Your inner wisdom is what directs you where you most want to go.

Building awareness around what goes on inside our mind, body and soul, is all about making the unknown known. We shed light on the mysterious workings of our subconscious, bringing our beliefs, values, experiences, fears, and memories into our consciousness. Without awareness, most of what is stored in the subconscious mind is not available to our conscious mind, but still influences everything from the choices we make, to the actions we do or don’t take to the thoughts we think. If our body/mind/spirit complex is a car, our subconscious mind is the driver of our car. The process of learning to connect and listen to our inner wisdom is an invaluable tool on the journey towards greater health, meaning, depth, spirituality and happiness. It is the road map to our best lives

Sometimes The Easiest Way Is The Hard Way

There are two types of awareness that connect us to our inner wisdom. The first is the natural by-product of learning to communicate with this wisdom effectively, which is what this blog is all about. Once we have accomplished this, we feel greater ease and flow in our lives and a deeper knowing that comes from clarity and understanding who we are.

The second type of awareness does not come softly or gracefully into our lives. It shows up subtly at first and then becomes louder and louder the further we stray from who we are. This type of awareness can hit us like a ton of bricks, knocking us off our center and forcing us to dismantle the foundation of our knowing. Maybe it’s losing a job, a loved one dying, or the onset of physical pain or disease.

Whatever the messenger is, it’s the Universe’s way of making the unknown known, of helping us see the external life we’ve created is in some way out of alignment with the life that we were invited here to live. The following is the 4 ways that I have found to be most effective for cultivating the awareness that invites your inner wisdom to help guide you to what you want with greater ease and flow.

1. Identify those areas of your life where you are trying to control the world around you.

The essential question we must ask ourselves is what are the people, places, and things that we’d feel tremendous loss around if they were taken from us tomorrow?

This isn’t grief, but a feeling that a significant portion of our identity has been lost without this person, place or thing. These are our attachments—the objects in our lives that we mistakenly believe are the cause of our happiness. It is essential that we practice complete and brutal honesty here because the rational mind will do everything in its power to keep the truth from us. It believes we need this attachment in order to be happy and fears the empowerment we will gain from identifying and loosening its grip over us. Identifying our attachments does not mean we walk away from them, it means that we shift our reality and beliefs around that object so that we no longer see it as the source of our happiness.

Remember, love and attachment are not the same thing. In fact, empowering ourselves against our attachments actually increases our capacity to give and receive unconditional love.

When I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes 11 years ago, it took me 4 years to become aware that it was leading me toward something greater. I had developed an addiction to sweet foods because it numbed the pain I felt at the lack of sweetness in my outer world. I tried to control every aspect of my external world through diet and exercise in a heroic effort to control my body—to force it back to health. It took me 4 years to develop the awareness that this diagnosis was an invitation to bring the sweetness back into my life, that I deserved to experience joy in my life, that I was worthy of making choices that fully aligned with my soul. It took a diagnosis and many years of struggle for the fog to lift and the awareness to become known.

2. Make a list of everything you are currently complaining about.

Another place where awareness is knocking at our door is in the things we complain about. Things like not having enough money, hating our jobs, experiencing pain in the body, having no time for ourselves—these are all great examples. The problem is not the things we are complaining about, but that we feel powerless to change them. We can’t see clearly because our only options feel scary, risky, or out of character, which creates the illusion we don’t have a choice. But we do have a choice, we just need the courage to stretch beyond our comfort zone.

Make a list of everything in your life that does not align with where you would like to be, what you want to have, what you want to do or who you are. Identify the story you are telling yourself about why you can’t invite the change in that would bring you more peace and happiness.

As a child I was a uniquely clean and organized kid. I remember organizing, even alphabetizing my books and vacuuming the rug with the suction hose attachment because I liked the clean lines it created on the floor (ugh - that one hurts to admit). I struggled through a 17 year marriage with a man with hoarding tendencies never feeling that I could relax in my home because of the disarray. I spent a lot of years feeling resentful and blaming my husband for not being able to keep the house the way I wanted it until I realized that my distress had nothing to do with the house or even him. My childhood organizational tendencies developed as a way of controlling my environment to help me quiet the chaos I felt inside my body. Being able to access my awareness allowed me to see clearly what the inner chaos was really about and take steps to remedy it.

3. Be willing to surrender what you think you know about yourself.

It is easy for us to self-identify with certain aspects of our personality. We might consider ourselves the quiet one, the funny one, the wild one, the clean one, the always on time one, the teacher’s pet. Most of these character traits were programmed when we were young—the thing we were praised for often became a way for us to seek approval from others. However, as an adult, if we are still identifying with this and it doesn’t match how we want to show up in the world, it will constantly pull us out of alignment with ourselves.

Who do you admire in life? It can be a celebrity, a public figure, a neighbor, friend, co-worker—anyone we linger over on social media or discreetly watch them from across the room. This is not a strange stalker type of admiration, but a genuine fondness where we wish we could be like them in some way. I believe the people we admire in life are just our inner wisdom showing us what is possible for ourselves. Showing us who we really are underneath all our fear and attachments.

My family did not have a lot of money when I was growing up. I found myself always admiring the girls with the stylish clothes and hair, yet never believing I had what it took to match their sophistication. I found myself excusing my appearance because “I am just a tomboy” or even judging the stylish girls for their eccentricity. I went to a network marketing professional event a few years ago and found myself triggered all over again by the “style” of people who were there who had attained much more financial success than I. Part of my healing has been shifting the belief that I have to be stylish to be successful AND that I have to be successful to be stylish. It is a lose - lose battle in my subconscious that ensures I will have neither unless I reframe how I see myself.

4. Be willing to consider an alternate reality to the one you have subscribed to.

Many of us unknowingly subscribe to limiting beliefs. These beliefs once served us, kept us safe, and provided a structure for us to build our lives around. However, inevitably, a life built on a faulty structure must come down and be rebuilt. Return to the list you made earlier about the things in life you are complaining about. Your limiting beliefs will show up as the reasons behind why you feel powerless to do anything about them. They are what is keeping you from considering the options that would set you free.

I grew up with a mother who was invariably present for my brother and I. Every scrape, every athletic event, field trip, birthday—my mother was there. I can’t think of a single working mother in my family tree or one that even occasionally put her own needs above that of her children. I learned very quickly that to be a good mother, I must be present, without question and that I must put the needs of my children above my own needs. There are many women who find great purpose and fulfillment in raising their children. I am not one of those mothers. I find great purpose and fulfillment in helping others heal. Since becoming a mother, there has been a voice inside me that constantly tells me I’m not good enough, that I work too much and that I should spend more time with my children. If I allow that voice to be my reality, I will never find inner peace or explore my full potential, but if I allow myself to consider an alternate reality, peace becomes possible. What if I can be a good mother and follow my passion? What if showing up for my children two hours a day with my entire heart and soul is far better than being partially present or distracted with them for an entire day (or worse if I gripe at them and blame them because I am not doing what I feel called to do)? This voice creates space and acceptance and room for me to breathe.

The Point of No Return

The thing I love most about awareness is that once we become aware, we cannot go back to our previous existence. We cannot un-know what we now know. The very process of making the unknown known, changes us. It invites us to let go of the old and welcome the new. There is a kind of magic that happens when we discover who we are underneath all the programming and layers of trauma. When we allow our lives to be guided by our own internal compass, we invite in a subtle kind of magic that permeates out to the rest of the world—the kind of magic that makes others watch you and wonder what you’ve got that they don’t. The kind of magic that invites everyone you meet to look within themselves too, the kind of magic that can heal the world.