I will have to respond to in the morning…
… and one from Lastdude.
Worship Leader Gone Wild 