Feel like you’ve lost yourself since having kids? Yeah, me too. To be honest, I am not even sure if I had found myself before kids. But, there is nothing quite like being rocketed into motherhood to destabilise the world that you knew and start provoking some pretty big questions like ‘who am I’ and ‘what do I want to do with my life?’
These questions, among other things, led to my separation from my husband of 17 years. For me personally, I realised, I was betraying myself to stay safe, instead of allowing myself to experience authentic true happiness. And, for sure, it helped me to survive, as that’s what maladaptive coping mechanisms do and it is a beautiful coping ability that we as humans have, but there becomes a time when in order to grow, we must first shed old behaviours, beliefs and actions because deep down, we know. We know, we need to make change. We know, we can’t ignore ourselves anymore. We know that we are called to step into our truth. The calling to live within heart, becomes louder, than the fear to stay put.
Quite the sobering realisation to find the clarity and realise that for a very long time I subconsciously had been living in fear, instead of my heart and this unconscious choice I made, had been rotting parts of my life. But, the law of polarity is strong, and true. And, for as deep and dark I go, is as high and light I can go and the universe rewards the brave. So, I promise, with some determination and a will to explore, there is light at the end of the tunnel when we align with our truth, and liberation from throwing ourselves into the fire and burning away everything that is not true to see what is left.
So, I am not saying everyone needs to leave their husband like me, I’m just posing the question – where are you living inauthentically in your life? And, what’s the cost? And, if you did what you really wanted to do in your heart…. how would your life change? How would you feel? What could be possible?
Heart. It’s a word we use to describe so many things. Love. Compassion. Kindness. And for some of us, it’s a word that describes our truth and our authentic selves. It is the person we are when we’re not wearing a mask (and I don’t mean a mask for covid, I mean the mask of identity) or pretending to be someone we’re not. The person we’ve grown further and further away from, piece by piece, over time. When we’re living from our heads, we’re in survival mode.
Thinking about what we need to do to get by, to make ends meet. What we think we should be doing based on society’s conditioning and trying to keep everyone else around us happy. To get a pat on the back and recognition to cement our perceived worth. Worrying about the future and obsessing over the past. We’re not present in the moment, and as a result, we are missing out on so much of this short and fleeting human experience.
But when we’re living from our hearts, everything is different. We’re in flow. We’re connected to our intuition and inner wisdom, that has actually been there all along (hello a million signs from the universe we chose to ignore). In positive psychology ‘the flow’ captures the positive mental state of being completely absorbed, focused, and involved in your activities at a certain point in time, which illuminates feelings of happiness, peace, and satisfaction.
When we are in a positive immersion, we can then do a really cool thing and leverage off epigenetic expression to build, multiply and expand these feel-good moments by embodying these feelings into a daily habit to draw in and attract more clarity, meaning, connection and fulfilment in our life. Whether we are consciously manufacturing these feelings or they are free-flowing from a series of deliberate actions, the brain will pick up on these vibrations and respond by making proteins that send messages to our DNA which influences every single cell in our body, and shapes our reality by magnetising experiences to match the feeling and the vision we have imprinted in our mind.
So, now that we know that. Here is a thought for you….Knowing what we know about how the brain is a magnet and attracts what we think, what are the thoughts you’re thinking? Because if they are negative, limited, or false then you’re only attracting more of that and robbing yourself of the life you actually really want.
Living from your heart isn’t always easy. I know, from first-hand experience, especially when we are tired, burned out, frustrated mums as some days it is bloody hard to see the wood from the trees. It requires determination to be your authentic self. It requires strength to make bold decisions. It requires extreme amounts of consciousness to start seeing the unseen of what has been holding you back and practice upon practice of rewiring new thought pathways into our cells. But it’s so worth it. When you live from your heart, in alignment, you’ll experience more joy, happiness, and love. You’ll also find yourself coming out of depression and anxiety. So if you’re ready to make a change in your life, start by coming back to your heart. Listen to what it has to say. And then follow its lead.
These are just some things to focus on that can help get you started on your journey back to your heart. Remember, it’s a lifelong journey and there is no destination. The goal is to live a life full of love, joy, and happiness. And it all starts with coming back to your heart.
Less is more – True story.
In a world where busyness is worn like a badge of honour, but the key here is in the slow down we actually start to speed up. We all need stillness in our lives to tune into our hearts and go into our bodies so we can find our inner compass. This may be short snippets, minutes, or seconds, whatever, it doesn’t matter as long as it is done, and done consistently. If you’re short on time try simply placing your left hand on your heart and right hand on your tummy, closing your eyes, slowing and deepening your breath and feeling what comes up. Prioritizing time for journaling, yoga, meditation, breathwork, walks in nature or whatever works for you can bring about more awareness and help build your window of tolerance to enable you to move out of stress and into fulfilment easier.
