We've all heard the saying "the truth will set you free." Why then, do so many hide from it?
Because... confronting the truth can be incredibly daunting.
The truth I am referring to here is one's "inner truth."
We all have our own inner guidance system that we can call #intuition, but narrowing it down to that feels oversimplified. Our feelings (including gut feelings), energy, emotions, senses, intuition, and physical responses all play a part.
You may feel really connected to your inner guidance or you may not, and that's okay. This relationship is one that can grow and evolve, and it strengthens as you build trust in yourself.
To illustrate this, here is an example of how our inner guidance system may communicate and how our level of connection with it can guide our responses:
Scenario: You feel "on-edge" (AKA unsafe) around a person who is unkind to you. This kicks your sympathetic nervous system into overdrive, sending your body into fight-or-flight mode as a stress response.
Response 1) You recognize what this physical response is telling you and realize that interacting with this person is not in your best interest, so you begin to create distance with them. Your feeling of safety is restored and your body regulates itself again.
Response 2) You do not recognize or doubt what your body is telling you, so you internalize how they make you feel and continue to entertain their company. You remain in fight-or-flight mode and continue to sacrifice your well-being by choosing to maintain the relationship.
If you are familiar with the 2nd response, this is not to shame, as I have been there too. There are plenty of reasons why we may choose to ignore our #innertruth, but the dominant undercurrent is fear. Fear of change, fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of abandonment, fear of how we are perceived by others, fear of being wrong... the list goes on. While the outcome of acting on our inner guidance may cause some pain, what cuts the deepest is acting out of alignment with our truth. When we dishonour ourselves, we feel it at our core.
I was once all too familiar with this pain. I was really good at hiding from my truth. My body, heart, and mind would tell me, but my fear and self-doubt prevented me from acting on it. It would get louder and louder and louder until I couldn't possibly ignore it. Maybe some of you have felt the same gut-wrenching agony.
Thankfully, I don't push my insides to that extent anymore. Little by little, I began listening more. I began trusting more. I started to move towards what felt nourishing, and I moved away from what didn't. Small steps like that over time generate big results. You will see.
The power that comes from that, the peace that comes from that, is what sets you free.
