A Sense of Knowing

There is something deep within us.  We call it Trust, Faith, Knowing or Intuition.  It doesn’t matter what we call it, we all have it.  This knowing comes from our soul, from the deepest most authentic part of us.  It is a voice that struggles to be heard above the thoughts in our heads.  It is a way of knowing your purpose and place in this life.  But, do we listen to this voice?  Do we acknowledge this voice, this knowing?

I believe that this is something every one of us has.  That something unexplainable that sits beneath the surface trying to communicate with us.  This is because we are so much more than the latest trends or the trivialities of the modern age.  We know, deep down, that there is so much more to life (and to us) than the way we are living it.  I can compare that inner knowing to the amber light at the crossroads warning in its gentle way. to look out, slow down, pay attention.  Look up at the amber light!  Take the necessary action before it’s too late and you’ve lost your truth to all the ‘stuff’ trying to influence you.  Realize that living your life as you were intended to requires that you listen to your own inner guidance.

How Different would Life look if we Trusted more?

I have been playing a game of tug-of-war with myself over this very subject for, well, pretty much years.  You see, I have an instinctual ‘knowing’ inside me and I also have a very loud voice in my head.  The two don’t see eye to eye!  I am on the side of the knowing but being tugged by the voice.  I’m sure I am not alone here but I feel like life has cut us out into cookie cutter versions of what we ‘should’ be.  The problem is we’re all different flavours on the inside. So, to clear up my analogy, we ‘know’ one thing while our minds ‘preach’ another thing.  We go through life questioning why we question!  It’s a mess!

But, to the question at hand: how different would life look if we trusted more?  For me it feels like an instant release.  We immediately stop doubting, overthinking, stressing etc.  We are at ease about life.  This is the power of trust.  It can help you to live life from a place of love instead of fear.  Trust, in a sense, is a version of love.  It is saying ‘I love you enough to trust you.’.  And, I would say that living from this perspective would certainly change life for the better, wouldn’t you?

Start with Questioning your Thought Patterns

The reason we don’t trust our ‘Knowing’ is that we have been hardwired to think the same way that every single other person on the planet thinks.  When our own inner voice whispers to us we brush it off because it goes against what is expected.  This comes from all the years of living life by the rules.  Our true self feels like the one that is wrong, that needs to be pushed aside.  So, that is what we do.  There are a million examples of this for a million different types of people but we have all experienced this ‘pushing aside’ in our lives at some point.  Think about your life and you will find a time or a situation where you were living according to what was expected instead of what you instinctually wanted.

When you make a decision that causes your heart to ache, but your mind is telling you it’s the right thing to do.  Chances are, you got it wrong.  Your heart is always the voice to listen to. The mind is a notorious overthinker, but because it is so obnoxious and loud we tend to believe it’s the voice that matters.  But, that simply isn’t the case.  We have to find a balance between what appears to be ‘reason’ and what is our inner truth talking.  So, pay attention the next time someone tells you: ‘being an artist doesn’t pay the bills’ or ‘the last 3 generations in our family have been doctors’ and your heart aches.  Don’t assume that what makes sense to the majority has to be your truth.  Only you know your truth.

Learning to live According to our Emotions

This is not a free pass to let loose when you are feeling angry.  This is about learning to process emotions and understand why they are coming up in the first place.  When a situation like the one’s mentioned above come along we need to be able to use those emotions as our gauge for whether the situation is healthy for us or not.  When we can do this, we are more able to find ourselves in a place of understanding and eventually, more able to make decisions on how to move forward.

For example, your best friend gets accepted into Art School and you find yourself feeling resentful of her.  All the nasty remarks start popping up in your head like ‘she’s not that good, how did she get accepted?’, or ‘typical, everything just falls into her lap’.  Are your emotions trying to tell you that you have an unexplored interest in the same career choice?  Have you been denying yourself because you’ve been told you should be doing something else, or you didn’t believe you were good enough?  There are many reasons that this kind of situation could be affecting you and they need to be explored and understood to be able to work through them.  But, first, you have to pay attention to them.

This is just one example to get you to think about what triggers you.  Think about the situations that stir emotions in you.  Ask yourself the question, ‘is there something deeper behind these emotions?’.  Is there a voice, a knowing, that is trying to send you a message?  Most of the time when something stirs an aggravated emotion in us it is trying to tell us something.

