What did I learn today? Lessons on the Journey to Unconditional Self Love

  Personal growth is not about removing all internal and external difficulties, it is about improving the way you handle them so that they no longer crush you when they appear. Yung Pueblo  Growing up, I somehow got into my head that if I was a good person, prayed and did right, I will experience zero difficulties. I believed that only bad people had bad experiences. Well how off base was I! When life happened to me I thought the sky was falling in, wasn't I a "good person" was I not doing the right things and following the formula? Then whatever the hell is going on?  What I learnt is, life is fleeting, and so are all the events associated with life. There will always be positive and negative times, experiences come to support in building our character, patience and faith. The experiences we receive in life push us to emotional maturity. Life will keep repeating the lessons until we get it. It's nothing personal..  When we are emotionally mature we are able to ...

" I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision." Maya Angelou The difference between moving towards a challenge and not has always been for me making a firm decision. The moment I make a firm decision, it  seems as if my mind, body and soul all come together to make it happen. I find the time, I find the courage, I find the discipline and commitment to persevere through the challenge and through the challenging times. The moment I remain in uncertainty and unwillingness, there is no way that I move forward with clarity.  I have learnt to wait, to not force myself, if I am not willing to make a firm decision there is no way that the goal will be achieved. There is no alignment when our thought, words and deeds are different.  When we say we want to do or want something, we believe that it is possible despite the challenges and then we take action to make it happen. The Universe works well when we are in alignment - whe...

  Healing is about feeling, not about thinking Yung Pueblo One of the best, yet toughest lessons for me has been to "feel all of your feelings". It sounded so simple at the time - simple ain't always easy. The formula for healing always start with feeling. For us to move past where we are we must ask ourselves. What Am I feeling in the moment? And have the appropriate language and courage to respond. "Okay" is not a feeling, it is not an emotion. it is a mental or emotional bypass. In other words, I don't want to/need to think about this or make myself vulnerable to it, so I will pass right by it with saying I am "ok" Normal is not a feeling. Normal is similar to okay, an opportunity to side step. Fine - our usual standard. We always seem to be fine. The quicker we start pretending to be unbothered, the quicker we start healing. I had a habit of hiding my feelings, I am not entirely certain when that began, but I am sure about when it ended. I wan...

When you keep that commitment to yourself, you’re saying: I believe in possibility. I believe in my future. I believe in myself. Joe Dispenza  Keeping commitments to self. Do you have any? Do you keep them? Do you think that commitments to yourself are important?  What I have learnt is keeping commitments to myself helps in building trust, both to myself and in the process. Keeping commitments to myself supports accountability. Keeping commitments to myself builds self confidence and self love Why? I demonstrate to myself that I am important...to me. I demonstrate to myself and to the Universe that I am worth it. It takes practice. The world we live in will tell you that your job and its deadlines are more important than keeping your commitments to self. Your responsibilities will scream at you, put me first, you can wait. It becomes easier and easier for us to break the commitments to ourselves leaving us feeling guilty and many times tired.  It takes discipline and cou...

Believing we create our own reality means we acknowledge that nothing can change in our lives until we change. Being accountable means being willing to examine what we need to change about ourselves to draw closer to the new future – the new personal reality – we envision. And then, once we’ve made a commitment to change, accountability means we honor that commitment. Joe Dispenza  Our belief of our own worth is essential as we navigate through this journey called life. How worthy do we feel? our sense and feeling of our worthiness informs many of our choices. As we move through life, we encounter situations such as fear, rejection, insecurities and broken dreams which play on how we feel about ourselves. Many of these are external events. It is crucial that we know and remember that worthiness is innate and an inside job. What is important is how we learn and respond to the events. An inside job - it starts with you, it starts inside you, knowing, believing, doing the work. What ...

  Make sure them expectations you living up to belong to you & no one else. Ebony Davis On Thursday, I drove just over two and a half hours to speak at a school event. The entire day and the experience turned out to be quite beautiful. Lessons were learnt and letting go was enhanced. I have been focusing on the art of letting go during the month of May. I define letting go as staying in consciousness. Stating centered, grounded and peaceful when faced with difficult situations or when my ego wants to prove that I am enough. Letting go is taking a pause before reacting out of anger, fear or ego. Letting go is taking responsibility for my feelings. The school asked me to speak to just over 100 young ladies between the ages oof 13 and 14 - hearing just over 100 ladies scared me. Driving for just over two and a half ours, the thought of doing that, scared me. My mind started talking to me (incessantly) "this more that I have ever spoken to before" My mind also reminded me th...

