Self Discoverly

Each of us has an energy field–an emotional self–that runs a lot like a bank account. Our output is determined by our input. If we only withdraw from our physical bank account, eventually we will run out of money. It is no different with our emotional bank account. In order to produce output, we must first produce input. When we learn to feel our emotions and get in touch with our inner worlds, we begin to understand this concept and as we engage with our emotional systems, we realize that we cannot hack this system–there is no way to infinitely take from our emotional bank account without some kind of filling. We thrive when we work within our emotional bank account’s limits. Survival mode kicks in when we run out of emotional money. Once we understand this, we also realize that every dysfunctional behavior we exhibit occurs during an overdrawn emotional account.

UNDERSTANDING OUR EMOTIONAL SELF

If you can imagine a flowing water way for a moment, you can grasp this concept. Our emotions are a lot like a flowing water way. When we allow our emotions to flow without resistance, they move with ease just like an abundant water way. When we resist feeling an emotion and seek to shut that feeling experience down an emotional block occurs. Think of this block like a dam in a waterway. Only after the dam is removed can the water flow again. So it is with emotions. Where there is a block, removal of the block must take place before the emotion can flow again. The more blocks that we have in our system, the more emotionally scarce we will be–the less funds we will have in our emotional bank account. Emotions are simply energy. Our thoughts and beliefs are what cause our resistance and lead to blocks. But emotions on their own are simply energy. And once we learn how to work with our energy, managing and processing our emotions becomes a lot easier.

PRODUCING INPUT

Have you ever engaged in an activity or experience that propelled your energy to another level? Afterward you seemed to have all this energy. You were able to get so much more done than usual and you rode the wave of that energy for as long as you could? Whatever you experienced during that time is energy input. Becoming in tuned to this ebbing and flowing of emotion helps us to begin the process of shifting our decision making from auto-pilot to energy auditing. As we begin to investigate and experiment with this we gain better awareness and understanding of it and then things like setting priorities, boundaries and time lines become much easier because we understand how our energy bank accounts work. We will become aware of what activities drain us and what activities fill us up. When we feel empty we will understand that we need to fill up our emotional bank account before we can do anything else. And we will consciously choose to do this rather than stepping into dysfunctional behaviors and survival mode.

UNDERSTANDING DYSFUNCTIONAL BEHAVIORS & SURVIVAL MODE

When we are conscious of our energy system and emotional bank account, we understand that all of our dysfunctional behaviors happen when our account is empty. The reason for this is because we hold beliefs within us that there are responsibilities and tasks that we MUST get done and get done by a specific time regardless of our emotional bank account status. So much so that we place these tasks above our own mental health! As such, every time that we seek to withdraw energy from our empty or overdrawn emotional bank account, we will get feedback that there is nothing there to take. If we are not self-assured or self-secure enough, we will be too afraid to tell the truth about our emptiness and need to recharge before we can do the task, so instead we will push ourselves or reach for synthetic refilling options like caffeine, dysfunctional behaviors like projecting, complaining, whining, attacking, acting like a victim, etc. When we engage in these behaviors, we are doing so because we believe our thoughts and beliefs and do not believe in our emotional energy system and its input/output system. The minute that we choose synthetic refilling options, we step into survival mode. Only gaining education about how the emotional energy system works and then investigating and experimenting with it until understanding can we step into thriving mode. Thriving happens where we are conscious and in control of our actions and emotions. Once we understand how our emotional system works and we gain dominion over it, we simultaneously gain personal power.

HOW TO BEGIN THE PROCESS OF GETTING IN TUNE WITH OUR EMOTIONS

The easiest way to begin to get in touch with our emotions is to become the watcher of our behavior. Watching enables us to make connections between dysfunctional behavior and emptiness. Once we make enough connections we’ll gain faith in the truth of this system and be more inclined to engage it. When we take notice of the behaviors we choose to engage in and WHY we choose to engage in them when we are empty, we begin to see patterns. We see what we truly believe about the task we are seeking to accomplish. We see what we truly believe about our ability to say we are empty and cannot complete the task in the moment. We see what our fears are about not completing the task in the moment. And on and on. The more understanding we can gain about ourselves and why we choose the way we do and do the things we do, the easier it will be for us to begin to test the emotional bank account process.

FINDING NEW WAYS TO MANAGE EMOTIONS

In the beginning, unfortunately, there is no easy way to cope with emptiness. Emptiness is just what is. Many people are so empty and overdrawn in their emotional bank accounts that they are actually experiencing burnout! The only cure for emptiness is recharging. We cannot use our cellphones once they die until after we recharge them. There’s simply no way to get around it. And so it is with our emotional energy systems and emotional bank accounts. When we are empty, we must choose between stepping into dysfunctional behaviors (suppression is also a dysfunctional behavior!) or stepping into input behaviors to refill. When we choose to step into input behaviors to refill, we begin to learn how to manage our emotions. We come to accept what is in regard to our energy and emotions. But in the beginning, we tend to step into dysfunctional behaviors more than input filling behaviors because we have HUGE hooks into our relationships and belief systems and the fear of being attacked, shamed, guilted, ostracized, etc. by our social groups. This is why becoming the watcher is so essential. At least watching ourselves choose the dysfunction enables us to see the patterns.

PAIN AND SELF-LOVE

When we experience enough pain and burnout, something inside of us often shifts. When we watch our own behavior enough and see the patterns clear as day, we simultaneously gan insight into other’s behaviors and with all this information, we come to see that the relationships we thought we had with others is not in fact reality. We come to see that many of our relationships are conditional relationships where exchanging is expected. If I do my partner’s laundry, for example, he’ll make me dinner. If I help my friend with her party planning, she’ll help me with my computer. It is usually our own inabilities that cause us to step into these exchanges with others. We have needs that we cannot meet so we come to believe that in order to get our needs met, we must agree to meet other people’s needs. Now I am not saying that it is not good to meet people’s needs or that we should do everything for ourselves, I am simply showing how we end up with the beliefs that we have! It is amazing to help each other! We all need help! But, it is not amazing to help someone when we are empty and either have to step into self-harm by suppressing our true feelings and depleting our energy system more than it already is or by acting passive-aggressive with a person because we really should have asked to reschedule until we had more energy. What I am saying is that real help is a gift we give and we can only give a gift that is appreciated by another when we are giving that gift from a sincere and loving place.

LEARNING HOW TO MANAGE TIME AND ENERGY

As we learn to manage our time and energy, we begin to better understand priority and boundary setting. When we make the conscious choice to use our energy system as our guide, we simultaneously learn how to organize our lives and days in a way that has the most meaning and purpose to us. Through this process we gain insight into the relationships that are sincere and meaningful to us and those that require us self-harming and self-denying in order to maintain. We learn what has value in our lives and what doesn’t. We gain insight into where we are engaging in codependent relations with others, where we are enabling others, where we are denying our own needs, etc. Once we come to understand that we cannot give what we do not have and that we have to make a deposit to make a withdrawal, we begin to realize that our emotional energy is extremely precious and the best way to make it grow is to invest the energy!

