Category Archives: Essential Journey

The Voice Inside | A story about Joy.

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The Voice Inside copy

When Joy was a little girl her mother was very sad. She wanted to make her happy so she laughed and danced and told stories and drew pictures. But still her mother was sad.

As she grew, she kept trying to make her mother happy but nothing she did seemed to work. Her mother would only yell at her and tell her to stop being so silly, so loud, so childish. She didn’t understand. She was just being herself. She just wanted to make her happy. Not mad. Not sad. Not angry.

She thought it was her fault that her mother could not be happy. She thought she was the one who made her so sad.

And she felt sad too.

But that was not allowed. Be happy, people said. You’ve got a roof over your head. Food on the table and clothes on your back. Be happy.

So she was.

Happy.

On the outside.

But inside she carried the secret guilt of being the one who could not make her mother happy. Inside, she carried the secret shame that it was all her fault.

She grew up and moved away and got married and had children and a career and did all kinds of things to make the world a better place. And still she felt sad inside.

And nobody knew. She could not speak the words that would name the guilt she carried, the shame she harboured deep inside her.

Until one day, she looked outside and saw the rain and clouds and heard the thunder roaring and felt the sadness inside roiling up as if it would drown her. She was scared. Frightened. Lost. She did not know what to do.

“Stop lying,” a voice from deep within the well of her sadness whispered.

She stomped her foot and put her hands on her hips and angrily replied, “I am not a liar! That’s not who I am. I’m a happy person who doesn’t lie.”

The voice inside laughed. “Really? That’s hard to believe ’cause from where I sit inside you, it looks really, really dark. Stop lying.”

She got even angrier and very slowly repeated. “I a-m n-o-t a l-i-a-r.”

Again the voice inside laughed. “Harrumph. I didn’t call you a liar. I just said you’re lying about the truth inside you. Think about it. You look all sunny and bright on the outside and feel all dark and gloomy on the inside. When the outside is not a mirror of the inside, one of them is not true. Which is it?”

The question surprised her. She didn’t have an answer.

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“Then perhaps it’s time you found out.”

“But what if I don’t know how?”

The voice inside gave a little chuckle. “You humans. You think the answer always lies in the how when what you really need is to understand the what. Do you want to be happy or sad?”

“Happy of course,” she replied.

“Then there’s your answer. Now you know the what, keep digging into what keeps you from having it. If you want to be happy and feel sad inside, ask yourself, what can I do differently, and then do it.”

“I’d rather you give me a manual that tells me how to do it”

“There is no manual. You are the how. You are the manual. You are the way. It’s what you do that makes the difference.”

Joy looked inside and saw the tiny light of hope starting to flicker.

“It doesn’t look as dark inside,” she whispered to the voice.

“What does that tell you?”

“It tells me that no matter what, I need to do whatever it takes to keep the light burning brighter.”

“Then do it.”

And so she did.

And Joy became the light of her life shining from the inside out.

Epilogue

And guilt and shame got lost in searching for more fertile fields to plough.

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What if this limitless world is our home?

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FullSizeRender (95)Do not ask me where I am going
as I travel in this limitless world
where every step I take is my home

~ Dogen ~
Zen, Tao, Chan

What if… we did see every step we take as being in our own home? What if we did see this limitless world as our home. The place we reside. The place that holds us safe, secure, comfortable. That keeps us surrounded by beauty. That supports the flourishing of our lives?

Would you walk differently? Step more lightly? Tread  more gently?

Yesterday, as I got out of my car to take Beaumont for his walk at the park, I opened my door and there beside me on the ground was a pile of cigarette butts. Someone obviously had parked in that spot, pulled out their ashtray and emptied it on the ground.

Later, as Beaumont chased the ball that he insisted I keep throwing for him, I had to keep one eye on the ground to ensure I did not step on leftover evidence of other dog’s presence that owners had not picked up.

