When You're Ready, This Is How You Heal

by Brianna Wiest

What if, instead of losing hope in the world and life itself, you allowed your failures to strengthen your faith, making you see that there is a path for you to walk, and a forcefield holding you to it, no matter how hard you may try to get off?

You’ll begin to realize that the foremost important thing you can do for your life and yourself and everyone you know is to protect your energy more fiercely than anything else. Make your life a safe haven in which only people that have the capacity to care and listen and connect are allowed. You are not responsible for saving people. You are not responsible for convincing them they want to be saved. It is not your job to show up for people and give away your life to them, little by little, moment by moment, because you pity them, because you feel bad, because you “should,” because you’re obligated, because, at the root of it all, you’re afraid to not be liked back. It is your job to realize that you are the master of your fate, and that you are accepting the love you think you’re worthy of. Decide you’re deserving of real friendship, true commitment and complete love with people who are healthy and thriving. Then wait in the darkness, just for a little bit… …And watch how quickly everything begins to change. 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 feel how you feel. Find a healthy, productive distraction for when your mind needs to be rerouted. Unfollow every single person who makes you feel bad about yourself. See your discomfort as your subconscious way of telling yourself that you are capable of more, and better, than you have at this current moment. Junk journal. Open up a notebook and scribble down exactly how you feel. Stop trying to invalidate them with

positivity. That will arise on its own once your subconscious is more clear. Let yourself dream. Imagine what you want to build and create next in your life. Give yourself something to look forward to. Plan a trip, make a date, or take yourself out somewhere. If there is something you need to change in your life, start today. Look for new jobs. Write a letter to someone you need to apologize to. If time is not resolving the matter, then time may be waiting on you. Do not believe everything that you think. Do not trust everything that you feel. Think back on everything you worried about that turned out to be nothing, and how sometimes, our fears lead us to believe our worst thoughts are most real. Think back on all those times you had strong, overwhelming feelings that you didn’t really understand and realize that sometimes, you just had to learn how to let them pass. Do something each day that helps you get to know yourself better. Write down what you like and what you don’t. Identify your values, your beliefs, your hopes, your fears. Spend time with people who understand you. Do something for someone without asking for anything in return.

Don’t be afraid to disengage. Spend less time on your phone, decline events that make you feel drained at the end. Remember the sacredness of your energy and attention. Read something that makes you think about the world differently. Note what comes effortlessly to you, within this is a key to your future. Note what is interesting to you, within this is a key to your purpose. Note what you struggle with the most, within this is a key to what you’re here to heal. Practice standing up for yourself in a healthy way. Look in the mirror and practice setting boundaries. Learn to speak your truth with dignity and grace. Recognize that whatever bothers you most about other people can reveal the unconscious truth about yourself — use these discomforts as opportunities to heal your own invisible wounds. Lean in deeply to that which brings you joy. Do something special for the people you really care about, even if it’s just a reminder text of how much they’re loved. Create a vision board. Study the daily habits of people you admire. Study the daily habits of the people you do not admire.

When you feel the impulse to judge another person, remind yourself gently that every time you do so, you only continue to narrow your own self-approval. State what you are feeling, in clear and honest terms. This will help you process and accept it, even if it doesn’t make complete sense to you right now. Interrogate one negative thought. Instead of running on autopilot, stop and ask yourself: Is this true? Do I know for a fact this is true? Who told me this is true? Then ask yourself: Does this thought help me move my life in the direction I would like it to go? Give yourself permission to rest. If all you were able to do today was wake up and keep breathing, that’s okay. Make a to-do list, then cut it in half. Then cut it in half again. You should be left with the one or two most imperative tasks. Focus on those and only those. Go from there. Meditate on how far you’ve come. Make a list of all the things you have, do, and feel that you never imagined would be possible. Meditate on how much you’ve overcome. Consider everything that happened in the past that you swore you’d never get over, and note that you always did. Express genuine gratitude. Find something you are actually happy to have. If feeling good is too far from where you’re at, just try to feel neutral. Sleep when you are tired.

Eat when you are hungry. Pause before you react. You are allowed to be angry, but you will want to be mindful of allowing that feeling to make you take action that could impact your safety or quality of life for years to come. Write yourself a note in which you outline exactly what to do when you have a panicky feeling. When you’re thinking clearly, tell yourself what to do when you’re not. Remember that you’re mortal. All of this will pass. No time is guaranteed. You are not stuck forever. Life moves quickly and it does not stop. You are only here for a moment. Try to savor it as much as you can.

It’s easy to define ourselves by the empty spaces, the ways in which we lack. And yet those are not always gaps within us waiting to be filled, rather, the simple contrast between all we are and all we were never meant to be. When we can learn to hold space for all the coexisting truths of our lives we can begin to understand that experience itself is both contraction and expansion.

We are not summarized or defined by any one instance or experience. The static, singular image we think others have of us in their minds—it’s usually a projection of our greatest hopes and deepest fears. We are fluid, evolving beings. We are different from one moment to the next. We spend so much time making assumptions about how we are in the world instead of actually feeling into our lived experience. We allow ourselves to become labelled and defined by what we think we’ve done and how others have responded to it, rather than who we are going to become and whether or not we can be at peace with it.

We are in no way forever limited, or permanently defined by who we were in the past.

You, more than anyone, are most inclined to believe that the worst things about you are the most true things about you.

Nobody—not one single person alive—is thinking about you more than you are thinking about yourself.

That is what it means to start over. It means that it’s time to reconcile what we’ve known wasn’t working all along, what those things were acting as a bandaid for. When we’re too attached to the outcome of something, and we have little tolerance for its presence changing whatsoever, it’s usually because we are using that thing to hide something about ourselves, and that something is our dissatisfaction.

We cannot keep running in circles and expect our lives to blossom, we have to stay where we are and have the courage to heal what’s broken within us before turning to yet another outside source to mend the damage.

It’s about setting an intention to heal. Writing it down on a piece of paper somewhere you see often. Realizing that nobody knows what to do at the beginning, so sometimes the most powerful way we can begin is by making a statement to the universe about what we’re going to do.

we often don’t think to change our lives until change is the only option we have.

These are the 8 things that happen right before your life changes for the better.

catalytic event occurs.

You’re forced out of denial.

almost nothing in life leaves us without purpose. It’s only a matter of when we accept this truth.

You feel swells of anger and fear.

It is healthy and normal to feel anger when a boundary has been crossed or you are facing some sort of injustice. It is healthy and normal to feel sad and scared when life abruptly changes and you’re not sure what’s next.

You get a glimpse of a better path.

You start making small adjustments.

You see the purpose in the pain.

you might realize that had you not originally been so uncomfortable, you might have gone through the rest of your life with unrealized dreams, holding yourself back out of small and irrational fears, and living half the life you were destined to, all because you didn’t have the courage to change.