I grew up asking questions. Mostly, I grew up seeking opinions. I remember in my teens never making a decision unless I had canvassed the opinion of all my friends, male and female, to see which action I should take next. Should I go to this drama school? Should I smoke the weed? Is this skirt too short?
As I got older, you would think that the questions would lessen as I learned to tune in to my own inner answers. Yet I must have missed the memo on that, because it took me well into my thirties to really start listening to the only voice that mattered. My own.
How often do you ask others about what you should do? Who do you ask: your partner, best friend, sister? Your mother, father, kids even? It’s much easier in many ways to ask others rather than trust ourselves. We can then place the blame on someone else if things go wrong (subconsciously if not literally). We get to take less responsibility for our actions. And it takes less work. Less inner work anyway. Getting to the heart of our own truth requires processes that can be uncomfortable, tiring and full of complexities, especially if we haven’t traversed those waters before.
When we stop looking outside of ourselves for answers and turn inward, to our own inner wisdom and guidance system, we stop churning and burning our energy. We stop questioning what we think we believe but replace with others projections and opinions. We learn to find the calm in our self created chaos, to understand grace and ease. And we learn that whatever decisions we make, when they come from our core, our own inner knowing, that we will be just fine.
To have sovereignty as women, we need to be unto ourselves in all ways. We need to learn to get quiet. To ask the right questions of ourselves. We need to be able to hear the answers. And then trust our own guidance.
The first step is to catch yourself when you are seeking opinions. Catch it mid sentence, after the fact, or whilst the question is still forming in your brain. Then pause. What is it you are really seeking the answer to? If you sat with it for just a few moments, what answer would you come up with if you gave yourself the opportunity?
Sit with that. Feel into that. Over time you will learn that you really can trust yourself. And you can trust life that all is unfolding just as it should be. Relax into that knowing, and take rest there.
