There are two natural responses children react to when they feel threatened, uneasy or in danger; they are the same reactions that follow us into our adulthood, and we defer to them when we do not have the tools or resources to change our behavior. They are our norm.
We call it fight or flight.
When we are in fight mode, we are defensive, aggressive, outwardly dominant but inwardly, deeply insecure. We defer to this reaction because it gives us comfort, and we feel that we do not have anyone to protect our best interests so we must be our own heroes.
If we are in flight mode, we run away from conflict or anything that requires us to be our own advocate. We may shrink ourselves, hide from others, and we are viewed as weak, fake, or possibly frail. We are prone to be targets of those who are more powerful, dominant and ego-driven because we do not have a voice and rely on those who do to make our decisions for us.
Running from myself and others has always been my kryptonite; as a child who was morbidly obese, I stuck out from my peers like a sore thumb, and I ran from confrontation. I desperately tried to blend into my environment so that I would not draw unwanted and unnecessary attention to myself because the attention that I received felt like a hammer to my soul. I was mocked. I was teased. I was told that I was worthless, and my frail ego believed it.
As a creative child, I believed I could be anything, and there was nothing that could stop me from being all that my heart desired – except the opinions of others. Twelve-year old me didn’t understand why no one liked what I had to say – they laughed when I spoke, so I shielded my voice, and they poked fun of how I looked so I wore clothes three times my size to drown me away.
The insecurities bled into my adulthood. I desired friendship, companionship, and any type of connection with whomever gave me the time of the day, and this led me on a journey of a decade’s worth of pain in my twenties that catapulted me into an emotional and mental breakdown.
This led me on the journey of discovering who I truly was; the road to my divinity (finding my power within) began with a conscious choice to treat myself the way I wished I had been treated as a child: with kindness, patience, and unwavering love.
Sometimes, that is what is required from us all: to treat ourselves the way we wished others would have.
There will come a time that the fight or flight reactions that we have kept from our childhood to protect us will be the tipping point in our adulthood to guide us to the awareness of where we are internally hurting and where we need to properly care for certain spaces within us that we have chosen to push aside, and ignore for far too long.
If you find yourself struggling in a state of fight or flight, your soul is asking you to dig deeper so that the truth of who you are can be revealed.
To be of fight and flight is to live in a life of disempowerment; we are disengaged from our true nature, from our strengths, and our divinity; to find the power within you, within us all, requires willingness of the heart to rediscover the truth of who we are.
Are you ready to live an empowered life?
Sometimes, that is what is required from us all: to treat ourselves the way we wished others would have.
The Dis-ease Within
How do you know if you are living a life disassociated from your core desires? What separates you from knowing that you are unhappy, and living in a space of denial? What is the key to changing your reality from a space of lack to a space of wholeness?
Awareness.
Everything begins with awareness. If you live in a state of awareness, you are able to see your life from the perspective of being an active participant in your experiences versus just letting life happen to you. Case in point, if you are at a job that is unfulfilling, you may experience stress-related illnesses, you may suffer from anxiety, panic attacks and possibly depression – a person who is unaware may continue to live in the space of compromising their wellbeing to stay within the status quo.
Whereas, the process of awareness will have someone questioning the correlation to their illnesses, their wellbeing, and their current unfulfilling job.
What brings us dis-ease always stems from a root. A cause. Life will show up (as it always does), and give us signs to hint to our discomfort, or to show us where we are not aligning in our truth, and if we ignore those signs, they become bigger problems, and those problems can turn into storms that we can no longer possibly ignore.
The storm can show up as us losing that job, that house, that relationship, or receiving a massive rejection or heartbreak that cripples us…. the storm requires us to deal with what we have refused to acknowledge within ourselves for so long.
If we decide we are willing to go deeper, we can begin to ask ourselves difficult questions:
- Why do I feel this way?
- When did these feelings start to surface?
- Am I honoring myself?
- Am I living for others?
- Am I truly happy with my life right now as it is?
- If not, what is blocking my joy right now?
These questions may be uncomfortable because the awareness causes us to be unapologetically honest with our truth, and that truth may be completely different than the current reality that we are residing in.
Who wants to admit that the life that they are living may not be one that they really desire?
When I was living a life for others, I suffered deeply from panic attacks, codependency and low self-esteem – the connections that I surrounded myself with reflected my discomfort within, the job that I worked aided in my depression…peeling back the layers of my pain, I recognized that I had been living for everyone else but myself, and that my dis-ease within was manifested by ignoring my heart’s desires.
The heart deserves to be heard, and if we do not listen closely…if we ignore our heart, we ignore our inner guidance to a life that is in alignment with who we are out our core. To hear the heart begins with honoring the awareness of your discomfort, and then venturing into a journey of coming back to the authenticity of you.
Unlearning & Relearning
When we were babies, we were innocent, naïve, and fearless; we lived life in the space of wonderment and bewilderment. There was nothing that we could not do or face. We were bold, our dreams and desires were imprinted on us from the moment that we were formed in the wombs. We were all born with our character traits, our needs, our wants so what happens when we grow up as adults, and we live in a space separate from our desires, our needs and our wants?
It’s the external programming. It’s the learning. It’s the layers of beliefs that are placed upon us as babies, children and young adults from our families, our friends and society; instead of living a life that we were intended to live by showing up in our power (the power that was given to us at the inception of our creation), we adapt and mold ourselves into what fits society standards.
