Shift into Your Body, Shift into Your Innate Worth + Connect with Your intuition
Letting go of weight loss, your ‘ideal body,’ and why loving yourself as you are right now is the key to getting through to your intuition
The biggest myth we face in our culture right now is that changing your external body will shift your internal worth.
OOF, this crock of SHIT… Y’all, if I could wave a magic wand right now and fix one thing, it would be to lift the veil and show anyone that believes changing their body will change their confidence how flawed that logic is.
Letting go of weight loss, your ‘ideal body,’ and why loving yourself as you are right now is the key to getting through to your intuition
The biggest myth we face in our culture right now is that changing your external body will shift your internal worth.
OOF, this crock of SHIT… Y’all, if I could wave a magic wand right now and fix one thing, it would be to lift the veil and show anyone that believes changing their body will change their confidence how flawed that logic is.
First, if you are in IF then thinking or When then thinking, you’ve got it twisted. We must love AS WE ARE in order to move forward in our authenticity. Being rooted in the present is the only way we can be in touch with who we are. If we’re living for a future that hasn’t arrived, we’re missing the power in the present moment.
Loving your body right now and celebrating what it can do is how you connect to your intuition and find real confidence from within.
Not only does weight loss not solve confidence issues, but being overly focused on your appearance and controlling your body’s shape can be deeply damaging to your intuitive abilities. If you only see your body as an external appearance, you are cutting yourself off from your own power.
As someone who chased the thinness ideal for most of my life, I can tell you firsthand that this is myth. A new body will not improve your life. The only way to move the needle on your confidence is to look at your internal programming.
Despite the messages you’ve been receiving your entire life to the contrary, attaining a certain external look is never going to make you whole. Chasing thinness and youth is a losing game because you are making a tacit agreement that thinness and youth are “better” than growing old or having your body present differently that the cultural standard and ideals presented through mainstream advertising. (If you aren’t familiar with the work from Lindsay and Lexie Kite, who have literally written the book about self-objectification, check out Beauty Redefined, right now)
Your worth comes from within and it starts by being inside of your body instead of focusing on how you present to others. The biggest leap I made in my self-confidence and living my life for me, came when I began to understand this and integrate it into my life.
You do not have to change how you look to feel good about your body and about your life - you have to change how you look at yourself.
It’s not about how you look or how others perceive you, it’s about how you feel. If you need help with this, go on Instagram and see all the influencers who are outside of the very narrow mainstream beauty standards that are living their best lives and loving themselves.
What we want isn’t to fit the beauty standard, it is self-love. We conflate beauty standards and accepted norms as self-love and that’s why so many people are trapped on a hamster wheel of despair that they don’t know how to get off.
THE GOOD NEWS. THERE IS AN EXIT. You can unplug from these wild standards and start living from your authenticity (it does take practice and time, so be patient)
We transform our day to day experience when we shift from living outside of ourselves to living in our body. If you’re stuck as an observer to your life, you’re losing out on truly living your life.
The culture we live in disconnects us from our body, deceiving us into believing that our body must look a certain way before we can achieve our goals.
We take our power back when we root back into our bodies and connect with our innate power within.
If you do not connect to your physical experience, you cannot connect to your intuition. GO BACK AND READ THAT AGAIN.
IF YOU DO NOT CONNECT TO YOUR BODY AND LIVE INSIDE YOUR PHYSICAL BEING, YOU ARE CUTTING YOURSELF OFF FROM YOUR POWER SOURCE. I know this because I lived outside of myself for most of my adult life. I was watching my life as a 3rd party instead of living firsthand in my own body.
If you are disconnected to your body, it’s likely for very good reason. We shift out of our bodies for many reasons, trauma being one of the big reasons and diet culture being another. If you’ve grown up in a woman’s body - then you’ve grown up in a world that has trained you to objectify yourself. Women learn and internalize from a young age that how men perceive you is your value (thanks patriarchy) While this is not true, it’s a powerful message that has been perpetuated in the media and is used to keep women small. (Another reading recommendation - Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski)
If we are so self-focused on how we are perceived, than we cannot enjoy our lives fully. Living fully happens when we let go of what it looks like and enjoy the physical experience of being present and in our bodies. We cannot go full throttle on accomplishing our goals if we’re too distracted trying to make ourselves acceptable from the outside.
I spent years on the loop of believing that my worth came from my external appearance until it dawned on me that all that pressure I was putting on myself was slowly killing me, what was the point of trying to look good if I didn’t FEEL GOOD?!?!
My brain was dedicated to beating myself up and there wasn’t any space to really let loose and enjoy my life. I was living my life as an observer to myself - stage mothering myself; over-controlling every move, worried about how others might perceive me instead of living from my heart and body.
I was so miserable I had to give up. What was the point? What was all of "this” performance for? Certainly it wasn’t for me. If my life wasn’t for my enjoyment, then what? When I let go of trying to be everything for everyone else, I opened up space to truly find out what it meant to be me.
Your worth isn’t what someone else thinks. Your worth and experience is centered in being YOU.
It takes time to let go of your old mindset that keeps you small and build a new one that supports you.
If this is new work for you (and even if it’s not) being gentle leads to more growth than being harsh on yourself (trust me, I’ve done both).
TAKE ACTION
Practice + Reflection Questions:
How can you be kind to yourself and your body today?
Are you listening to the messages your body is sending or are you too worried about what it looks like to listen?
