Reviews of my new book The Way Forward:
“Fantastic book to give as a gift... quotes that can be helpful to anyone.” - L.Hagg
“Love this book! So much wisdom. I bought two!” - Elizabeth H.
The Way Forward is temporarily 23% off on Amazon and available in bookstores.
Three Thoughts:
There is a beautiful level that relationships can enter, where enough emotional maturity is established that both of you feel safe enough to be authentic and honest. You have each spent enough time and energy establishing the architecture of your emotional home and now you get to enjoy the feeling of security and active care that bonds the two of you. Not only are you two deeply in sync, but you are intentional about treating each other with kindness and curiosity. Life continues its natural ups and downs, challenges come and go, hard moments give you their lessons, but even amongst it all you two maintain the goal of elevating the love that flows between you. Even in this chapter of harmony, there is never any expectation of perfection. There are still disagreements between you and things you each will occasionally have to apologize for, but conflict is now held in a different container. Even when you argue you can both feel that you love each other deeply. There is no malice in your words but instead you are more interested in understanding each other and coming to a resolution that feels good to the both of you. Nothing is flawless, but happiness has never been more abundant. The inner work that you both put energy into is the key that opens the door into this new era.
Give your intuition more importance than the advice of others. Walking down a new and unfamiliar path can attract a lot of unsolicited advice. Some of it may be worthwhile and helpful, especially from those who love you and want to see you succeed. Their support can strengthen your spirit and they may even offer good feedback that can help you better assess your strategy as you take on your new adventure. A lot of advice will also come in the form of projected fear. Doing something different can trigger anxiety in others. Their reactive advice will be an attempt to get you to reign in your ambition and redirect your energy into more common pursuits. The only way to parse through all this information that is coming your direction is to check in with your inner compass. A combination of logical decision making, courage and choosing the actions that simply feel right, will get you to where you want to be. A new path usually means that there will be some difficulty involved, but you need to affirm within yourself that you are capable of great things. The most rewarding life choices often require that you choose growth over ease. Embracing growth and staying aligned with your intuition will help you cultivate inner and outer success.
The conditioning of your mind will condition your life. The subconscious of the mind does not just stay there, it is constantly impacting your perception and the way you react to everything you feel. Your subconscious carries the load of patterns that have accumulated through your lifetime, most of them defensive patterns that arise from your craving to survive. This thick and knotted up conditioning not only makes it difficult to perceive reality clearly, but it shapes the way you think and act. Healing work is not only necessary if you want to live a more peaceful life, but it essential if you want to stop your past from having control over the design of your life. Loving yourself and others well is hard when your mind is heavily geared toward survival. Journeying inward to unpack and unbind the conditioning your mind carries will remove the dense lens of the past so that you can finally arrive into the present moment with more flexibility and with new energy to make intentional decisions. New thoughts and new actions that are more conducive to your happiness are possible when you accept responsibility over your mind. The way your mind currently reacts is not a destiny, it is an option. Remove the inner weeds so that the greatest you can breathe deeply and see.
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Beautiful thoughts Yung! I can relate so deeply to all three and am grateful for what feels like my thoughts that you've put into words so eloquently. In particular #3 really describes me in this moment of my life. I've been on an amazing journey the past 11+ years of essentially reprogramming my mind so that my old survival techniques have less of an impact of living the most authentic version of myself. Realizing it is a lifelong journey frees me of the shame/blame that seem to accompany me along my path. Here's to continuing mowing down those inner weeds!!
I love this vision of relationships. My younger self would not have believed that's possible, but yes, doing the inner work, taking responsibility for how you show up, can take us there 😊