We dim parts of our dreams.
We quiet our voices.
We attempt to fit in rather than stand out.
We conform.
We adapt.
We accept jobs that go against our desires.
We compromise our needs in relationships to soothe what was never given or lost to us as children.
And, then the pain surfaces…the anxiety, the panic attacks, and the depression.
Our identity has been built upon layers of what others may want from us, and to reidentify with the core desires of our hearts requires us to unlearn the programming that we have subscribed our souls to for the entirety of our lives.
Is it simple? Hell no but if you are able to live a life that is not your truth for decades, you can certainly learn to live a life that is in alignment with who you really are; it begins and ends with the mind.
What we believe, we shall be. If you are told that you must be a certain way to be accepted (ex: dress this way, look this way, talk this way, go to this school, marry this person, live this life), you form a belief about yourself. A limiting belief inherently communicates to your soul that who you are is not enough and you must be something else to be deemed worthy of good things. That limiting belief becomes our identity. We form our lives, our choices and our decisions around that limiting belief.
To undo the belief requires a discipline of how your mind works, and a conscious choice to welcome positivity into your life.
It sounds easier than it is, but the method works. Just listen to Oprah Winfrey. Eckhart Tolle. Michael Singer. Paulo Coehlo.
Every spiritual teacher asks:
How do you get up in the morning? How do you move throughout your day? How do you interact with others?
Do you simply exist within this life or do you actively move with intention?
To live a life of intention shows up in how you choose to see yourself, speak about yourself, how you feel about yourself, and what you give your energy to; if you are welcoming positivity, love, and compassion into your space on a consistent, daily basis, you are actively reprogramming your soul to see your life from the perception of love, and if love is there…you begin to peel away the layers of what others may want for you, and align to the voice of who you really are.
The voice that was imprinted within you in the womb. The voice that is here to guide you, protect you, and align you back to the desires of your heart.
The journey to you begins and ends with LOVE.
Welcome LOVE!
What we do everyday – how we show up – how we interact with others – how we see ourselves – becomes our reality. What you do now becomes your tomorrow. If we are aware that our current reality is a byproduct of our daily inner monologue then would we be more intentional about how we choose to live?
After being bullied as a child for being overweight, I chased adoration as an adult until it led me down a path of deep loneliness, despair and anguish. I lived a life that was created by a falsehood…I created my reality by lying to myself daily. One day, I became tired of living a life that felt incredibly painful to keep up with.
What I began to understand about learning to eliminate negative past beliefs about myself was that it required an overwhelming amount of patience, love, and compassion…but not from others…
This was required of myself.
If we are to challenge our status quo, we need to learn a new way of being, of thinking, and of living.
Coaches will tell you that you need to adapt a new mindset. Healers will say that you need to work on yourself. Therapists will tell you that you need to get to the root of those negative beliefs/reactions. They all say use different terminologies, but the underlying message remains the same: use love, and your life will begin to change for one that’s in alignment with your truth.
How can you welcome love into your space?
The journey of discovering yourself is never-ending. There is no right or wrong way to becoming your most, true, authentic self but there are things that you can implement into your life on a consistent basis that will help ignite a deeper, understanding of who you are and what you desire.
I call it living life from your five senses: touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound.
Find a ritual that stimulates your five senses in a way that welcomes more love into your spirit; for example, if you are listening to music, podcasts or audible books that are encouraging, uplifting and loving – your mind becomes adapted to the messaging that you are feeding it daily – a message of love, a message of growth, and a message of change – as time passes, you will notice that your reality is shifting by what you are feeding your spirit on a daily basis.
What can you do daily that feeds your mind, your spirit and your body?
In my case, I wake up daily to looking myself in the mirror and speaking loving affirmations to myself (using sight and sound) to nourish my wellbeing, and then I may some play music (preferably Lizzo) that reminds me that I’m a badass woman, flaws and all, as I feed my body with food that feels good to my soul or maybe I listen to an empowering podcast about self-love and how to shift from my current state of being into a life I desire.
My rituals change daily by how I feel (because let’s be real – we’re not always happy!) but the effort I have put into how I treat myself with my five senses has equated to living a life that has opened doors of miraculous opportunities; I lived a life of denial for so long that now, learning to love myself on my own terms, relearning the truth of who I am, life has granted me the opportunity of having experiences that reflect my inner work.
I’ve connected with souls who see me for who I am and accept me. I have written books. I have traveled. I teach others how to align to their authentic truth. I found love, lost it, healed, and then learned to find love again…but with myself first. I have found my voice, and while it is not for everyone – it is mine, and I won’t ever quiet myself again. I have pulled back the layers of people pleasing, self-sabotage, and depression to reconnect with my heart space again…
The one I was granted with in my mother’s womb. The one I lost when I was a child…I have found her again.
That’s the gift that is given when we rediscover ourselves. Our joy. Our power. Our light. We find a way back to who we were as children. We find our way back home.
It is on us to decide to release the programming from our past and create an intentional life of what we want to experience.
Life isn’t happening to us, it is happening for us, and if we are willing to be conscious participants in our experiences, we will find that we are more susceptible to such magical, loving, and truly beautiful moments that reflect the love that we have created internally within ourselves.
How much LOVE are you willing to give yourself? Daily? Weekly? Monthly? How much are you willing to fill your cup so that you may live a life of empowerment?
The choice is yours.
