How Willingness Unleashes Your Power

After experiencing repeated trauma, many of us decide that rigid boundaries will bring certainty and safety. While we may resent that we’re stuck in our routines, lurking below the surface is the comfort of familiarity that keeps us right where we are. This is why resistance is expected, and why it’s welcome. After all, it comes up to come out!

Moving in a new direction brings up all kinds of thoughts and sensations. I completely understand the terror of feeling again. It can bring sensory overload for which we aren’t ready. Staying numb…well, that’s an effective survival strategy. But surviving isn’t thriving, and it’s selling ourselves short of the abundance the life has to offer. BUT FEAR!!!!!

And so the healing journey and change process invite us to a new reality, one that we must be willing to explore, whether or not we’re certain of the steps along the way or the outcome.

Willingness allows us to tap into our inner wisdom because we’re in a receptive posture, internally speaking. And as we open to our innate knowledge, we start to align with what truly works for us. When we do that, we make progress and are willing to take the next step.

Willingness allows us to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, a skill that is quite useful in growing through life.

Willingness to feel ALL our feelings invites the exiled and the outcast parts of us to return home. Rather than guarding against pain (which simultaneously guards against pleasure), we are open to experiences along a broader spectrum. As we begin to soften and accept what we’ve tried to stuff down, we free up energy we didn’t realize we were missing.

Willingness to make mistakes, to grieve, to forgive, to do things differently…

Willingness to laugh, cry, move forward…

Willingness to learn is the willingness to live.

Willingness is the small opening we allow our psyches in taking steps toward reconnecting with our power. As we are willing to let go of our armor, our self-protection, our ways of being and doing that don't work, we’re open to learning a new way. As we are willing to try something new, we open to discovering greater possibilities for ourselves and our lives. As we are willing to do something differently, we invite ourselves to a new reality.

Take a look at your experience. Is there an area where willingness would be helpful?

DISCLAIMER: There are many teachings in the world that ask you to be willing to suffer, sacrifice, and endure hardship. Please know that I’m not talking about willingness with those contexts in mind. I believe that pain is just a part of life but suffering is optional. Sacrifice is great when it’s something that doesn’t serve us, like a habit that’s harmful. . . but it’s not something one should do to self. And enduring hardship…well, we all go through hard times, but we don’t have to stay there. So we’re willing to walk through difficulties but we’re not trying to set up a home there, if you know what I mean.