True Listening

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“Don’t die with your music still inside you. Listen to your intuitive inner voice and find what passion stirs your soul.”
– Wayne Dyer

Learning to truly listen to yourself is the key to living a spiritual and purposeful life. Cultivating the skill of deep listening with mindfulness will improve the quality of your relationships. But first, you must learn to listen to yourself.

With the spiritual practice of deep inner listening, you’ll develop heightened sensitivity of your body and soul. Over time you will learn and understand how they communicate to you. True, inner listening is a spiritual practice requiring dedication, compassion and awareness helping you move towards maturity and enlightenment.

True listening is hearing your heart and soul speaking to you, not the intellectual mind. This sacred voice are whispers of love and wisdom always knowing the truth about you. You won’t hear a loud booming voice or a neon sign, but instead a gentle, blowing sound.

The voice of your true self is a voice you can trust. Your soul wants what’s best for you and nothing less. It knows every part of your being and the desires of your heart to guide you on the right path. To listen, feel the vibration emanating from your heart and breathe deeply to become intimately connected to it.

When you have a burning question on your heart rolling around in your head, look within instead of the outside world. You’ll feel deep in the bones of your body and soul the answers to the questions you are seeking.

Don’t intellectualize, overthink, overanalyze or disregard what you receive. Feel the gentle nudges tugging at your gut allowing the truth to come forward. Invite your inner wisdom with open arms to embrace the truth being told with awareness, gratitude and compassion.

Listen to what your life is saying to you. When you do, you’ll realize your life has been speaking to you all along. You’ll see a pattern of certain desires that never go away. They keep popping up over and over again like a kid vying for your attention.

Most of the time these desires have been there since your childhood waiting for your undivided attention. The voice of your true self never dies or goes away. You only choose to ignore it or suppress the truth.

Once you start listening to you and become accustomed to it, you’ll learn to trust yourself. You’ll understand you have everything you need right now to be who you are.

To hear your soul speak, you must remove all distractions. Internet, news, social media, and well-meaning family and friends who think they know how you should live your life. It doesn’t matter whether the information or intent is good or bad.

This information is problematic because it distracts you from hearing your inner truth. Why do you need approval or validation from others when you know what’s true? You don’t because your path will be different from someone else’s path. If you don’t listen to you, you’ll end up living someone else’s story.

To listen to you, create a quiet space every day for just a few minutes. It could be a walk outside, turning the radio off in the car, or sitting in silence for five minutes before your family wakes up. The more comfortable you feel being alone in silence, the easier it gets to hear you. But to hear you, you must show up with presence and open awareness every day.

Sometimes when sitting in silence, your ego overpowers your soul speaking to you. If you allow it, the ego can control and dominant your mind preventing inner wisdom from coming through. When this happens, stop and be present. With awareness don’t judge or condemn these thoughts. Allow them to pass through with mindfulness and compassion.

By allowing it to pass, it will dissolve naturally. If you engage in the dialogue, you’ll give it power making it stronger. Acting like a counselor attentively listening to clients speak, give your ego the space to lament so it can be free.

When you start listening to you, you’ll begin to start really living your life creating miracles for yourself. Opportunities, people and events will open as you align with your true self working with the Divine. You’ll receive guidance and direction as you experience the fullness of life being true to yourself. Whether you are on or off track, you’ll see it and feel it giving you the chance to adjust accordingly.

Listen to you and hear the whispers of truth and inner wisdom deep in your core.  Feel it, own it and live it to be one with your mind, body and soul and live a life with purpose, magic and joy.

Photo by Miguel Bruna on Unsplash

The Power of Perseverance

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“With ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable.”
– Thomas Foxwell Buxton

Anything worth achieving is going to be hard. No doubt. To accomplish a goal that lights you up inside, requires hard work, dedication, practice, blood, sweat, tears, pain, sacrifice and perseverance. There’s no magic pill or fast track path to reach a significant goal. But the power of perseverance is key to making your dream a living, breathing reality.

It was a challenge earning all my black belts. My martial arts journey has been filled with setbacks, failures and disappointments. But with each setback and every obstacle, I got back on the mat and tried again and again. Every trophy, belt, technique and skill earned was the result of years of hard work, drive, determination and unwavering commitment no matter how hard the journey became.

All the pain, exhausting work and hard training was worth it to make my dreams come true. To keep going when times were tough built courage, optimism and resilience. Imagine if I gave up the first time I failed or come across an obstacle? Had I not persevered, I would not be the black belt I am today.

If you have a dream or a desire you want to achieve, let it inspire you and never give up. Ever. It’s vital to success. There will be times you’ll want to drop everything and say, “Forget it!”. But you must keep going forward and not back down. If you need to take a break, take a break. Go ahead and rest your weary soul. After you recover, get back up and go.

You’ll always regret quitting but never regret trying. Trying leads you somewhere. It may not be what you originally intended or visualized but it will lead you to a new destination. If you quit, you’ll end up nowhere with disappointment and lack of self-worth to gain.

Perseverance builds character to overcome adversity, deepens your integrity, develops humility, empowers your life and creates fierce, inner strength. By staying on your path, you’ll tap into your unlimited potential for greatness you never thought was possible.

When your path becomes challenging, and it will, lean into it. Embrace it. Accept it. Allow the joy and inspiration from your dream fuel your perseverance to carry you through. When you reach the peak of frustration, doubt and discouragement, know your breakthrough is on the other side.

Believe in yourself even when the odds are stacked up against you. The more you believe and trust, the more the odds will fall away. Be strong, diligent and focused on your mission under all conditions. Take it step by step, day by day, moment by moment. With each small step forward, you’ll get closer to your goal while staying in the game.

Perseverance means ignoring the naysayers, toxic people or well-intentioned family and friends who don’t agree with your path. Listen to yourself and no one else. You know what’s best for you and know what’s needs to be done to fulfill your goals and dreams. Don’t succumb to what others think and say but surrender to what you believe following the calling of your heart.

To fulfill a dream that drives you, inspires you and propels you forward with joy and passion requires perseverance. The power of perseverance is the key to success and putting your destiny in your own hands. Keep on keeping on to make all your dreams come true.

Photo by Xan Griffin on Unsplash