Why Magnetic Marketing Energy-Based Got Worse After I Started Doing Inner Work

Before significant inner work begins, many practitioners have a functional — if unsatisfying — relationship with showing up. It isn’t magnetic. It may be effortful, periodic, and driven more by strategic pressure than genuine expression. But it functions. Content gets created. Posts go out. A practice, however inconsistent, exists.

Then genuine inner work begins. And the showing up, which was functional if limited, becomes harder. More triggering. More effortful. Less happening. Or what does happen feels more false than it did before. The practitioner expected the inner work to make showing up easier. Instead it seems to have made it harder.

This experience is counterintuitive and deeply discouraging. It deserves a direct explanation.

Why Inner Work Initially Disrupts the Showing-Up Pattern

Why inner work initially disrupts the showing-up pattern has a specific mechanism. The showing-up pattern that existed before inner work was built on a particular self-concept — a particular, often-limiting understanding of who the practitioner is, what they’re worth claiming, what level of visibility is appropriate for them. The pattern was stable because the self-concept was stable, even if the stability was limiting.

Inner work begins to change the self-concept. It introduces new information about worth, about possibility, about what’s been carried from the past. And as the self-concept changes, the old showing-up pattern — which was built on the old self-concept — loses its foundation.

The practitioner is now in a gap: the old pattern no longer fits because the self-concept it was built on is changing, and the new pattern that will fit the developing self-concept hasn’t been built yet. In this gap, showing up becomes more difficult, not because anything is damaged but because the old rails have been removed before the new ones are in place.

What the Disruption Phase Actually Is

The disruption phase is the transitional period between the old pattern (stable but limiting) and the new pattern (not yet built). It’s not evidence that the inner work has made things worse permanently. It’s evidence that the inner work is genuinely working — the old foundation is being disturbed, which is exactly what was needed.

The disruption often shows up as: the old showing-up strategies no longer feeling honest; an increased sensitivity to performing (noticing performance where it previously went undetected); a difficulty accessing the authentic expression that the inner work is beginning to make possible. The practitioner is more aware of the gap between performed showing up and genuine presence, which makes the old performed version harder to sustain — without yet having developed the new genuine version.

This is progress that feels like regression.

Regulating Through the Disruption Phase

Regulating through the disruption phase means maintaining enough showing-up practice to build the new pattern while not requiring that practice to be as functional as the old one was. The disruption phase is a transition, not a permanent state. The practice that bridges it doesn’t need to be the full new practice — it needs to be enough to keep some connection to the showing-up muscle while the new foundation is being built.

Integrating inner work with showing-up practice means deliberately connecting the two tracks — bringing what’s being developed in the inner work into the showing-up practice, and using the showing-up practice as a space to experiment with expression from the emerging new self-concept. The two tracks aren’t in opposition. The inner work prepares the ground; the showing up is where the new ground gets used.

The New Pattern That Emerges

A practice that bridges the disruption is smaller and more honest than the old functional-but-limited practice. It starts from where the practitioner actually is — in the disruption, with less functional showing up than before — and asks: what is genuinely expressible from the emerging self-concept, in whatever form is honest right now?

The honest expression from the disruption phase is different from both the old performed showing up and the new genuine presence that the inner work is building toward. It’s the middle voice — the voice of someone in genuine transition, which has its own quality and its own authenticity.

The full approach through and beyond the disruption works with the disruption phase as a necessary and temporary stage — and with building the new pattern that the inner work has made possible.

The Abundance GPS Skool community supports practitioners through the disruption phase — the gap between the old showing-up pattern and the new one that genuine inner work opens. The door is open at https://www.skool.com/miraclesforme/about.