Since stepping into myself and understanding my authentic needs, desires, and goals there was a huge, unexpected “ta da” moment: that I didn’t really value anyone’s opinion anymore. This isn’t to get mixed up with not caring about how my choices affect those around me but my rule of thumb is: if it doesn’t do harm to others then there isn’t anything stopping me from doing it.
You can be mindful of others and also not care what others have to say about your lifestyle choices.
When I first established my spiritual practice and begun blogging about a spiritual lifestyle, I was still relatively young and vulnerable to outsiders opinions. There was always someone who had an opinion of what I was saying, what I was doing, what I wasn’t saying, and what I wasn’t doing.
There was never going to be a way to make everyone happy.
After three years of an endless, tiring cycle and one huge break down, the moment of truth was dawning on me: my existence is not to make others happy. That should not be the source of my happiness. The source of my happiness needed to be from my own goals, my own accomplishments, and my own freaking choices.
In order to have my break through I had to have my breakdown, for the break down lead me to the biggest realization: the Universe gave me free will to make my OWN path. It gave me a feisty personality to fend off anyone who tried to stomp out my fire.
By allowing everyone to have a say in my life, lifestyle, and business I suffered a huge lack of direction and alignment with my actions. My anxiety was spiking, my depression deepened, and my life felt like it was on COMPLETE auto-pilot at some point I was finally just fed up.
Miserable one day I looked into the mirror. I remember thinking, “Remember when you loved life? Remember when your goals meant something, and every message made your goal; even the spam ones?”
Remember when your life belonged to you?
That was the moment I remembered that those things used to belong to me, and it is because I LOVED what I did, because it was apart of me. It was who I was, and it was what I did that made me beam with joy.
It is often easy to preach about self-love, but dragging myself through the mud really deepened my understanding of what it meant. Learning the true, unadulterated meaning of unashamed loving myself through allowing people to teach me not to love myself was both painful, but needed.
Get in touch with your authentic self and unashamed self-love with follow.
This inspiring post was written by Alexis D. of Terrestrial Aesthetics
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