13: Learning to Trust Yourself & How to Connect to Your Intuition
Trust is essential to the healing journey and connecting to yourself.
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In this episode, you will learn about:
Why learning to trust yourself is so important
What it means when you feel unsupported by the universe
How to connect to your intuition
How to trust yourself when making a big decision
Episode References:
I list many different practices for connecting to your intuition, find these suggestions at – TIME: 22:30
Free Meditation Resources
Free Resource Corner
WALKING MEDITATION
Many people think that meditation has to on a pillow with our eyes closed, but that’s not true. A great way to start becoming more mindful is to start doing walking meditations. Walking is a great way to SLOW DOWN and connect pack to the present moment.
How to do this:
Notice your breathe. Breathe in breathe out.
If you want to listen to music, find meditation music or yoga music (such as: David Grand Biolateral Sound Healing on Youtube)
Imagine all the stresses and anxieties of your day shooting out from your body and into the Earth with each step. I usually picture a black sludge leaving my feet and a white light from Mother Earth shooting back into my body with each step
Start to notice your senses, how do your feet feel on the pavement? What do you smell? What colors do you see? Do you hear anything? Birds? Cars?
Breathe in and breathe out
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:01 Teaching
10:46 Listener Question 1
22:31 Listener Question 2
38:00 Listener Question 3
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NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool called Otter. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Amanda Durocher (Intro) 0:00
Welcome to New View Advice, a safe place for you to ask your most vulnerable questions about life, relationships, healing, and so much more. I'm your host, Amanda Durocher. And I believe our fears and traumas are often what holds us back from living life to the fullest. Join me here each week as I offer advice on how to move through whatever is holding you back from being your best self. Let's get started. Hi, beautiful. This is Amanda and welcome to New View Advice. If you're new here, this is the podcast where I answer listener questions about life, relationships, healing, and so much more. Today, we are going to be talking about trust, and the act of trusting and how learning how to trust yourself life, a higher power, whatever you believe in, is essential to healing from trauma is essential to healing from anything and also is essential to learning how to grow and change along this journey of life.
Amanda Durocher (Teaching) 1:01
Trust is essential because as we heal, and as we grow, and as we change throughout life, we learn that we don't know everything. And we can't know everything. And as we already know, we can't predict the future. So we do have to have this inherent trust that things are going to work out. We have to have this trust that we're on the right path. This trust that life is supporting us a trust that if we take that leap of faith, that things will work out that if we choose to heal that if we choose to look at our pain and suffering, that we are safe to do that, we have to trust ourselves along this healing journey. And trust is really difficult to actually it sounds so easy. And it's a topic that I feel like we're taught from young ages how to trust other people, the importance of trust, but we don't really learn is how to trust ourselves. So learning how to trust ourselves, trust our own body, what our body is telling us, learning how to trust the guidance we receive the signs we receive. And learning how to trust that inherent knowing is essential to learning how to live in alignment with yourself. Learning how to live your authentic life. If you want to live a life where you just do everything you're told, you never really have to learn how to trust. But if you're listening to my podcast, I think that you're looking for something more than what you have right now. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with being unsatisfied with where you're at what's wrong is not doing anything about that, because it is your responsibility to change your life. And the first step to change your life is to notice the unsatisfaction. And then the next step is to take an action step about that. So today we're going to be discussing trust. The questions all are a little different today. But to me, what all these questions have in common is that they're from three people who are unsure if it's safe to trust, if they should trust and how to trust themselves, life and a higher power. So for humans, for us as people, trust is so hard because throughout our lives, we have been told and taught not to trust life, not to trust others, and to inherently not trust ourselves. So when we were children, many of us had instincts had knowings had emotions that were minimized. Many of us had needs that weren't met. So as children, we learned to not trust ourselves. So if you were sad, and you were told not to be sad, or if you were angry, and you were told not to be angry if you were a boy and you were told boys don't cry if you were a girl and you were told, girls don't get that excited. Girls don't yell like that. You were taught not to trust yourself. Emotions are inherent to us. Emotions are normal emotions are nothing that we should be judging emotions are a way that our body communicates to us. So when you're sad, that is a way of your body trying to communicate to you how you're feeling a boundary that may be crossed a heartbreak that needs to heal. And when our emotions are minimized as children, we become disconnected from ourselves. So so many of us had parents, teachers, friends who did this, also society does this right. And so, when we are on our journey back to self, it is so crucial to learn how to trust ourselves and not trust what we were necessarily told. Part of the healing journey is learning how to reprogram, heal, and