An intimate conversation with the Master Life Coach explores the power of following your intuition, connecting with your heart center plus so much more.
As I began preparation for my conversation with the creator of The Abundance Architect, earlier this week, I didn’t anticipate that her words would resonate so deeply with me. I had a list of questions to ask Dana Grant, determined to dive into her life-changing coaching techniques and impressive accomplishments … but the universe surprised me with so much more.
As an esteemed businesswoman, keynote speaker, podcaster, and upcoming author of two incredible books, there were plenty of directions I imagined our conversation would flow to. Yet, empowering me to turn inward and harness the power of my intuition was not one of them.
“Everyone’s got intuition,” she tells me. “We just have to learn to trust it.” Admittedly, in the past, I had been feeling disconnected from my body for quite some time, often struggling to make important decisions.
Torn between the logic of the mind and the emotions of the heart is a common dilemma that many individuals are faced with, myself included. Traumatic life events and negative experiences can make it all the more challenging to feel connected to oneself and thus, do what’s best for us.
Sometimes we even recognize that we’re in a cycle and want to change, but we’re so resistant that we put walls up—something Grant refers to as “terror barriers.”
“It’s called terror barriers for a reason,” she explains. “The only thing on the other side of it is newness, but our ego says, ‘this is difficult, it’s not safe, and we can’t protect you there,’” so we stop ourselves in our tracks. This is why we find ourselves repeating the same patterns over and over again. Because “it’s comfortable.”
But comfortable at what cost?
“Nothing is more frightening than overthinking and not making the move,” says Grant. “I’ll be 60 this year, and I don’t want to die with my dreams inside of me. I don’t want to say I was too frightened to do it.”
This begs the question, is there something you’re too frightened to do? Perhaps you’ve always dreamed of moving across the world, but the thought of leaving your current life behind scares you. Or maybe you’d like to finally set boundaries in your relationship, but you don’t know where to begin. Regardless of what your dream is, Grant says that you can do it, as long as you believe in yourself.
As a life coach, the majority of Grant’s work involves guiding people through the process of making their dreams a reality, including navigating the discomfort of putting themselves first. Too often we find ourselves sacrificing what we truly want to please others, despite the damaging effects this can have on us emotionally and even physically.
“Your emotional state is connected to your physical state,” Grant continues. Which is why “the biggest integrity you can have is with yourself and you don’t want to break that.”
“The more that you honor yourself, the more every cell in your body will listen,” she says. When that happens, you begin to operate from your “heart’s center,” the part of the body that signifies you are truly aligned with your highest self.
To know if you’re operating from your heart’s center, Grant encourages you to ask, “Does this feel like love? Because we’re here to love and be loved.”
One of Grant’s go-to techniques that has helped her clients cultivate a stronger connection to their heart center is positive affirmations. When you say something like, “I am making new choices, or I am connected to myself,” you are grounding yourself within those beliefs, she explains.
Even if you don’t believe it to be true right away, repetition can help rewire your thought patterns, to the point where one day, you may not even need to affirm anything to yourself. “Everything is a lesson,” she says, “and everything is moving us towards love.”
With all of the responsibilities and duties of daily life, it’s easy to get lost in the repetition of going to work, coming home, making dinner, tending to the kids, and then repeating the same thing the next day.
But the beauty of it is that you have the choice to choose differently. You can lead a healthy, happy, and fulfilling life no matter how unrealistic or far-fetched it may sound now. As Grant says, you just need to “trust the process.”
“Everyone’s got a different process,” says Grant. “There’s no right or wrong. There’s only what you call into your life to evolve from.”
Nearly one hour and plenty of “ah-ha” moments later, I left my conversation with Grant feeling renewed, like my cup had been filled after a conversation with a best friend. “I know exactly why I was routed here,” she says to me. “I know exactly why we were connected.”
Grant reminded me today that as humans, our main purpose is to “love and be loved,” to support and uplift each other and to evolve and grow together. She says “Everything happens for a reason,” and now I understand why. There is no such thing as coincidences. Not only did she and I meet for a reason, but even you are reading this article for a reason.
If you feel inspired to continue this conversation, be sure to connect with Dana Grant on Instagram and send her a message.
You can also visit her website and stay up to date on her upcoming books, which include a self-help book and a cookbook, as well as future podcast episodes.
