Find Your Path of Ease: Release the Struggle

This is a guest post by Monique Gallagher from ctcoach.com

How many times have you been on fire with a project, enthusiastic, excited, engaged, then proceeded to a procrastination-dead-zone in near record time?

It feels like you are almost two different people one passionately wants to achieve, be more, do more; one is fearful, operating from an agenda that your visionary self didn’t choose. Your forward progress lacks consistency; on good days you take three steps forward and two steps back, but on bad days you move forward and backward at the same time. This is how I would define struggle: doing a lot but getting nowhere.

What’s happening here?

The short answer is that you are out of alignment with your True Self.

First, a quick definition: Your True Self is your inner voice, your intuition, your gut-self. It’s that internal spirit that has an intrinsic ability to know what is for your highest good. When you are in alignment with your core essence, your True Self, you have a source of powerful energy that assists you in creating your vision and has the know-how to craft its’ reality.

However, since birth, your True Self has likely taken some hard knocks. The echoes of your schooled brain – the voices of teachers, parents, siblings, spouse – are in conflict with your True Self. And my message to you is that ALL of your internal struggles come from a failure to align your relationships, your work, and your health choices with what your True Self knows is for your highest good. Your True Self is your cheerleader, your champion, your personal growth teacher, and much more.

Here are six signs of failure to align with your True Self:

• You’re often tired.
• You’ve lost your mojo, your drive and enthusiasm have evaporated.
• You doubt yourself and second-guess your decisions.
• You are extremely self-conscious, constantly wondering what others think of you.
• You procrastinate, putting off projects and decisions
• You tell yourself stories that things aren’t so bad in painful areas of your life.

You need to understand that when you continue to ignore your True Self’s attempt to get your attention, life becomes a consistent struggle. When the above six signs are not addressed the symptoms and the struggle deepens.

Symptoms of Not Living Your True Self

1. The only time you can truly relax is when you are alone. Since you are uncomfortable around new people, you restrict your interactions to familiar individuals. That way, you always know what to expect, so you can safely navigate your limited universe.

2. Your health begins to suffer. You experience digestive problems, insomnia, and/or constant fatigue, which could lead to auto-immune disorders.

3. You suppress your real feelings and become a people pleaser.  Since you fear confrontation, you let your own needs go unmet. You continue to stuff your unmet needs. The resulting resentment of others demands eventually leads to explosions, creating conflict at work and at home.

4. You doubt your own abilities, so you follow one guru after another, putting others in the driver’s seat of your business or personal life. You use a mental whip to force yourself past your fears or comply with demands of your life.

5. You know that you want and need to let go and embrace new opportunities, but your schooled brain continues to assert that you must go along to get along.  And by all means, don’t trust your gut feelings!

6. You start to micro manage yourself and others to maintain the image you want others to have of you, because you fear what will happen if they see you as the false imposter you really feel you are. You emanate such stress that you drive others away.

All of this sounds pretty grim, doesn’t it?

Let’s take a look at what living could be like when the struggle is released and your True Self is in the drivers seat.

Find Your Path of Ease

When you are listening to your True Self you become aligned with your core nature, you are operating and creating your life from a place of what is natural for you, your place of EASE. You are more in love with your self, your spouse, your children and your work.

Your personal and work reality suit who you are and you become less inclined to respond and react to the harsh taskmaster of your internalized critical parent. The feelings you had as a young child, so in love with life that you bounced out of bed each morning, eager for the days adventures are your constant companion.

That probably sounds like bliss, right?  At this point you are probably wondering, “How do I align with my True Self?”

First, bear in mind that you may have been ignoring True Self’s messages for a very long time, and True Self has stopped trusting you to listen. Imagine that you have a friend who calls you, wanting to get together, and you are always unavailable. Call after call, you have no time for your friend. Eventually the calls dry up. If you want to reestablish the friendship, you must pursue it actively.

The same applies to your True Self. After years of tugging at your shirttails, pleading for a voice and being ignored, it no longer believes that you will listen so it has gone silent. You must coax it out again.

3 Ways to Connect with Your True Self

Here are 3 ways to Reconnect with your True Self:

1. For the next week, observe yourself and make a note of the things – the important things – that you aren’t doing (or saying you will do).  Literally write out those messages. This process sends a message to your True Self that you are paying attention and want to listen to its voice again.

2. After you complete this exercise, read your notes. Then choose to take action on something you’ve been putting off. This does two things. First it gives you a sense of empowerment over your life AND sends a clear message to True Self you are listening and taking action. Your action can be finishing a project, delegating or releasing a project, clearing some clutter, or having a crucial conversation that is important to your well being.

3. Once you have established some communication with your True Self, take care to spend your time with people who support and motivate you to follow its’ voice. Be aware of (and avoid, if possible) people who sap your energy, dismiss your dreams and/or try to take charge of your life.

These hints will help you to reconnect with who you are at your core and you’ll experience a shift, a result.

However, bear in mind that as long as your critical parent/schooled voice continues to echo, it will drown out the soft voice of your True Self.  To silence those echoes you must reconnect with your True Self.

Click here to tap into the deep treasures of your True Self.

Monique Gallagher teaches her clients how to break through their sabotaging mindset blockers, build lives in alignment with their true selves and raise their self worth. You can learn more about Monique on her blog: ctcoach.com