change the beliefs that are not actually true. So so many of us as kids, we just take everything adults say to us as truth and then When you become an adult, you need to learn what is your truth and what is true and what isn't true. So for example, for me when I was a kid, I was constantly told I was too emotional. I was told my emotions were wrong, I was told that the emotions I had weren't correct that they didn't have any where they came from, that I was overly dramatic. And I took this as truth. I took it as my emotions were working against me that they were this curse I had that I had so many feelings. And as I got older, and as I started to heal, I realized that my emotions were signs from my body of all the repressed memories I had, of all the repressed things that had happened to me and the dissociation, right. So even though my mind disassociated from many things, my body and these emotions were trying to communicate with me, what had happened to me what needed to be healed, and what made me feel unsafe. So as I got older, I had to learn and to reprogram myself, that it's safe to have feelings, that my feelings are my friend, that my emotions are always communicating to me something in my life that may need to be changed or healed. And that there's nothing wrong with having emotions. Even though I had many adults, not just my parents, many teachers, many friends, parents tell me that I was too emotional, I had to learn to trust my emotions. And I had to learn to trust myself, because there was a part of me that always knew that these people were wrong, who were telling me that my emotions were coming from nowhere, that just didn't click for me, it just didn't make sense, because that wasn't my experience, because the truth is, my emotions were always coming from sorry, they still come from somewhere. Now my emotions are one of my biggest gifts. So I also want to say that to people who have a lot of feelings, or have experienced a lot of trauma, who are listening to this podcast, I want you to start trusting that what you experienced that there are lessons and there are gifts in it. Because the truth is, the more pain you have experienced in life, the more you will be able to create space for others to feel safe. The more compassionate you can be, the more that you can trust yourself because you have experienced such pain. And you have seen your own resilience through the healing process. So for anybody who feels a little lost, or like they've experienced too much, or that it's all too painful, I promise you that if you stay on this healing journey, and you learn to trust yourself, and you learn to trust life again, because that is what's programmed out of us as children is not to trust life. A lot of us had parents who we couldn't actually trust, who we couldn't trust with our feelings. We couldn't trust with our emotions. We couldn't trust with our bodies, who we couldn't trust to show up at night, who we couldn't trust to be reliable. And all this confuses children. And we see parents also not trust themselves. And we just learned not to listen to ourselves. So that's why I'm really passionate about learning to trust ourselves, and about this topic today about how we can start to trust ourselves and trust life. Because as I mentioned, learning to trust is essential to the healing journey. Because the more you heal, the more you do learn to trust yourself. And the more you also have to trust the process. Because the last thing I'll say in the intro here is that, what you will find is that the healing process goes a little something like this, you have a trigger, you ignore that trigger, you keep being triggered, and then decide to finally look at that trigger, that trigger brings up a lot of emotions, a lot of things and you look at it, you finally allow yourself to move through it and heal it. And then you feel a lot better. So you have this release, because you released this pain that is physically in your body, this stuck energy, this resistance that is blocking you from the flow of life. And so you release that and you feel really expansive, and you feel a lot better. And then a day a week a month goes by and something else sneaks in and you start getting triggered again, about something new, but it could be similar. And you're like, Oh my God, why am I triggered again, I thought I was like totally healed. And then you go through this whole process again. And what you have to learn is you have to learn to trust the process. You have to learn to stop judging when new things arise. And you have to stop avoiding doing the work. And you just have to trust that the more you healed, the more layers you pull back, that you really will live more expansive, more compassionately and more whole, you're always hold but you will feel that wholeness with them. And you'll live in a more aligned way. And those resistances and those triggers will be fewer and far between. I used to live with constant anxiety and constant depression. I can say now that I don't live with constant either of those. I actually feel very peaceful most of the time because of all the healing work I've done, but it doesn't mean those emotions don't arise. But what I have to do now is if I'm anxious now I'm able to connect and be like, why am I anxious or if I get depressed? It's like What's up? What's going on with me today? Do I just need to self care today or is there something that needs to be locked? So I mentioned that because the more you heal, the more you really will change and your emotional world and your physical world will reflect that work you've been doing. But the first thing you have to do is trust. Trust yourself, trust the process. Trust that it's safe to heal. That is the essential first step. So many people aren't healing because they don't feel safe enough to. And it really is the first step. And if somebody is not there yet, don't judge them send them so much love and compassion, because I think we've all been there before. So today, we're going to dive into a few questions, and I am so excited to talk about trust. Let's jump on it.
