“Madness doesn’t want to be masterfully tamed,” says thought leader Lorna Gabriel. “It wants to be exquisitely crafted.”
She should know. As a self-described maverick who tried and ultimately failed to find her space in the world of business, she overcame mental illness to find success in helping others to recognize their true selves.
“I have managed to take poison and turn it into a potion,” she says. “I have taken my mental illness and turned it into my spiritual genius. It’s been challenging, But for people for whom normal rhythms of work and life do not apply, I have helped develop programs that have allowed complicated people to thrive.”
Early beginnings
Lorna Gabriel knew she was different from a very early age.
At school she struggled to understand how people formed into groups so easily, looking on from the outside with something approaching a sense of wonder. When others asked her for advice, she gave it to them bluntly. Often they were upset.
She saw the world in a different way, and yet she was a straight-A student, a daughter of ‘Christian Royalty’ from a fundamentalist household. The mismatch would grow in her to a point of madness.
After years of struggling with not being able to fit in – with mental illness, success, and failure playing a major role in her life – she has emerged as a thought leader in spiritual coaching, helping other “misfits and mavericks” to feel comfortable with their lives.
Corporate success
Lorna started out in corporate. “I spent 15 years in corporate America, with the last five of those sitting on company boards and holding senior executive roles helping build and grow multi-million-dollar organizations,” she says.
“This, in and of itself, was a radical reinvention. I graduated college with a major in philosophy and the history of math and science, and with no idea what I should do with my life I considered becoming a poet or a priest, neither of which appealed to me fully.”
In a stunning reversal of fortune, Lorna began to lose jobs not once, or twice but three times. The bridge Lorna thought she was standing on had disappeared and with it the trappings of material achievement.
She joined her parent’s company, and while it started well, the association ended badly when her parents also fired her. She went on to work in a string of corporate jobs, handling multi-million dollar accounts, but she continued to feel it wasn’t the right fit – there was a disconnect she couldn’t identify no matter how long and hard she worked.
Breaking through
Her 43rd birthday saw her broken and unfit to work, living unhappily with her daughter in her parent’s home.
Diagnosed as bipolar with PTSD, it wasn’t until Lorna Gabriel figured out the puzzle that was her life that she was able to create a business model that catapulted her to success.
“Suddenly the way forward became clear. I had to create my own business. I started deprogramming myself from all the limiting beliefs I had about the rat race, and the corporate slog,” she explains.
She set up the disruptor business accelerator Luxe Godhead, clear about what she needed to do. In her first 10 months, she turned over a million dollars with the help of just a part-time virtual assistant. Later she set up a team of like-minded thinkers, and the planets aligned. People came from around the world, intrigued and instinctively knowing that Lorna was someone who recognized true genius.
“I can sit with someone and within minutes I can see their unique offering,” she says. “These are people with passion, with business ideas that reflect who they are and what they believe in. That is someone I can work with and help build a business that is both disruptive and ground-breaking,” she explains.
In a matter of months, the founder of Luxe Godhead was able to find both success, happiness, and freedom from her mental health issues. She mixes a little magic, a lot of business experience and identifies the mavericks and misfits to build her success and propel others towards theirs.
Shadow Alchemy
Lorna has evolved her personal growth into a healing modality that she introduced to people in need and is now launching to the public. It is being hailed as ground-breaking by many in the healing community, who are calling her the new Tony Robbins, a consciousness builder.
Called Shadow Alchemy, it uses archetypes and the architecture of the psyche to rapidly and permanently reprogram consciousness. “When you alchemize your shadow, when you actually alchemize that psychic content back into light, which is its natural state, you unleash the darkness within you. And that darkness is not opposed to light, like evil as opposed to good. It is the newest light that has not yet made it into consciousness. That’s what dark consciousness is.” Lorna explained how using this tool correctly will transform everything in your life.
The way forward for a woman who never belonged has put her in a position to help others overcome their limiting beliefs and finally, as the head of Luxe Godhead, she has created a world she wants to belong to.
“I grew up feeling like I never fit in,” says Lorna. “I straddled two worlds, my parents chose to live by different principles when they turned their backs on their fundamentalist upbringing and I struggled to find my place. It took until my 43rd birthday to realize this was my greatest asset. Like Lazarus, I got up and walked into the life I was meant to lead and everything changed from that moment,” she says.
Lorna Gabriel’s knowledge has been hard-earned, and today she can clearly see the mismatch that occurs in others who don’t fit in.
“Business and personal development have to align today, we’ve all been so messed up by being put in boxes all our lives. Often this means unraveling all the baggage we’ve collected, clearing all the baggage from our parents, from our past, and putting the focus where it belongs,” she explains.