SELF-INVESTMENT

Just like money, investing in our emotional energy system will cause that energy to grow! The more that we choose recharging and input filling over dysfunction, the more energy that we will accumulate. And as we make these choices, we will simultaneously remove the emotional blocks that keep our emotions from flowing. In essence, as we choose to live within our means we will learn how to heal our emotional systems. As we invest in ourselves, we will heal all the dysfunctional behavior patterns and belief systems that don’t serve us!

FINAL THOUGHTS

All of us like predictability. We like to know what to expect. If we go to the same restaurant every week, we want the same staff to be there who know what we order and how we order it, to have the same protocol happen that makes us love the restaurant to begin with. If one day we go there and the staff is different and the food is different and the protocol is different, we will be confused even if everything new ends up being better than before. As those around us see us making changes, they will be confused and they may resist because we are changing what they are used to. Sharing our thoughts and feelings with those we can trust can go a long way in helping everyone adjust to this new way of life. Oftentimes, the simple act of illustrating for our loved ones what we are experiencing and feeling can go a long way in them wanting to support us through this change. I am not saying this is the case all the time, but where it is, consider this approach. What is most important is for us to feel confident, empowered and equipped with what we need to live a functional life so that we can best support those that we want to support! When we choose to love ourselves and pay ourselves first, we grow in ways that will enable us to better support those we love. While our loved ones might not like the initial changes, in time they may come to see that their lives are better because of your courage!

Much Love!

Years ago, I was codependent. I only realized it was an addiction when I reached a place where I knew the relationship was unhealthy and I wanted to get out of it, but I couldn’t. It’s when I found God. I needed help and no earthly help was working. I wasn’t understood in the earthly help and oftentimes I felt incredibly judged. And I had a young child depending on me and my sanity and so kicking out of this addiction was not optional. I got down on my knees, folded my hands and sought after this Being that I knew nothing about. Oh, sure I was raised very religious, but this seeking was entirely new to me. I needed help like a small child needs help from their parent. I need that Being to ANSWER!

I needed the roots of my codependency tugged out so that I could be free. I needed strength and courage and the ability to cope outside of the toxic relationship. And so it was day by day that I began to be delivered books and thoughts and support and information that slowly offered me the healing that I needed to be able to peel myself away from that relationship. The biggest support came in the form of an idea–a BIG idea–that quickly became my dream. It took me back to my early years when writing and creating stories was something I did for fun. I was pulled back to my childhood and reminded of who I really was and of something that I could do again and use to shift my focus, my desire, my energy. And so it was I began a five year journey of writing my way to recovery. At the time, I was simply so focused on “finishing” this book that I was not looking it at it that way. It wasn’t until 5 years after I stopped writing that I realized the real purpose of that writing journey. It wasn’t about the book or finishing the book at all. It was about reconnecting with myself! It was about self-discovery!

Dreams are about us. They are not about anyone else. And we take the dream journey on our own. For me, writing that book gave me hope. I could focus on the light at the end of the tunnel of what my life would be like once it was finished. I’d be self-sufficient, have no reason to be codependent, I could meet all of my daughter’s needs on my own. And the desire in me built and built. This taught me that desire and dreams are closely linked.

If we want to make our dream a reality, we must first begin with our desire or desires. Manifestation is linked to our desires. And desire is a feeling. The greater the desire, the more likely that we will manifest whatever it is we are seeking to manifest . The one exception is where other people’s will is at play.

Sometimes dreams we think we are seeking after turn out to not be the actual dream we have. In the example of me writing, I believed my dream was to finish that book. As it turns out, the real dream was my own freedom. Part of my freedom was discovering my authentic self. And what I learned in this journey is that finding myself and choosing myself made it possible to gain new insight and perception that I did not previously possess. Taking the dream journey gave me way more than what I was seeking. Healing opened up conscious pathways within me that have given me heightened intuition, enabled me to comprehend concepts that my pre-dream self couldn’t, increased my empathy tenfold, and softened every aspect of my emotional self to the point that I can feel the truth of others and understand why they are where they are with great compassion and accept them without judgment. ALL of this happened as a side note. I was not seeking any of it. This is why I say that dreams can be their own recovery plan.

In earlier posts, I talk about the subject of direction and how once we have direction (or a plan) we intend to follow after, we’ve established a vision for our lives. Now, the only work left to do is establish the goals and objectives to achieve our plan or dream. As we persist with our goals and objectives, the desire for the dream will grow. This growing desire is what will motivate us to persist with our goals and objectives. As we go along, we will encounter many barriers or obstacles that may come in the shape of emotional overwhelm, relationship turmoil related to us seeking after our dream, financial hardship, family challenges that need our attention and leave us with less time to work on our goals and objectives and on and on. These obstacles will test us and up against our burning desire, at times, cause big emotions to arise because everything inside of us wants this thing and we struggle with the obstacles standing in our way.

Big emotions arising inside of us is PART of the journey. With these emotions as obstacles, we will not have what we need once we achieve the goals and objectives and reach the dream. The big emotions are a call from the universe to take notice because managing those emotions and discovering what’s beneath them is part of the journey! When we consider literature and movies, every heroine undergoes testing and emotional hardship before they reach their goal. And it is from going through the emotional hardship that they end up developing the emotional strength and skills they need to accomplish their goal.

We all have an external plot and an internal plot. Once we come to realize that the big emotions arising in us are part of the obstacles we will be prepared for all that comes next as we meander this thing we call chasing a dream. That’s why it is essential to understand the value in a dream upfront. When we want something badly enough, the passionate desire will carry us through all the turmoil and stress that arises along the way as we inch closer to achieving our goal. Every emotional addiction, every physical addiction, every crossed boundary, every mask, every fear….it’s all going to be exposed and each exposure will be an invitation to choose between the dream or the thing holding us back. So, in essence, the dream acts as its own recovery program!

Dreams are a vision in our mind of an ideal situation. Our dreams show us our ideal. It shows us what is possible. Dreams give us hope. And when we chase our dreams, we are putting faith in that hope and believing in it. As we go along, the faith grows and grows. What is more, we uncover our own courage and strength and will and eventually we discover our own personal power and all of this discovery leads to unwavering confidence and self-assurance!

I’ve always loved Disney. I took my first trip to Disney World when I was 5 years old and was instantly hooked, a Disney lover for life! As a creative mind, the magic there sparked something in me every time. Last time I was there, the Happily Ever After fireworks inspired me and as I was writing this post, I was reminded of the beginning of the firework show. “Each of us has a dream…It calls to us. And when we’re brave enough….that dream will lead us on a journey to discover who we’re meant to be.” The reason this inspired me so much is because it is SO true! To think that a big corporation like Disney would desire to inspire the level of audience they have is exceptional! And for that reason, Disney will always hold a dear place in my heart!

Dreams are not a fairytale. They are the most real thing that you will ever do for yourself! The dream is actually reality and everything else is the fairytale! Taking the dream journey is where we discover this truth!