Amanda Durocher (Listener Question) 10:46
Dear New View Advice. I'm someone who has been doing the work for quite some time. I've read a bunch of self help books, and I know all about manifesting and meditating. But I got to be honest, sometimes I feel discouraged. I've been on this path for years. And I feel like the universe isn't supporting me. I'm not where I want to be in my life. And I'm wondering why that is. Recently I found myself crying a lot and feeling hopeless. How can I realign with the universe? Thank you for this question. I think this is so relatable. I think everyone along their healing journey, their self help journey, their growing journey changing, that they can relate to feeling discouraged, at some point into feeling not supported by life not supported by the universe. So thank you so much for this question. So I included this in today's topic about trust, because I think that this is a perfect example of how it's important to trust what's happening to trust the path, and how you might be resisting that trust right now in your life. So for you, I think that you are in a period of integration, I think that you are being asked to integrate all this knowledge that you have gained. So what I've noticed along the self help journey is that a lot of us start to binge information. So one of the first steps to your self help growth on your healing journey is that you start to read books non stop, you start to listen to self help podcasts, you start to change the media you're consuming, you start to consume this information about how you can change about how you can heal, because you start to slowly implement some of these strategies in your daily life and you start to see changes. So you're like, Oh, my God, I'm onto something here. And it's all this information that we aren't taught in school that we're not taught in college, that our parents, a lot of them didn't practice. So we start to binge consume this information. So for you, I mentioned this, because you said you've read a bunch of self help books, you know, about manifesting and meditating. So I'm thinking that you have done a lot of the intellectual work, which is so important, this is very important. And a lot of us do this and also start to integrate practices. But then you hit a point, this is what I found, you hit a point where you've consumed enough information that then you're just asked to integrate what you've learned. So it's like, okay, you know, what you should be doing? Can you do that? On a daily basis? Okay, you know, how to meditate? Are you meditating daily, you know, how to manifest? Are you living with the feelings that you would be feeling and living? Like, what you want is already in existence? Are you doing that daily? Or are you not, and so a lot of us find that we read all this info, and then when we go to integrate it all day, every day, that we hit a lot of inner resistance. So that's when the work comes in. That's when healing comes in. That's when trust comes in. So for you trust is so important, because you need to trust one, that you know what to do, you're feeling hopeless, you're not feeling guided, the universe and yourself, your soul are always communicating with you, you are not paying attention to the signs, and you are blocking this communication, because you have blocks and resistances. And my guess is that you have something you're avoiding healing. Because that was my experience along the way was that any block I had anything that I had trouble manifesting this and that it was all because of my own internal blocks that needed to be cleared. So I could say affirmations all day. But if I had these internal and subconscious beliefs, they were always going to block me until I looked at them. So let's give the example of money. A lot of people want to manifest more money into their lives. And so they say manifestations about money, pray about money, but they don't look at their core wounds around money, or they look at a few and they think that's it. No, the work is looking at the 1000s of layers that you have around one topic. And then moving on to the next topic that you have 1000s of layers upon. And 1000s might be an exaggeration, but it's not one it's not two, it's not three, you will find that with your deep core wounds that you will be peeling back the layers for years. That doesn't mean can't manifest money as you do it. But you need to release these blocks that are inside you. So, to me, if you're feeling discouraged, and you're not feeling guided, you're in a period of integration. So you're being asked to integrate all that you've learned. And you're also being asked to trust that you're on the right path. Because I don't know a lot about your life. But you could be gaining knowledge right now. You could be growing your business, you could be doing steps towards your next big thing. But just in a period that feels like a law, but it's not a law. It's you gaining wisdom and traction for that next quantum leap. You could also just not be taking the guidance you were given. So I'll give an example of this in my own life. Recently, I was feeling really lost. And I kept being like, Oh, my God, what am I supposed to be doing? And I kept getting the guidance, you need to finish this class you're taking? And I was like, yeah, yeah. But like, what else? Like, what am I supposed to be doing? Oh, my God, like, what is my life look like? What am I doing with my life? And I keep getting the guidance, you need to finish this class? And was I sitting down and doing the class every day? No, it was a self paced class, but I was still avoiding doing it. I had signed up for it last August. And I told myself, I'd finished it in six months, the six months passed, still hadn't finished it. And I kept getting the guidance, you need to finish this class. That was the only