On my way home, I stopped at a local cheese shop to pick up delectable morsels for a girlfriend and I to share over a glass of wine. Just outside the shop I spied a discarded wrapper from the sandwich store next door. Someone had omitted to throw it into the cast iron garbage container that stood a few feet away at the edge of the sidewalk.

This is my home. Your home. Our home.

I regularly pick up other dog’s deposits while walking Beaumont. I also pick up litter on the street.

Yes, the original dog owner, the original litterer ‘should’ do it. But if they don’t, who will? Do we not each have a responsibility to take care, to pick up after those who do not?

If I don’t, who will?

The challenge is to pick up with a soft heart. To pick up trash without grumbling beneath my breath about inconsiderate ‘others’ as I complain about having to clean up after them..

To clean up with gratitude for the opportunity to be of service to this world which I call home can be challenging. I want to find the original offender and tell them to ‘do it right’. To quit being slobs. To start taking care of our shared world. Yet, if wherever I travel every step I take is my home, I must find the grace to be at home wherever I am, however the world is around me.

And that includes seeing everyone I meet, everything I encounter as part of my world, a world where I am responsible for the care I take, and give, to keeping my home clean, safe, beautiful and flourishing.

For today, let my mission be to treat all of this limitless world as my home. Let me carry only love in my heart and leave only peace in the wake of every step I take.

Namaste.

Let me only DARE LOVE

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I awaken with tears. I awaken with an ache in my heart, sadness sitting heavy in my bones. I ache. All over. For this world. This earth where violence erupts again and again and for a moment, in the split second of bullets ripping through flesh in some far flung and not so far away corner of our world, I feel helpless, lost, frightened.

And I breathe.

I want to curl up into a ball and ask the world to please stop. To please quit doing these things we do to one another that cause such pain, such horror, such terror.

I want to plead with unseen faces, with bands of men and women gathered together in secret places where their desire to incite terror, inflict pain washes over them in a frenzy to release their pain, their anger, their terror on others. Please stop.

I want to gather my children and tell them to not be afraid, to not lose hope, to not give up on peace, on one another, on their capacity to change this world so desperately in need of changing.

And I breathe.

In moments like these, when violence explodes in a nightclub tearing apart the lives of so many as I lay sleeping, I awaken to my fear that we are too late. We have gone too far down this path of an eye for an eye vengeance multiplying in our streets, our cafes, our markets, our homes. That terror has taken up residence in the hearts and minds of too many of us to be overcome by Love.

Let Love be the way my heart cries out and still, I fear.

And so I breathe.

For today, for this moment right now where I understand so little of the moments others are experiencing that lead them to such dark and violent spaces they only want to lash out, to kill and maim and destroy others. Let me not give up hope. Let me not give into fear. Let me not give up.

Let me only DARE to LOVE.

Let us all who have not succumbed to terror, who have not given in to fear, who will not give into helplessness and the desire to kill one another, let us all DARE to LOVE.

And so I breathe and with each breath I ask for strength. I ask for hope. I ask for courage. To understand. To find compassion. To be forgiving. To be of Peace.

If I can do nothing more in this moment now to change the past, let me change this moment right now through Love. Love is the path to peace. Love is the path to understanding, compassion, kindness, tolerance. It is the way.

Let Love be my way. Let me only DARE LOVE.

I Dare You!

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Like steam exploding from a bag of just popped, fresh out of the microwave, popcorn, there have been moments in my life when the only answer to address the issues burbling to the top of my consciousness has been to enter therapy.

The only way out is through.

Several weeks ago, when I stood in front of a mob and felt the heat of the anger they hurled at me burning my skin and searing my psyche, I had the courage to turn my back and walk away. It was all that I could do.

Walking away took me out of immediate danger. In walking away, I claimed my power to decide what is welcome, and what is not wanted, in my life.

The challenge with the deeply buried feelings and emotions that awoke through that encounter, is that they do not have separate from me feet to walk away. They are part of me. They have a voice calling out to be heard.

To find peace, I must listen and give them a safe space to be heard.

It is the gift I give myself to clear away vestiges of unease, voices from the past, spaces of discord lurking unknown, unseen until they rise up, in my psyche.