  Insecurity will manifest itself as control, which blocks the flow of real love Yung Pueblo Over the past few weeks, life has been reflecting back to me my insecurities. Life is beautiful like that, it brings to your attention what you need to focus on. Sometimes, life will take -what we would consider - drastic moves to get our attention. Sometimes, getting our attention can be uncomfortable at best. I have now learnt these attempts at getting my attention as a demonstration of how much life loves each and every one of us. All that to say that the reflections to me lately has been manifesting itself as control, blocking flow. I had to sit with myself and ask: what am I insecure about? what does it even mean? Why am I even feeling this way? The definition of insecure is uncertain or anxious about oneself, not confident in self. Note that "oneself" and "self" is an important part of the definition. Its all about you. How you feel about yourself, rather than what ...

  Why is it so hard to go against the norm? There are so many fears that can come along with charting your own path - you risk ridicule, isolation, and potential loneliness. Our culture often does not make it easy to embrace who we truly are. It usually seems easier to go with the status quo with less risk of strange looks, harsh words, or worse. Rachel Astor As we journey towards stillness, there will be moments where we doubt that being still is an effective strategy or solution, we may even believe that stillness is a waste of time. The over riding culture promotes that there is no time to be still, that stillness takes away from the "things we have to do" What I have learnt on the Journey to Stillness is, when changes are occurring in your life, especially the life altering ones, stillness is one of the techniques that can provide us with a level of  inner guidance like no other. The opportunity to pause, reflect, stop and breathe becomes critical.  Stillness put...

  Real change can only happen when you take steps to change your behavior patterns.   Stacey Herrera Self awareness involves you paying attention to the patterns in your life, your habits, what you do on auto pilot. I have been speaking quite a bit lately about patterns and habits. Having realized that many of my actions stem from habits and patterns was a moment of self realization, I can tell you it has changed my view on so many things. Self awareness allows us to view, pause and make courageous choices. When we live from a space of habit, we act efficiently sometimes however not in our best interests. We act efficiently because the brain can work, the brain can follow. Once we become self aware, we can make different choices, from the different choice comes the change. Change is challenging, Not impossible. There must be a firm decision to change, a conscious choice to yourself that you want something different. This is the start of the real change. Peace Akosua'...

  “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.” —Viktor Frankl My default to many a situation, a question, an uncomfortable  moment, a problem is to immediately, let me mention it again, immediately, find a solution. I want to fix it. I want to fix it NO W. This "fix it now and find a solution" behavior even extends to my  social media interactions, email and texts. Texts and messages come in and I want to answer them right away, even sometimes while driving- which we all know is not just dangerous, it makes no good sense! Having thought about it, my habitual responses have come from being rewarded for being responsive, being one to find solutions quickly. I started pegging my worth and value on how quickly I could solve, fix, respond because the accolades and praises kept coming in. Confessions on the Journey - there have been times when the fix, the solution, the ans...

  We often settle for what's familiar, even if it's not good for us, because it requires less effort than starting something new. And when it comes to relationships, we often stay in toxic, harmful ones far longer than we should because they're comfortable and easy.  Remember comfortable and easy does not equal enjoyment and pleasure. Stacy Herrera Building any type of relationship, even a relationship with yourself  takes time, effort, courage, commitment and very importantly a pure intention of what you desire. This process becomes more difficult when we don't know how, we lack self belief or we live in a pattern or habit. Think about it for a second, you live a particular type of life, its become a routine, a habit to do the same things over and over, its comfortable, there is not much thinking involved. There is no rocking of the boat. Why change that? There will be moments in that life where there will be some happiness. Many of us are resigned to live that way. St...

  Pausing means being ok that you are uncertain of the  outcome, letting go of control or surrendering to the present moment. Each takes a tremendous act of courage - Rachel Omeera  Pausing - taking a minute before you move, stopping for a short time, stopping during a process. For a very long time I believed that pausing was a sign of weakness, of laziness, of dropping the ball. Why pause when you can finish something now, why pause? push through to get a definite answer, a guaranteed outcome, a level of control and certainty.  What I have learnt over time is that there is power in the pause. The power comes from the ability to trust in yourself, trust in the process and trust the Universe. Pausing is a sign of spiritual maturity. When we are intentional with pausing, we are able to get to a place of peace. When life puts us on pause, we have to navigate through guilt, shame, illness, breakdown and unexpected changes.  Pausing allows us to tune in to our bodie...

  i am finding beautiful beginnings in unexpected endings. Billy Chapata Greetings The Journey continues... What is your definition or perception of stillness? Is your definition one where you freeze, you pause, you rest, you sleep, you stop moving? Do you even have an idea or a definition of what stillness is? We live in times where being busy is tied to our worth, we are seen as productive, ambitious individuals when we are busy, we are seen as progressive when we are always on the go with something to do. We are rewarded for movement and busyness. When there is always something to do, our minds are occupied with that, there is a tendency to fill our time with things to do. This helps in avoiding that quiet time we need with ourselves, to reflect, accept, change and most importantly love up on ourselves. Busyness and always being occupied becomes an escape. Life has a way of making you become still when we ignore the signs. When we tie our self worth and our self value to being b...