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The best thing we can do for ourselves is to be true to ourselves.
To listen to ourselves.
To move with what feels right to us.
This movement, this decision, this feeling isn’t always obvious or clear. There may be times when we’re unsure—when we can’t really tell how we feel. When we may be feeling or thinking many things at once.
We may have many thoughts, many feelings, many beliefs circulating through us—consciously and subconsciously. Some may conflict; they may even directly contradict one another.
This conflict is born from layers of thoughts, opinions, and beliefs that stem from conditioning—ideas that have been externally imposed on us. Things we don’t know why we think, feel, or believe. Ideals we never consciously decided to align ourselves with.
These differing thoughts and beliefs begin to clash inside of us—especially when we become aware that something deeper within us doesn’t align with them. When we understand that the deeper feeling within us doesn’t resonate with them.
These unseen, unknown conditioned beliefs are determining how we move in the world, and they can be so subtle, so deep, that they feel like they’re our own. We believe that we believe what we believe—but do we? Are our beliefs really our own?
They may feel like our own—our own thoughts, feelings, opinions, beliefs, ideals.
But are they ours? Are they really?
Did we choose to believe them? Do we want to align ourselves with them?
How do we know what is true for us? How do we know what our deepest truth is?
We can feel it.
We can feel it.
What is our deepest feeling? How do we truly feel?
It can take time, at times, to discern—to figure this out. We may have to sit and feel and allow thoughts to linger and wander and move and flow.
But when we can feel what’s right—it’s a clear feeling. A softness. An inner knowing. A peace.
Even if this knowing also makes us feel uncomfortable—or fearful—because it contradicts a belief we believe we’re supposed to believe, an ideal we’ve unknowingly been taught we should meet.
If our decision, if what we know is right for us, contradicts those externally imposed layers, we may feel uncomfortable. Tentative. Fearful. Anxious. In the sense that we know we are choosing something that goes against what we’ve somehow come to believe we should feel or do.
We may feel this discomfort even if we also know that it’s right.
We will feel the discomfort—and also the deeper feeling of our truth.
And we can choose our truth.
We have to learn how to come back to ourselves, to our inner feeling of what’s right.
But we have to choose it. Move with it. Decide to hold it and stay true to it.
If we’re moving and choosing and deciding based on our own inner alignment—based on what feels true and right to us—then it is right.
The best thing we can do for ourselves (and others) is to be true to ourselves. To do what feels right to us.
This can be a practice. A way of tuning in. Coming back to ourselves.
Our true selves.
Rediscovering who we are beneath the layers of beliefs and opinions—conditioning—we never consciously chose to take on.
And if we move with what feels right, even if it’s uncomfortable, even if others are unhappy with us, even if we know we will be judged for it, we will still feel a deeper peace—because we’re choosing ourselves, staying true to ourselves.
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AUTHOR: LISA ERICKSON
IMAGE: OH_LONG_LESLIE/INSTAGRAM
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