When the student is willing, the teacher appears.

My inner yearnings, my left-over from childhood trauma feelings of unease are all teachers.

To ignore them, to push them back down discredits the voice of truth that is saying, “Here is the door to freedom. Open it. Let me speak and be heard so you can walk through into the light of knowing your truth fearlessly in the now.”

Creating a safe and courageous space for others to explore their value, their worth, their sense of wonder at who they are, was why I started an art studio in a homeless shelter years ago. It was an act of giving through which I received the gifts of connection, friendship, meaning.

It was why I created a studio in our home so that I could explore my creative expression and release my inner yearnings to be free in the safe and courageous space of my studio.

It is all part of the journey, part of the process, part of growing, learning and becoming me.

Being in therapy is the same kind of gift of a safe and courageous space, only this time, I am gifting myself the space and place to speak up, explore, and discover my sense of wonder and awe of who I am when I let go of carrying messages from the past that do not fit my life today.

There is a part of me that wants to run way, to retreat, to go back to sleep.

But I will not. Cannot.

Truth is calling me back. Freedom is drawing me out.

We all encounter moments when we have to make a choice. To stand and fight. To retreat and hide. To hold ourselves in loving kindness as we walk confidently into the unknown spaces of our psyche willing to listen, feel, know the truth within.

The psyche is an amazing place. It holds memory. Thoughts. Feelings. Emotions. Ideas. It is permeable. Resilient. Strong. It can bend with one thought, leap in one breath, fall in one word. It holds us together. It can tear us apart. It connects us to today, and gives us courage to look into the past and see into tomorrow. And always, it holds us in place. Always, it keeps thinking, knowing, feeling, being what it is. Our friend. Our foe. Our greatest strength. Our weakest link. Our essence of being who we are, however we are, no matter what we are.

My psyche is calling me to let go so I can fly free.

I am heeding its call.

What about you? Are you willing to transform your thinking to set yourself free? Are you willing to take a journey into the unknown to discover all you know about being you?

I invite you to explore your options, or, as my inner child would say, I Dare You!

Namaste.

 

 

 

 

What questions do you ask yourself?

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Do you ask yourself the important questions?

And no. I don’t mean, “What am I going to wear today?” Or, “What will we have for dinner?”

I mean the one’s that keep you engaged, learning and moving forward in life, with life, as you grow more deeply aware of your possibilities, capabilities and impact.

The questions that make you stop and think about your journey, the direction of your next step, the importance of each moment, the value you intentionally bring to the world.

Yup. Those kind of questions.

Dean James Ryan of the Harvard Graduate School of Education told the graduating class that there are 5 essential questions we must all ask ourselves and each other every day.

  1.  Wait what?

This question gives you time to ask for clarification before jumping to conclusions.

2.  I wonder… why? I wonder … if?

Asking, I wonder… helps us retain that essential ingredient in life — curiosity. And asking the ‘if’ helps us explore what can we do.

3.  Couldn’t we at least…?

This is the question we ask to get unstuck. Come to agreement. Find common ground. Get started.

4.  How can I help?

Asking ‘how can I help’, especially when we ask it not from the position of wanting to swoop in and exercise our ‘saviour complex’ but from a humble place, gets us involved and  engaged in making a difference in a way that honours and recognizes the power of each individual to be the masters of their own lives, to have the capacity to make a difference for themselves. Dean Ryan also adds that how we help matters as much as, if not more, than if we help.

5.  What truly matters?

When we ask, ‘what truly matters?’, ‘here’, or ‘to me’, we force ourselves to get to the heart of issues, the heart of our own beliefs and principles. From that place, we can see more clearly, hear more deeply and know more completely what we need to do from a place of humility, not ego. It helps us understand what needs to be done that will truly make a difference, for everyone.

When you wake up each morning, stop and ask yourself, “What truly matters to me today?” The answer may not change what you wear, it could change how you step into your day.

Namaste.

