You know that little voice inside you that tells you something doesn’t feel quite right? Or that feeling you get that there’s more going on than appears on the surface? Those feelings aren’t just empty feelings; they come from a beautiful thing called your intuition that is always looking out for you.
It meets you where you are, in the very situations that mean so much to you – especially in love and the relationships with the people in your life who mean so much to you. It’s why you’re exactly right when you sense that something’s changed and that a conversation is needed to clarify what’s really going on beneath the surface.
It’s why you feel comfortable with sharing your heart and soul with some people, but close up and keep things close to your chest with others. Time will almost always tell you the same thing, but when you look back and remember the “vibes” you picked up on or the feeling you felt when you were around a certain person, chances are you recognized this for yourself right away.
You knew. They didn’t have to say much. In fact, often it’s what someone doesn’t say that says it all.
But if this is as simple as it seems, why don’t we trust our intuition more often, instead of second guessing ourselves like we so often do?
We doubt ourselves because others give us reason to.
So many of us are told from such a young age that we don’t know what we’re talking about, that we can’t trust ourselves because someone else always knows better than we do. We’re left questioning ourselves for good reason; because that’s all we’ve ever been taught to do!
When we try something new, we hear “Don’t reach too high, you might fail.” But what if we’re left always settling for what’s safe for someone else because we never took that chance on our own dreams that, in reality, were never too high for us at all?
When we wanted to choose specifically who we would spend our time with, we were told that it’s not right to exclude others and we need to include everyone. But what if those others were harmful to us, and we knew it? What if they brought us down, kept us from following our own dreams simply because they’ve never know what it feels to be free? Their path is not our own, nor is it ever meant to be. Our own path is never found by deferring to someone else’s voice instead of listening to our own.
In fact, it’s just the opposite that’s true.
Someone else can never know what you need to know, simply because they’re not you! They may think they know what’s best for you; they may want to share with you what they think you should do. But what they’re talking about is what’s best for them. It’s their path, their journey, their life.
You have your own path, your own journey and your own life. Depending on how much we look up to someone else, we can take on what they say and what they tell us about ourselves without questioning how it resonates with our own hearts and souls. But they aren’t you! They don’t know you deep down like the way you do. They aren’t connected to your world, to your universe, to the path that’s truly right for you.
We may think it’s so much easier to listen to what someone else tells us to do. But the truth is they don’t know better; you do.
It may take some practice, this learning to trust ourselves and hear our own inner voice. In the beginning we may be tempted to dismiss our own soft voices with the ones from our well-meaning family and friends and mentors that come through so much stronger than our own.
It’s okay to hear what they’re saying, but you decide if they’re really worth listening to. You decide if what they are saying honors you, the real you, and where you’re at in your life right now in this place and time on your journey.
Ask yourself what resonates with you. Do what brings you the greatest amount of peace and calm and leaves you with the least amount of regrets. You’re not here to live by anyone else’s set of rules or blindly follow a path that belongs to someone else.
Test it, try it, experiment. In time you’ll see just how much you know yourself better than anyone else. In your beautiful heart of hearts, you’ve known this all along!
