Overwhelm.
Fear.
Panic.
Those are the feelings I ran into when I first started following my heart somewhere around 2006-2009.
I thought that if I could only find my passion, or tap into my inner wisdom, everything would be fine.
But life doesn’t work that way.
I discovered that in order to follow my heart, I had to let go of my baggage. And letting go meant facing my deepest fears and insecurities.
[Read more…]When you think about being free and living the life of your dreams, what do you imagine?
Do you envision that there’s a path for you that is effortless, without problems, and without struggle?
If so, that will forever keep you from truly living life, because you’re constantly looking for something that doesn’t exist.
Your mind might respond, “But I see others living like that.”
However, what you see is only what they put out there. You don’t get a glimpse to their psychological state, or their darkest moments.
When you stop running away from any part of life, that’s when life begins to open up.
And that is what we’ll explore now.
You already know the standard questions, such as:
While these are excellent questions to explore if you haven’t done so, there’s something deeper hiding here.
Look at any of the above questions, and ask: What is it I’m going to feel when I get exactly what I want?
Then notice that what you want is often the opposite of what you have, so your desires emerge from the aversions of this moment.
Do you want your present moment aversions to dictate your future?
I’m hearing a no. Or at least I pretend I’m hearing you say no.
So then, what to do?
The cure for the pain is in the pain.
Rumi
Stop running away from the pain of this moment.
Thoughts will say that you don’t want this. Resistance. Avoidance. Story. The mind will throw everything at you to try and distract.
But how can you be free if you are constantly running from something?
When you think about your dreams, you probably see them as something external. Meaning, something out there will change, and then you will be happy, right?
What if it’s the other way around?
It is the internal that changes, which makes the external almost redundant.
Let me give you two examples:
Imagine that you get your dream life, but you feel depressed and miserable. Do you still want it?
Now imagine that in five years you are still where you are, but you feel alive, free, and ready to dance with life. Do you still want to reject it?
These are simplistic examples to help you get a feel for what I’m pointing to, so don’t worry if your mind is coming in with a “Yes, but…”
What if the life of your dreams isn’t a what, but a how.
In other words, what if it’s not something you get to, but something you are.
When you stop relying on thoughts and concepts for the answers, you begin to notice that everything is alive. The whole of life is beckoning you to dance.
But here’s the part you don’t want to hear: To get there, you have to be willing to go through the darkest parts of you, including those feelings you’ve been avoiding for your whole life.
The good news is that you are not your thoughts, feelings, ideas, concepts, conditioning, or even personality.
There’s something here when all of the above come and go.
In a way, this demands everything from you. Are you ready to face the demons within?
It sounds more dramatic than it is, because you don’t have to do this all at once. I did this over many years, and I resisted the process for many more.
Let’s do a short exercise to get you familiar with this.
Bring your awareness to your body. Scan from your toes to the top of your head. Notice if what sensations are there. Anything unpleasant? Unease? Anxiety? Irritation? Fear?
Bring your attention to where those sensations are, then feel without pushing them away. Don’t create distance. Don’t separate. Just melt into them.
Start in small doses if this feels like too much.
And if you’ve had a difficult life, a professional can help. This is not easy work, but if you want real freedom, this is the way.
As you begin to live less in your mind, you naturally drop into the body, and notice that it is pulled in different directions.
Life lives through the body.
And it’s not really life living through anything. It is simply life happening as one thing, but for the purposes of this article, I have to use language to convey this.
Your head is filled with ideas of what life should be like, what you need to be happy, and how you can’t feel any unpleasant feelings.
Your heart lives life in the moment, noticing what resonates, and enjoying what is here right now, which includes the ups and downs.
Become curious how this happens for you. You could call this intuition, or following your heart. It doesn’t matter. What matters is beginning to let go of the imaginary reins that the mind thinks it has.
I wish I could give you a step-by-step formula for living the life of your dreams, but I can’t.
You could chase after success, fame, and the rest, but ultimately it will lead you back here, unsatisfied, looking for the next goal to achieve.