guidance I was receiving. I even had dreams that were like, you need to finish this class. And I was still like, Yeah, I know. But like, what else? Instead of trusting the step I was being given, I kept being like, Yeah, but like, what else am I supposed to be doing? So then, after a third dream, I was like, okay, fine, I get it. I'm supposed to finish this class. So I finished the class, within a week of that message, I was like, Okay, I'll just spend all my time finishing this class, so that, you know, I can move on from this. And then after the last class, I had this profound healing, the class brought up a lot of things that I knew but needed to heal. And it felt like this final step about something I had been looking at for a year, about being seen about stepping into my authentic expression. And I felt this immense freedom come after I finished this class, it was like, of course, and I had this huge healing. And then after that, I started getting more guidance, I started getting more steps of what I was supposed to do, my guidance was coming in clearly in the mornings and giving me things to do on my daily basis. And that's a story and an example of why you need to listen to what you are given right now. And if you're told to finish a book, finish that book, if you're told you need to finish the class, finish the class, if you're told that today, you need to clean your house, clean your house, we don't know why sometimes we're guided to do certain things. And a lot of us can resist it, which causes blocks and can cause things to take longer than we want. But really, we are the ones not trusting life. So with my example about the class, I was the one choosing not to trust life, I was the one choosing not to trust, the guidance I was given, I kept thinking that I that my small human mind, my ego mind knew better than my soul. And my higher self, were telling me about this class. And as I mentioned, I finished the class and everything became clear. But I never would have known that. And I never would have gotten there if I didn't finish the class. And for me, it was this big healing also in this big learning experience of why I need to trust my guidance, and why I need to trust that there is something out there, which I call God, the universe, Sophia source, all names of God are welcome here, I use names interchangeably. To me, God is the all loving presence that flows through all life, my life, your life, all humans, the earth, trees, everything. And that's what we're aligning to. And that is our true nature. And what this experience with the class taught me was that that is always speaking to me all the time. And it's me who blocks that communication. So I offer that story to you. Because as I mentioned, it could be one of the two is that there's something in your life you could be doing, and you're not doing so you're being told to do something and you have resistance to it. If you have resistance to it, you either just need to start doing it every day and find ways to work around that resistance. So doing it in 15 minute intervals, setting timers, giving yourself little rewards, whatever it is, or you need to look at those resistances. So with this class, as I was resisting the class, I was also looking at the same fear that was healed in the last class around being seen. So I was doing healing work alongside it that I found helpful. So if you're resisting writing a book, look at why like, Are you afraid of your authentic voice? Are you afraid of your creativity? What is there for you? And then the second thing that could be going on is that you're just in this period of integration, and you just have to relax into it. You just have to trust that the more you relax into life, the more that guidance will flow to you and the more that you'll see why you have this law. Because that's the other thing is that the more we relax into life, the more we trust life, it's really trusting the present moment. So every present moment is an opportunity for something new, but if we're living in the past or we're living in the future, We are blocking guidance, or we're blocking our own wisdom from flowing through in this present moment. So that's another way we block ourselves and we can end up feeling unsupported. All you have to do is breathe. And intentionally focus back into this present moment. drop into your body, feel your feet upon the earth, your butt in the seat, your fingertips, tap each of your fingers on your thumb and just drop into your body, you drop into this present moment, you are safe in this present moment. Another thing about trust is that a lot of us don't trust life. So we are constantly running from the present moment. Because we are afraid of what will come up, we are afraid. So we're always preparing for the next moment. But we aren't allowing ourselves to just be in this present moment and to enjoy life. If you are always in the future, you are not enjoying life, because you are not appreciating what's happening right here. Right now. You're always focused on the next thing on the next goal. You aren't appreciating what's happening right now you're not appreciating the journey, you're not appreciating every step along the way. You are always supported, you are on the right path. And I know that you know what to do. Because you said you do the work and you know what you should be doing. So if you're not already meditating daily, I recommend to start a morning routine morning practice. If you aren't journaling regularly, start journaling, start connecting with yourself. And I think that if you start integrating the teachings from all these self help books and the self help podcasts that you listen to, you will start to see changes in your life. But you just have to trust, trust that life has your back, you're so supportive of so much more support than we realize. But what we're really looking for is to be our own support system. So you are looking for you to support you. So you're looking outside yourself, and the universe is part of you. And the universe is asking you to support you. And how you're going to do that is aligning to the present moment. And trusting that life has your back, and that you are safe right now. And you're on the right path you are supported. And you will get where you want to be. And for you and for anyone listening, I just send you all my love and a blessing of remembrance. May you remember who you truly are. May you remember how safe you are in this present moment. May you remember how loved you are in every moment. And may you remember how supported you are in always, always sending you all my
