Written by Guest Contributor, Leah Guy.
The Fearless Path
Life is busy and it’s easy to lose sight of our hopes, our dreams, and ourselves. Before we know it, we’re traveling a road we don’t recognize and we feel lost, unhappy and scared. Here are three ways we can remind ourselves of who we are and how to stay connected to our purpose as well as to people. And stay sane.
1. Speak Your Truth
Learning to speak up for yourself is an important part of self-care and healthy relationships. Concealing one’s feelings and denying who you are is only damaging to one person. You.
Finding the genuine and appropriate voice for yourself is a balancing act. Poor communication skills can be damaging to self and others. Constriction or restriction of the voice may appear due to yelling, lying, diminishing others, or negative talk to self or others. Ignoring our true feelings traps energy in our bodies and can develop into a variety of emotional symptoms and patterns such as gossiping, fear of ridicule or judgment, shyness, stubbornness, inability to express thoughts, social anxiety and fear of public speaking.
One of the main reasons we don’t speak our truth is to hide our pain and suffering. To heal our emotional wounds, we must practice saying what we need, what we desire. Using your voice is not just for words alone. We often do not realize the lies we tell ourselves. Self-love, compassion and truth-telling are powerful routes to healing old wounds and scar tissue that has developed from shame, guilt, grief and fear. You will feel free, unstuck and connected when you do.
2. Accept Your Authentic Feelings
Accepting your feelings is different from clutching onto your past. Honoring all of the emotions that an experience evokes is what allows us to stay whole and healthy. We are often scared of our feelings and fear is the guiding force that leads us to detach from our feelings. But the truth is we need to connect to our authentic feelings in order to actually process them and move forward. We need to learn to allow our true feelings to come through and sit with them for a while—even if it’s uncomfortable at first.
To deny ourselves the acceptance of our feelings, even the nasty, gnarly ones, is to deny ourselves a full life. We miss the opportunity to express humility, feel empathy, or ask for forgiveness.
3. Risk Love
To return to happiness, to function with purpose and peace, you must learn to trust yourself and love yourself.
Grief, anger and heartache can drown you in emotion if you are not present and practicing self-love. By reassuring your inner self that you are present and capable and willing to take care of your emotional health, you are taking steps on the fearless path to healing. The heart is capable of processing emotion if you give it support it needs. Perhaps you didn’t have a strong and supportive environment when young, Maybe you don’t have it now. It’s imperative you work to build that foundation for yourself.
Can you risk love in the face of injustice, guilt, shame, grief, anger, trauma and all the other forms of suffering? Ego (fear) says no, but the Soul says yes. Risking love asks for you be open to pure passion in the heat of a moment. To allow hearty laughter in your life. To feel grief. These are actions of emotion and freedom that come with an open heart, free of fear.
In my book, The Fearless Path, I call these self care practices “Emotional Workouts.” These workouts will strengthen your self-love and build a foundation of trust in yourself. In time, you will be better equipped to handle and heal from life’s sufferings. You will not have to detach from real experiences, but instead, you can stay present and allow your emotions to teach you, move through you and to transform you.
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Leah Guy is author of the new book The Fearless Path: A Radical Awakening to Emotional Healing and Inner Peace
For more info visit www.LeahGuy.com/book.