The gift of not getting what you want

In my last blog, I was talking about having been in a season of slowness due to ill health. I shared the powerful realisations I came to on how self-worth is intimately connected to the way we treat ourselves in our bad times and on the hard days.

Today, I want to tell you about how this slowing down has led to an exciting time of growth and change for me and my work.

Moving slow, moving with power

So the exciting news....

...I still haven't got a literary agent.

And I am no closer to getting my book published. In fact, since last time, I have received a lovely (warm, personal and encouraging) no thank you from a literary agent.

But I am ok with it. In fact, I am more than ok with it because I am carving a path for this year that feels like growth and expansion and power. I am excited about what lies ahead, even though it is not what I had hoped for.

Of course, I will still keep trying to get representation, for me and for my book, but I have changed tack in a way that doesn't feel like giving up. It actually feels like calling back control and personal power. I share it here, knowing that so many people want to work on themselves, their lives, their careers, their healing this year. And that the way we do this matters. It's not just about what what, it's always about the how too.

If we set ourselves rigid timelines or targets then we can end up living at a pace, and with an approach, that feels like we have abandoned ourselves. It can come to feel like progress over all else, and when phrases like,

• Push on through

• I should just cope better

• I just need to get that done before I rest (or other self-care activity)

enter our minds, it is likely that we will be rushing, living in comparison and moving with an anxious energy. Perhaps any growth or progress is now undermined by pressure and an circling inner-critic?

How can we reset to allow growth & progress to move WITH self-worth & health?

(Therapist side note: any time the words "just" or "should" come into use, a therapist knows that this is probably not a healthy thought or behaviour...feel free to disagree with me but I have found this to nearly always be true.)

Finding power through integration

For me this means I have decided, I want my book to be out in the world and I want to be working with it now. I don't want to wait for someone to decide it is worth publishing. I know it has value and I am ready for it to be activated...

...so I have decided to use my book this year and to work with people in a new way.

To expand my work from the therapy room and to create a programme, following the aspects of my book, so that it can support people right now. It means working from where I am and with what I already have and know - it's stepping forward, not in great leaps, but in a meaningful way that I can own and that matters to me. It feels more secure and more empowered. I won't give up on being published but I won't wait to move towards what I believe in.

When I sit with this energy and feel into it - it creates a sense of growing up from deep roots. Not rushing or over-reaching, fixating on follows or likes or external validation. Not letting ego dictate the pace or the score. Not letting fear set the timeline and pile on the pressure. Not letting doubt press pause. Not allowing the inner-critic to stand in my way.

Yes, all those feelings and experiences swirl around. (We are all multi-faceted humans after all - power, skill, mastery, wisdom can all sit alongside these other emotions and states. And they do.)

And yet this position allows movement and growth that feels sustainable, that gives space for creativity & progress and that is mindful of my hopes and my health. I don't want to spend this year focused on what I don't have, feeling pressured to hustle for a "success" that others hold in their hands. I want to move and grow on my own terms.

So, before I share with you what this means for me, I ask you to consider what it could mean for you.

• Are there things this year that you want to step towards?

• What do you feel is holding you back? Are these barriers internal, external or perhaps both?

• How could you move with a slow, gentle and steady pace in the direction of change? What would one step forward look like?

• Can you begin to imagine a forward motion that is so soft, so accepting of where you are right now that you don't have to change to move? Where change can unfurl from where you are now? Who you are. As you are.

• What is the smallest, meaningful step that you could take?

• Can you hold space that success might include challenges remaining - that growth and meaning can emerge alongside stuckness or barriers?

  
  

This kind of development needs us to prioritise how we feel inside as much as what we achieve on the outside.

But if you are here, then I guess you already know this is a truly successful life.

So let me tell you a bit more...

I am beyond excited to launch my Claiming You programme - an invitation into change for anyone who is tired and frustrated with living in the same stuck loops and cycles. It follows the four aspects of my book, all aspects I believe are needed in a life lived well. Claiming You integrates: solo reading & reflection, 121 support from me and small group community sessions.

Claiming You will run over approximately eight months with a group of, at most, eight people and is designed to give you the resources, structure and human holding needed to move toward greater self-worth, emotional health and meaningful living. All meetings are online and it will run from April this year. There is an early bird discount offer (making this offer £527 from £777) - these spaces are being taken, so please don't delay if you want to take one of them. I know it will be impactful for everyone in the group and, if this is of interest, you can read more about it here.

I'm aware that readers here are a range of former and present therapy clients, friends & family, online contacts and professional peers. So, if you are interested in Claiming You but are not sure how it might work given our existing (or previous) relationship, then please email me to talk it through. If you feel it is for you, then let's talk! Contact me on emily@emilymccoyshares.co.uk

In the last two weeks, I have also set myself up on Substack. I am hoping this will be a place I can share longer form writing and connect with people. Like all new ventures it is bringing me into the unknown, that state that humans find utterly vulnerable, and so it has kicked up self-doubt, comparison and low level stress about making it super successful. Overall though, I feel happy to have planted another seed (especially given I only really started writing in 2024... and seeing myself as a writer at all some time after that). It's not perfect, there's more to do on it but I have begun.

So if you are on Substack please say hello I am @emilymccoy89 and if you aren't there and would like to read my first article then here's a flavour - it's an exploration of why I believe self-worth is revolutionary, my passion to get more of us claiming back our true worth by owing all our polarities and casting off a 2D version of humanity and of success. And it begins at 2.13am as I start writing in a night of insomnia having woken from a nightmare involving Madonna and her attempt to mind-control the world from her book, "Sex." Interested??? Then you can find it back on my blog page.

I have also launched a series of mentoring offers. Claim You Mentoring are three levels of one-to-one partnership with me, for individuals who are looking for deep change outside of therapy, group programmes and coaching. These also follow the pathway laid out in my book and are built on solo reading & reflection and dedicated 121 support from me.

Self-doubt & personal power

I know that readers here are often on the road to healing and self-worth. And I know that reading about someone's work and progress can leave us all feeling rubbish - comparison is the thief of joy after all.

So I want to end by owing the truth.

I have worked a long time to hold the knowledge and wisdom that are woven into these offers. It has not been an easy road and many of you will know (from being in my life or following me here or on Instagram) I have had years of therapy along the way.

The wound of feeling never enough and the impact of my childhood is still there. It rises up telling me to rush onwards regardless of how I feel, it turns up as the snipping inner-critic pointing out my inadequacies and how many other people are doing what I do but more successfully. When life is hard (illness, stress, grief, sickness) my Shitty Factory Resets let these demons out to run riot in my head. I cry a fair amount. There are days I don't like myself much.

Please don't let reading any of this blind you to the truth of who I am.

I stand alongside you in utter multi-faceted human reality - sometimes meaningful, often boring, occasionally painful.

But isn't this the beauty of a community - to share in the realities of being human? For me to own all of this, and all of me, with you. To encourage you to own all of yourself too.

To tell you that (along with the hard stuff), I have a built a life that is good, really good - fully of meaning, health, purpose and connection. And threaded into the foundations of this life are all of my shadow parts and struggles too.

I don't want to wait for someone else to tell me it's time.

Or to wait for some imaginary day, when I feel totally good in myself and thus able to step out into my purpose.

I want to claim my life, claim all of me and claim my power.

And to live that life now.

I hope you can move with me towards the same.

I'm here for it.

So, if you feel any of this, I would love to work with you this year. Get in touch if you are would like to know more about Claiming You 2026 - let's move forward together.