This past week was tough. I was challenged in many areas of my life. I was presented me with many situations that required me to make hard decisions. I had to make decisions that felt extremely uncomfortable because I knew making them would cause others to feel uncomfortable. In the past, I would have done all that I could to please others. My only focus would have been on making sure that I conformed to what others believed was right and I would have gone against everything that I believed was right for me. This is a recipe for disaster, but this is what we do when we don’t know who we are. This is what we do when we don’t know our own truth. This is what we do when we neglect our inner knowing that we are born with. We conform. We obey. We listen to the opinions of others. We forget that somewhere within us, we have our very own unique compass. Why do we forget? Because somewhere along our path we heard a message that sounds something like this.

“It’s not ok to think what I think, to believe what I believe and to feel what I feel.”

This message leaves us feeling so unsafe in our own body that we will do whatever we need to do to feel comfortable, to fit in, to feel accepted. We lie to ourselves and to those around us and we betray our intuition. And what’s worse is that often times we aren’t even aware that we are doing this.

So how do we take back our power and return to the knowing of who we are? We must take the time to release all the limited, fear based thinking that we have taken on from outside of us. How was I able to make different choices this week than I would have in the past?

I’ve committed to knowing myself from the inside out. My number one job in this life is to continuously do the work of  identifying and releasing old beliefs that keep me limited and feeling disempowered. Some thought patterns that I have confronted this week sounded like this

“My truth will hurt people”

“Everyone will believe that I’m a bad person”

“I should be more understanding of people”

“I shouldn’t cause so much conflict”

Once we are able to identify these fear based thoughts and release them, we can then reconnect to our truth. We are able to take back our power and choose thoughts that are in alignment with who we really are and how we desire to feel. Releasing toxic thoughts give us the space to choose thoughts that feel more aligned with our truth. These new  thoughts sound like

“My truth feels empowering and guides me to make decisions that support my well being.”

“My truth will attract those people who are energetically aligned to who I truly am.”

“The only person I am responsible for understanding is myself”

“I will create peace and harmony in my life by making decisions that empower and uplift me.

These new beliefs are aligned with my highest truth and they create a sense of freedom and joy that enables me to be assertive and stand my ground. They enable the opinions and the stories of others to fall away and they guide me back to myself. There is nothing more powerful than doing the work of knowing who we are, aligning with the thoughts and beliefs that feel good to us and then most importantly acting on these beliefs so that we can create the joy and freedom that we are here to experience.