You only ever have two choices in life: fear or love. While this is overly simplified, there’s truth in it no matter what decision you’re facing. Everyday we make thousands of decisions. Little ones, big ones. Some that seem trivial and unimportant. Like what color underwear you’ll wear today, or where you buy your coffee. Then there’s bigger decisions that take up more of your mental faculties: will you get a membership to the gym or yoga studio? Should you go on a date with your colleague? Maybe you weigh the options with a pros and cons list. Do you use your left brain to analyze the situation and decipher the option that is the least risky? Do you take the safest route? The most ‘logical’ option?
You're either choosing from your highest truth (where you don't limit yourself based on a feared outcome) or you’re choosing from fear. Most people live their lives trying to avoid danger, stuck in lower survival emotions and reactionary tendencies that were programmed in the mind at a very young age.
Our minds are programmed to keep us safe which often means keeping our environment familiar and predictable so that we’ll have fewer surprises and feel more in control of our lives. In effort to belong, we avoid risk and trying new things as to avoid being wrong or unaccepted by our communities. This is a subconscious process designed to protect us and you may not even realize it’s happening until you look at your habits and tendency to choose the same thing over and over again, even when you know it’s not good for you. Whether it’s relationships, food or even reading choices, we have patterns that are familiar to us and we often stick to them even when we ‘know better’. This makes your choose things that are familiar and ‘acceptable’ rather than what you know if your Highest Truth. These mini self-betrayals, unnoticed at first, are the reasons you don’t trust yourself. No wonder you don’t know what to do with your life. You wouldn’t believe yourself if you did.
Most people don’t know what they want, or at least they think they don’t know. I believe everyone knows what they want and can access this truth anytime by quieting the mind and listening to the heart. It takes some repetition and lucky for you, you have hundreds of opportunities every day to practice.
When you quiet the judgmental thinking thoughts, you can hear little curiosities and nudges towards people, situations and events that feel good. You’ll might get ideas that don’t seem logical or productive. You’ll likely get sudden inspirations to do new things you haven’t done before, but always dreamed of doing. When you don’t listen to your heart you experience resistance, frustration and procrastination. Although the voice of your heart, or Higher Self, is usually quiet and subtle, sometimes she will rage loud with all her might so that you can’t avoid your truth. This can happen through loss, anger, heartache and car accidents. The good news is you train yourself to listen to the subtle signals and follow the path to an extraordinary life.
Step 1: Overcome decision making fatigue by making some processes in your day easier. Have the same thing for breakfast every day. Buy one type of sock so you don’t have to spend time searching for a match.
Step 2: Declutter so that you don’t have to sift through so many options. Give away things you do not regularly use. How many things do you have attached to this story? Don’t worry about the possibility of needing it 5 years down the road. If you need it then, it’ll come into your life. For now, get rid of it. If you don’t wear it, don’t keep it. If it’s not a fuck yes!! Then it’s a no. Unless you want your life to be mediocre at best -- settling for whatever comes your way -- you have to let go of things that aren’t your highest truth and excitement. Which leads the the next point.
Step 3: Tune in and learn to differentiate from your judgmental thinking mind and the call of heart, so that it can guide you to the people, places and things that are aligned to your highest truth. Nobody else knows what’s best for you more than you do, however we live in a world that paints a different picture. This modern world is constantly bombarding you with information and noise implying that you aren’t good enough, successful enough, healthy enough, beautiful enough, smart enough, etc. In a world that profits off your self-doubt the most honest thing you could do is turn inwards for the answers. When you have an important decision to make, take a few minutes to ground and center yourself by going for a walk, taking 10 slow, deep breaths, or sitting for a short meditation. Tune into your body and your breath and ask yourself ‘what is the next honest step?’ Trust what comes up, don’t second guess yourself.
Step 4: Discern Is this coming from fear or love? Notice your first instincts. Notice when your mind is trying to make a list of pros and cons, and whether it’s concerned with what others will think. Don’t feed these thoughts. Keep coming back to your truth. If you didn’t believe any thoughts of lack or fear, what would you choose? What option feels most inspiring and expansive? How does your body feel when you consider each choice? Your body is a powerful multi-sensory device that is constantly informing your being through your emotions. Feel your gut, and listen to the body. What does love feel like? What does fear feel like?
Step 5: Follow your heart. Are you a recovering people pleaser? If you’ve spent a lot of time taking care of others, than it’s likely you’ve trained your mind to see your needs as less important, if not forgetting them all together. The good news is you can train your mind to do anything you want with a little repetition. Begin choosing for YOU and what’s in your highest inspiration because the greatest gift you can give anyone is your own happiness. Your joy is medicine and it’s infectious. The more you express the gentle stirrings of your heart, the louder she speaks to you. At first you may get inspiration to rearrange your living room furniture, or go to a dance class. You build trust within yourself by saying yes to the seemingly ‘random’ calls to act spontaneously. Your logical mind may pipe in that it’s unproductive but I dare you to ignore this criticism. You’re not on this planet to be a robot working for bottom lines. You’re a miraculous combination of spirit and matter designed to express your creativity, turning thoughts into things.
To live an extraordinary life you must know who you are, and to do so you must explore who you truly are. You must play, adventure and sometimes unproductively and trying new things without letting the fear of being ‘wrong’ hold you back. Once you discover who you truly are you’ll naturally share your uniqueness with the world, moved by inspired action.
When you’re honest with yourself, you hear your heart’s call. When you follow that call you begin to trust yourself, knowing that life will provide you with everything you need to see your dreams through. All you have to do is let go, listen and trust. Surrender to the power of your heart’s truth, she knows exactly what to do. The most valuable knowledge that you will ever discover is, and always will be, within.
xx Sol
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