Amy Childs

How I became a Happiness Consultant (part 3)

We established new agreements with each other and continued to live side by side for several years in our family home. We worked on our relationship within a new paradigm - not as married partners, but as parenting partners and friends based on the truth of who we really are.

In the meantime, my mid-life blossoming continued. I dedicated a year of my life to an inner-directed “Essential Self School,” taking my lead as much as possible from my true desires. I soon realized that I wanted this exploration to include our children (then 8, 10 and 13), and we began to homeschool. We based our curriculum on the search for our true selves, trusting that this would lead us to learn everything we really needed to know. I saw that when I stayed focused on breathing deeply, telling the truth, and trusting my own and my children’s desires, miracles began to happen in our lives and in the lives of those around us.

A year later I discovered The Hunger Project, a global organization committed to the end of chronic hunger. Working with the Hunger Project, I learned from experts that in order to end hunger we must focus on the empowerment of women. I saw that ending world hunger paralleled my own process of reclaiming my full self, and the implications of what I was doing began to crystallize. My professional organizing business slowly expanded to include talking with clients about what I was learning in my new life adventures, so that I could teach others to find the same joys that I had been discovering. As I became more comfortable with the details of homeschooling, I offered support to other homeschooling families, and continued to discover the fulfillment and freedom of empowering young people to be in charge of their own lives and to express their true selves.

As my business has grown to include many different clients’ needs and wants, my unwavering focus continues to be the search for what makes people truly happy (even though that endeavor almost always includes opening up to life's pain in fresh new ways). As I homeschool my adolescent children, our “curriculum” becomes more firmly grounded in trusting the surprising guidance of our desires. I remain a loving and curious student of the human condition, and I base my personal and professional life on my talent for increasing relaxation and pleasure in the world. I thoroughly enjoy working with clients who, like me, want to find out how to express their true selves, fulfill their deep desires, and create a life that is honest, authentic and free.