Achieving our dream is the best feeling! It’s for sure an emotional experience! It’s the finish line of all the time, energy and effort we put in to get to this place. It’s validation that dream achievement is possible. It’s faith establishment, in essence, because we discover that passionate desire does lead to receiving. Achieving the goal is what offers the feedback that the dream journey is real and that anyone can take the journey and feel its reality. So I encourage you to take your journey to find your happily ever after! I promise you that you will be SO glad that you did!

Much Love!

Self-care is the art of holistically taking care of all the parts of our whole. It’s caring for our emotional self, our physical self, our spiritual self, our mental self and our social self. Self-care is so much more than just looking our best or eating nutritiously. Self-care at its highest is being in tune with ourselves and being cognizant of our needs, desires, and aspirations. It’s making a conscious choice every day to do things that have a direct impact on the life we are seeking after.

Here are nine self-care strategies that are proven and work!

1. PLAY

To play is to get in touch with our innate self–the person we were before we adopted strategies to protect ourselves. Play will never feel forced, like work or uncomfortable. Play should always feel spontaneous and make time stand still. Play should make us forget that we are an adult and have adulting things to do. When we play, we immerse ourselves in activities that bring us joy and pleasure. When we are playing, we are present and fully connected to our true self. And in that place, we have enormous power to get to know our true selves and begin the process of learning to listen and receive the messages of our inner child! The more we integrate play into our lives, the more energized and motivated we will feel. Play also has the potential to open new doors of possibilities!

2. PRIORITIES & BOUNDARIES

We all have limits. There is only so much any one person can do each day. Still, so many of us find ourselves trying to push ourselves to do a little more, a little more, a little more, to the point of burnout because we possess a belief inside of us that what we are currently doing is not enough. Before we combat the task of setting priorities and boundaries in our life, it is essential that we become self-aware of our own belief system. Before we can effectively set priorities and boundaries in our life, we must understand what we believe about the tasks and responsibilities currently on our plate. For example, if I hold the belief that mothers never take time for themselves, when it comes time to investigate my plate of “priorities” what I’ll end up taking off my plate will be the very life giving things that actually need to stay on my plate! Once we understand our beliefs and where they come from and how to change them, it becomes a lot easier to look at my priorities and boundaries and assess what needs to change!

RECHARGE

Each of us has an energy system that works very similarly to a cell phone battery. That system can always be charged, so once we understand how it works, we have the power to achieve everything we want to put on our plate. However, what is essential to understand is that there will be a learning curve as we meander the battery usage of our energy system. If we have four hours of battery use on our morning routine before our three year old gets home from preschool, then we will have to use our prioritization strategies to decide how to spend that energy. We’ll have to budget our energy like we budget our time. We’ll have to learn how to strategize our day so that we can maximize our energy battery to our advantage. Only we can know how to strategize our energy battery. What’s important here is understanding that we have an energy battery system and being mindful that when it gets low, it must be charged. The difference between people and phones is that when a phone gets close to dying, it is not plagued with pending responsibilities. When it runs out of juice, it just stops working. If you’re a parent like me, you know that we do not have the option to just say “My battery is dead, I’m unavailable,” so to avoid toxic behaviors creeping up like passive-aggression, projection, etc., it is essential that we learn how to budge our energy. We must understand that our behaviors are linked to our energy. And if too many days the behaviors are creeping up, it is time to pause for thought and assess how we are budgeting our time and energy and create a recharging strategy that works for us!

3. FEEL

Part of tuning in to ourselves is gaining insight and understanding into our emotions and feelings. Are you able to identify your emotions? Are you good at managing your emotions? Can you process your emotions? The better we are at identifying, managing and processing our emotions, the more in tuned we will be with ourselves and the more clarity we will have on our life’s trajectory and the goals and objectives we must set to achieve those goals and objectives. If we want personal power over our lives, then we must have dominion over our emotions! We need to understand what the sensations happening in our body mean and are trying to tell us. When we are emotionally aware, we tend to feel more emotionally stable and are better equipped to manage our emotions. When we are emotionally unaware, we tend to experience more instability in our lives. Spending quiet time with ourselves tuning in to our emotional system, getting acquainted with the sensations and inner promptings will go along way in gaining insight into ourselves.

4. UNMASK

It takes a lot of energy to pretend to be someone we are not. And, if after a day of masking you feel super drained, then you understand what I am talking about. It’s utterly exhausting playing a part all day. To find the courage to unmask, we must first discover why we mask in the first place. What is it about ourselves that we find so terrible that we believe we must hide it? And if we are hiding it, WHY are we hiding it? What is it that we don’t want others to find out about us? What do we think would happen if they found out about it?

Unmasking is best begun in solitude. When we take our mask off in our aloneness we have the opportunity to acclimate ourselves with ourselves. As we pause and study ourselves we can gain insight into our authentic selves. Authentic self is not perfect self. Authentic self is just what is. Authentic self is constantly evolving and changing as we gain new insight and wisdom. The authentic self has strengths and weaknesses, perfection and flaws, big emotions and small emotions, desires, aspirations, needs, beliefs, conditioning, and on and on. As we sit with ourselves we begin to connect with ourselves and feel our inner worlds. We sense things about ourselves. We gain insight into why we behave the way we behave, feel the way we feel, and think the way we think. As we gain this insight without judgment, we begin to understand why we choose masking over unmasking. To unmask, we must first find the courage and confidence to unmask and that begins with discovering ourselves and then having the courage to take the self-discovery journey! Only after we know who we truly are and what we actually need can we rightly self-care!

5. PAY YOURSELF FIRST

We cannot give what we don’t have. It is not selfish to self-care. Self-caring is actually investing in ourselves to make our energy grow which will lead to us being able to serve more people. The more physical money that I have, the more people I am able to serve. It is no different with emotional energy. By paying myself first with self-care, I will gain valuable insight into how I work which will lend itself to understanding how others work which will lead to more effective relationships. And this goes for money in self-care as well! If I do not pay myself first with retirement, with paying off debt, with getting my financial affairs in order so that I can take care of myself, then later I will need someone else to take care of me. Often times, in the moment, especially with parenting, we believe the best choice is to put off saving for retirement or paying off debt in order to take care of our children first. We drain our retirement accounts to set our children up for life so they can start their lives without financial aid debt, for example. In the moment, it feels noble and like the right thing to do, but after, we feel an incredible imbalance when our needs cannot be met. If we want to be good caretakers of our children, we must first be good caretakers of ourselves. A good self caretaker is a good role model and what children need more than anything else is a good role model on how to self-care. Consider the elite’s children. I do not think there has ever been a destitute elite child. Why? Because elite children grow up learning how money works and how to manage it. They don’t have any scarcity mindset about money because they’ve never learned that. When we pay ourselves first, we teach our children how to self-care and then they will automatically know how to self-care.

