5 lessons on trusting your inner knowing
 
 
post + photo by Jamie Schumann
 
 
 

Many of us are on the journey back home to ourselves. Back to alignment. Where our body and mind catches up with the will of our soul. 

We’ve been struggling for so long. Getting buried in the hustle without the flow

Getting burned and burnt out. Sometimes by our own Fire

But there is one thing many of us know among the resistance to quit and the need to keep our inner flame lit without compromise. 

Your inner knowing is speaking to you. And listening to it is imperative.

Your inner knowing is also your House of Personal Power where your solar plexus chakra resides. It’s telling you every moment of every day how and when to proceed. That giving something up or surrendering doesn’t have to be the ultimate sacrifice. That pausing when needed is most utterly important in these times. 

But how many of us are actually listening to our gut let alone trusting to follow through on it? Here are my greatest lessons on replay, when it comes to listening and trusting your House of Personal Power. 

Learning happens in cycles - not lines

Can you remember the last time you learned an activity? Maybe you had to practice it until you could feel confident in your performance. Maybe you picked it up naturally - but still needed to practice to reassure yourself of the confidence you have.

Everything happens in cycles. 

Our days, weeks and years happen in cycles. Nature shifts in cycles. Even our everyday routines are cycles. Cycles are meant to key our insides to know when to do something and when not to. Think about it. You wouldn’t start brushing your teeth in the middle of a meeting, would you? Most likely not. Not just because it seems silly or illogical, but because there is a routine (or cycle) for that. 

As we learn and grow - a very natural thing for us souls living a human experience - we must embrace the cycles that our learning and healing happen in, embrace the you of now.

What is it that you are learning about yourself right now? What’s speaking inside of you as you read this?Take note of that. Then build off of it. Even if it’s just accepting yourself in this moment.

Last year - I felt called to heal myself and I knew the path I was on was one that was not preservable. I took a step back and started inspecting my foundation. I started asking myself what didn’t feel aligned, why, and what needed to change. I had all the answers inside, but once I started learning about those answers I began a journey to restore myself that I had no idea would lead me to where I am today. I had to say goodbye to fear and speculation and start affirming myself that I had all the answers, even if they didn’t make sense at the time.

I remember taking a deep dive into self-care. I learned what it really meant to me and re-defined it as self-restoration. I focused on the obvious things : taking bubble baths, self-compassion, exercise, food, positive affirmations, learning the Tarot and reoccurring breaks from things that hurt me. 

A year later, I find myself in more self-awareness, a gentler understanding of my patterns and barriers and a deeper connection with the tools that are empowering me through my experiences. But to my own surprise,  in no means did I actually pour my foundation with those practices I started. My journey started in a bubble bath but then i dove into an ocean and created multiple pathways to gain deeper meaning in what self-restoration really means to me.  I am learning how to engage on a level that honors my body and mind through what my soul already knows. And my seasons and cycles with it. Today, many of the tools I use now are different or they’ve evolved. The practices I am engaging in now have a slower, steady, more practical yet magical approach. That’s the foundation. There is no way I would be where I am at in my own restorative practice had I not realized that and surrendered to it’s inevitable cycle inside of me.

When it comes to the things we cannot see but can only feel - the need to witness an outcome becomes a significant weight on our experience. Often, we are impatient with the learning of others and the learning that happens within ourselves. We want to see evidence that we are making gains, because what is it all for anyway. Right? We’ve become so obsessed about witnessing gains that we’ve bypassed witnessing our patterns. We are so obsessed with gains that we are willing to outsource our own personal power to the things around us. This can mean validation from another that we are on the right track, or it can lead to something more self deprecating, the comparison trap. Surrendering to cycles is highly important and highly inevitable. 

Stay in your lane

Staying in your own lane requires two things : navigating the comparison trap and letting others complete their journey the way they are meant to. 

The comparison trap. Can you think of a time when you noticed the people around you? What they were saying, doing, how they were behaving? Can you think of a time when it didn’t influence in you some way or provoke a feeling you felt? The comparison trap can be subtle but it can also roar inside of you and threaten to rip you to shreds. As empaths/intuitive beings we feel/hear/see/and even think a lot of things that are not actually generated by us. This isn’t because we don’t have our own identities. It is because we are energetic beings who are aware and in tune to the energy generated around us. This is why staying in your own lane is crucial to hearing and following through on your own intuition. And of course, protect your energy!

We often tell ourselves stories about ourselves everyday that work against us without even realizing it. The fear, the self-doubt, the things that we’ve internalized because of past hurts and experiences that manifest in the present. Tell yourself a new story about yourself every morning and every night. Make it a positive one, a nurturing one, a healing one - whatever you need! Because humanity needs you to treat yourself the way you’d treat your best friend, companion animal or plant. When we do this for ourselves, it creates a ripple effect that reaches timelines we don’t even know about. When we do this for ourselves, we do it for others as well. 

Staying in your own lane also requires kindness, caring and compassion. Not only for yourself but for others too. When we pick up on the needs of others so loudly it can be difficult to assess if help is wanted or not. I’m not talking about the obvious times - a person in need of directions, a situation where you have knowledge and power to share with someone who might not. I’m talking about a deep soul knowing level. You FEEL someone struggling deep inside and feel the NEED to help them.  The times when your intuition is so strong you can see solutions to issues people don’t even know they have yet. And WE ALL HAVE THESE. But here’s the thing - by letting others be and not interfering or proposing/imposing questions or ideas on them you are actually doing your do diligence as a helper and an Empath/Intuitive. By not interfering unless you are given consent to, you actually energetically set the president that the other party is in fact very capable of the growth you see in their potential. 

