How It Started For Me

I wanted this first post to be special, so I though, I would share how my own journey began and how everything started to shift in my life.

I believe that maybe this way you can understand the purpose of this blog and why I’m doing it.

As I was self-reflecting, and looking back, after some time doing the work, thinking about how everything started for me. I can say that it all started with AWARENESS. What I call the starting point of anyone that wants to create a change in their lives.

So that’s where I wanted to start. When I realized what was happening in my life and how my healing journey started to become a reality.

The moment some people like to call “the epiphany moment” was for me in the year 2018, at 5am in the morning. I was not able to sleep any longer. I usually need 7 to 8 hours of sleep to function well during the day, but I was sleeping 5 or less. So I found myself in the balcony of my home back in Caracas, Venezuela drinking a coffee and just staring at the view (the one from the picture). My beautiful Ávila, as a wave of questions started to fill up my thoughts, there was clearly a lot going on in my head.

And I can close my eyes and picture the moment so vividly because it truly felt like someone put a pair of glasses in my eyes and I started to see things for the first time. I realized that there was this voice inside of me begging to be listened. And it was in that moment that I knew I needed to wake up. Something needed to change and I needed to do something for myself.

I had been in a relationship for almost 10 years at that time and it was exactly then, where I felt something was OFF. I think I had this feeling for a very long time, but I was ignoring it.

I started to feel it on my body. I was feeling unease, unsettled, unfulfilled, exhausted, drained. Only when I started to listen, is when I understood that I was putting myself last on everything, living life as everyone else wanted me to, and always following society standards, making sure I was THE perfect girl.

All of a sudden, none of it made sense to me anymore. I remember asking myself, is this how life should feel? I started to ask myself questions that I didn’t dare to ask before and being honest…questions I didn’t have an answer to. What do I want? What do I like? Is this really what you want to do? My answer was always the same…I don’t know! All of it became one big question mark.

When you want to make everyone else happy, to avoid conflict, is so easy to leave your identity behind and simply execute as others please. I lost myself to the point of not even knowing what I wanted anymore.

In that moment I knew I could no longer bear what I was feeling. The fact that these questions came up said a lot to me. It was enough to understand that there was some discomfort. It was affecting my wellbeing, sleeping less hours, and a heavy feeling overall. I was immensely sad on the inside and it felt like my body was giving me the signs so that I could start paying attention. I felt I needed to reconnect with myself, with my voice. I had no idea how I was going to do it but I made the decision to try to understand what all of it meant.

Being AWARE was the start of my recovering people-pleasing journey. Understanding and having a perception of what was going on, gave me the consciousness to be aware of my internal thoughts and give them a space. I realized that by only being conscious for the first time I was already doing something.

I like to look at it as a radar. When you turn it ON, you can start to realize what’s working, what’s not and change courses if needed. That’s when I understood the importance of being AWARE.

To be able to evidence changes in our lives, we must start by recognizing the areas we want to change. Listen to ourselves and feel the signs. In any scenario, a family or business meeting, wherever we are and we start to feel things in our bodies. Being aware is being able to take those signs, realizing there is something going on within you and act upon it. That’s how we start to honor ourselves.

Every action driven by self-awareness is an act that protects and honors our identity.

Acting from that self-knowledge, won’t jeopardize our needs. Practicing self-awareness has been an important part of my journey. I believe it’s like a muscle that needs to be in constant practice to develop.

There are many different ways that can help us practice our consciousness. Mindfulness, therapy, meditation and journaling have been the ones that have become habits in my life and they help me nourish that self-awareness I need as a people-pleaser to make any decisions.

We will be discussing and learning about those practices in more depth throughout this journey, because I truly want to share how they have impacted me individually and give you some insights of how they can do it for you too.

TAKEAWAYS

If you want to stop your people pleasing patterns, and stop forgetting about yourself and your needs, you first have to make a choice to start listening to yourself, to that inner voice (which we all have), honoring it and taking the time to understand it. It all comes down to the decision of honoring who we are and our identity.

There will be some times when we will not understand what it is trying to say, but it is in us to make the choice of trying to understand it in order to be aware of the feelings it brings, because that’s what’s going to make a difference moving forward.

I hope you can nourish and develop your awareness throughout this journey with me so that you can start making better choices that will help you improve and grow in every aspect of your life. Always honoring your inner knowing.