The Art Of Actually Listening To Your Heart

I am on fire.

My soul burns to explore and yearns to breathe air in places I’ve never been.

I feel the call of my curiosity deep within my soul and I ache to investigate these parts of me I haven’t yet explored.

Lately, I’ve been feeling trapped in my day to day. I know what time I need to set my alarm for the morning and I know what I’ll be having for lunch every day the coming week…and for a time this routine was so satisfying, comforting even. Then it got stagnant. I found myself forcing my smile and going out of my way for people that I really wasn’t invested in.

My heart was missing from my day to day and with that I realized I was missing myself.

I think we all have times or moments like this, where we suddenly have this feeling of watching ourselves from the outside going through the motions and it’s almost as if our soul or spirit is waving madly at us from the sideline screaming, “Hello!!! I’m right here!! Play with me!! Can’t you see how tired you are of living like this!” and we shrug it off and wave it away and continue as if everything is ok, when really bubbling under the surface is this untamable desire for something more. What that ‘more’ is I have no idea, I just know it’s something bigger, much bigger than what I am currently doing.

This happened to me for some time, my soul continuing to almost mock me from the sideline of my life. It was getting louder, and louder until one day I had no choice but to turn and yell back, but found myself listening instead.

Listening to my heart.
Listening to my soul.
Listening to myself.

I think we are all called. We all have this feeling in the bottom of our bellies that can surface when we get comfortable for too long. I’ve come to realize that it’s because my guiding intuition at the heart of who I am knows that I don’t grow when I stay stagnant. I don’t grow when I am comfortable and I certainly don’t grow when my heart isn’t present in my day-to-day life. The call is a call to make change. I couldn’t honestly look at my life and happily continue living it this way every day for the rest of my existence; this was how I knew I had to make a change.

In this transition of mindset, I also had a realization I think I’ve needed to have for an incredibly long time, and that is that it’s ok to not be ok. I think as a society we so often feel we have to put up the mask or the barrier or the protection shield to hide what we are truly thinking or feeling. And you can lie to the world for as long as you want, but you can only lie to yourself for so long.

The cool thing about our souls is that they don’t give up on us, no matter how consistently we lie to ourselves, no matter how persistent our denial, no matter how long we continue being content with comfortable, they’ll be there, screaming on the sideline, with relentless energy, until we listen.

When I finally turned back to myself I was embraced like a warm cup of tea and my favorite pair of socks at the end of a long week as I finally arrived home. I’m not talking about my home as in the house I live in; my home is my physical and spiritual being. Although I had been walking around in it, having conversations in it, going about my day to day, I wasn’t home. Being reunited with the truth of who I am was one of the scariest things I have done in a long time, it was like going on a first date with myself. I learnt a lot about myself in that first date, and these things will inherently change the next chapter of my life. I learnt that I undervalue myself and let people walk all over me. I learnt that I have something to offer the world and I need to start using my gifts. I learnt that freedom was one of my highest values and I’d been feeling caged. So I decided to set myself free. Instead of letting society or expectations of others dictate my course, I would listen, to myself, to the call.

It is in this moment that we realize we aren’t lost; we’ve only lost touch. With who we are, with the essence of our being. Listen to that crazy part of you waving on the sideline and stop lying to yourself; answer the call of your soul.

My entire being aches for the next adventure and I am answering the song of my curiosity and following it with my whole heart.