6. PURPOSE

Some people think that purpose and direction are the same, but I believe that they are two separate things. I believe that purpose is our why for doing something while direction is the plan we follow to achieve the purpose. When we have purpose in our lives, we have meaning and an opportunity for fulfillment. The why in our lives enables us to wake up each day and work on priority lists and daily tasks knowing that our efforts are leading us somewhere. When we don’t have purpose or a why for daily living, we tend to lose momentum and motivation. Life becomes monotonous and we begin to feel like a servant in our own life. Sometimes we might feel like we are living solely to serve someone else. If serving someone else is part of our passion and desire, that is one thing, but if it is not and every day feelings arise that are causing us to notice that we are not fulfilled in our own life, it is time to investigate our why for our life. Everything in life can be changed. Despite everything we believe about change, our feelings on any given subject can change. But all of it starts with identifying why we do what we do. Once we are clear on why we are doing what we are doing, we have incredible power to make changes.

7. DIRECTION

I often ask the following questions to friends and family when they are struggling with decision making and come to me for support and advice. I ask them: Who are you? Where are you going? How are you going to get there? When we know the answer to these three questions with great conviction and confidence, we have enormous personal power and can achieve whatever goals we set for ourselves. When we are reminded of who we are and where we are going and remember how we plan to get there, the right choice often surfaces automatically. When we do not know the answer to these questions, we often feel aimless, lost, unmotivated and discouraged.

I have come to understand that when we have direction in our lives as well as a vision strategy with clear goals and objectives we can achieve dreams pretty quickly. Clarity of direction enables us to see best decisions easier. When we know where we are going, we can narrow down how we are going to get there. If I know I’m going to travel the world after college for two years, I can now establish the goals and objectives I need to put in place to achieve my plan to travel the world. My direction also assists me with realistic time lines. Direction also hones our self-discovery and self-care journey because as we seek to achieve our goals and objectives, obstacles will arise and 9 out of 10 times, there’s an emotional link between meandering the obstacle and moving the block standing in the way of overcoming the obstacle. Direction, essentially, sets us on a journey and to achieve the goals and objectives of our plan, we must simultaneously overcome the obstacles! This is why I feel so passionate about answering the three questions: Who are you? Where are you going? How are you going to get there? Once we know the answers to these questions, we are set on a path and all we have to do is keep putting one foot in front of the other and figuring out how to overcome obstacles as they arise along the way.

8. FORGIVENESS

What we hold onto and resist letting go of often acts like its own block to achieving our goals and objectives. Forgiveness is often misunderstood because we often associate forgiveness with letting someone who hurt us off the hook. Forgiveness does not mean that we forget what happened, forgiveness is simply the act of no longer giving energy to something. Forgiveness is the choice to let go of giving energy to something we have no control over. We cannot control if someone changes their behavior or not. But we can control our own actions and choices we make for our own life.

Forgiveness is making the conscious choice to radically accept what I have no control over and choosing to take personal responsibility for my own self-care. If we have unmet emotional needs, forgiveness means we take personal responsibility to meet those needs. Whatever the unmet needs are, we consciously choose to meet those needs. We radically accept that for whatever reason, the parent who was supposed to meet our needs was unable to do it. And we accept the healing journey to come to understand why they were unable to do it. Whatever the reason, forgiveness empowers us to move forward!

9. GRATITUDE & ABUNDANCE

Gratitude is the acknowledgment and expressed appreciation for a noted gift. As we take notice of the gifts we receive and feel their impact, we develop a grateful heart. Gratitude is the natural response when we feel the impact another has on our lives. The more we notice the gifts we receive and the love behind those gifts, the more abundant we will begin to feel. With an abundant and grateful heart, we will be able to attract more of the things we seek after in our lives. With gratitude comes more faith and more belief in the goodness of others. With gratitude comes more humility and willingness to be vulnerable. As we travel along our own self-care journey and we will become more and more sensitive to the teachings of the universe and more aware of how everything is interconnected and the importance of each other and the universe at large. With greater awareness and understanding comes greater gratitude and abundance and with greater gratitude and abundance we inch closer and closer to realizing the dreams we have for our lives!

FINAL THOUGHTS

Self-care is the process of nurturing all the parts of ourselves so we have the energy and strength we need to manage our lives and our life pursuits and responsibilities. With self-care, we have the ability to thrive in our lives. Without it, we run the risk of getting stuck in survival mode. The more that we self-care each day, the more confidence we will have in the self-discovery process and in our own ability to manifest the life we want to be living!

Much Love!

All our lives we have heard the echoes of “be responsible,” “choose responsibility,” “remember your responsibilities,” but what if I told you that it is impossible to be responsible unless you are able to respond–unless you are RESPONSE ABLE!

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE RESPONSE ABLE?

Being response able means that we have all the tools and skills that we need to respond to any given problem or pursuit. And by tools and skills, I do not mean strictly the skills and tools for the pursuit itself. Let’s say that the pursuit is to wash the dishes. I may have the skills to understand how to run water, put soap on a sponge and even lather up and rinse a dish, but if I do not have the emotional capacity to handle this added task to my daily duties, I cannot be categorized as “response able” for this task. FAR too often, parents assume that children are ready for things solely based on chronological age and physical skills and tools. They often fail to consider a child’s emotional age and ability and this has led to a generation of overwhelmed and overstressed adults. To be response able, we must have BOTH the skills and tools to accomplish a task AND the emotional capacity to manage the emotions that come with the added task.

EMOTIONAL READINESS

In the special education community, there’s an idea that students should stay below their “frustration level” because if we ask them to push past this, the pressures associated with pushing past this frustration level will interfere with the students ability to complete the task. This “frustration level” does not change once we turn 18. Somehow our society has created standards where our chronological age determines our physical abilities. Growth and development that supports increased responsibility must be holistic in nature and grow the emotional part of ourselves at the same time as our physical part. We as a society need to recognize that careful observation and gauging needs to happen with people of all ages, not just children to determine emotional readiness for any given task or pursuit.

NOT ONE SIZE FITS ALL

Life trajectory is not a one size fits all endeavor. We are all different. Each of us has our own unique combination of knowledge, experience, skills, tools, education, awareness, perception, emotional capacity, interests, etc. The learning path that you are on may not be the learning path that I am on or that the next person is on. While for one person, a 9-5 lifestyle might be ideal for them, while for another, part time is essential to their emotional well being. Being responsible does not mean being a superhero. It does not mean that we pressure or force ourselves to do things that we are not ready for because social media tells us that we should be or because we feel the incredible pressure from our environment to do and be and become what everyone else is doing and being and becoming!

TUNE IN

The first step in gauging your own response ability is to get quiet and tune in to yourself. What things trigger you and why? What is easy for you? What is hard for you? What do you enjoy doing? What do you hate doing? If it was up to you, what would your life look like? What is a priority in your life? What can you take off your plate? The more questions we ask ourselves, the more answers and insight will come. As we do this work, we will begin to discover a lot of ways where we are off balance for what is best for us. We will discover a lot of ways where we say yes when we need to say no. We will discover a lot of areas in our life where we believe that we are supposed to be doing something or “should be’ doing something when in truth those are someone else’s beliefs and opinions! As you tune in to yourself and become acquainted with your own frustration levels and emotional readiness, you will be able to chart the life trajectory that is best for you and create a time line that works for you!

TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT WHERE YOU ARE

There’s absolutely no shame in speaking your truth. No matter if this truth needs to be spoken to your spouse, your partner, your parents, your boss, your friend, your child…find the courage to have this conversation with them! Step two is to express your feelings! You might say something like, “Hey would it be okay if we have a chat about what I’m learning about myself and my ability to handle my responsibilities?” If they are open, then share with them what you are feeling and noticing in yourself and share with them what your plan is to self-care. To offer a personal example, in my own life, I used to believe that I needed to be supermom. Supermom did not take breaks. Supermom was never tired, burned out or incapable. Supermom could work a full time job and a part time job, maintain an immaculate home, make from scratch meals, do all the shopping, homework helping, activity driving, etc. But then one day, I realized that I was not supermom. I realized that I did not have super human powers. I realized this only after a clinical depression diagnosis. “Oh, supermom also needs to self-care,” was the realization I ultimately had. And so it was that I began my own self-discovery, self-care journey to reprogram my brain to replace my “supermom” beliefs with just “mom” beliefs. I had to evaluate myself and figure out what I had the emotional capacity to handle without melting down and what I did not and that took a lot of adjusting. My family had been used to me doing so much, on the cash flow I was bringing in, on the personal assistantship I had been providing each of them. So you can imagine how my life change affected everyone around me! (And ultimately what I discovered was that it was my fears of how the truth would affect everyone else that kept me from self-caring to begin with!). My truth became an adjustment period for us all! But fast forward to today and I can assure you that it was a blessing to those around me because what my choice to change did was it enabled my family to have a happier, healthier me and it taught each of them to learn things they never would have known about such as what it means to be response able!

BE WHERE YOU ARE

It’s okay to take steps backwards. Honestly taking steps backwards is not really taking steps backwards. Sometimes, we need to go back to learn the new lesson we are learning in order to understand it. In school, I often found that going back to easier math problems enabled me to understand harder ones. I was learning the harder math concepts BY reviewing the easier ones. As you understand what it means to be “RESPONSE ABLE” you will be able to vibe out a solution that will work for you and your life. All of us are different, so there’s really not one formula I can write down here. I found in my own life that when I worked in breaks and rewards for myself that I could reenergize myself which enabled me to get more done throughout the day. I also found that cutting out a lot of nonsensical things that I did not need to have on my list also helped. For example, our drawers and closets do not need to be organized every week! And, it’s not bad parenting to ask our kids to choose one or two activities they really love and kick to the curb the rest! My daughter reminds me regularly that she is equivalent to an expert swimmer even though she dropped out before she got her shark certificate. I am happy to report that she has not drown to date!

BREATHE

This life, it’s yours too! And wherever you got the idea that only doing EVERYTHING made you responsible needs to go! Go take a obreak, take out a piece of paper or a whiteboard or a blank document on your computer and start soul searching for what’s working in your life and what is not. Figure out where you are easily able to respond to life and where you are struggling. One step at a time, breathing your way through it, find your RESPONSE ABILITY level and then BE THERE. Don’t apologize for being there. Just breathe there. It’s not your fault. You’ve done nothing wrong. It’s simply what IS! And until you are where you are right now, there is no ground to move forward to be where you want to be. Radical acceptance is the only solution.

Much Love!

Self-Discovery is the process of coming to holistically know yourself—mind, body, spirit—by first investigating your inner-world to become acclimated with all the parts that make up the whole that is you and second experimenting with various ideas, practices and beliefs until clarity of self emerges and you are able to think, feel and act for yourself without outside influence.  In essence, self-discovery is the journey to becoming your most authentic self.  

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO HOLISTICALLY KNOW YOURSELF?

We are not one-dimensional beings.  We are multi-dimensional, so holistically knowing yourself is becoming conscious of all of your dimensions and then gaining personal power over them.  When we are conscious of all the parts that make up who we are, we are able to make conscious decisions, practice mindfulness and chart a life for ourselves of our choosing.  When we are unconscious of all the parts that make up who we are, we are easily influenced, swing between moods and are less fulfilled and satisfied with our lives, mostly because we are ruled by obligation, duty, responsibilities, fear, guilt and shame!  When we are unconscious, we tend to struggle more, suffer more and engage in a slew of behaviors that in no way serve us.  

HOW DO YOU INVESTIGATE YOUR INNER-WORLD?

First we must gain critical knowledge on the basics of self-discovery and understand things like beliefs, addictions, façade, behaviors, fears, influence, etc.  One of the best ways to gain knowledge is to ask questions.  The more questions we ask, the more information we will acquire.  Some questions to get you started with this:

1. What do I believe about the belief system that I was raised with?  Are there any things that I feel differently about?  Why do I feel differently about them?
2. What behaviors do I engage in when I am afraid, uncomfortable or become triggered?  (For example, do you mask in certain situations in order to avoid judgment?) 
3. What are my desires?  What are my fears?  (Hint, your fears can lead you to your desires!). I.E. If you are afraid of what people think of you when you sing, you may have a desire to sing!  
4. What makes me angry?

The more questions you can ask yourself, the more answers you will get, the more you will come to understand yourself.  As you gain self-understanding, you will begin to see all the ways that you are not yourself (authentic) and the work to be done to become yourself!  (I want to say in parentheses here that the goal of this exercise is not to tug you away from your family or your family’s belief system.  The goal is simply to give you insight into why you believe what you believe and to differentiate between what you have adopted as a belief and what you are consciously CHOOSING to believe). 

Once you’ve gained critical knowledge on the basics of self-discovery and understand things like beliefs, addictions, façade, behaviors, fears, influence, etc., you are ready to look at each of these and observe yourself from a non-judgmental stance.  (A NON-JUDGMENTAL STANCE!) The goal of observation is simply to take note of all the ways we self-sabotage our own happiness.  As you observe yourself, you may begin to see unconscious/auto-pilot behavior patterns that are tugging you away from the very goals you are trying to achieve.  You may see conditioned beliefs that are standing in the way of achieving your goals.  You may notice masking practices you’re engaging in with others in order to feel accepted, approved of or belong.  Essentially, you will become aware of all the ways that we use various techniques to protect yourself from shame, judgment, fear and guilt!  Each of these a-ha moments will bring you one step closer to becoming self-aware which will lead you closer to achieving the goals you’ve set for ourselves. 

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO EXPERIMENT WITH VARIOUS IDEAS, PRACTICES & BELIEFS?

The most important part of self-discovery is activation of intuition.  In order to determine what is best for you and your life, you NEED your intuition.  The experimentation phase of self-discovery is all about feeling your way to learn how to discern what feels good and what does not feel good.  It is impossible to offer an exact playbook for self-discovery because everyone is different.  But there are universal words like investigation, experimentation and finding direction that can help you understand what is happening along the way. 

