Shifting the narrative, honoring your trauma and struggle, creating a life you desire and trusting yourself because you know you are enough, whole, and worthy just as you are is the key to stepping out of survival mode.

Moving away from people pleasing and into pleasing yourself. Instead of dimming your light, shine bright and unapologetically. Be seen. Be heard. Know you’re worth it. Your unique experience brings something beautiful to our universe.

Just think, the God/Source/Universe that created the mountains and the oceans decided the world needed one of you, too. This is important and profound. Anchor into that goodness and magic.

One way to shift out of survival mode and exhaustion is by listening to your emotions. Our emotions and feelings are the navigational system of our soul and life’s purpose. Our four bodies – spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional bodies are equal parts of the wheel of life.

We have been taught that feelings are a weakness and vulnerability has no place in our lives… when actually it is the foundation for living an authentic life.

Posted in the comments is one of top 5 viewed TedTalks. Brenè Brown talks about the power of vulnerability and honoring your feelings and trusting your gut. She is a renowned author, researcher, and gift to humankind.

For example, anger tells you where a boundary is and has been crossed. A boundary is the space at which I can love and respect both myself and you simultaneously. Exhaustion often stems from being selfless and operating from wounds and a belief that you’re not worthy and you spend so much energy trying to prove your worth.

A boundary is rooted in a belief. Beliefs can be kept, exchanged or returned. Believing you have to hustle for your worth – that’s a societal belief ingrained in us from a very early age and needs to be exchanged. Believing that freedom, alignment, rest, and flow are important for a sustainable existence and that you are enough as you are right now is key to relieving some of the exhaustion.

If you grant yourself the permission to fill your cup up, when anger is activated, you have the power to pause and respond to the situation. Make a choice rooted in heart and soul. Survival mode requires reacting and cleaning up the mess later (which for me is usually filled with regret of using hurtful words or beating someone down with my pain so they can share it). So. Exhausting.

Sustainability was the word of the year for me in 2019. Does this experience deplete me or fill me up? Am I saying yes to someone else and saying no to myself? Does this being me closer to how I want to feel or further away? Chaos and survival is the coffee that I drank for years and I became aware of how unhealthy and depressing it was.

Empower yourself. Listen to your trauma and your wounds. Process the hurt and pain. Don’t relive it, but witness it, observe it, learn from it. Call back the part of yourself that was voted off in order to survive.

For me, I voted away my feelings, desires, and absorbed discomfort and pain from others because I thought that was what love is. It was my experience, in order to be worthy of love, I must make their pain less and take the blame and shame for it all. That belief system is toxic, draining, and based on unhealthy co-dependency.

In 2018, my therapist said to me – during an unraveling – that my thoughts, feelings, and experiences as a human mattered. It was the first time in my life that I heard something of that nature and was seen – in my wholeness, messiness, and chaos – that despite my humanness I was worthy and loveable.

I was 30 years old.

It took me 31 years to live that truth. In October I will be 33. The past two years of my life has been riding the waves of life while consciously creating my heart’s desire. I am energized. Excited. Ready for the ebbs and flows. (I focus on the progress, not perfection of it all because there are days where I slide back into old reactions and comfort…I notice that I don’t stay there long).

That skill of trusting myself and honoring my boundaries is something that needs to be exercised daily. Teaching the world how to treat you is not something we are taught but so dearly need.

It is uncomfortable. I piss people off. People think that I am conceited and angry when I establish boundaries. They raise their armor and try to deflect their pain and discomfort. At times I take on the shame and blame, but most often, I politely and firmly decline to enable their co-dependency and toxicity.

I have lost many relationships. Ones I thought I couldn’t survive without. But I realized that the most important relationship in life is the one I have with myself and that is no longer negotiable.