My journey to choosing the life I want!
At the beginning of 2019, a dear friend asked me what happened 10 years ago that now, in 2019, I would be doing the opposite. In 2009, I came to Kenya to follow my ex-partner, it wasn’t really a choice per say, I was following the flow of life, as I had been doing my whole young adult life.
In this past 10 years, I have been learning to choose and stop "not choosing", basically from a stand of powerlessness to feeling and being in my power. It has been a realization that when I don't choose, I am still making a choice, but it is a powerless choice. I used to give away my power to people, life experiences, the past or the future. For a long time in my life I had felt a victim of what is happening to me, and felt powerless, depressed or numb.
Powerlessness is when you feel life is happening to you. You are basically a victim of your experiences. While there is a truth to it, because when you were a child, life did choose for you your experiences, once you are an adult, there is a moment one has to realize that they can be the leader of their own life and start choosing.
This realization didn’t come easy to me. My first realization was in 2010 when I read The Power of Intention by Wayne Dyer, which was my first “self-help” book read ever. I realized that I wasn’t aligning my thoughts, behaviours and actions to who I really was and what I really wanted in life.
One thing I had been sure about is that I wanted to guide people on their healing journey, as I had been practicing my psychic abilities since I was 18 years-old. In 2013, I then signed up for NLP and life coaching course by Marianne Verrijt in Nairobi. It blew my mind right away, I discovered I could change my beliefs about myself, from worthless to being worthy of love and the life I desired. That was the start of my journey, I kind of knew things would not come easy as I could feel I had many layers to work on, so I kept on working on myself. By the way, spoiler alert, one can never stop working on oneself!
Along the way, I have made very important life choices, getting married (which also meant I chose to stay permanently in Kenya), becoming a parent, quit a job that no longer felt right.
At the beginning of 2019, I still felt I had some layers to work on especially as I felt parts of me were resisting the change towards choosing the direction I wanted in life. I then decided to face every dark corner of my being. It has been hard work to face my shadows, but I wouldn't exchange the experience, I wouldn't go back to my old self.
This is what I have learned along the way:
Here are 7 tips to start choosing the life you want:
1. Stop blaming or judging others and yourself: that is not easy; you can start with practicing self-love, the famous: BE KIND TO YOURSELF
2. You don’t owe anything to anybody; this is an invitation to SAY NO: no to jobs, no to clients, no to friends or family; saying no to whatever doesn’t feel right or is not align with your vision of life.
3. Practice self-forgiveness: here is a nice podcast about it by Candice Wu
4. Acknowledge your body’s needs and treat it with care and still be kind to yourself always!
5. Be aware of your physical and emotional energy and choose consciously your daily/weekly schedule and the company you keep
6. Meditating and writing intentions and goals with the moon cycle
7. For any decision you make: take the time to feel it in your body and your heart: is it the right decision, are there parts of me that disagree? Is it serving my larger life vision?
They are all work in progress; I don’t master all of them all the time, but this is where I am aiming at most days. I have learnt to be kind to myself when I don’t tick all the boxes.
This article idea was totally triggered by Lulu Kitololo who asked in her Afri-love Women FB group about what is our biggest lesson in life! Thanks Lulu!