If you know you aren’t treating your body with respect - see what happens if you get curious about what’s happening in your body instead of having expectations.
Who benefits from your negative self-talk to your body?
If you’ve got the time today - assess your relationship to your body and your intuition. Are you expecting your body to be something different than what it is? Why? How is that affecting your ability to listen inward?
Shifting into the driver’s seat of your life is letting go of any external expectations and checking in with your energy and needs. Affirm that you are making progress just by considering these questions.
Shifting success to work for you: Navigating the world with an open heart center and swimming against the tide of a productivity at any cost culture.
In Human Design, wisdom doesn’t come from the defined energy, but from the white spaces in our charts.
Ra Uru Hu (channeler of the Human Design System) said it best when he said the white space is where we go to school.
In Human Design, wisdom doesn’t come from the defined energy, but from the white spaces in our charts.
Ra Uru Hu (channeler of the Human Design System) said it best when he said the white space is where we go to school.
Therefore, whenever I’m in my not-self over my worth, I go to open heart school where I am constantly reminded that open hearts have nothing to gain from trying to prove themselves.
So check your chart, if you have white space in the heart (ego) center (70% of us do), you have the potential to get really burned by societal pressures to perform and achieve.
TAKE THAT IN FOR A MINUTE. 70% OF PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE STABLE HEART ENERGY AT THEIR DISPOSAL. This means that the majority of people are getting sucked into competitive energy and ego energy that’s not theirs.
EXPLAINS A LOT, DOESN’T IT.
70% OF PEOPLE ARE OUT HERE THINKING, “I HAVE TO ACHIEVE TO PROVE MY WORTH.”
WE HAVE GOT TO GET OFF THIS HAMSTER WHEEL.
UNLESS YOU ENJOY TAKING SOMEONE ELSE’S RIDE (SEE HAMSTER CLINGING TO WHEEL FOR DEAR LIFE ABOVE), learning to balance that open heart center is critical for our wellbeing.
We’re not meant to compete in the same way that defined hearts do. Those blessed with their own heart energy typically have the built in self-worth that we have to build on our own.
So how does the open heart center work?
Our heart centers amplify the output from surrounding defined heart energy. We’re processing centers for heart energy, which explains why we can really get caught in the tailwind of our cultural obsession with action and achievement.
Hi, yes, I’d like off the hamster wheel please.
Balancing your open heart is possible!
First step is compassion towards ourselves and others. Second step is remembering with an open heart you aren’t here to prove your worth.
These are the only steps needed in heart school. Compassion towards yourself and the mantra, “I have nothing to prove.”
When you find yourself on the hamster wheel, feel free to give a quick reframe to the experience by saying thank you for teaching me that I have nothing to prove.
No one told us we’re out here amplifying the energy of others or that we can quickly get carried away while others can use that energy wisely. From my experience, it feels like failing at having value while others seem SO VALUABLE and it feels random. It can trigger my victim mentality and feel very, WHY NOT ME?*
No matter what we try, we can’t earn our way to heart energy if we don’t have it in our charts.
It is fully random that some people get heart energy and you and I didn’t. If you need something to blame, blame the stars. (Our bodygraph is a map of our energy and that energy outlined on the map is imprinted star energy. They just weren’t on heart energy when you were born and that is OK!)
It’s all going to be fine because we can shift our attention and awareness to where it can have an impact.
So my open heart friends - when we’re in heart school, we’re learning that we are already enough.
We may be in heart school for years, days, months, or on and off for our whole lives. We’re in heart school as much as we need until we integrate the knowledge that Open heart energy people aren’t here to base our worth on our productivity - it’s just not our energy!
So, open heart - you have nothing to prove. Now what?
Sitting down and defining success for ourselves, especially during testing times is a spiritual exercise that can bring greater alignment into your life.
If you didn’t have the media setting the agenda for you, what would success look like for you?
If you haven’t taken a step back from TV, magazines, social media anything that triggers you to act out of low self-worth, well- now’s the time. It’s super helpful to cut out the noise to connect back with your core essence.
If you need research proving that there’s nothing to gain from pushing yourself into endless productivity - I recommend finding these two books:
Yes, I read two books this summer to prove that I have nothing to prove, but if you’re anything like me and you need some solid validation and well-researched evidence about the benefits of shifting your success metrics - read one or both of these. Celeste Headlee’s research showing how our definition of success has been passed down and shaped through the generations genuinely blew my mind.
When we follow our own guidance and intuition and work on building our own self-worth foundation it can feel lonely, but know that we’re in the midst of creating new worlds. We’re making ourselves unshakeable. We’re swimming against the old ways and new ways of experiencing and experimenting can be met with skepticism by the greater collective.
Double-down on your own way!My life is infinitely more enjoyable when I am process-oriented. We’re on the vanguard when we decide to enjoy the moment and not just the end results.
While I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to stop getting caught in the achievement lifestyle completely, knowing that I have an open heart helps me become so much more aware when I am out of my alignment.
I am here to feel and experience, I gain wisdom and awareness by growing my daily ability to appreciate life.
If you’d like to explore this for yourself here are some reflection questions you can journal on:
How have your values shifted during this time?
How do you define success?
What lessons have you been learning lately?
How do I know when I am in my not-self?
*if you click on this link know this is my favorite commercial from college in the year 2005. Yes, it is enforcing gender stereotypes + objectifies women, but I definitely felt,(maybe still feel) like an Ashley a lot.