Click here to view Dean James Ryan’s convocation speech. (Scroll down just a bit — it’s on the left hand banner)  Enjoy and be inspired!

 

Who’s really the problem here?

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Do something different copy

Have you ever noticed how life is constantly offering up opportunities to grow and learn, and how we (at least many of us) constantly resist the opportunities?

Life is doing its job.

Too often, we humans are not.

Instead, we’re busy resisting, ignoring, over-looking the abundance before us in our quest to blame, criticise and condemn others for our lack of happiness, joy, love, peace…

For awhile, without my even realizing it, I had been building up a little pile of resentment around my beloved’s inability to understand me. Now don’t get me wrong, I love C.C. deeply, but sometimes, he just doesn’t get me. Know what I mean? When I say with great enthusiasm, ‘Let’s paint the living room!’ He says, ‘There’s a hockey game on tonight’. When I say, ‘let’s go pick out paint’. He says, ‘After the hockey game is over.’

I mean really. Doesn’t he know painting the living room comes over watching hockey? And seriously? Who cares about a hockey game when we peruse the paint chip aisles salivating over teals and aquas and sunshine yellows?

But here’s the deal.

It is not his job to understand me.

That’s my job. Just as it’s his to understand himself and yours to understand you.

It is no more acceptable for me to ask him to go pick out paint colours when the Stanley Cup finals are on than it is for me to pout and shuffle about, maybe even pull out the vacuum in the middle of the game and ask him to lift his feet so I can vacuum the floor beneath them, especially when Crosby has the puck, just because I don’t like his answer.

And no. But I might have wanted to…

See, here’s the thing. Relationship takes work. And sometimes, I like to tell myself I’m doing all the work while he’s watching hockey.

Quite frankly, that is a lie I am telling myself to build my list of resentments so that I can feel sorry for myself. Just because I can.

The thing about life though is that it is always present, always serving up opportunities to get aware and get growing through whatever is eating at my peace of mind — as long as I am willing to stop blaming others for my unease. As long as I am willing to be 100% accountable for my own experience.

And that is something we humans do not like to do a lot of — be 100% accountable for our own experiences.

Ask yourself, when was the last time you thought something like, “What is their problem?” Or, “If they’d just go ‘A’ to ‘B’ the way I want then everything would be just fine.” Or, “Why do they have to be so …? (fill in the blank)”

C’mon. Be honest with yourself.

Now, change the question. When did you last ask, “What is my problem here?” or, “What if I accept their A to B as not ‘wrong’ but simply different?” or, “What’s in it for me to stay so rigid about …… (fill in the blank). What can I do differently here?”

See, life gives us ample opportunity to grow and learn, to understand ourselves better. Life is filled with abundance. Often, we look at it through eyes focused on the other person’s actions, words, thoughts, while we resist looking at our own. And in our resistance to looking deep within ourselves and being 100% accountable for our own journey, we forget, we have the power to know ourselves deeply and in that knowing, change our lives.

We’d much rather someone else changed theirs.

And so, we look at them and wonder why they don’t understand us, when really, the lack of understanding of us is ours.

Life gave me a beautiful opportunity to look inside myself to find the root of my unease. It was a beautiful gift.Especially because, I like what I found in me!

The truth may surprise you

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How often do you jump to conclusions about another person’s motivation or reason for doing something especially when what they are doing is causing you angst?

If you’re human, the answer is possibly, a lot.

The brilliant Ian Munro of Leading Essentially shares  4  Thoughts For Navigating The Every Day Path, on his blog this week. As Ian writes,

How often do we find ourselves rising up the “Ladder of Inference” (theory first put forward by organizational psychologist Chris Argyris), creating new truths for ourselves that clutter our view of our world and make it difficult to answer the question “what’s really happening right now?”  (you can see the diagram for the Ladder of Inference Ian mentions by clicking here.)

We are New Truth Makers, continually spinning tales of ‘what’s really happening’ outside our sphere of influence to deflect from what’s really happening within us when we become hyper engaged in someone else’s story.