Amanda Durocher (Listener Question) 22:31
Dear New View Advice, I want to connect with myself more. But I just don't know how I want to be more intuitive, but I just don't know where to start. I'm so indecisive. And I wish I wasn't I often get so flustered and overwhelmed when I tried to figure out what I want that I just don't do anything. Any advice on how to connect to myself? Thank you so much for this question. I receive a question like this all the time. I have a lot of people ask me about intuitive practices and to ask me about how connecting with yourself. So thank you for this question. I think that this will be really helpful for a lot of people. So I want to start this answer with saying that everyone's intuitive, and everyone's actually always connected to themselves, we just think we are disconnected from ourselves. So you are already receiving a lot of information and a lot of guidance. So for example, if you have an anxious stomach, that is your body communicating with you, but the question is, are you ignoring that anxiety, if you get angry about something that is your body that is your soul communicating with you if you get a gut feeling about someone, or if you feel drawn to someone that is used to speaking to you, so you have guidance already. But a lot of us don't like the guidance we are receiving because we have a lot of work to do. So we disconnect or we discount the guidance we have. So you are already intuitive. You're already being guided, I'm going to give you a few practices about how you can connect deeper with yourself or how you can start listening to yourself but know that you are already connected. There is nothing wrong with you. I find that indecision is often a stem of people pleasing. So if you have trouble making decisions when other people are around or even with yourself, because you're afraid of what people will think or you're afraid that you'll make the wrong choice, you're afraid of being judged. I would start taking a look at if you are a people pleaser. So if you're constantly afraid of what others will think of you if you feel like you need to change yourself to fit in, if you are anxious of what others will think of you if you're anxious of being your true self, if you're so disconnected from yourself because you've been molding yourself to fit in with others, or you just are so afraid of other people's so you are indecisive because it's a defense mechanism. So a lot of people use this as a defense mechanism because when they had opinions or tried to make decisions as children, they were discounted or their parents got mad at them or they became unsafe because of the feelings and decisions they had. So Have a defense mode, they create this indecision because if they can not make decisions, then they can't make the wrong choice that could get them yelled at. So if you are really indecisive person, I invite you to start looking at the people pleasing part and seeing where that may stem from. But just know that you're always connected with yourself. So one way you can start connecting with yourself is I want you to start to ask yourself questions. This sounds really basic, but a lot of people don't do it. And how you're going to do this is you're going to sit somewhere safe, somewhere quiet, and you take five to 10 deep breaths. And if you still have a lot of thoughts running through your head, just keep breathing till they start to slow down. And for you, it might take longer than five to 10 breaths just start breathing, because a lot of us our minds are running at a mile a minute, they are so fast, the thoughts blowing through our heads that we cannot slow down and see what thought is us, versus what thought is our ego versus what thought is other people's first thought isn't what we should be listening to. So we get all overwhelmed because we have a million thoughts running through our head. So you need to learn how to slow down that is going to be key for you learning how to connect with yourself. So this is one way you can slow down. So said in meditation, lie down in bed, do it first thing in the morning, right before you go to sleep, and start breathing, five to 10 deep breaths, breathe for a minute or two. And then ask yourself a question. And when you first start doing this, you're going to ask yourself simple questions. So yes or no questions, or you're going to ask yourself a great question to start with is for a sign. And you're going to ask for one to two word answers from yourself, because what you'll find is that your intuition will only speak to you in short phrases at first and yes or no answers. Because you are seeing if you can trust yourself, your intuition wants to know it can trust you. So it's going to speak in shorter answers first. And the more you listen to that, the more you follow that, the longer these answers will get. That's the defense mechanism of our bodies. So you're not going to get this huge divine download of your life plan all at once, because it doesn't want to overwhelm you. So if you're already so overwhelmed, it's