All the best-known teachers of the past talked about “emptying to get filled.”  What they meant by this is once you empty out all that will not serve you—the beliefs, the conditioning, the adopted values, etc.—you make room for what will serve you—what YOU value, what YOU believe, what YOU need and desire!  Before you can determine what ideas, practices and beliefs will serve you, you have to experiment with different ideas, practices and beliefs.  During this stage, you will not be attaching yourself to anything, but simply acting as a scientist and trying things on for size.  As you try things on for size, you will learn that in order to discover what is best for you, you must first discover what is NOT best for you!  Experimentation does not have to be within any practice or belief system as well (for me, I experimented first with beliefs and practices and second with my own muse.  Once I engaged with enough beliefs and practices, I concluded that what was best for me could not be found within any belief system; that I needed to kind of create an amalgamation).  

Experimenting is anything that you engage in that activates your internal feeling censors and guides you toward your intuition!  There is no right or wrong answer to the experimentation phase of self-discovery, the goal is simply to explore ideas outside of what your auto-pilot self until you become acquainted with and connected with your intuition!  In truth, the experimentation phase is more about awakening your spirit and soul to itself than anything else.  Once you are connected to yourself, you’ll KNOW what to do next!  And then you will be able to take the rest of the journey on your own!!  

FINDING DIRECTION

Absent direction, motivation and inspiration can be challenging.  Direction gives us focus, purpose and hope.  Direction reminds us why we are doing the things we are doing every day.  For some of us, direction might be saving to build our dream home while for others of us it might be following a leader.  When we have direction we have a plan and we have faith in that plan.  We trust that if we do the things charted in that plan that we will achieve the goals we’ve set for ourselves.  The direction that self-discovery offers is the goal of becoming your authentic self.  It is a healing journey that leads you home to yourself.  It clears away all the confusion about playing guesswork in life.  Once you discover yourself, you will know who you are, where you are going and how you are going to get there. 

THE JOURNEY TO YOUR AUTHENTIC SELF

Rare is it to meet someone who is entirely authentic.  Masking can be performed so well that only a very trained eye can pick up on the subtleties of masking.  It takes a great deal of courage and strength of character to choose authenticity.  When someone is authentic, they cannot be influenced.  They are entirely connected with their emotions, feelings, thoughts, beliefs, values, aspirations, goals, objectives, desires, needs, and purpose and trust their own intuition.  Authentic people would rather be alone than have to pretend or suppress themselves to be with people.  Authentic people have stellar personal power and either inspire everyone around them or trigger everyone around them.  For the unconscious/auto-piloting person, an authentic person will trigger them because what the unconscious person wants most is not to be discovered.  For those desirous of stepping into their own authentic self, they will feel inspired by the authentic person and gravitate toward them desirous to learn everything the authentic person is willing to teach them! 

With self-discovery comes the freedom to choose what is best for you and your life’s direction.  With authenticity comes the power to live your life unapologetically.  Self-discovery is basically cracking open the egg of light that is you, peeking inside to discover everything about yourself including discovering your inner-child, your inner-child’s needs, your own personal power and then connecting with your inner-child, helping that child heal and finally integrating all the parts of yourself until you are the whole person you were born to be!  It’s a journey that requires a lot of courage and faith, but it is truly a life-changing experience that will lead you on a path to realizing every dream you have for yourself!

Much Love!

Have you ever wanted to do something really bad? You feel the desire burning inside of you ? You know this feeling. And as time passes and you are not able to accomplish this desire, you end up getting super frustrated, yes? Recently, I discovered that needs, not emotions, are the trump card. When an infant has a need, 99.9% of the time they have an adult close by to tune in to that need and meet it. We know the need has been met because the infant is soothed and becomes content in some way. We know the infant’s need is not met when the crying persists. But as we age, conditioning and belief systems begin to creep in and children are dealt with in varying ways. What is more, there is often a suggestive approach to child care and child rearing that involves parents and caregivers suggesting to a child how they are feeling, what they need, etc. When a child says, “I am thirsty, I need a drink of water,” tired parents might say, “No, what you need is sleep, back to bed.” And so it goes for all of us, we become programmed at the thought and emotional level. We learn to question our needs, question our feelings, question our very thoughts! When we feel a genuine desire for something, we often talk ourselves out of it or parent ourselves saying things to ourselves like, “No, that’s not responsible,” etc.

It is ironically, often, our own self-talk and self-parenting that leads us to denying our own needs and desires. And it is the denying of our needs and desires that CAUSES the emotions. Infancy teaches us that we all have innate needs. We need water, food/nourishment, connection/closeness, safety, security, warmth, stimulation, experiences, education, growth, development and progression… These are not things that we can go without and yet the vast majority of us exist without all of these basic needs met. We cannot address causes at the effect level. We must instead use the effect to inform us of the cause.

Having taught all of my adult life, I profoundly understand the Law of Progression. The Law of Progression states that growth happens progressively, over time, as students gain mastery of skills in a systematic way. That means we cannot learn multiplication until we first learn addition because we need addition skills to multiply. In our society, we use chronological age to determine readiness. When a child turns 16 we say they are ready to drive. When a child turns 18, we declare them an adult. There are no tests or assessments performed on children to assess their emotional age. We do not evaluate children along the way to gauge where they are lacking skills and tools that are vital to their adult life success. And so, millions and billions of people are entering adulthood with not only an exuberant amount of unmet needs, but also a lack of awareness that they even have unmet needs. And as a result, we have become a society of “socially acceptable” in so many unhealthy ways. Our promotional platforms prey on this mindset!

When a person’s needs are not met, they will often lean on other means to bandaid fix the situation. So, if a person. has a need to rest and recharge, but the very roof that they have over their head requires them to work no matter what, they will turn to self-force or caffeine or other means to mitigate the situation so that they can continue to survive. But surviving is not thriving. It’s not living. And it’s certainly not conscious living! If this person were a student in my classroom, I would immediately see and feel the behavior patterns and begin their education by having the child rest until the child’s nervous system was back to normal where they were in a state of learning reception. But society does not approach people like this. There are no programs in place for burnout. No funding for burnout and no intervention program that heals burnout at the causal level. Right now, that responsibility is on us.

Years ago, I had a terrible bout with burnout. I did not have the liberty of not working so I had to come up with a solution that would enable me to kick out of burnout and make money. My solution was self-discovery. I needed to understand. I needed to find the cause, rather than the solution. I needed to become my own student so that I could help myself. THIS is how I learned about unmet needs and the importance of self-care on a conscious level. I had always been intuitive about the needs of others, but when it came to myself, I often used coping mechanisms with varying degrees of healthiness to survive. But burnout FORCED me to awaken. Looking back, I see the blessing that burnout was, but at the time, I was beyond frustrated because my lifestyle had no time for exhaustion. I needed my energy to move my and my family’s ship forward. (or so I thought).

