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Healing is not a one-time event.
However, the true work of healing is allowing that disruption to wake us from a deep state of unconsciousness, to release the personas we adapted into and begin consciously piecing together the full truth of who we were meant to be.
It is a life-long quest, because we must tend to the gardens of our minds on a daily basis.
Our lives require a higher functioning, future-considering adult aspect of ourselves to come forth and sit in the driver’s seat.
In many ways, the journey of healing is not so much a chapter in your story, but changing the way you write the entire book. It’s a shift in the way you move through the world, one in which you move from being disappointed that life has not met your every expectation to expanding your vision to perceive all of the magic, the wonder, the awe, the heartache, the loss, the gain, the contrast that makes us all perfectly and unpredictably human. Our healed selves are not our most flawless selves. They are not immune to sadness or grief or fear. They are just not controlled by those experiences any
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They fear things that are unknown or important or both, but they do not allow that emotion to prevent them from moving forward.
Your first purpose is to heal.
It is more challenging to look ourselves in the mirror and be honest about the ways that we have not been living up to our true potential, to identify the areas in life where we have some room for growth, and then to consistently push ourselves to show up every day to make those changes manifest.
this book intends to do: awaken each of us to the small and large ways in which we truly can affect those around us, in the corner of the earth we were given, in the specific ways we know how, for the period of time that is ours.
There is not one person who does not need healing, because there is not one person who does not need to be awakened from their unconsciousness and into all life might offer.
What you can’t see right now is that nothing is really wrong. Actually, things are really right, which is why you finally feel safe enough to feel what you really feel. Stop projecting. Stop telling stories. Those dull, unsettling feelings are not in the future—they’re in the past.
If we don’t finish processing our emotional experiences, they stay with us like the food we can’t metabolize, or old clothes we never get around to packing up and putting out at the curb.
When you’re ready to heal, you will need to lay yourself down in a very safe space and focus on those tense feelings.
You will need to cry.
You will need to sweat.
You will need to shake.
You will need to surrender.
You will exit relationships and begin others.
In the healing process, you don’t just learn how to go back and fix what you didn’t finish. You also learn how to press forward, how to live more intently and presently, how to process your experiences in real-time. The more you do this, the more you will awaken and begin to show up for life. You start speaking again, you start feeling again, you start being again.
You were never lost. You were only hidden.
What if you began to understand that a job is a means to an end, and you doing anything to contribute to your or your family’s well-being and security is important and yet only one facet of success?
What if, instead of believing that you have failed, you began to recognize that failure is just life’s way of moving you in another direction?
What if you realized that they are under no obligation to be who you think they should be, and the most loving thing you could do would be to set them free of the expectations you hold in your own mind?
What if the journey is really asking you to love a flawed person, so you might be able to love your own flaws the same way?
You could spend your entire lifetime wondering if you are worthy and enough and beautiful and successful and you will never come up with anything concrete. So you have a choice. You have a choice of how you will build your own perception around what exists. What if cleansing your mind with hopeful, joyful, positive thoughts is the rebalancing that’s been long overdue, after so many years of existing solely within the most negative interpretations you could come up with?
What if, after an entire lifetime of being sold the idea that the point of your life is to exist as perfectly as possible, you could now open up to the notion that perhaps you are, instead, here to enjoy the ride while you’re still on it?
Stop having hard conversations with people who don’t want to change. Stop showing up for people who are indifferent about your presence. Stop prioritizing people who make you an option. Stop loving people who aren’t ready to love you.
I know that your instinct is to do whatever you can to earn the good graces of everyone you can, but that is also the impulse that will rob you of your time, your energy and your sanity.
If you’re left out, subtly insulted, mindlessly forgotten about, or easily disregarded by the people you spend the most time with, you’re doing yourself an incredible disservice by continuing to offer your energy and life to them.
Maybe if you stop showing up, you’ll be less liked. Maybe you’ll be forgotten about altogether. Maybe if you stop trying, the relationship will cease. Maybe if you stop texting, your phone will stay dark for days and weeks. Maybe if you stop loving someone, the love between you will dissolve. That doesn’t mean you ruined a relationship. It means that the only thing sustaining a relationship was the energy you and you alone were putting into it. That’s not love. That’s attachment.
The most precious, important thing that you have in your life is your energy. It is not your time that is limited, it is your energy. What you give it to each day is what you will create more and more of in your life. What you give your time to is what will define your existence.
Make your life a safe haven in which only people that have the capacity to care and listen and connect are allowed.
Decide you’re deserving of real friendship, true commitment and complete love with people who are healthy and thriving.
47 Ways to Practice Micro-Healing in your Everyday Life Do something that your future self will thank you for, even if it is small. Appreciate something you have today that your past self would be impressed by, even if it feels normal now. Start saying “thank you” for what you want as though it has already happened. Write it down, say it out loud. Even once is enough. Learn the power of momentum. Start with small tasks in the day and let it build. Make one tiny shift in the right direction. Drink one half glass of water. Walk around the block. Take one deep breath. Just for today, let yourself
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You’ve been more accepted than you remember—more appreciated, and validated than you know. More people saw your potential than you realize. They liked you more than you believe. You were more wanted than you think—by friends, by family, by potential lovers who longed for you in ways you probably never would have imagined in the first place.
You’ve made a bigger impact on the world than you realize. There are more hearts you have soothed in moments of grief, more minds you have inspired to see hope where there was once defeat. There have been more instances where one kind, selfless act cascaded a ripple effect across the entire world. Your love has touched people on the other side of the planet, you just don’t know it right now.
The reality is that you exist in so many different forms and images and beliefs and stories—and yet, the only one that is ever really going to matter is the one you tell yourself.
The point was never that you adjusted everything around you until it was made perfect, but that you adjusted the way you see everything until you realize that it is enough, and it always has been.
It’s about carving out space for deep rest. The deepest rest you’ve ever given yourself. It’s about realizing that your body knows what to do, and your job is to support it, to step out of the way.
It’s about changing your environment, both in big ways and small. This might mean moving. It might mean cleansing your space of relics, so you are no longer living in a museum of the past.
It’s really hard to accept this, but so important to acknowledge: almost nothing in life leaves us without purpose. It’s only a matter of when we accept this truth.
Emotions often remain within us until they tell us what it is we need to know.
What this means is that we will remain what we have always been unless we consciously choose to become something else.
You have become comfortable being uncomfortable.
In the same way that too much of a decadent dessert can overwhelm the taste buds and become unappealing, we reject intense emotional highs when we aren’t used to them.
people have a predisposed tolerance for happiness, and when our emotions exceed that limit, we begin to unconsciously self-sabotage in order to bring ourselves back to a more comfortable baseline.
Any change, no matter how positive, will be uncomfortable until it is also familiar.
If you’re not used to life being easy, you’ll make it hard to anchor yourself back down to what you’re familiar with. Overcoming this is not a matter of overwhelming your system with positivity. It’s actually a process of grounding yourself, expressing gratitude, and shifting your belief system to reflect the idea that you are allowed to feel good, you are allowed to create goodness in your life, and you deserve the beautiful things that are blossoming — you don’t need to keep uprooting them.
You don’t know all your options yet.
Real growth requires genuine exploration, a period of trial and error. It requires you to first admit that you might not know what you want.
