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Aloha everybody!

I am here today to talk about the importance of trusting ourselves and our lives. This can be so difficult for some of us to do, and it has us feeling frazzled, unable to make decisions, and relying on others’ opinions and viewpoints.

However, when we rely on others to make our decisions for us, we begin answering our life questions with the answers from someone else’s life. It is like trying to fit a piece into a puzzle that doesn’t fit. We try and try to no avail. The piece simply was not made to fit into that puzzle.

This is what so many of us do in our lives. We are trying to fit pieces of ourselves into someone else’s puzzle. Or vice versa—fit someone else’s pieces (aka advice) into our puzzle. When we do this, it is like hitting a brick wall, and we feel even more dizzy and confused than when we first started trying to put the puzzle together!

I have been there. And I am still in this state of mind even now. This sense of not trusting ourselves and our intuition is so deeply programmed in us that it is hard to shake off the idea that we truly do know what is best for us.

It really is so simple when we think about it in this way. We have all of the answers to life’s great test within us. It is only a matter of being able to slow down, shut up, and listen to the whispering of our true selves.

I believe that this concept is so difficult for us to shake because it serves those who make a profit on supposedly having the answers to our life’s questions, or so they say they do.

When we look at advertisements on TV, the latest self-help books, or even our college professor, we see that they are trying to sell us something that will answer our deepest and most vulnerable questions to our lives. So we buy all their books, attend their seminars, and buy the latest products all in hopes of somehow figuring out how to put the pieces of our puzzle together.

But it never really works, does it?

They always seem to promise that it will, but somehow we still end up with pieces of our puzzle scattered all across the floor.

We are taught from a young age that there is always someone out there who knows more than we do. As kids, we are taught that logic is king and following our heart is meant only for a princess in a book.

We (especially us women) are taught that what we feel deep within the centers of being cannot be trusted. That it comes from a place of emotion and feeling, and in our patriarchal society, these are not things to be relied on.

I have always had a difficult time trusting myself and my life. From an early age, I was taught to listen to “adult figures” more than myself—because they knew more than I did. I was not taught to make decisions for myself or listen to the messages in between the beats of my heart.

If I were to make a decision, it was best that it could be backed up by logic, reason, or because everyone else was doing it (aka “that’s just the way it was done”).

This, of course, did not sit well with my little, rebel heart. Something inside me felt amiss. The longer I refused to listen to myself, the more chaotic my life seemed to get and the more unhappy I became.

It finally took me hitting rock bottom and breaking open for my true self to slip through the cracks of my conditioned being for me to hear her voice again.

So I began to listen to myself more. It was difficult at first, and I faced a great deal of backlash from people. (Know that this will probably start happening to you when you decide to finally live your life on your terms. People seem not to like it.)

I recall my parents thinking that the decisions I was making were “crazy” and “selfish.” I felt a lot of shame upon hearing these words, but I also felt a deep knowing within me that I was on the right path. Slowly, the puzzle was forming, piece by piece.

The more I began to listen to myself, the more my world opened up for me in ways that I could not imagine! Looking back now, I can see that when I listened to myself and agreed to pledge my loyalty to myself and my intuition, my life became so much easier.

I wasn’t constantly running about on the hamster wheel thinking “what if?” I did not experience as much confusion when making a decision, and instead, focused my awareness on my heart center instead of my head.

I am not saying here that we should throw logic to the wind. I feel that finding a healthy balance between the head and the heart can be transformative. It’s just that a great deal of us spend most of our time and decision-making in our head.

So the next time you are having difficulty with a decision or trusting that it will all work out, I call you to drop out of your head space for the time being. Take a walk and listen instead of trying to take action right away.

Your mind may be screaming alarm bells at you yelling, “We don’t have time for a stupid walk! We have to solve it right now!”

Being a sufferer of this mindset, I can confidently say, “There is always enough time!” Period. There is always enough time for you drop into your heart center and listen to the simple whispers of your soul. I promise you that it makes all the difference.

Listening to yourself and your intuition is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. Letting go, trusting, and knowing that everything you need to solve this grand, mysterious puzzle of life is already within you, waiting to be discovered.

You have all the tools you need within you. You have all the answers to your life’s questions. All you have to do is listen.

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