Recently I had a perfect example of my ability to be a new truth maker. A simple mistake, omission, moment of forgetfulness by another lead me down a path to telling myself the story of how they were being deceitful.

Fact is, what I knew to be true is they had not done something that needed doing. Whether it was forgotten, an oversight, or an intentional omission made little difference to what needed to happen — and that was for them to address the situation so that it would be resolved.

Challenge is, in my story-making-up-of-their-motivation, I fell into my own trap. I believed less of them and in that place, felt less of myself because my response, based on my less-than thinking, did not keep me in the moment, did not leave me operating from my higher self, but rather, thinking from my baser instincts.

And that does not serve me well.

Life will always offer up opportunities to rise above or sink below our instinctual habits. For example, I know that I don’t trust people’s motivations easily. It is learned behaviour that I am conscious of, and when acting from a place of esteem, balance, openness and authenticity, does not pull me down to my baser instincts. However, because I have an inherent belief that people are ‘out to get me’, I can fall into the trap of believing they are not acting from a place of wanting to contribute their best in moments of discord. When I let go of my desire to stand in the light and be at peace with the world around me, it is relatively easy for me to leap to the conclusion that what motivates others to do what they do, is proof I should never have trusted in the first place.

From that place, it’s just a short hop, skip and a jump to seeing what someone else is doing as being nefarious, underhanded, deceitful…

Staying conscious of my innate distrust of other’s motivations keeps me grounded on my path, without my capacity to create new truths that prove my child-centric belief, ‘I can’t trust anyone’, interfering with my ability to continually check in with ‘what’s really happening right now’.

Making ‘new truths’ is convenient. It means I don’t actually have to see inside myself to what’s really happening now within me. It means I don’t have to be 100% accountable for my responses, my actions, my own story. It puts me in that treacherous place of negative fortune-telling where I see ‘what’s really going on here’ as the one and only truth – and that’s not a truth based on fact. It’s based on the story I’ve created to keep me from feeling at risk.

We all encounter moments where it is convenient/habitual to make up stories about why someone else is doing what they’re doing that is causing angst or drama or unease in our worlds.

Fact is, we can never be 100% all-knowing of what motivates another.

We can be 100% all-knowing of what motives us when we stop our rapid ascent of the Ladder of Inference, take a breath and go back to the basics of asking, ‘what’s really going on here, right now, inside of me’.

When you do that, when you take the time to stop and ask yourself, ‘What’s this really about for me?’ ‘What do I really want right now’ ‘Is my belief about the other 100% true?’ ‘Is my story about what they’re doing 100% fact?’,  or, ‘Is my story about the other interfering with my ability to be… happy, content, peaceful, accomplished…?’, when you ask yourself the tough questions and lovingly embrace the answers that appear, the truth may surprise you.

 

Great artistry abides in everyone.

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Great artistry copy

If I had met them walking down the street, I might have been inclined to judge them by their look. To think the two young men walking towards me were out to find trouble, or at least, aimlessly wandering without direction.

In every human, judgements reside.

Not knowing their artistry, not knowing their story, I might have wondered about how we could be of the same world and inhabit the same space when we are such world’s apart in how we appear to the world. I might have passed them with a fleeting thought about what caused them to look so fierce. To dress so grunge. To think being hipsterish was cool.

On their part, I might think that if we passed each other walking down the street, they would not even notice me. I would imagine they were so caught up in the stage of their lives, they would not notice an older woman walking down the street, or even wonder if we had anything in common.

And then I watched the video of two young ‘hipster’ men dancing.

What struck me most, what superseded any judgements I might, or might not have had about their ‘look’, was the passion of their dance and the incredible discipline, training and commitment to their art it must have taken for them to be able to dance together like that. What talent and creativity. I was in awe.

When I posted the video on my FB page, a friend commented on the power of their dance. When I replied with my commentary of how judgements of ‘the look’ could have interfered with my seeing the beauty of their art, she replied, “Great artistry abides in every human costume.”

Yes!