not going to give you a bunch of things to do, it's going to answer yes or no, or very short answers. Because this information does not want you to get overwhelmed. It does not want you to turn away from it. It wants to make this transition into connecting with yourself instead of looking to the outside world for all your answers as easy as possible. A lot of us can get really frustrated with that. But if we can learn to trust back to that word of this episode, trust ourselves, trust our intuition and trust the one to two word answers, the small answers first, I promise these answers will start to get bigger. And you'll know when to start asking bigger questions that aren't just yes or no, you will start to intuitively ask longer answers, and you will intuitively hear the guidance you're supposed to receive. So I want you to start practicing that. Thinking back on my practice. What I realized now is I first did guided meditations only, and a lot of guided meditations will ask you to ask yourself a question. So you could start with guided meditations, then I moved to guided meditations followed by my own meditation. So I would start with like a 10 minute meditation. And then I would just stay in meditation. Once that meditation ended, I would take the headphones out. And just keep meditating and ask my own questions. At this point, I can drop into that state pretty quickly where I can get my intuitive guidance. And I listened to David grant bilateral beats a lot, because I find that that can be really soothing, or I just do it in silence. And I breathe, I drop into a slower state of mind, a state of mind where I can start to notice my thoughts rather than attached to my thoughts. And then I visualize a safe space. And then I usually invite in an angel or a spirit guide to talk to me because in my mind, I like to visualize conversations and I like to visualize my answers rather than hearing words, everybody's intuitive practice is different, you will find out what's best for you and how your body works, the more you practice this, so I offer that just as a little guidance of what I've done throughout the years. So creating a meditative practice is going to be really helpful for you. I don't always call it a meditative practice. And I call it asking yourself questions because I think the word meditation, people have ideas of what meditation is, and meditation is really whatever you make it but it's the idea of slowing your mind down, getting into a slower state of being and asking for guidance. So my meditation does not look like me sitting cross legged with my hands and mudras and just having a blank mind. That's not how my meditations are doesn't mean that that's wrong. People do that all the time. That's a great way to meditate. For me, my meditations are me dropping into that slower state. I'm usually sitting in bed or lying down, and I usually bring myself to a safe space and then I watch a movie that arises. So I can drop in a question and I watch my higher self and guides or angels Or people have cast on come in and help me work through an issue. So my meditation practice feels more like watching movies in my mind than it does a blank mind. So I offer that to anybody who struggles with meditation, and thinks it has to look a certain way, it does not have to look a certain way. And I will say, if you do guided meditations, they really do walk you through images and stories in your mind. And to me, meditation is all about slowing down your mind, and becoming aware of your thoughts. So you can become aware of your thoughts through images, or through silence or through just seeing the words, but it doesn't have to look the same for everyone. So just don't judge it so much. It's really just about slowing down. So that's, to me, a great practice to start is slowing down your mind and asking questions. And meditating, too. If you struggle with this, I think you should start a physical practice. So Yoga is a great way to slow down your mind. And you can ask yourself a question at the beginning of class. And oftentimes, by the end of class, your body will be more relaxed, you'll feel more slow that that answer will flow to you more easily. Because Yoga is a great way to become present. throughout a yoga class, you will find yourself becoming present because as you hold these poses, you have no other place to be, but this present moment and to sit with whatever arises. So this could be pain, this could be the feeling of strength, it's whatever arises for you, but yoga helps us to slow down. So if you have trouble sitting with yourself, I offer yoga as a great way to start connecting with yourself. Another practice, I think, is great for people who can't meditate is to start coloring. I think coloring is really meditative. Because it takes that mind that can't slow down and focuses on something. So that mind will focus on the coloring. And you will find that you start to slow down, and that you get out of that really high brainwaves are going and you'll becomes calmer and slower, and more intentional. And I think any creative practice can help with this, I think colorings a great one. But I think that if you intuitively dance, or if you start writing poetry for me, writing stories really helps me to feel connected and helps me to slow down. Once I get really into writing a scene or writing characters or writing a movie, I find that that flow state comes really easily and it's actually the place I feel most connected with something greater than myself. My spiritual practice really started with my creativity, because for me, my writing is not me, it's me connecting with something, and there's something greater than me flowing through me, for me to be able to create these worlds in these stories, there may be this grand idea, and it flows through my lens of life. So my