Is that voice really me?

It took me a while to come back to my writing, I avoided it at all costs and made excuses as to why I didn’t have the time or why I didn’t feel like it. The truth is, I have all the time in the world and a lot of words to say, I just stopped believing I had the right to say them. I felt like since I sometimes am not able to practice what I preach about emitting positive energy into the world and putting my self-love first that I am not worthy of writing on those topics. Then a couple days ago the truth hit me fast and I realized that self-doubt is EXACTLY why I need to write on these topics, because it is something we all face in some way at some point in our lives and it is what’s holding us back from growth and manifesting everything we need to in this life.

We spend our whole childhood learning how to fit in to society; learning right from wrong, learning to share, learning that lying has consequences and learning to communicate our wants/needs. We are taught the concept of ‘I’, not only to attract what we want but to personally identify with “ourselves” to engage in and better understand our self-dialogue as we grow up. The problem is that our internal dialogue and the conversations we have with ourselves in our mind are not always from our true selves. Sometimes the voice in our head and the messages we accept as our truth are parasites that tell us we are not capable, that we are unworthy and we must choose another route. Perhaps if we focused self-learning from an early age on challenging these parasites and identifying when they are invading our internal dialogue we could help our children to become more in tune with themselves as they grow into adulthood. That way they can make decisions that are more in sync with their spiritual calling and less out of fear.

Education is crucial to learning, growing and learning who we are at our core. I’m not talking about traditional schooling, I’m talking about a lifelong quest to know more; searching, listening, reading, conversing to help us connect more with ourselves. The deepest problems arise when we are not even conscious of the parasites in our internal dialogue and we accept them as our own internal voice; we label them “I”. The parasites remind us that we must lower our standards, that we won’t achieve that goal. Or that we can’t follow that passion because we might not have financial stability, that we are not worthy of buying that dress because we have not lost enough weight, that we are not yet complete enough to contribute to a healthy relationship. Having the ability to step back and reflect on our internal dialogue and decipher which voices are actually ours and which are the parasites takes concentrated time, effort and practice but when do we ever even learn how to do this? We don’t, so for many of us we drift through each day accepting the parasites as part of our identity and thus letting them control our outcomes. Unless we increase our awareness and consequently can identify our true voice vs. our self-limiting beliefs the cycle continues because it is left unchallenged. It is an awakening experience to recognize that the parasites are keeping us in a perceived comfort zone that is ridiculously uncomfortable when we have a deeper knowing that we are here to achieve more, to be more.

I truly believe that these parasites are to blame when we experience that feeling that something is missing in our lives but we just can’t figure out what it is. If you know this earning, you also know that it’s powerful enough to consume you especially when your internal dialogue has a lot of time to run wild.  Maybe that’s why we distract ourselves with physical mundane activities so we can focus on something physical, so we don’t have to settle into the uncomfortable wandering of our mind’s negotiations. I know that I have done this for years, in multiple ways, some healthy, some unhealthy. Even sometimes now I’ll fall back into a cycle where I am not truly in tune with myself and I’m just going through the motions to get through each day. I think that’s why I made excuses as to why I had nothing new to write about, because my own parasites told me that since I drift in and out of connection with myself that I’m not qualified to be writing about mental health, self-love, and embracing spirituality. I finally decided today to fight back and admit to myself that I know these parasites are only keeping me in my comfort zone which ironically is making me uncomfortable because I know it’s time to leave that zone, I know it’s time to grow. I also know that healing isn’t linear, it’s a roller-coaster and that is not anything to be ashamed of.

When we’re young people ask us what we want to be when we grow up, and we have the greatest aspirations because nothing is out of reach or off limits for us. Most often we receive support for whatever response we give as well. “I want to be an astronaut, a firefighter, a painter, a surgeon, a pilot, a teacher, an author, an athlete.” Then as we grow and are asked the same question, the support slowly decreases and we are told to be more realistic or to pick a route that will provide us with more opportunity for monetary success. At what point in our existence did we stop listening and appreciating our inner child and our deepest earning for self-fulfillment? Why do we contradict ourselves and give our children false hope if we’re one day going to turn our backs on them and tell them that their sights are set too high and that they should lower their standards? We spend many years when our children are the youngest letting them live in their brave, dream bubbles and then at some point they cross a threshold where we continuously challenge what we've encouraged them to strive for.

No matter who we are, what we have achieved, where we are on our journey, we all experience self-doubt and fear. It isn’t about trying to change yourself so you don’t experience this at all. It’s about practising being aware of the parasites in your internal dialogue so that you can feel and embrace the fear rising in you, then let it go. By becoming aware of how our fear is holding us back we can consciously choose to not let it control us anymore. Then we can set out to grow in any area of our life with confidence because we know the parasite telling us we are inadequate is not a voice of our own. We are always worthy of love because we are love, even when we take 3 steps forward and 2 steps back, what matters is that we take our new-found knowledge to help us take another 3 steps forward. Imagine a world where we helped our children to be in tune with themselves and their internal dialogue. Imagine we helped them identify self-limiting beliefs so that they don’t let them control their lives. Imagine a world where we don’t tell our children to dream big and then shut them down for those same dreams. It is possible, and it will take time, but it has already started because we are awakening.