Within each of us great artistry abides. No matter how we look, what we wear, how deep our pockets, how tight our pants or how long our pasts. Great artistry abides within each of us.

It is what struck me every day when I worked at a homeless shelter and started an art program. The individuals who came to the studio didn’t have deep pockets, they didn’t have a wealth of clothing options or choices on how to share their creative gifts, or how to express themselves through every medium. We only had so many supplies in the studio, so many canvases, so much paint for people to explore and use.

It didn’t matter.

Because when they walked into the studio, they came with the fierce desire to create. They came with their deep passion for expressing themselves through their art.

While homelessness may have ripped away all of their possessions, undermined their self-confidence and sense of place, they all shared a fierce commitment to holding onto ‘the thing’ that no one and nothing could take from them. Their creative essence.

Life can be tough. It can tear us down. Pummel our dreams and shake up our sense of purpose. It can hold us in arms of sadness, grip us in the death maws of addiction, weigh us down with the heaviness of sorrow, loss, regret, and trauma.

But it cannot take away the greatness of our individual artistry.

That abides within us.

No matter how deeply it gets buried beneath the clothes we wear, the heaviness of our backpacks, the depths of our traumas, our greatness cannot be diminished.

And when we set ourselves free to express ourselves from that place where all that matters is being true to ourselves and our self-expression, we create a world where differences diminish, judgements disperse. In that place all we are left with is the raw, beautiful and shining gift of our greatness.

I am so grateful these two young men had the fierce confidence, passion, discipline to not leave their artistry buried within them. I am so grateful they chose instead to dance with abandon for all the world to celebrate.

Let us all dance with abandon today so that in our dance, the world can celebrate the great artistry that abides within each of us.

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Thank you Slim Russell for inspiring this post.

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Listen with the ears of your heart.

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St. Benedict, a 5th Century monk who wrote, The Rule of St. Benedict to guide his fellow monks in monastic living, entreated humankind to ‘listen with the ears of your heart’. To let go of the mind’s desire to know the meaning of the words through thought and sink deeply into what comes when we soften our hearts and listen with all its desire to know the soul.

Yesterday, my eldest daughter shared her sadness over the responses she had read in social media feeds to the verdict of a case involving a young man, who in the darkness of a psychotic break, went to a house party and killed five fellow-university students, all of whom were celebrating the end of a year of studies.

It is a tragedy beyond the scope of our thinking minds capacity to understand how this could have happened, or why.

We must listen with the ears of our hearts.

To the sorrow of the families who have lost their beloved children.

To the family of the young man who committed this act of violence.

To the young man who is now under psychiatric supervision and must live with the consciousness of his act for the rest of his life.

We must listen with the ears of our hearts. Those ears do not decry the failure of justice, ignoring the power of the mind to break down and drag a young man into the darkness where he hears only its roar driving him to strike out against the world around him. In the devastation left behind, those ears seek to understand, to know this act of violence was not of conscious mind. They seek to find ways to be present for those who are filled with the pain and loss of what happened so that they can help ease their burden.

Those ears do not seek vengeance. They do not judge. They do not condemn. They seek only to understand the soul’s calling out for humanity to stop the violence. Stop the killing. Stop the wars and drugs and rapes and horrors we commit against each other every day and to be present to one another. To love one another. To cherish one another. To be with one another in peace.

My mind cannot begin to imagine the pain and sorrow and anger and grief of those involved.

What my mind can imagine is what I need to do to be present in our world so that my presence creates a place where healing and peace can take hold.

Adding my anger, condemnation, judgement does not ease their burden. It does not pave the way to peace.

Adding my compassion, my heartfelt, soul-driven desire to be of service, to be present from a deeply soul-driven place of listening with the ears of my heart calls for me to soften my heart and let go of judgement. It calls for me to lower my voice filled with condemnation and be present to the pain and suffering. To stand where I am in peace and know it is what I can do in this moment.

 

As a friend said over tea on Sunday, she does not want to add more violent discourse to society’s already violent discourse about so many things — politics, our leaders, the economy, what is happening in our world. She only wants to add peace. Compassion. Caring. Love.

