Hey there, It’s Jodi Hinkle from HerQuest, and congratulations on joining us. Somehow this course has fallen into your hands and that means you want to get back to what matters to you. We’ve all chosen to dedicate pieces of our lives to other people, jobs, and causes and have realized we lost track of ourselves somewhere along the way. It is simply time to pause and adjust how we invest in our own happiness. For some, this will be a whole new phase of life, perhaps even in a new place. For others, life around us doesn’t feel any different, but somehow, we do.
For me, there was a time I would have explained losing track of myself as having no choice but to overwork and neglect both myself and my family. But now that I stand in a different place, I hold a different perspective, and I see the world and the past in a very different light.
At first, I just wanted to stop feeling so disappointed. But when I was first trying to figure it out, I realized I couldn’t even answer the question “what do you want?” I felt so lost, unable to find the words to convey that I didn’t really know what I wanted anymore, which made me feel worse because it seemed no one understood me either. I felt so dumb. How could I not even know what I wanted in my life?
The thing is I had arrived at a place where I believed my happiness would come when I could control the circumstances of my world…. meaning, the people, the interactions, and the experiences that made up my life.
In an effort to control my world, I listened to everyone else instead of me. I constantly assessed what was “going on around me” instead of “within me”.
Whether it was work, relationships, and even friendships, without realizing it, I morphed myself into being whatever “just right” was to please the other people involved.
With years of practice, I got pretty good at looking like success on the outside, while I basically abandoned myself on the inside.
I medicated myself with anti-depressants, mood stabilizers. At times, I over-relied on alcohol. I fed myself emotionally with food and struggled with my weight for years.
Fast forward years later and the result was a sort of a walking death that came with feeling nothing. What I know now, that I didn’t know then, was that when I cut off my emotions, I cut off my source to my inner spirit and every one of the solutions that are within me.
I spent my life trying to figure it all out. What was I doing wrong? What could I do differently to get the life I wanted, the relationships I wanted, the job I wanted? And as soon as I thought I found it; my focus became how to not lose it.
No matter how I look at it today, it was an endless effort to control everything around me that I believed would bring me happiness.
Finally, I realized I was trapped by the thoughts whirling about in my mind. Thoughts that were built upon a lifetime of experiences. My beliefs so entrenched they influenced my entire perspective and interpretation of the world.
The truth is they kept me from believing I deserve to be happy and in retrospect, I can see that I had slowly given up believing I could have the life I wanted.
Today I live my life reaching for Freedom, Growth, and Joy and My promise to myself is to experience life in remarkable ways, by being present, by being awake and alive in every possible way for as long as I am here.
I claimed my freedom when I released myself from any dependency on other people to make me happy.
Most importantly, I choose to honor the depth of my emotions…Whether passion and enthusiasm or grief and fear. For now, I am aware that my emotions are the communication tool between my physical body, my inner spirit, and my powerful mind.
By understanding how to shift my perspective from emotionally reacting to outside circumstances, to realizing what my emotions are indicating to me, I access my own unique inner guidance to get and stay on track to what matters to me.
Many women, for one reason or another, shut off their emotions, ignoring them, even repelling them.
And it is my quest to create experiences that guide women on how to reacquaint themselves with what they have lost track of so that their lifelong desires can be fulfilled.
Ok, let’s get to it.
What if I told you I have one writing assignment that will uncover the ingredients that will infuse your life to move forward? What if you knew how to remove what is getting in your way of having the experiences you want in your life?
The relief that comes when you realize what you have been searching for, it floods your body and gives you a way to project yourself right into what is right for you.
Once you uncover what is hidden from plain sight right now, you will know precisely how to invite surprise, delight, intrigue, and curiosity back into your life.