life experiences affects the story. But it's something divine, it's something bigger than me that flows through me to allow me to write these stories. So if you don't have a creative practice, I think that that's another great way to start feeling connected to yourself. And you'll find that sometimes when you're in a flow state, you'll get the answer to something else that you had been so stressed about. But you had been blocking because you had been so resistant and so panicky about it. So like, Oh my god, I need this answer. I need this, that when you finally relax, which creativity, yoga, meditating, they all get us to relax. So if you're having trouble connecting with yourself, or you don't feel intuitive, relaxing, is a great way to start to get this guidance. It's all about getting calmer, getting these thoughts to slow down. We live in such a fast paced world, that it's so important to find practices that slow us down. So another thing I offer is creating a morning routine, starting to get intentional with your day, starting to connect with yourself in the mornings. So this only has to be five to 10 minutes, it can be in your bed, it can be out of bed, but find a way to get intentional and slow down. So morning routine could involve exercise. It can involve meditating, it could involve affirmations, it can involve you in a cup of coffee, sitting outside in nature, if you have a porch, if you have a backyard, just sitting there without your phone for like five to 10 minutes every morning. Just breathing just dropping into your body. Just asking yourself how you're feeling today. And just not grabbing that phone first thing in the morning, just allowing yourself that time to connect to yourself. And the last thing I'll offer today is that if you really struggle to connect with yourself, another practice you can use that I've used throughout, a lot of my life is connecting to your dream world. So people who are close to me know that I have really vivid dreams and I often get like, Oh, I wish my dreams were like that. And I've been thinking about it recently, and I've realized that this was a practice that was built. I didn't always have such vivid dreams. So if you've experienced a man's trauma, you'll find that you have nightmares and nightmares are a way for our body to release really strong emotions that we were not able to release at the time. So for me as a rape survivor, I have had nightmares that helped me to release the terror, the panic, the actual physical touches of what happened to me that I could not release in my awake life. Because these emotions were so overwhelming. But as I healed, my dream world would start to help me to release these stuck feelings, I was still in my body of immense terror, an immense panic. And I would write down all these dreams, I started with my nightmares. And then I just started writing down every dream. And I now realize that by writing down my dreams and analyzing my dreams, that's how my dream world has become so vivid. So for example, I had a dream the other night about a llama. And I'm walking up a hill with a llama. And I'm like, What is this dream mean? And instead of just being like, What a weird dream I woke up in the morning, I meditated on it, I googled what a llama was in dream world. And I got an answer of what that dream was trying to tell me. So if you have dreams, if you remember any of your dreams, I recommend writing them down, right when you wake up, and then really sitting with that dream or googling what those symbols mean, because the language of our soul and the language of our subconscious speaks in signs and symbols. So our dreams oftentimes feel like they don't make sense, or they seem so out there, or they seem bizarre, but it's really our body trying to talk to us. And the more you start looking up the symbols, you're like, Oh, my God, that's exactly what I'm working on right now. And you'll find that your dreams actually make sense. So if you struggle to connect with yourself, I recommend starting to pay attention to your dream world, it really is transformative, it's really helpful. And then the more you connect with your dreams, the more you write them down, the more you'll remember them. And the more you'll remember from them, I recommend giving that a try. And if that works for you, let me know I absolutely love dreams, it's been one of my most awakening ways to connect with myself, it's how my intuition can get to me information that I'm avoiding in my daily life. Like if I have a resistance, it comes through in a dream. But it's not always clear. But now that I write down my dreams, or I usually sit in the morning, if there's a really vivid dream that sticks out, I'll always meditate on it and see what it was trying to tell me. And I find that this is a great way to connect with myself. So I offer that to you as a practice as well. I think so many people discount the dream world. But it's eight hours a day, our subconscious is trying to communicate with us. So it's pretty powerful once you start to pay attention to it. So I hope one of these practices helps you there's lots of ways to connect with yourself. These are just a few I offer for somebody who's at the beginning and struggles to connect with themselves. If you have other favorite ways, please reach out. I'm always interested to learn how everybody connects with themselves. I just want to reiterate that we are all intuitive beings, we're all able to connect with ourselves, we can all be decisive, we all know what we want in every moment, we just have to start listening to ourselves. And the key to that is to find ways to slow down and relax. Because as I mentioned, this is a very fast paced society. So we can feel really disconnected from ourselves. our cell phones also disconnect us, they keep us from listening to ourselves.
