#3 You’re worrying less about impressing others and more about doing what’s right for you.
Many of us have developed an identity, a role that we continuously play in order to be accepted and stay in our comfort zone. Unfortunately, we rarely stop to question if this role is really who we are.
What most of us don’t know, or try to ignore, is that our true self is right beneath the surface, waiting for us to wake up.
Our true self doesn’t care about others’ expectation, or about what society considers to be normal. It just wants us to grow and flourish. …
Everything the child within us needs to hear.
Connecting with my inner child has been a huge part of my life for over a year now. Without it, I’d still have lots of memories to heal and lots of suppressed emotions that I had never allowed myself to feel.
Telling what your inner child needs to hear is incredibly powerful, especially if you were not given the love and acceptance you should have been given by your parents or primary caretakers.
As children, we can’t identify what’s wrong. We can’t tell if our parents are good or bad — we just love them the way they are, and…
We have normalized our fear of intimacy — but we can’t run away from it forever.
What do you associate love with? Is it pain? Is it fear? Is it anxiety? And where do your ideas about love come from?
Many of us associate love with suffering due to our past relationship experiences. If we’ve been cheated on, if we’ve been through a painful break-up or if we’ve been emotionally abused by someone who was supposed to love us, love can be terrifying.
Sometimes, we haven’t even had a relationship — our parents’ marriage was so unstable and hostile that we created the belief that love was not safe.
Whatever you perceive love to be, your…
#2 Our loved ones can be the most resistant to our growth.
I’ve been going through my dark night of the soul for over a year now, and it’s been the most challenging, beautiful, painful phase of my life.
The dark night of the soul is defined as a spiritual journey that takes you along an emotional roller coaster, shaking everything you thought to be true and bringing you face to face with your deepest fears and wounds.
Before it all started, I was in a state of spiritual bliss for several months. I felt connected to nature and to the Universe like never before. I could feel pure love for every…
#1 You feel a need to read, learn new things and understand the world.
I believe we all have a spiritual side. I believe we’re born with an innate ability to connect with our intuition and recognize this amazing life force that inhabits each and every one of us.
Unfortunately, the world we live in doesn’t always support this aspect of our life. In fact, it makes us believe the material realm is all that matters and, as a consequence, we spend years living as disconnected as possible.
If we’re lucky enough, there comes a time when we can no longer pretend everything’s fine. …
You can’t accept something you don’t feel worthy of.
For years, many of my relationships would end up the same way: with me feeling rejected, abandoned and unlovable.
In fact, I’d feel this way during the whole relationship, not just when we parted ways.
More often than not, the other person would never know it. My true feelings would always remain hidden behind a mask of detachment and indifference — I was so convincing that I’d even convince myself I didn’t feel anything.
The funny part is, I’d simultaneously push away people that would show me love and support. …
Times of desperation give us the redirection we need.
In the beginning of my dark night of the soul, I felt incredibly lost. I felt disoriented and overwhelmed, with no idea of what was going on.
Suddenly, I no longer resonated with the career I was getting myself into. I no longer enjoyed the company of many of my friends, and I could no longer pretend my family was not dysfunctional. Every foundation of my life was falling apart, and it still is.
But this journey has taught me many lessons, and one of them was that this painful phase of my life can turn into my biggest blessing…
How to know you’ve found a keeper.
When it comes to dating, there are plenty of articles about red flags, warning signs and and subtle cues to watch out for. Luckily, there are just as many green flags to look forward to.
Relationships can really be captivating and supportive, but it helps to know what to expect, otherwise we may find ourselves in the middle of toxic dynamics and dysfunctional patterns.
This is particularly true when we have never felt truly loved before. If we’ve spent years being the giver, feeling unloved or unlovable, then that’s what we’re used to.
I mean, how can we recognize something…
According to clinical psychologist Dr. Lindsay Gibson.
You’re not alone if you feel like you’re just rambling your way through life, with no real sense of purpose or direction.
Unfortunately, our society often requires us to ignore our deepest needs, so that we can adapt and become the acceptable, conventional, reliable version of ourselves. It makes us forget who we really are so that we can become who we’re supposed to be.
The good news is, there’s an alternative path. That path demands a great deal of courage and resilience, but it gives us the freedom we desire in return. …
And freed me from my people-pleasing tendencies.
Two years ago, I read The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. Although the book is written in a very simple, almost childish language, it’s filled with many powerful insights into our lives and relationships.
According to the author, we all have our own personal agreements. Essentially, an agreement is a story you tell yourself about something, to the point where it becomes a belief that unconsciously dictates your whole life.
We make thousands of agreements with ourselves, with our loved ones, with the society we live in. In these agreements, we tell ourselves who we are, what we want…