This is how I discovered that I did not know anything about life or love. I did not even know myself! And so it was that for the next 10 years, I would do nothing but educate myself on all things self-discovery, spiritual awakening, consciousness, love, relationships, energy, purpose and direction, self-care, psychology, generational trauma and genetics, the laws of the universe, self-empowerment, gifts and talents, and SO much more! (My daughter nicknamed me “book-a-holic”). I essentially got my own doctorate degree in healing. I simply had this burning desire to understand. My motive at the time was to simply get my energy back so I could be the mom my daughter needed, but what I ended up receiving was a miracle! What I got was myself!

Healing is what happens after pain. Absent pain, there is no reason to heal. One aspect of pain is unmet needs. The longer we go without unmet needs, the more pain that we begin to feel emotionally until eventually we have pain that needs healing. It’s only when the pain becomes great enough that we seek out the healing in the first place.

For me, I had the unmet needs of self-care, self-love and self-worth. I lived my life exclusively outside of myself caring for everyone else! Only caring for myself and tuning in to my needs and desires could heal me. I did not need prescription meds, I did not need psychotherapy, I did not need advice. All that I needed was to learn to listen and hear myself. As I tuned in, I began to discover that I needed rest, recharging, quiet, calm, peace…I needed self-connection and self-expression, but creative self-expression like storytelling, poetry, etc., not relationship expression. I needed release which could only be found in creative pursuits for me. What this taught me about myself is that our emotions that are trapped need to be released. Only once we release these emotions can there be “healing.” At the time, I did not understand any of this. I simply felt the need to express myself. After I expressed myself for a good five years, suddenly I felt okay and began to feel new desires and needs arising. I needed to be responsible, to be self-sufficient, etc. And so I pursued those things which led me to “release” emotions related to those things which led to new needs arising. I am still on this path of following my needs and desires and “releasing” emotions. I have come to accept the process not knowing how long I will go through this before I can declare myself officially “healed.” But I have gone through the process enough to know with certainty that NEEDS are the trump card, not emotions. The emotions do not ever release in me until AFTER the need is met.

This journey is different for everyone. Only you can tune in to yourself and discover what you need and desire. When I first began this journey of meeting my own needs, I started simple. At first, I set a goal to drink water every day (something that was very hard for me). I would set a goal to drink a glass of water daily. If I completed that task, I had had a successful day. Over time, I increased the goal to drink an entire water bottle, or a liter of water. This goal setting ebbed and flowed. I’d go weeks forgetting entirely about my water drinking falling into unconsciousness on the subject. Then I would be focused on another goal like taking a walk every day. It was about feeling my way through this process of self-connection and self-care. I was learning what it felt like to tune in to myself and gauge my needs and then follow through on meeting them. The ebbing and flowing was because I would regularly fall back into caretaking patterns that tugged me away from my own goals. So I had to work my way through the layers of codependency and caretaking in order to reach a place where I shed some of those behaviors before I could truly integrate the new self-care consistently. But the more that I focused on self-connection and self-care, the better I got at meeting my own needs.

As we tune in to ourselves and practice meeting our needs, we will discover that meeting our own needs requires shedding behaviors in other areas in our life. When we add something to our lives, we often have to take away something else. We begin to learn what is important, what we value and what we desire in our life. And the healing process of letting go of what is not valued has its own pain and healing journey! And that is why I have learned to accept that the self-discovery/authenticity journey is not like getting a college degree. There is no set graduation date. There are a lot of variables and only we can figure out the best path to take to reach our goals! But reaching our goals IS possible! It just requires radical acceptance of where we are right now and a willingness to trust the journey even when we doubt it. Several times the universe has brought me backwards to learn something again even when I felt that I knew the material. Only once I accepted the regression was I able to gain the wisdom of remedial training! Healing is not linear. It’s happening to us every day whether we realize it or not. Consciousness has simply enabled me to be able to see what is happening!

The more that we learn to trust ourselves and meet our needs and desires, the more we will understand this process and the closer we will get to living the life that is right for us. Our needs are the trump card, so I believe in you, discoverlies!

Much Love!

Have you ever felt like you are working SO hard? You’re pushing and forcing and expecting so very much of yourself? And despite all those efforts and all that work, sometimes, you really do not feel like you are getting the results that you are after? This used to be how I felt ALL the time! I felt overwhelmed and hopeless to ever make any progress because there were TOO many tasks on my plate and absent help I was doomed to live the same life I was living that was not meeting my or my family’s needs. But then I gained some insight and learned some things that helped me revamp my mindset and enabled me to perceive things differently.

Here are 10 things that may help you to feel less overwhelmed and still get more done!

1. Let go of whatever idea you have in your head about what progress and success is supposed to look like
2. Accept yourself and your circumstance at this exact moment without resistance. To achieve this you MUST also let go of what you believe should be or should happen.
3. Make a list of what you desire to be doing with your time first. This list is NOT about your kids, your husband, your best friend…This list is exclusively about YOU and YOUR time! Once you have this list, set it aside
4. Make a list of all the tasks, responsibilities, obligations, etc. you have in your life currently. You’re not thinking when you write this list. You’re just writing it. For example: laundry, car maintenance, give kids bath, make dinner, go to work, etc. Be as detailed as you can with this list. (Most adults will likely have LONG lists of responsibilities (most of which are perceived responsibilities which is a topic for another blog, but for now, all you are doing is making the list).
5. Now that you have both lists, I want you to imagine what it is you want to do with your life. If you won the lottery tomorrow and never had to work again, how would you spend your time? What would you choose to do? In other words, what’s the big dream? With this vision, I want you to make a decision to take steps toward achieving this vision.
6. Put your daily tasks and dream and vision into a system that works for your brain. I use index cards for my system. I have a giant stack of index cards that I work from daily. Every morning I go through the stack and pull out everything that I will accomplish for the day. Some of these tasks are monotonous things like laundry and emptying the dishwasher, some are one time things like sending out a thank you card or making a purchase and some are things I work on every day like building this blog or building online courses. This system works for me because it enables me to focus ONLY on the tasks in the pile that I’ve selected for the day and keeps me from getting super overwhelmed by the chaos of ALL the tasks! I have come to learn that everything will get done, but not everything has to get done today!
7. Come up with a daily reward for yourself that you will get upon completion of your tasks.
8. With your system, try to accomplish the tasks that are only allotted for TODAY!
9. Reward yourself once you complete your pile.
10. Revise. If you are not able to complete your daily goals and therefore reward yourself, then it’s time to revise. For today, reward yourself anyway for your efforts and KEEP rewarding yourself as you come up with that perfect system that will work for you. Some things to consider when revising: Are you listing too many tasks each day? Do you need assistance to complete tasks? (It’s okay to need help, this may simply be where you are right now!) Are you doing tasks for others which they could be doing for themselves? (Are you doing your husband’s or wife’s laundry when they are fully capable of doing this for themselves?

As you go through this process of trial and error, you will slowly begin to notice things about your life that are acting as road blocks to your own progress. You’ll discover that you do your husband’s laundry because you like how he treats you when you do it or you fear how he’ll act if you don’t. As you go through this process you’ll begin to understand yourself more and more. You’ll discover truth after truth which you can use to revise and edit your life plan so that you can achieve the life you want to be living!

