Growing up, you took in millions of messages about the kind of person & parent you were supposed to be. These messages would’ve primarily revolved around your external appearance & behaviors, and likely came in the form of rules and definitions.

• Success means doing these jobs and making this amount of money.

• If you have these genitals, you’re supposed to do this for a living.

• Your body is supposed to look like this in order for you to be attractive.

• Showing your emotions means this about you. Not showing your emotions means this.

• A good parent does this, and this, and this. And never does this or that.

• When a parent is a good parent, you can tell because their child behaves like this and not that.

[I’ve left the rules & definitions ambiguous, because each person will have their own special flavors of what means what based on their upbringing.]

Trying to live your life according to these myriad and often conflicting rules can feel overwhelming, disappointing, and frustrating. You go about making choices which you think will bring you the fulfillment you’re seeking, yet the distance between you and fulfillment remains.

You often find yourself stuck between wanting to make the right decision and fearing making the wrong one.

But... what if there is no such thing as an objectively right or wrong decision?

When you clarify what you have going on inside of you by identifying the difference between your Self and your conditioning, you create space to connect with your inner truth and make decisions that are aligned for you.

Sometimes, those decisions may look like the decisions you were told you should make, but because you’re making them from a place of inner clarity, your internal experience will feel more grounded and peaceful.

And other times, those decisions may not match up with conditioned & societal norms! Over time, you’ll find that the more you follow your own clarity, the more you’ll also cultivate your confidence to continue pursuing your own energetic alignment (instead of trying to avoid everyone else’s potential judgment).

While, of course, you won’t divorce yourself from your decades-old patterns of belief & behavior overnight, deciding to attend to your inner world will provide you with many opportunities to integrate your awareness on a daily basis, which moves you in the direction of feeling more and more alignment starting now.