Get in touch with your inner child – Who dat?
Inner child work is an approach to recognizing and healing childhood trauma and when I say trauma, I don’t specifically mean big T trauma, it can be little T trauma too. It is entirely likely you have many little T traumas that you aren’t aware of but they are still playing a storyline within your life and impacting your success. Inner child work recognises that our behaviours as an adult stem from our early childhood experiences and as we grow up we slowly grow further away from being ourselves because of these experiences and how we relate to them. Reconnecting with our inner child and listening to their needs and wants is a profound process of self-discovery and this self-discovery and realisation will take you far in business as you understand yourself on a deeper level. Be careful with this one, it is sure to make you cry a lot!
Find Your Village People – No, I don’t mean the people who sing YMCA.
Create or find a community that supports you on your journey or join my Facebook group Remarkable Business Mums. There is nothing like having people in our lives to help us along the way. We can’t do it all alone and finding our village will help carry us when we need it. As humans, we are wired to crave connection and in fact, when we have meaningful connections in our life it can lower anxiety and depression, help us regulate our emotions, lead to higher self-esteem and empathy, and actually improve our immune systems. All of these beautiful little qualifies help open up our window of tolerance and opportunity so we can flow into living within heart, easier.
Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Discomfort is a part of life and it’s only when we’re able to sit with it, that we can grow from it. Any type of new direction we want to take in life registers in our subconscious mind as ‘unfamiliar’ which translates to ‘potentially threatening’ for our nervous system. The nervous system’s job is to kick in when we feel uncertain and lead us back to familiarity. We will try to logically rationalise this such as believing we don’t have enough time, or energy, or money or skills to start a business but the reality is there are solutions to all of those challenges. furthermore, we will create an unconscious bias to support whatever belief we choose to onboard. eg: if we believe we have no time we will look for evidence to support that regardless if it is true.
Our nervous system will flag any new direction as ‘threatening’ and ‘unsafe’ and loop you back to the ‘safety’ of the ‘familiar’ even if it isn’t what you intrinsically want to do. It doesn’t care whether you’re happy. It just cares if you are ‘safe’ the job you hate, is familiar and safe. Even though you don’t like it. Being a sahm and your daily routine is familiar and safe. Even though you aren’t fulfilled. The income you earn is safe and familiar. Even though you know you could earn more.
The long hours you work are safe and familiar. Even though you’re exhausted and miss out on important kids’ events. But still, a lot of us stay stuck and unable to make change. So, now you know your nervous system is just doing what it is designed to do. But, can be a little misguided at times. Because it doesn’t care if you’re happy. Just about whether you’re safe.
Too often people try to break out of this by taking on too much at one time. Which only overwhelms the nervous system and triggers the ‘freeze’ response. But with awareness, there is a simple solution to override this. In order to keep your nervous system from subconsciously tripping you back into safety, take small steps.
Gradual action built up over time helps the subconscious mind climatise to the new change. Have someone help you stay on track because don’t forget, at first it all happens on a subconscious level, meaning we don’t see or recognise it until we start becoming aware of the unseen.
Know that ‘new’ and ‘unfamiliar’ will feel scary and uncomfortable and notice when you start to get pulled back to making decisions for ‘safety’ as opposed to what you really want. Learn to make decisions based from what you need to do, not what you want to do because, I want to go and watch Netflix but I need to work on my business will yield two entirely different results. Catch your thoughts and then replace them from ‘what if it goes wrong?’ to ‘what if it goes right?’ to alter your automatic trajectory and open up the space for manifestation to kick in and do its thing.
Become a river, and learn to go with the flow.
So, I have learned this one is a delicate dance between being proactive, but also unattached. Spiritual leader, Gurudev says life is a combination of both effort and effortlessness, if you want to catch a train you have to run to catch the train but once you’re on the train there is no point running inside the train, it doesn’t get you there any faster. When we surrender to the flow of life, we are accepting what is. We are open to the present moment and all that it has to offer. We let go of our need to control, and instead, trust that all is as it should be. We are in tune with the universe and its vibration.
Going with the flow means that we are flexible and adaptable but not avoidant to difficult choices or uncomfortable conversations but unattached to the outcome because we have inhabited a strong faith and knowing that we are always exactly where we are meant to be, and we can reframe any experience into inner wisdom to guide us into our next stages. We don’t resist change, but instead, embrace it. This can be difficult when things are tough, but it is during these times it is most important to remain flexible and open. Take special note that this is not about bypassing feeling, all our feelings are important, but it is about learning how to allow our feelings to flow through us so they don’t block our energy. When we go with the flow, we allow ourselves to be guided by our intuition and inner wisdom. This can take us down unexpected paths, but they are always exactly where we need to be. We let go of our need for certainty and instead, trust in the process of life.
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