Be patient with yourself as you figure this all out! The fact that you are reading this and investigating this subject means that you desire a change! Applaud yourself for noticing that something in your life is not working for you! Adulting is NOT easy! And social media does not help because somehow our brains in spite of the fact that we understand the concept of editing still find some way to override this and find something to judge ourselves about. YOUR circumstances are NOT like anyone else’s! That means that comparing yourself to anyone else is fruitless. I, instead, invite you to focus on only yourself. Get still and quiet and become a scientist of your own life. Observe, hypothesize, and problem solve until you find a solution that works for you! When you do, I promise you that your life will change in ways you did not even think possible!

Much Love!

Have you ever heard someone say, “You just have to learn to balance everything?” Over the years, as I’ve attempted to listen to this advice, I’ve come to discover that I SUCK at balance! While I am attempting to balance parenting, self-care, home management, finances, creating cash flow, relationships, etc., I am entirely preoccupied with survival, unaware of my inner-world, focused exclusively outward on all these tasks that need doing! (Tasks mind you that are NEVER finished!). One day, I decided to accept my sucking at balance and let everything topple over!

I needed a new plan. I needed something that enabled me to live the life that I wanted to be living instead of waiting day after day for when it was my turn! Instead of trying to balance all the tasks, I would instead focus on balancing MYSELF. The goal shifted from “keep the entire ship running” to “keep THIS passenger on the ship running!” That meant that I needed to maintain my own emotional stability. I needed to keep my energy bucket managed. I needed to be conscious enough to be tuned into that energy bucket to note when I was getting too empty. And I needed to accept that sometimes I would not be able to “do” everything on the list. It meant that sometimes I would have to disappoint people (which at the time was the most terrifying thing there was)!

My therapist at the time often told me that I needed to set better boundaries. I regularly argued with her that she had NO idea what my life was like and that self-care was something I desired, but not something that I could achieve. I was trapped in codependency with others not even realizing it. I’d take care of other people’s inner-child instead of my own. And maybe this was because I’ve taught almost all my life and it was auto-pilot to care for others? I did not know, but what I did know was that the plan that I was using was NOT working and it was time to try something new. That’s when I started to focus my attention on my own emotional stability which led to me learning TONS about boundaries and self-care and led to me to changing the way I do things.

Life is still filled with doing laundry, home management, parenting, creating cash flow, etc., but now those things are secondary priorities that I am able to do as a result of letting things start with me! So now, I start every day by checking in with myself. I tune in to my feelings, vibe out my needs and remind myself what MY goals for this life are and then I get to it creating the life I want to be living. As a result of this shift, I no longer swing between raging at the world and feeling completely drained. I still end most days very tired and ready for bed, but it’s a very different feeling. It’s a feeling of “Ok, enough for today, time to rest,” feeling.

and What is more, I no longer feel depressed or hopeless about my life. With this approach, I now feel a sense of direction, purpose and meaning. Parenting has become PART of my life instead of ALL of my life. Cash flow has become something I do to meet needs, not something I do to survive. These tiny shifts make all the difference and now, I finally understand what people are saying when they say “you need to learn to balance everything.” What they are really saying is “you need to learn to balance your emotions and feelings.” As I’ve learned to manage and process my emotions along with become in tuned with my inner child’s needs and wants, I’ve gained valuable insights and maturity which have enabled me to grow in my ability to handle and manage adulting! I think that the saying should be, “has anyone ever taught you about emotions and feelings and how to manage and process them so that you have the capacity to balance your own life?” Doesn’t that sound a lot more helpful?

Make yourself a priority, discoveries! You’re worth it!

Much Love!

Do you know who you are? Do you know how very amazing you are? Have you discovered how special you are? If you haven’t, you’re in the right place! Far too often, people are walking around feeling so much shame, inadequacy and hopelessness. They’ve yet to realize their awesomeness! It makes me really sad. I find myself driving past people and saying silent prayers for them. I do not know their story, their desires or if they even need my prayer. I only know that everyone needs someone to believe in them–even if that someone is someone they’ve never met and have no idea is rooting for them! What I found in my journey is that the person who we need to believe in the most is ourselves!

Years ago, I struggled with self-assurance issues. I could not get enough reassurance from others. “Am I doing ok?” “Did I get it right?” “Is it good enough?” At the time I had no idea what self-belief and self-discovery even were! I was very lost! And I remember the feelings that I felt often while I was lost. I remember that I doubted myself, I felt depressed, I felt insecure! As a result, I could not chase after my best life because I was too busy surviving! But then a series of events transpired in my life that set me on a new path–a path to discovering who I really am and setting in motion a transformation that I did not even know that I needed!

At the time, my prayers were all centered around understanding what was happening to me, understanding what things like self-discovery, transformation and spiritual awakening even were. I had no idea that there were universal laws or that I was not alone! And I certainly did not know that I had an inner-child who was trying to get me to listen to her! All of these things came in their own time. But looking back, the one thing that I wish that I told myself more was to believe in myself. Believe in my abilities, believe in my determination, believe in my strength!

A good friend of mine once shared advice that I still use to this day. She said that we do not look forward to see our prayers answered, but backward. And as we look back to remember past prayers and desires, as we look back to see our own progress, we come to understand greater principles like learning, growth and development. In our society, we are conditioned to avoid mistakes and chase after rewards. We are trained to the good/bad line of thinking and as a result, we tend to be all or nothing thinkers a lot of the time. “I’m either growing or I’m not,” and a lot of times, our own growth is in our perfection of things rather than our efforts of things. And so, looking back we remember what we asked for and we see that we received it. We received the next missing piece of knowledge we needed to understand a concept, we received the next layer of healing we needed to have the strength to put ourselves out there. Answered prayers are often more subtle than what we ask for. They are tiny pieces we need to take the next step. And over time, as we look back, we see how all those tiny pieces fused together to be a massive gift that propelled us to where we are today!

None of us is perfect. I repeat NONE of us is perfect! We are all learning and growing. We are all here in this moment right now. The trick to taking a step closer to knowing ourselves is to accept what is in this moment. And then to not place meaning or judgment on it. It just is. It is not good or bad. It’s just. Once we can allow ourselves to think like this, eventually we begin to understand that growth and progress is found first in acceptance of what is and second in our own willingness to take the next step using the tiny piece that was gifted to us. We become able to do this the moment that we believe!

I believe in you! I believe in your ability! I believe in your incredible value to this earth that you have yet to realize! My prayer for you is that in time you discover this value because on that day, you will understand and with that understanding you will begin a journey toward discovering your truth self and becoming who you ARE!

Ignore the judges. Remember, the judges are only judging because they themselves have yet to believe in themselves. Try not to take it personally! You are on your own journey and you get to grow in your own time!

Much Love!

Welcome to Self Discoverly, a place where you can find inspiration, information and connection! May your journey be filled with wonder, growth and love!