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When I first started to wake up, or open my eyes to realize there was something bigger than myself and the life I was living, I took various roads to explore that.
One of those paths was the professional development route, learning the power of affirmations and the law of attraction. I learned how to manifest, and how to structure my daily routines in a way that would set me up for success.
This path led to a natural segue into spirituality, which felt more aligned once I was given the foundations of personal development. As I moved out of all these pre-paved timelines and chose a life of sovereignty, I had to reevaluate all of the things I had learned WHILE I was growing.
I think a lot of the time when we have chosen a path of growth, we only compare ourselves from where we are to the person we were before we woke up – and we forget that we need to also challenge the versions in between that.
You can be held back by the more healed versions of yourself.
What I mean by that is; We need to let go of good things, to make room for great things.
Free will is a bitch.
One of those conditionings is the concept of pushing ourselves. In other words, the human need for us to “challenge” ourselves, and constantly push the boundaries.
Yes, this conditioning got you out of the stagnant pool of energy you were in before working on yourself, but this is because it is actually a survival mechanism, not a lifestyle.
I see a lot of people in the healing community who hold on tight to this one, and it’s keeping them from expanding past their own perception of sovereignty.
I am not telling you to lose all desire to be better, in fact, quite the opposite – I am asking you to do that from your heart, instead of your ego.
There is a very large vibrational difference between pushing yourself and choosing yourself.
We think pushing ourselves is choosing ourselves, but it’s really resisting your natural flow. Let me give an example:
When I was in my twenties I decided that I was going to challenge myself to eat no meat for a year. For me, it had nothing to do with health, it had nothing to do with the animals, and it was purely on the basis that I wanted to push the boundaries within myself and see how much I could withstand and overcome.
I actually told myself, “If I can do this, I can do anything.”
Sound familiar?
So in essence, I was saying to myself, “How long can I make myself do something I don’t want to do?”
This is what a challenge is – forcing ourselves to do things we do.not.want.to.do.
That’s a bit silly, isn’t it?
So for a year, I was disciplined in this challenge, yet every day I dreamt of hot dogs and steaks and drooled over my friend’s meals when they ordered meat at lunch. I looked for ways to curb my cravings, like with vegan substitutes, and overindulged in other things to satisfy me.
When I neared my one-year mark, I counted down the days, and almost down to the hour of completion, I ate a ton of meat.
The happiest I was in that entire last year was when I finally ate a plate of meat. However, after doing so, it took my body an entire month to adjust to the extreme shift in hormone levels after depriving myself for so long, and then over-indulging in one sitting.
I lost ten pounds from the stomachaches, I got severe acne from the hormone imbalance, and to be honest, I realized I got nothing out of the challenge.
The only thing I learned was that I could do it. I was really good at forcing myself to do something I didn’t like.
It didn’t bring me joy, it didn’t make me a better person. All it did, because I do believe everything serves a purpose, is showing me how much I get in my own way.
This is why I say pushing yourself is a function of the ego.
If I was to have chosen myself, I would have honored what my body needed – I would have decided to eat meat. I would instead, nurture the part of me that felt the need to challenge myself and come to terms with my fears regarding failure, and my fears regarding not accomplishing something.
Because these are conditionings that the ego tries to sustain and keep alive, so the ego can stay in the driver’s seat.
The goal is not to kill the ego, again another conditioning picked up by many in the healing space. It is to create a BALANCE of head and heart, where the relationship changes to the heart in the driver’s seat and the ego takes the backseat – your heart decides when it chimes in.
As long as you are living in a human body, the ego will always be present, learn to create a relationship with it, and come to terms with its presence, instead of pushing it out of the car.
So I am going to challenge you to switch out words, in order to shift the vibration from head to heart.
First, “I choose myself,” instead of “I challenge/push myself.”
The next, which goes hand in hand with the phrases above, is the misconception surrounding motivation.
Motivation, which by definition is “the reason or reasons one has for acting or behaving in a particular way,” is a logical reason to do something. Essentially, you are choosing something directly based on your ego.
Inspiration carries the vibration of the heart. And it is the only thing that will actually initiate true change – motivation does not have this capacity.
If you continue to function in a way where you rely on motivation instead of inspiration, you will stay on a hamster wheel of unfulfillment.
At last, we come to the ever-so-popular word, discipline. What’s funny about this is, we have the courage to stop others from disciplining us but don’t see how much we discipline ourselves.
In the healing space, and most notably the professional development space, this is a buzzword. It’s all about self-discipline, keeping your ass in check.
Do you know what the actual definition of discipline is?
“The practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience.”
We quite literally, are obsessed with punishing ourselves. This, again, is conditioning.
Instead of disciplining yourself, transition to a perception of discernment.
Its definition is, “the ability to judge well.”
Can you feel the vibrational difference here?
Instead of forcing yourself into societal boxes, ask yourself what’s right for you, ask yourself if this box is worthy of your presence.
DISCERNING what is right for you is more powerful than any act of discipline, because it is the decision from the heart, and it is decided in full faith, which means, YOU are creating what your world looks like, not forcing yourself into another.
This will move you from a state of disempowerment to a state of empowerment.
If you resonate with these word transitions, try the following mantra with me:
I will always choose myself, even if it means dialing back instead of adding on.
I will seek inspiration because the path to things I truly align with is not one of suffering.
I will practice the art of discernment because I am ready to create my own path instead of settling for the ones laid before me.
