Episode 0019 – 3 things I wish someone told me about the awakening process that would have made it 100x easier

Subscribe on: APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | YOUTUBE | GOOGLE | RSS

Note: This blog post serves as an accompaniment to the corresponding podcast episode of A Changed Mind, where we’ll distill down the core ideas of this week’s theme, along with additional distinctions and insights. If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, you can go here to do so.  Enjoy.

A lot of people are making the process of personal evolution a lot harder and more complicated than it needs to be.  Believe me, I get it.  When I was at the peak of my personal development journey, I felt like the more aware I became, the more difficult my life became – maybe that’s true for you too.  So today, I’m going to share with you 3 simple things to help you through the “awakening” process that you’re likely going through and take the stress out of becoming more of who you’re really meant to be.

Good News! You’re Waking Up

By the very nature of you being in this community and reading this now, you’re going through this “awakening” process.  I call it that because, in many ways, you’re waking up and rising out of this dormant state of existence.  Up until the moment you started getting into personal development, you were living pretty much on autopilot according to the thoughts, limiting beliefs, and childhood traumas that we’ve all been domesticated into.  The lens through which you’ve experienced reality was formed at an early age and it’s been calling the shots of your experience of life – but now you’re beginning to question it all.

You’ve only been paying attention to the evidence in your life that supports your beliefs – whether it’s around money, health, relationships, you name it.  But the more you immerse yourself in this work, the more aware you’re becoming that you’re creating your own reality.  Thankfully, science is beginning to catch up to the metaphysical philosophies that everyone from Buddha to Napoleon Hill has talked about that your thoughts really do become things and your beliefs dictate your destiny – this is how the human being operating system works for all of us.

Navigating The Overwhelm Of Self-Awareness

But coming to these realizations can be overwhelming and uncomfortable on a multitude of levels.  You’re likely becoming more self-aware and paying closer attention to your thoughts, only to realize that those very thoughts are not conducive to creating the type of results you want in your life.  You may be doubting yourself and constantly battling that inner critic who’s trying to convince you that you’re not good enough, not worthy, or there’s something wrong with you.

These doubts may be contributing to feeling like you’re burning out, missing out on the magic moments in life and creating beautiful memories for yourself and your loved ones, and not being fully present with the people, causes, and projects that mean the most to you.  You might even be becoming more aware that a lot of your life experiences are reflections of the generational traumas that have been passed down and instilled in you.  So you become even more overwhelmed at the thought of all the “healing” you still have to do.

The greatest spiritual teachers and metaphysical philosophers in history would suggest that life always responds to what we ask of it – so you’re beginning to ask more questions.  Spoiler alert: the answers aren’t always as profound as we expect.  The very nature of you being here and reading this is evidence that answers are coming and they are available to you.

I’d also suggest that the reason why your life might be feeling particularly intense right now is simply because you’re becoming aware of that which you weren’t aware of before.  Your worldview is shifting – and that’s a good thing.  No one ever said that change was easy – it does take some “work” and that work, like the answers that come with it, can push you and challenge you.

All You Need Is The Faith Of A Mustard Seed

So what can you do in terms of taking the heat off your awakening and awareness?  In a word, you can RELAX.  Awareness is the first step, so allow yourself to become used to these new levels of awareness you’re experiencing around your thoughts, beliefs, and habits.  You can also realize that whatever thoughts or emotions are coming up for you right now – whatever they may be – aren’t trying to hurt you.  As one of my personal mentors would say: “What’s coming is going.”  

As you continue opening up your unconscious mind, it’s going to bring up a lot of uncomfortable emotions, feelings, and thoughts.  But none of these things exist outside of you – they’re not attacking you when you’re experiencing them.  They’re simply coming up from within so that they may be released.  It’s important to realize that this is a healing process taking place.  Accept that it’s happening and allow it to unfold.  

The mistake a lot of people make is thinking that by becoming more aware of your limiting beliefs and thoughts, you’re actually going to perpetuate them further.  Not true.  All that’s happening is you’re deepening your awareness and realizing that this inner dialogue has been taking place all along, and I believe that should feel freeing.  Why?  Because what’s coming up – and what you’re now giving more attention to – is actually going.

The smallest shift in your mindset can produce huge results.  That’s why in the Bible they say all that’s required is the faith of a mustard seed.  So maintain the faith that this redirection of your attention and increase in self-awareness is a step in the right direction.  It may feel like your thoughts and emotions are getting worse, but they’re not – there’s nothing wrong and nothing bad is going to happen.  Breathe through it, allow it, and relax.

Clearing Space For The New You To Emerge

Part of this awakening process involves becoming more aware of not just your limiting beliefs, but also the desires you have for your life.  You want to change the way you think, have more empowered thoughts, and attract better solutions, ideas, and resources to help you accomplish and achieve the things you want in your life, right?  This too can feel a little daunting – deciding that you want a better life, a bigger impact, a better relationship, a stronger body, better health, more financial abundance.

