I Choose To Truly LIVE

The sense of not quite feeling like we are enough can almost always be traced back to being an outsider in your own family. This feeling as if they had sensed the lack in you early on saying that you didn’t fit in with what they believed in or how they behaved. There is a pain that comes from constant disapproval; a sense of having lost something unnamed, unknown. Kristin Hannah shared, ‘All you can do is to survive it by being quiet, by not demanding are seeking attention, by excepting that you are loved, but Unliked’.

This nagging disapproval will more itself into the negative self-talk asking ‘What do you have to show for your life? How would your time on this earth be marked? Would anyone remember you, and if so for what?’

Finding Confidence In Who You Are

Who I am today and the woman you experience me to be, is not the woman I was 6 years ago. There are things I can say and do that I would not have the courage to do years ago. The adventures I have partaken in, the experiences I have said yes to, or even the boundaries I have set for myself are as foreign to me now if I had been told 6 years ago that this is who I would become.

Don’t get me wrong, I have always been the same person at the core. So, what is the drastic change? I have always been empathic and kind. I was intuitive; however, I did not trust my own intuition. I would be the container for my clients, friends, children, and partners emotions/ experiences- yet I would not set boundaries or point out what I am perceiving and speak on my intuition until I had an exuberant amount of evidence to prove my point.

Behind Closed Doors- Understanding Emotional Reactions

Fear is a natural emotion and yet I would argue that it is the strongest of all the reactions to life. It manifests in various colorful ways including anxiety, cautiousness, rejection, doubt etc. Take a moment and write down what fear means… The definition of the emotion as well as the many ways it presents in your life.

As I am sitting here attempting to explain this, I find myself stuck after 3 sentences. For such an enormous emotion, I am struggling with identifying exactly how to define it. From a psychological point, fear is a primitive reaction that alerts us to a potential threat. It presents in a cognitive as well as a physiological manner that can be felt through real or perceived threats.

Embracing Your Glorious Mess

Who are you in the vast sea of all the characters we play in this life? Do you respect, appreciate, protect, vouch for, and accept who you are in all that makes you uniquely you? Self-love comes from experiencing love, and also having trust in the protection and safety that was present in your early childhood. Along with that security that you are loved and cared for, there has to be the element of acceptance- Acceptance to be who you are at all times without consequence. Without the acceptance to be you, it is difficult to cultivate a sense of belonging and subconscious love of who you are and what you have to offer. We often confuse the loving behaviors from your family with the acceptance of who we are as a person.

Is This What I Want? Authenticity vs. Conditioning

Relationships in any degree can be the most amazing experience in how we connect with one another with the meaning and importance they hold for us. In other words, we revel in the way they make us feel about ourselves and our place in the world. I have friends where the conversations do not need to be in full or complete sentences and they just get me and get what I am trying to say. We finish each other’s sentences and can even portray our message through charades, a look, or a crafty raise of the eyebrow. Seems magical and in these moments, all feels right with the world. Afterall, we humans do not exist in isolation, nor are we immune from the interactions and emotions of the people around us. Instead, our emotions and sense of self are shaped by, and a part of, an emotional system created originally by our family and continued by the involvement with our social circle.

Are You A People Pleaser?

Untangling Beliefs Behind People Pleasing

The golden rule: Do unto others as you would want them to do for you… Globally we are taught this lesson as children in a way to instill empathy- a core value in the human condition. Put yourself in their shoes and see how you would feel right? So in theory, other people you encounter should also be doing this for you… Is that how it always is though? Are all relationships reciprocal? Do you get back what you invest in the people around you to the same degree?