Understand how you have Lost that Sense of Knowing

With so much pressure to stay in our ‘lane’ there is a certain amount of guilt attached to breaking away.  To choosing ourselves.  There are many people in our lives that have an influence over the choices that we make for our own lives.  What we need is to understand that we are separate from these people and their ideas, no matter how much we love them.  There are plenty of good intentions that have led to a life separate from that sense of knowing that is there to guide us.  Our job is to learn to recognize where this has happened in our own lives.

When you realize this has happened try to look at it from a gentle perspective.  Understand that most of the time this moulding and re-direction is not even intentional.  We live in a world that puts more value on one career choice versus another.  With the best of intentions we are pushed towards ‘being our best’.  Unfortunately, the result is far too many people living a life that is against this sense of inner knowing and more in line with what the world deems worthy.  We need to embrace the fact that we are not all cut from the same cloth.  We were created with our own individual gifts and passion and to go through life without using them is a waste, and a sad one at that.  Those gifts were bestowed upon us for a reason, they are our contribution to this world.  Our purpose.

Understand that you are not Wrong for Choosing Yourself

Now that we know how we find ourselves on a path we didn’t choose for ourselves we can start to make a shift.  We can start to pay more attention to the butterflies, the aches and the nagging voice that is our truth!  The sense of knowing will always be there, nagging at you.  When you get up to go to that job that wasn’t meant for you, something will feel wrong inside.  When you start to pay attention to how you feel in these situations and begin to see that it is because you are not living according to your own purpose and design, it is time to choose you.

Choosing you is the first step to living a fulfilling life, but feeling like you are letting down the people in your life is never going to be easy.  Here’s the thing, though, letting yourself down will always be so, so much worse than letting down someone else.  The problem is we don’t realize how much worse it is.  We are faced with the disappointment from the outside world on an almost daily basis, from the opinions to the expectations.  It is a very tangible disappointment.

Our own inner disappointment, however, is locked up inside; hidden away and denied.  But fighting against your own truth can never be the right thing to do.  This is literally YOUR TRUTH we are talking about.  The entirety of who you are meant to be on this earth.  Denying this causes an unrest in your soul.  No amount of trying to be a good parent, child or employee will ever heal the wound of denying your true self.

Be Kind to Yourself during the Process

For many people this will not be an easy process.  There is a lot of soul searching, and a lot to think about.  You need to sort through the messages from the outside world and the messages from your intuition.  You need to fit them into categories to understand where they are coming from, ie. Societies influence, good intentions, soul led etc.  Once you have a better understanding of how your life was shaped, and what your sense of knowing is trying to reveal to you, you can start looking at making a change.  You can start looking at living from your truth!

This change can include having difficult conversations.  It can involve career changes, or taking on studies in a whole new field or opening a business you’ve been dreaming of.  These are almost certain to be challenging, but in order to be true to yourself you have to take that very first step.  Know that you are worth it, know that being true to yourself is the only true way to live this one life.  After all, no matter how much we might love those around us, we are only living this life for our own experience.  Let’s make sure it’s the best one possible!

Lean into Trust

Take the time to sit and listen to what your heart is trying to tell you.  What is the truth in your heart that you have been denying?  We all have this deep inner truth, our authentic self that is waiting to be set free.  That gentle voice that provides us with a way of knowing that is both unexplainable and undeniable.  Tap into that truth in every aspect of your life.  Check-in with it when you have big decisions to make, or a strong emotion comes up.

At the end of the day I don’t think you can actually get guidance or advice on ways of knowing.  It is an internal, personal thing.  And we all have it, without exception.  What we do need, is to learn to trust the knowing.  To learn to trust ourselves above all else, because this is our own unique life experience and not even the most well intentioned of people can know 100 percent of the time what is right for us.  We, as a species, need to learn to be true to ourselves (and to let those around us be true to themselves).

Always be True to You

If I could leave you with one last thought it would be this.  Is it ever a better option to live your one life according to the rules and ideas set out by ‘other’ people?  People who do not live in your skin, breathe in your breaths or dream your dreams.  If you live your life from a place of love, with good intentions for all, your truth can only ever benefit this world.  Honour yourself by letting it shine.

Steph x