There’s a memory I keep coming back to lately…

The summer I got my braces off, I made this decision that I was going to completely reinvent myself before school started. I had been watching Legally Blonde at the time, and I became convinced that if I just changed enough on the outside – dyed my hair, shaved my legs, got the Tiffany necklace she wore.. I would walk back into school and receive a completely different experience.

I was so bullied growing up. I didn’t have a lot of love or acceptance from my peers, and I remember thinking… if I could just look different, people would finally see me differently.

So I did the work. I put all this time and energy into my physical transformation. And I remember stepping into school that fall, so full of excitement…

And it didn’t work.

Nobody really met me in that new energy. The external makeover didn’t shift how people treated me – and more honestly, it didn’t shift how I felt about myself on the inside.

It took me years to understand what that experience was really showing me.

I was trying to rearrange my outer world to change something that could only ever be touched from within.

Why External Transformation Doesn’t Create Internal Shifts

And when I look at that now, with the healing and awareness I’ve cultivated since then… I can see how many of us carry a version of this very same pattern into adulthood.

We believe that once we hit the milestone, once we reach the goal, once the body looks a certain way or the bank account reaches a certain number – then we’ll finally feel like the person we want to be. Then we’ll feel worthy. Then we’ll feel enough.

But the process of becoming doesn’t live there.

It never has.

There’s this deeply ingrained belief so many of us hold that the external results are what create the internal feeling. That if we just get the thing, land the opportunity, see the number, something in us will finally relax. Something in us will finally say, okay, now I’m her.

But what I’ve found, over and over again, is that when the inner work hasn’t been done… even when the external things arrive, we still feel that same quiet emptiness. We still feel like we’re reaching. Because the part of us that feels unworthy doesn’t suddenly heal when the circumstances change. It heals when we change – from the inside out.

The Shift That Changed Everything

Over the years, I’ve completely shifted that paradigm. I stopped anchoring my sense of self to what was happening externally and started making my inner becoming the most important thing in my life…

Becoming a woman who has boundaries. Becoming a woman who respects herself. Becoming a woman who uses her voice. Who is regulated in her nervous system. Who is present, strong, and embodied in all of the wide variety and dimension of who she is.

I made that the priority. The inner becoming. The quiet, daily, unglamorous work of actually shifting who I was at my core… not because there was something in me that was bad and needed fixing, but because I wanted to hold a deeper relationship with myself before asking the world to reflect it back.

And that work didn’t always look graceful. Some days it looked like sitting with really uncomfortable emotions. It looked like having the hard conversation I had been avoiding. Some days it looked like choosing to stay with myself when everything in me wanted to reach for a distraction.

But every single time I chose my inner path, something shifted.

What Happened When I Made the Inner Work the Priority

And what’s wild is… when I look back over the last five years since I made that shift, my world has completely transformed. I’ve hit my financial milestones. My marriage has deepened in intimacy. I’ve built the most beautiful friendships. I manifested a home that feels like real peace. My life became everything I had been reaching for.

All of it came from the daily, sometimes messy commitment to becoming the version of me who already felt whole before the external evidence arrived.

And I think that’s the part that surprises people. Because in this journey of being human, we spend so much energy chasing the physical manifestations… and yet, when we do leave this world someday, we leave with ourselves. We lose all of the external things. So the relationship we build with who we are on the inside – that’s the thing that actually lasts. The thing that magnetizes everything else.

This is something I think about often. We put so much pressure on the 3D world to give us the feeling we’re looking for. But manifestation in our physical world can really only begin when we hold that deep, healthy, interpersonal relationship with self. When we stop outsourcing our sense of wholeness and start building it from within… that’s when the field opens.

The Real Question Behind What We Want

I think this is one of the most important things I’ve ever learned about manifestation…

What we want is often our birthright. But we want it because of how we believe it’s going to make us feel. So the real question becomes – can you start cultivating those feelings now? Can you prioritize the internal journey of becoming the woman who already holds those emotions… before the external world catches up?

Because here’s what I’ve experienced, again and again.. when you do that, the outer world does catch up. Almost like it was waiting for you to arrive first.

This is what I’ve built my entire approach around. And it’s the thing I’m most excited to share with our community. The becoming is the catalyst. It’s the medicine. It’s the method.

And if I could distill it into something simple, it would be this – what you really want is to feel something. So start there. Start with the feeling. Start with the woman. Start with who you’re choosing to be today… and watch what begins to shift around you.

Grounding Into Your Body This Week

This week, pay attention to the moments when you catch yourself reaching for something external to feel more complete – a purchase, a validation, a number on a screen.

Pause there. Place your hands on your chest and breathe into the knowing that who you are right now, in this body, is already enough to begin. Let that landing settle into your nervous system before you take your next step.

Journaling Into Your Becoming

Journal on this question: who am I choosing to become?

Write without editing. Let the answer come from your body, not your mind. Then ask yourself – what is one quality of that woman I can embody today? Presence, softness, boundaries, joy… choose one and let it lead you through your day.

Letting Your Inner Work Lead Your Business

Let your inner becoming inform how you show up in your work this week.

Instead of asking “what do I need to do to grow?” ask “who do I need to be for this next chapter?” When your business is built from the energy of the woman you’re becoming, the right opportunities, clients, and ideas start finding their way to you.

Xoxo, Lauren