Everyone is on their own path in this life. We might be on parallel journeys, we will and do have reasons such as fate as to who shows up in our life when and how, knowing in hindsight it was only meant to happen to help you on your journey and them on theirs. If we defer to the notion that learning and growing happens in cycles then there is no leader, no end point, no prize. Only our own karmic completion. In order for this to happen, you have to stay in your own lane. Because when you commit to being in your own lane then you are sending signals to your body, brain and soul that you are committing to your inner knowing - that’s when trust soon follows

Connecting it all back to yourself is key

One thing that I have found incredibly helpful to staying in my own lane is connecting things back to myself. Have you ever said something out of anger and realized it was not about the situation at hand? Have you ever witnessed someone’s response and felt a negative feeling about it that just lingers in your body and it stays on your mind? The greatest gift you can give yourself is to ask “Why is this impacting me in this way?”. You are your greatest resource when it comes to learning your own lessons. This is true when it comes to understanding your own intuition and personal power. 

I just sat through a presentation at my day job where the presenter indicated that “Positive work events are 3 to 5x more frequent than negative events, but negative events have 5 to 10x the impact on mood.” (Miner, Glomb, Hulin, 2005). You don’t need research to tell you that we tend to focus on the negative more than the positive.

What is important to me is not just focusing on the positive - it’s asking myself why I am focusing my energy so intently on the negative. In this process we level ourselves up to understanding our own individual shadows and allow ourselves to take personal responsibility for the lessons we need to learn. 

Last year during a free trial of the channel Gaia I watched an episode of James Van Praagh’s show “Spirit Talk”. It was an episode that left me with a profound turn of perspective on my own consciousness. At that time, I was dealing with someone in my life that just kept pissing me off. They were constantly reacting to me when I spoke my truth. One time in a group setting they rolled their eyes at me. I kept latching on to the anger I was feeling about it. That they could just roll their eyes at me and walk away without really addressing what was bothering them beneath the surface. 

But then I realized it didn’t matter. Because it’s not my soul’s mission to convince someone that my truth is real. The Praagh quote that shifted this for me is this : “How other people treat you is their karma. How you react is yours.” When I heard this, it all made sense. A better way to spend my energy is to focus on my own reactions versus trying to heal their reaction to me. A much more empowering approach that led me to trust my intuition even further. I used to seek approval from others by giving and giving and giving to bucket they never even opened the lid to. From this realization and practice I’ve felt more self-confidence and self-worth than ever before. 

Boundaries are non-negotiable

Boundaries. You’ve probably heard of this term before. When I first started working on boundaries it was mainly with other people. My birth chart reveals that the air sign of Libra is in my south lunar node which means the fire sign of Aries is in my north lunar node. The north node is who you are meant to become and the south node exposes characteristics you need to move beyond. For me it’s the give and take part of Libra. It’s mastering relationships. Always giving and giving and giving and never taking or being open to receiving in return. From the moment I was born I was meant to learn how to experience life on my own terms. To balance the scales inside of myself. 

This meant for me to really consider and place into practice physical, emotional, and mental limits on what I can and cannot give to those around me. 

Boundaries don’t just apply to people. Maybe we need boundaries with the negative thoughts we tell ourselves, maybe we need to stop eating sugar because we know it causes issues with sleep, addiction and health, or maybe we need to cut our cable from our TV because we’re suddenly aware that we prefer to numb ourselves out with a safe and accessible escape versus dealing with our current state of emotions or what we are experiencing.  

These are all examples of boundaries I’ve had to set for myself. But YOU get to choose your boundaries. 

These are things that you know need to be non-negotiable. You know that if you don’t cut the bullshit out you are only setting yourself up for playing small in your growth and potential. 

I now see boundaries as a resource. They are not always cut and dry. They can be like water, fluid +  flexible depending on the container you need. But the most important thing is that you always trust what you intend to set for yourself when it comes to boundaries. Because boundary setting can be a really helpful way to develop and trust your intuition and flex that House of Personal Power. 

You have to pull your heart energy into it

I recently read through information shared by HeartMath LLC, that the human heart contains roughly 40,000 neural cells. Can you believe it!? Your heart contains a brain! These neurons can feel, learn and remember. Scientists were sure up until the 90’s that only the cranial brain sent commands but current research demonstrates that the heart acts independently of the cranial brain and also sends information. 

I know you’ve heard the saying, “follow your heart”. For a lot of us following our heart might not feel that easy. There will be personal limitations or limiting beliefs our head puts on our heart’s desires. It might also just feel really overwhelming for us to follow our heart. If there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that this is easier said than done. There may be systemic barriers, patterned subconscious programming from a young age, or even trauma that we could need to work through in order for us to feel safe and secure enough to follow our heart. 

That is why tuning into your heart center (your heart chakra - House of Love + Forgiveness) is so vital in finding resonance with your personal power. Think of the last time you went through a difficult time where you knew you had to make a change. Be it a career change, a relationship change, or any other overwhelming change.

If you obey your heart’s desire, you can work through whatever limiting beliefs or barriers you are presented with to make it work. It might not be easy and it might work out differently than you expect it to but you can be sure that when you pull that solar plexus fire into your heart’s desire, action and authenticity will follow. This you can trust. Because as intuitive beings, we know what we want, what we need and how to get it. Even if we feel like we don’t, if we sit with the emotion and recognize it’s feeling without believing the self-limiting narratives we tell ourselves, we are sure to succeed. Because the universe does not want you to fail. The universe wants you to succeed. 

Be gentle to yourself as you move through these growing pains and witness your shadows. We were not handed tools or manuals to work through these things from birth. Witness your shadows, hold the space they need, invite them to play. They are a very beautiful part of who you were born to be and help you to understand who you want to become. 

My darlings -

Keep planting,

- Jamie

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