What happens is these shifts that start to occur inside of you also start to shift outside of you.  Before, you’d built up this external reality based on false pretenses – your ego, your pre-programming, and the very beliefs that were instilled in you by outside influences.  But now they’re in the process of transforming.  Like I’ve talked about before, the dissonant energy that’s accumulated in your body and mind are beginning to transform into more resonant, unbound energy and vibration.  A new you is emerging, which can be uncomfortable.  It might even seem like everything in your external world is being shaken up.  I know that was true for me – that the more inner “work” I did, the more it felt like my life was falling apart.

But this makes sense, because the Universe and Spirit is helping you to clear space for this new and improved version of you to emerge.  But your external reality will resist the transformation, simply because it’s so new and unfamiliar.  Your life experience has been an accumulation and a reflection of all of the pain, hurt, and misunderstandings you’ve lived through, so when you decide that it’s time to step into your next level of personal power, resistance will rear its ugly head and challenge you.

So as you’re experiencing an internal transformation that begins reflecting itself externally and more and more outside resistance rises up, the approach is actually the same.  Allow the shake up to occur.  Allow the so-called chaos to take place.  Breathe through it, accept it, and relax.  Your logical mind will likely start testing you and projecting doubts you didn’t even know you had into the future – the money you want to make, the health challenge you want to get rid of, the relationship you want to step into.  The devil on your shoulder will say “Really, you think you’re capable of doing that?  Not if I have something to say about it.”

But this only happens because your conscious mind doesn’t know about the new solutions, opportunities, resources, and ideas that will inevitably start presenting themselves to you as part of this awakening taking place.  Your mind will try to look to the past to predict the future – and these predictions will show up as fear – but only because it can’t comprehend this “new you” that’s emerging.

The Magical Fruit Tree Of Life 

Imagine you’re a tree that can produce any kind of fruit.  You started as a seed, grew into a sprout, then a sapling, and now you’re this magical fruit tree.  Those fruits dangling from your branches are the mechanism by which you’re going to create your future.  At one point or another, those fruits need to drop.  If they don’t, they’ll become rotten.  But if you allow yourself – as this tree – to be shaken and let your fruits fall to the ground, you’re creating the opportunity for the seeds in those fruits to give birth to even more fruit trees.

This is exactly what’s happening as you’re going through this awakening journey.  When you let the old fruits fall – ie. the limiting beliefs, traumas, misunderstandings, and resentments of your life – you’re creating the opportunity for new things to sprout.  New relationships, new business and career opportunities, new communities, new health, and so on.  Before you know it, you’re still the same tree, but you’ve also become the forest around you – an entire ecosystem for abundance.  You become a mechanism to support new life, new creation, new opportunities, and new discoveries.

Rather than clinging onto the things that you don’t really need anymore and are no longer serving your being, you allow yourself to be shaken knowing that something greater will emerge as a result.  I’ve certainly experienced this phenomenon myself.  It happened when I decided to quit my job and go all in on building my business alongside my wife nearly a decade ago.  It happened again recently when we decided to make a major pivot in the way we ran our business.  Both times, my wife and I had to let go of what we had in order to make room for what was next.  We needed to let the old fruit drop so new seeds could be planted.

Sure, there’s an uncomfortable space in between that we all must allow to take place.  And our minds will try to figure out the answer by using our past experiences to predict the future.  But the answers only come when we allow the shake-up to occur – when we allow the fruit to drop.  

You Can’t Speed Up Or Slow Down Your Awakening 

If you want more prosperity, more abundance, more health, more joy, more flow, and to really step into the most powerful, authentic version of yourself – which I’m guessing you do – you don’t have to struggle to make it happen.  Yes, you must accept and allow discomfort to occur, but you can’t speed up the process.  You can’t slow it down either. 

Much like having a fever, you have to be patient with your awakening and your personal evolution.  You have to allow the healing process to occur on its own time.  That timing is going to be different for everyone, as will the intensity of the discomfort.  But stressing out about it only serves to slow down, or even prevent, the healing process from happening – and it’s going to happen no matter what.  So it’s important to understand that the more you try to accelerate your awakening process, the more discomfort will occur.

Only the Universe and Intelligence itself can decide how fast or how slow you evolve.  The more you try to manipulate it, rush it, or reduce the discomfort around it, the more you disrupt the natural process.  Unfortunately, that’s what causes so many people to feel like they’re doing this whole personal development thing wrong or that there’s something wrong with them.  So it’s important to give that energy into acceptance, allowance, and patience that a natural process is taking place.

It’d be nice if we could all just snap our fingers and become Enlightened.  But really, that’d be the greatest disservice we could give ourselves.  Why?  Because everything is working out in its own unique way for all of us.  We must experience growth on our own timelines with all the twists and turns that come with it.  Your awakening process is going to be different from mine and the next person and the next – and that’s okay.  There are going to be days that feel better than others and it’s important to have grace for yourself. 

The best thing that you can do when you’re feeling uncomfortable through this journey of awakening is to find ways to connect with yourself, with energy, with Spirit, and with others.

That might be meditation. It might be gratitude journaling. It might be spending more time in nature.  It might be breathwork.  Do something – anything – that you enjoy.  It doesn’t matter what it is as long as it’s serving your greatest growth, evolution, and prosperity – and only you can determine what that is.  Let the process unfold as it’s meant to and enjoy your life.