When you are ready to be brutally honest, you will know it, and you will be ready to face whatever you have been avoiding.
And it may be a rough couple of years when you finally open to what you’ve been repressing and suppressing, but it is worth exploring.
What you discover in the process is that you don’t have to be afraid. You are made for this. You are made to feel.
Notice any bouncing into thinking, story, blaming, shaming, explaining, and bring your attention back to the body. What is being avoided?
Can you be with this, just for this moment?
I’m asking you to wake up from your thought-induced slumber.
You’ve been living in concepts and ideas that have been handed to you.
Are you ready to break free?
The answer is to go into the dark forest with no path in sight, with nothing to hold onto, and discover that you only need to see your next step.
You don’t need to have everything figured out.
This is a radical way to discover that fulfillment and freedom are hiding where you least want to look.
All the best,
Henri
Does your heart know more than your head?
Or is it the other way around?
Which one will lead to more happiness, purpose, and fulfillment?
The answer is both.
This is not about neglecting a part of you.
Instead, it’s about using everything at your disposal.
You have a head and a heart for a reason. They both help in their own way.
[Read more…]Are you discovering that you don’t like your friends anymore?
Something just doesn’t feel right.
You may no longer have the same interests.
If you’re into personal growth, you may at some point notice that you’ve outgrown some or all of your friends.
This is to be expected. Even without inquiring into the nature of who we are and how things work, friends will come and go.
It doesn’t make you better than your friends, it simply means that a chapter has come to an end.
Letting go friends can be difficult, and it can go back and forth until you realize that there’s nothing there anymore. The friendship doesn’t feel magnetic.
There can be a feeling of loneliness as you transition from one group of friends to another. You may wish that you could go back.
A longer period of not having friends may even happen to help you look inward and wonder what this life is about, and who you truly are.
If you notice fear, grief, sadness, feel them fully. If there is resistance, allow it to be there, and then welcome whatever is being resisted.
Outgrowing your friends is difficult. There’s a sense of loyalty. There’s an idealized image of how it should be, and how we should grow old together.
This is a limitation that we put on life.
Life dances and evolves.
Stay focused on what resonates with you. If you want to stay home and explore who you are, then do that. Listen to your heart, and listen to what feels magnetic.
This topic of outgrowing relationships includes family. If you don’t vibe with your family members, you don’t have to spend so much time with them.
While this may sound harsh, it’s the truth. Listen to your heart. It requires courage and no one says it’s easy all the time, but in the end, it is the right path to travel.
Notice that everything unfolds at its own pace.
You may want to force a certain idea onto life, but does it work? Even these ideas come from your personality, genetics, society, and everything you’ve taken in during your life.
This all happens by itself, so let life live through you. You can relax and enjoy the ups and downs.
It’s all okay.
Use this as an opportunity to begin to listen to your body saying yes and no. How does it communicate with you? Does it feel like expansion and contraction, or like something else?
Begin to trust that you have what is needed to navigate this life.
And in reality, it’s not even you having something, but it’s built in, it’s included.
Every person in your life is there for a reason. In the end you have to ask yourself what feels right for you.
If you don’t like your friends anymore, then you don’t like them. You aren’t abandoning your friends. You are simply being aware of the energy shifting.
You may feel bad about cutting your friends loose, but if you’re not happy with where you are and who you are spending your time with, it’s time for change.
Now, having said all that, this is a learning process, so even though the focus in this article has been about letting go, your growth can also lead to a greater sense of connection with the friends you have.
Nothing is set in stone.
Enjoy the ride :)
Henri
How do you know when you’re listening to your intuition?
Have you noticed that sometimes your intuition is wrong?
Your intuition is not meant to guarantee that everything goes your way, that’s simply the mind trying to always feel good.
Instead of putting the burden of perfection on your intuition, see it as another source of data, a suggestion.
Now, this doesn’t mean you can’t improve the connection with your intuition.
The clearer your mind, the better the connection seems to be.