So it's just about dropping in and relaxing, sending all my love.
Amanda Durocher (Listener Question) 38:00
Dear New View Advice. I've had a dream of starting my own business for a really long time. But I've been afraid to do it. It's way out of my comfort zone. And I don't know if it's the right thing to do. I've thought about doing this for a while, but it would involve me quitting my job and starting from scratch. This feels like the right time to do it. Because my current job is asking everyone to return to the office in September. And I really don't want to, I realized I'm so much happier working from home. And I'm thinking this may be the right time to finally follow my dream. But how do I know for sure? Is there any way to be completely sure before making such a big change? Thank you for this question. This is such a beautiful question. And though this question does with starting your own business, this is really a question that anybody who is making a major life decision can relate to so many times when we come to crossroads. So if it's starting a new business, trusting a new relationship, deciding if we want to retire, if we want to move to a new state or so many other life decisions that are made throughout our lives, we come to this point, how do we know for sure if this is the right choice for us? So many people will find themselves asking that question when they are presented with a big decision. And for you this is a big decision. Do you want to follow the stream and quit your job? Or do you want to go back to work and continue with the life you have? And as I always say, I don't know the answer for you. I want to help you connect with you. I know you know the answer. I have no doubt. And what I will say is that you will never be completely sure about the outcome. And that's what you're really asking. You're asking how will you be completely sure it'll work out how you think it should work out, and that you will never know. But what I can promise you that every leap of faith you take every change you make every time you leave your comfort zone, you will gain something new, you will gain some new knowledge you will gain new lessons and you will become a better version of yourself and how do I know that for sure. It's because when we take leaps of faith, it is when we make big changes is when we allow ourselves change in life is all about changing in life is short. So you could either stay in this job that I'm not sure you are enjoying. Or you could take a leap of faith on this. And again, if you decide to leave your job, you could also get a part time job. So you don't feel like you have no income. I don't know how much your savings is. But that's not really what this question is about. This question is about how do you know for sure, how do you trust that this is right for you, and how you trust is you ask yourself what you want. You ask yourself what your dream is, you ask yourself where you want to be in 510 years, and you look at that. And if it's owning this business, the only way you can materialize that dream is to take the risk and start the business. See only way, if you never started the dream will never come true. So that's the other thing. So many of us want to ensure that our dreams will manifest how we think they should. But can you trust that the journey is really what your soul is asking you to do? It may not be what you think. But your soul is asking you to take the journey, your soul is asking you to change your soul is asking you to take a leap of faith, it may not end up looking how you think it's going to look. But that's okay. That's part of life. If you're unhappy in your current life, you are responsible for changing it, you are responsible for showing up in a new way, you are responsible for doing something different. And so many of us when we have big changes, start asking everyone around us, what should I do? What do you think I should do? And sometimes this can help us become more clear on what we want to do by if somebody says something, we can say, Oh, that's definitely not what I want to do. But oftentimes, if we're not used to listening to our own guidance, this can just confuse us. So what you need to do is stop asking others, and ask yourself what you want the rest of your life to look like? Are you happy the way you are? Do you need this dream? Are you unhappy, and you need something to change? Because I promise that if you change something in your life, your life will have to change. And that's amazing. And it's a big growth opportunity. And it's a big time for you to do something different. We're humans, we're not meant to do the same thing for 50 years and have our days all look the same. We're meant to evolve and change and grow and travel. That's part of being human life short, enjoy the ride. And I mentioned this in my job episode, but I read this question I'm reminded a little bit of myself. So for me, I moved to LA when I was 25. To be an actress, I followed that guidance, I had no idea what I was doing. And then I moved to LA and I came across all these new fears and all these new limiting beliefs. And I had to through that journey, connect to my inner world, which led to my healing journey. And then also by acting that led me to screenwriting, which is my absolute love, screenwriting is the thing that I could not live without, it is the way that my love of life comes through onto the page. It is the way I work through things, it is the way that I feel the most joy in the most whole. And I never would have discovered that if I didn't take a leap of faith if I didn't pursue acting. So at 25 I thought I was gonna win an Oscar for acting when I moved to LA. And that was my human mind. But do I regret taking that journey?
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