And if she cannot add those, then she will stay silent. She will not join in the discourse.

Sometimes, it is all we can do, what we must do to listen with the ears of our hearts.

Stay silent and hold peace in our minds.

In that way, peace has a chance to take hold.

The 4 secrets of self-awareness

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What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself. </>

~ Abraham Maslow ~

When we were small and learning about life, the lessons we learned were a reflection of the world around us. They formed the stories we told about our world, and how to operate in it to be safe. Sometimes, we might have sensed that a friend’s house wasn’t the same as ours. People didn’t yell in their house or get lost in a bottle when they came home from work or lay curled up in a ball crying all the time. But mostly, we accepted our family was the way it was and created a story to help us fit into the story safely.

As children, we didn’t think about life in terms of ‘something’s wrong with this picture’. We saw it through the child’s lens where every experience becomes the foundation for the next experience. When the adults around us yelled, we either grew quiet fearing what would happen if we didn’t, or fought back fearing what would happen if we stayed silent. When things happened that didn’t make sense, we either accepted them as our ‘new normal’ or, told ourselves we’ll never be normal. Not knowing the difference between what makes sense and what was nonsense, we conformed and adapted. No matter how fragile the branches of our family tree we held on for dear life, because it was the only place we knew where we belonged, no matter how fiercely the wind shook it.

Shaky foundations create unstable paths.

As adults, because the way things were is what created our adaptive behaviours and the stories we told ourselves to make sense of our world, we continue to operate from the unstable paths we created to make it through to today.

And then, life throws us a curve ball. One day, we encounter a situation we have absolutely no framework for, or we lose someone we love, or our heart breaks over yet another love gone wrong, or we just feel weary of always being the victim. Suddenly, the weight of everything we’ve learned that is stuffed down into the backpacks we’ve carried with us through life, pushes us to the ground. How will we ever get up again?

And that is when we have a choice. To crumble, stumble and keep struggling on, carrying the backpack stuffed with even more regrets and pains, telling ourselves this rut of ‘normal’ where being the victim, the loser, the scapegoat, the fall guy is our lot. Or, choose to wake up and start to unpack the past, jettisoning the stories we created as children that no longer work for us now so that we can learn a more conscious and life-giving way of being present in the world.

And that’s where self-awareness is important.

Self-awareness is an always choice.

Self-awareness is not a place. It is not a one-time event. It is a life-journey, a way of being and staying present always to what is happening in your life. It’s about not holding onto regret, pain and trauma but stepping joyfully into the lightness of being human, just the way you are, in this moment right now.

Self-awareness is owning your own story.

Self-awareness is not a self-indulgent retelling of the litany of sins committed against you, flailing your psyche with the long list of wrongs you’ve done, or were done to you.

It’s not about staying the victim. It’s about rising up, a victor in your own story.

Self-awareness is being courageous.

Self-awareness means fearlessly and lovingly hearing the lies you tell yourself about yourself. It means letting go of the list of wrongs and falling in love with yourself in this moment right now. It’s about being willing to learn and see the truth is not; you are awful, stupid, worthless, unloveable. The truth is; you are perfectly human in all your human imperfections. And aren’t you fascinating?

Self-awareness means looking in the mirror and being willing to love the person looking back, without fearing she or he will ever be enough. It’s about accepting, no matter how scary the thought, that you are enough, just the way you are, even in those moments when fear would have you doubt your own self-worth.

Self-awareness is the freedom to be you.

Self-awareness means taking up the challenge of charting a new path to finding value in all things in your life today because you are willing to acknowledge the old path was leading you to exactly the same place you were living in the past — and that was going nowhere but to where you  felt defeated, lost, confused, alone.

Does self-awareness matter?

Always in all ways. Self-awareness is the path we walk to living the life of our dreams, having the love we’ve always yearned for, the relationships we’ve always wanted, the joy we’ve always craved, the peace we’ve always chased.

Self-awareness is the way to freedom.