5 Star review of The Way Forward:
“Followed the author on insta and then bought the book. It’s a game changer. I read it over and over. Poetic and inspiring. You feel better after reading a few pages. ♥️” - Deb
The Way Forward is 23% off the original price on Amazon and available in bookstores.
When you decide to embrace your evolution, you will undoubtedly start making different life decisions. Your actions will start becoming more aligned with how you aspire to show up in the world, your preferences will slowly shift, and what you want from your interactions with other people will resemble the authenticity that you are developing within yourself. Since you are working on creating connection within yourself, you will seek deeper connection with those around you.
Along the way, there will be people in your life who do not approve of the way you are changing and others who applaud your growth. A tough aspect about a period of new transformation is that you cannot control other people’s perceptions, for their own reasons and because of past conditioning, some may be taken off guard by your changes and may even resist them. Especially if you are experimenting with boundaries, new healing modalities, making new friends, and testing out new world views to see which fits you best.
As you grow, it is important to keep in mind that kindness still matters. Kindness to yourself and others is a sign of great maturity and inner development. Culturally, in the wellness world, there is a trendy misconception that personal growth makes you selfish, but that is far from the truth and genuinely counterproductive.
Growth and self-love are not meant to make your ego bigger. A sign that tells you that your self-love is real is when you start developing more compassion for others. After spending time with yourself, examining your mind, old hurts and past conditioning, you should start to see how your mind works and how it impacts your daily life. For many, this experience of understanding oneself, helps you see that you are not the only one suffering, others are also having a hard time moving through the same spectrum of emotions.
Self-love and growth will naturally ask you to refocus your attention on yourself to make sure that you have established the proper systems and habits in your life that help the best you step forward. It takes time to learn how to treat yourself well so that you can function at a happier and more optimal level, but this is quite different from becoming egocentric. Seeing yourself as more important than others, treating others harshly, quickly excommunicating friends or rapidly labeling those you don’t like as toxic is not conducive to life-changing growth.
An important part of growing is realizing that nothing is ever going to be perfect, even in our closest relationships. Relationships are bound to have manageable degrees of conflict that if held properly can become points of understanding that bring you closer together. Conflict resolution is an essential part of being in any relationship or community. Having an argument does not necessarily mean the situation is toxic. Over time, running from conflict will decrease your chances of developing healthy and nourishing connections. Granted, this does not excuse abusive behavior that is truly harmful, in these cases it is certainly needed to create space between you and that person.
What you should strive for is balance.
Treat yourself well and be kind to others. Help people when you can but be mindful to not exhaust yourself or burn out. Give while also making sure that you have enough for yourself. Going to extremes, one way or the other, will create mental tension and struggle.
The reason wellness has picked up so much steam and is now such a large movement is because people seriously want to transform their lives for the better, but we need to make sure that we don’t go the other way where we solely care for ourselves and feel fine about treating others harshly. If your ego is growing, then your freedom is shrinking.
Even when you intentionally try to take care of yourself and be kind to others, you are not going to get it right every time. Others may still see you in a negative light because you are not behaving or doing things in the way that they prefer. Those are uncontrollable factors that are part of life. Even so, a point of inner victory is attained when you have compassion for yourself and others, getting yourself to this mindset is needed to experience true inner peace.
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So many juicy layers in this one, Diego.
🙏🏼❤️✨
"The reason wellness has picked up so much steam and is now such a large movement is because people seriously want to transform their lives for the better, but we need to make sure that we don’t go the other way where we solely care for ourselves and feel fine about treating others harshly."
This speaks so strongly to me. I have been working on myself my entire life, and simultaneously, my relationships and connection are as important. I have noticed that this self-improvement movement and setting boundaries is going too far the other direction. People have no problem flaking out on plans, canceling one thing to do something better and generally not being disciplined or sacrificing at all in relationships. It is becoming a culture of "me" and what is best for "me." And that's great and important, but we are interdependent creatures and the side effect of this movement is that we have now have a society that is lonelier than ever, lacking social skills and burying themselves into technology and entertainment. I sincerely hope we swing now into the middle and learn to balance me vs. us.