Why can’t you be the first one?
 
Just because no one around you took risks and opportunities, or decided to go against the grain, doesn’t mean your path can’t be different. If you grew up without seeing examples of the life and accomplishments you’re dreaming of, be the first one to do it!

You can pressure and push yourself towards something or you can be pulled towards it.
 
Judging, pressuring, and shaming yourself is one way to change, grow, and accomplish. It’s the way we use when we’re not connected to our deeper truth and authentic “why.”

As we move through life, it is natural to change and evolve. We will feel that change needs to take place when the way we navigated life isn’t working in our favor anymore. Changes can be abrupt and unexpected or subtle and predictable.

Fears may be driving many behaviors and thoughts that prevent us from engaging in full living.
 
Oftentimes, we feel drawn to something that seeks expression in our life, but then, fear comes up and we interpret it as a sign that we should stay complacent.

The moment we believe we know everything about ourselves, we stop learning and being curious. Self inquiry and curiosity are some of the most powerful tools for healing and growth, because they challenge our assumptions and rigid beliefs we hold about ourselves - often beliefs that are hurting us.

Your desire is your permission. When you authentically want something, the desire in itself is your permission to pursue it. There is a reason why this desire came to you. Following its direction is following your growth, potential, and fulfillment. 

If we want to create different results, we must look towards our future. We can’t keep turning towards the past to tell us what we’re capable of, what is possible for us, and how we can get to where we want to be. Past is limited with what it can show us because it only has experiences of what has already happened, not what hasn’t happened yet.

If your mind doesn’t have something specific to focus on (i.e. creativity, finding solutions, accomplishing a goal, etc.) it will focus on the familiar and comfortable. That’s what minds do. Familiar and comfortable often includes behaviors, thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and perceptions that directly go against what we most want for ourselves. Familiar and comfortable is most often not who we truly are and what we truly want, but it's what we learned at some point and then kept repeating, so it is easy and well known to us- it requires no effort. 

Breaking generational patterns is hard AND very possible. 

Generational patterns are (unspoken and spoken) rules and norms within the family that are perpetuated from one generation to the next. This can include: relational dynamics, gender roles, poverty, abuse, thought and behavior patterns, education level, traumas, and physical illnesses, amongst others. ​

In the movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower, there is a scene in which the protagonist asks his professor about why we pick people who treat us like we’re nothing, and his professor answers: “We accept the love we think we deserve.”

…Do we?

I believe we do. I’ve experienced this in my own life. Over the course of many years, I can clearly see how my external experiences always mirrored how I felt about myself. It was reflected in my relationships, lack of boundaries, in how I treated my body, habits I engaged in, and certainly in the way I talked to myself. ​​

Making decisions is one of the most important things that attributes to us feeling as a creator of our life. Even though a lot of us are not aware of it (mainly because we do it subconsciously and on autopilot) we make many decisions throughout the day. Many of these decisions do not feel empowering. The reason for that is that they don’t help us get to where we want to be, they don’t help us create experiences that feel joyful, and they don’t bring us close to our goals and desires. More often, the opposite is true – they make us feel us stuck, powerless, and lead us to recreating more of what we don’t want.

You are allowed to change your mind. You are allowed to want something and not explain yourself. You are allowed to be grateful AND desire more. 
 
If a specific aspect of your life keeps being a source of stress, guilt, fear, anxiety, or anything that feels constricting, you have the freedom (and responsibility) to change it.

Words are extremely powerful. Words we use to define ourselves, others, our actions, relationships, and circumstances reveal a great deal about our internal world and how we approach life.

We all have moments or even extended periods of our life we wish we can get back. Now that we are older and wiser, our past choices may seem troublesome and we believe we would now choose differently. The more we dwell on past decisions & non-decisions and the more power we give to them, the more we sleepwalk through life. Our past decisions were based on the knowledge, resources, and experience we had at the time. Give yourself grace and an understanding that you didn't know what you know now and you did your best. Take the lessons, find the compassion for your past self, and start living in the present.

Recently I had an opportunity to be a guest on Next Quest Podcast where I shared about myself, about being a therapist, and how we can grow beyond patterns that restrict our life and limit our growth. I'm sharing some of the main points we discussed in the podcast. As you read through, see if you can distinguish your patterns and notice in which areas of your life are they prevalent.

I am beyond excited to announce that I have completed a year-long NARM® training (NeuroAffective Relational Model). NARM® is a cutting-edge model for working with attachment, relational, & developmental trauma. This approach works directly with trauma patterns of disconnection that deeply affect our identity, emotions, physiology, behavior, & relationships.

Maybe you feel that something is off and life doesn’t seem as full and rich as you imagine it could be. Maybe there’s a nudge telling you that something must change, but instead of trusting your intuition, you decide to wait for a sign. 

Many of us learned to not trust ourselves. Our internal experiences may not have been validated and our ideas and thoughts may have been dismissed or ridiculed, so we disconnected from our own intuition and wisdom. We learned to turn outside of ourselves for guidance, because we learn that it is not safe to trust ourselves.

Most timelines we set for ourselves are completely arbitrary. We take someone’s expectation of when we should start things and when we should finish them, and then we adopt it as the timeline to live by without ever questioning it.

​On any given day, there are so many different things to think about and manage, that it is easy to slip into stress, overwhelm, and mindlessness. In this state, it’s all about getting through and reacting instead of having a sense of ownership and deciding what needs to happen next. So, if you tried stressing about everything you do and don’t do, and it still didn’t solve your problems or made you more present to your life, here are a few things you can incorporate immediately to approach things in your life with more focus, clarity, and ease.