Recognizing Your Own Innocence – A Foundation for Healing
Let’s be honest, we all do it. We judge ourselves for whatever it may be, making ourselves our worst critics. We blame ourselves for not being where we “should be”, not having said what we “should’ve said”, not making the “right” choices in our past and many more “should-have’s”. The commonality among all of these thought patterns is the emotional repercussions of vibrating our lives in a state of regret. Regret brings nothing but doubt, sadness, disappointment and overflowing levels of concern and dissatisfaction into our lives.
What if reducing these thoughts & fears wasd as simple as integrating a new perspective? I invite you to join me in flipping the coin for the next few minutes to see what it may feel like to break through some of these recurring negative mental patterns and granting yourself a platform to truly heal.
Healing comes in many different forms and at various stages of our lives. The beautiful truth about healing, though, is that we have an opportunity to focus on it on a daily basis through our own self-love. Every moment we have an opportunity to redirect our minds towards a positively pointed direction. If we consciously choose to elevate ourselves by incorporating self-compassion, our inner world begins working it’s magic and, in turn, begins shifting our outer world.
One of the best internationally known spiritual texts that masters this concept is “A Course in Miracles”. Several themes are brought within the book that focus on redirecting our thoughts into positive, God-filled ones. In other words, allowing us to forgive ourselves is an integral part of the healing process. Without this step in our spiritual-evolvement, our truth has no place to live and the habitual self-sabotaging modalities take the center stage.
Below are a few, relatively simple steps to start bringing some awareness and action towards your truly magical road to healing:
1. Let go of the negative self-talk. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, this is something that we are all guilty of. Some of the most common prompts are comparing ourselves to our friends & family on social media, thinking we aren’t good enough, regretting past decisions or making ourselves sick over what we ate for dinner last night. The more negative thoughts we allow our brainwaves to feed off of, the more these neural pathways find their consistent presence in our lives.
By utilizing our own self control, one step at a time, we are able to water the good seeds. This can be done by some simple techniques like limiting your time on social media, utilizing various gratitude meditation techniques or journaling about what you ARE proud of. Try focusing on positive thought patterns which enable you to presently feel the emotion of what you are aiming to manifest in your life. Most importantly – don’t be afraid to give yourself a pat on the back every so often – we are our greatest heroes!
2. Add in the good by utilizing positive affirmations. If a good friend or family member were to tell you exactly what you needed to hear right now, what would it be? Spend a few minutes thinking about what the most common negative self-talk themes are for you. Is it that you aren’t good enough? Too cowardly to make swifter and more poignant decisions? Not determined enough? Whatever those recurring thoughts may be, turn them into the equal & opposite positive statement and allow them to work for you!
Let’s now create a positive thought to counter those fear-based mentalities. If you are too scared, one of your positive affirmations may be something along the lines of “today I choose to be fearless. May my fear surrender to love and guide me to my highest good for all of the decisions I make today.” Get creative and don’t be worried about repeating the same affirmations each day. Our souls intuitively know what we need to hear and our job is to simply get quiet and listen. If you need some further guidance, a wonderful book that lists daily spiritually rooted quotes and affirmations is “A Year of Miracles” by Marianne Williamson.
3. Celebrate your successes! Don’t be afraid to be your biggest fan. Sure, we don’t want to be feeding our ego, but celebrating our success is a very different concept. We are hard enough on ourselves as it is and we very rarely celebrate when something positive has happened in our lives. Perhaps it is due to the fear of being the center of attention, the fear that others won’t think it is a success or the lack of enthusiasm we may have for our own lives, but the celebration of our successes additionally feed positive energy into our consciousness.
To think of a simpler example, think of a child – when they receive a good grade in school, what does their parent (hopefully) do? They congratulate them and celebrate! Life is hard work and each day brings forth a new set of challenges so we can’t be weary of celebrating the well-deserved moments. Excitement, passion, a sense of pride and celebration are contagious so don’t be weary of inviting friends and family to join in your celebration. By doing so, you connect others in a positive environment and encourage your community to do the same when it’s their turn. After all, we are all leaders and one of the most effective ways to stand in what we believe in and set an example is to act on our beliefs.
4. Practice essentialism. Being busy doesn’t mean being productive! Get organized and set a daily calendar for yourself at the end of each day as you plan for the next. What is essential for tomorrow? Try to limit your “to-do’s” to only one thing at a time, suggests Greg McKeown, author of “Essentialism : The Disciplined Pursuit of Less”.
The theory that less is more isn’t a concept that has recently sprung up on us. Eastern cultures have been utilizing these types of minimalist theories for centuries. The commonality among all of them is the tie to a greater meaning of life. When we reduce the clutter, metaphorically and literally speaking, we begin to create space. This space, in turn, allows us to really dig deep and think about what means most to us.
A common inquiry of many life coaches working with their clients is: “if you could do anything, what would it be?” A majority of us tend to answer with responses that are a bit tainted. Whether they are influenced by financial reasons, upbringing, society or simply our own fear, without setting some time aside to really ponder this deeply rooted question, we tend to live a life dictated by others’ desires.
Until we know what we want, we can’t vibrate at our highest potential through our actions. By taking time alone (yes, alone!) to think about our personal lives and what they would involve for highest level of fulfillment, we slowly begin to gain more joy, clarity and confidence in our everyday living.
5. Trust that there are no mistakes, only experiences for our own spiritual-development. The word “mistake” breeds fear within all of us. That dreading moment where you find yourself post-decision sitting in your own guilt, wondering, “why did I make this decision?” haunts us more than we’d like to admit. In order to modify our outcome to the theme of making mistakes, we have an opportunity to change our perspectives involving making mistakes. One of Wayne Dyer’s most famous quotes is “when I begin to change the way I look at things, the things I look at begin to change.” This, ladies and gentleman, is the power of one single perspective shift. As we change our outlook on our lives, our world shifts to a world that benefits us, otherwise known as the universe working in our favor.
I invite you to begin to adapt a new approach to making decisions. All decisions fall into two general categories – made or yet to be made (not the standard identification of good versus bad). Immense power lies in the act of actually deciding something and now it’s time to shine in your decision! Once you have decided something, it’s time to then follow the path driven by action on either decision A or decision B.
This moment is now critical! The very beginning phase in which your actions begin to gain inertia towards your decision, do not allow yourself to act from a place of doubt! Hold confidence in your decision and don’t seek an opportunity for the self-sabotaging “I told you so” fear-based thought to mold within your consciousness. The more space we allow for doubt, the more the emotions of fear and anxiety build strength within our minds and thus, we fall into the vibration of failure. Perhaps the decision hadn’t yet been a mistake, but because our subconscious is consistently chasing the scent of failure, we claim ourselves “failures” and continue to fall into this self-fulfilling prophecy of making a mistake.
By trusting in ourselves and our decisions, we begin to take action from a place of clarity & confidence. When we practice compassion for ourselves and for others, we truly begin to grasp the idea that all things are possible and that there is no such thing as a mistake, rather, a platform for spiritual-development. I wish you all a week of self-compassion as you recognize your own innocence of being a human being and having infinite opportunities to grow. By continuously learning and evolving together, we build a society where we have a deeper level of understanding for this human experience we are all blessed enough to partake in.
Words by Natalie Ohanessian, Certified Holistic Health & Nutrition Coach, of Soul-Bite
contact her at natalie@soul-bite.com
