Trusting My Inner Knowing

I recently started talking out loud about my hesitance to “declare” certain things out of fear. My intention is to release this, but of course, now that I’ve put all this attention on it, I can see just how deeply it runs. Sometime in December, we did an Away With Words The Podcast episode that was all about our intentions for 2021. The very first thing I said was that I am setting my intentions on specificity. By this time, I’d already spoken to my therapist about this, and in retrospect, even before us talking about it, I can remember all the small and gentle ways she’s been nudging me to clearly state what I want and need. 

For as long as I can remember, my “cool girl” has been highly activated. The “cool girl” has no specific needs, no complaints, no adjustments to be made. She just goes with the flow. Going with the flow used to sound so great to me. I thought it made me the best kind of person to be around because you could, essentially, always get what you wanted as I “didn’t care either way”. I can see now how that’s not played itself out to my benefit, in the long run. The ways that this has shown up in my life is proof of how everything happens in its due time. In divine time. 

I can remember as early as my first few sessions (I’ve been in therapy nearly 3 years now) cracking that egg wide open. We’d discussed how I developed this habit and pattern of being okay with “anything”, because I was afraid that if I said I wanted something, and was let down, that it would be even worse than simply not having what I wanted. Like most patterns that we find hardest to break, this had to have been a response that I came up with as a child. At some point, I wanted something, I didn’t get it, and it hurt. So much that I decided that it’d be best, and safest, to never say I wanted anything. Just be happy with what you have, I’d tell myself. 

Respectfully, I am here to say fuck that. While I appreciate that version of me filling the gap in a way that I needed then; I appreciate my need to keep myself what I thought was safe. This version of me, however, knows better now. As for the divine time piece, it took me to this moment in my life for it all to click and start to fall into practice. 

More than releasing the fear of being let down, I am also deeply learning to trust myself. My inner guidance. My intuition. My ultimate knowing. We all have it. We’re all born with this inner knowing, and overtime, through life, schooling, and learning to socialize through society’s standards, we unlearn our inward listening. We override our hearts with our minds, and our minds are much more cluttered, just from us living life. 

So, I’m setting my intentions on trusting. The thing about trust, is that it’s deeper than trusting that the decision is the “right” one. It’s about trusting that even if it isn’t, the journey it takes us on is always for our highest good. Everything is happening exactly as it should, and spaces that end up not being “right”, end up being the space for some of our greatest learnings. 

The trick, I believe, is to just decide. To know that nothing in me is intent upon steering me wrong, so I can choose whatever comes up for me, for the sake of resisting inactivity. We spend so much of that “deciding” time, just being inactive. I’m also trusting that I can declare and manifest, and decide once I get there if that’s where I want to stay. How would I know otherwise? 

So, as for me, I am releasing fear. I am releasing the inactivity that comes with deciding. I am releasing the ways I’ve silenced myself and my needs to appear more reasonable. I am leaning in. I am trusting that no one knows how to guide me like I do.