♥ Why Self discovery is the beginning of a beautiful journey
As women we can often find ourselves constantly exhausted, overwhelmed and run down looking after everyone else’s needs and not our own. Often, this leads to resentment and unhappiness. We can feel like we have lost ourselves and our own identity and this is especially true when we suffer a real heart breaking setback such as a divorce, split or something that makes our ‘safe and secure’ world as we see it fall apart.
What if there was a different way? What if by really discovering who you were and what you truly wanted and giving to yourself first, you could lovingly, happily and generously continually give to others and give you the tools to be truly happy and confident to deal with anything life throws your way?
I struggled to understand this concept for years and found it hard to believe that maybe my priority should be myself rather than everything else. It was only when circumstances forced me to realise that if I didn’t start nurturing and giving to myself, life would be stressful and unhappy for me and my children, I knew without a doubt things had to change. When I became a single parent to my little ones, I realised that this ‘journey within’ was crucial as the happier I became, the happier our home would be and I would be teaching my little ones, especially my beautiful daughter a powerful message that real strength comes within no matter what challenges happen and self love and self discovery is the key to inner confidence and happiness.
One of the first books I ever read that helped me understand the necessity of loving myself and discovering who I truly was, is a beautiful book called ‘Simple Abundance’ by Sarah Ban Breathnach.
The author weaves the magical principles of gratitude, simplicity, order, harmony, beauty and joy throughout the book to lead you down a path where she describes herself as your ‘personal pathfinder’ to help you transform your life and understand the art of self discovery. As she clearly shows in the book, change takes time, usually about a year and needs to be undertaken gently, just one day at a time.
A quote that sums this up so well is ‘Dont try and overhaul your life overnight. Instead, focus on making one small change at a time. Over time, these small changes will add up to a big transformation. Don’t give up!’
I love journaling and have always written since being a teenager as its helped me with so many of lifes ups and downs, and the reflective questions throughout ‘Simple Abundance’ jolt your soul into realising how vital it is not to miss the woman you were born to be.
Self Discovery questions such as:
What if you knew a year from today you could be living the most joyous creative, happy and fulfilling life you could imagine? What would it be? What changes would you make? How and where would you begin?
Asking ourselves – What is it that I truly need to make me happy?. There are so many questions within the book that really help us discover what we need to know about ourselves.
As she so eloquently says ‘What is missing from many of our days is a true sense that we are enjoying the lives we are living. It is difficult to experience moments of happiness if we are not aware of what we genuinely love. Learn to savour small, authentic moments that bring real contentment’.
Sarah Ban Breathnach magically gives you practical yet beautiful ways of gently uncovering authentic desires and helps you to recover a true sense of who you are and how you might have lost yourself along the way especially when life causes us to rebuild it when challenges happen.
Some of the techniques she talks about are:
♥ Gratitude Journaling
Its the first step on the path to simple abundance which leads to happiness. The more you are grateful for what you already have, the more will be given to you. ‘Gratitude is the hearts memory’
For more Gratitude Journaling ideas and help – see my blog – Gratitude Journaling and how it can help
♥ Learning to live in the present moment
This is the path to joy but requires a profound inner shift in our reality. As I know too well, we at times, unconsciously create dramas in our own minds expecting the worst from situations only to have our expectations become a self fulfilling prophecy. We can struggle from day to day, crisis to crisis feeling battered by our circumstances without realising we have a choice. When we finally realise we have the power and strength to create our own reality, our whole life can change.
♥ Self Care and the gift of time
As Barbara De Angelis says ‘Give yourself the gift of time’.
Sarah Ban Breathnach gives us the idea of nurturing ourselves daily. It might feel impossible but one hour a day to nurture YOU will change everything. You need enough breathing space to allow your heart to ponder what is precious to you.
♥ Morning Pages
Do you want to quiet the voices inside your head? This clears your mind, helps you relax throughout the day and leads to realising more about yourself than you would ever dream of knowing. Each morning have a conversation with yourself on paper, it eliminates that mental chatter that can often drive us crazy and depletes our creative fun energy. Stressed souls needs the reassuring rhythm of self care rituals) Initially, these pages might be full of complaints which is a good sign as over time you will feel inspired to keep moving and change things. (Just use cheap notebooks for this, save those pretty journals for gratitude journaling)
♥ Illustrated Discovery Journal
‘The key to loving how you live is in knowing what you truly love’
When you start keeping a self discovery journal of what you love through images, quotes, postcards and more you begin to craft on paper the beginning of the life that over time you will create.
♥ Acknowledging your authentic self as the ‘little you’
Find a picture of you at the age of about ten and reconnect back to what you loved and who you were. You still trusted your own instincts at this age and had your own opinions about things before life started changing these.
This is just a small glimpse into a book that can begin to gently help you take control back of your life and start that journey of discovery into creating a life you love.
Its a day by day map that guides you on your own spiritual journey that leads to an understanding that the simple joyful pleasures of life which cost so little and require only imagination, can bring a wealth of creative energy, harmony and fulfilment to you each and every day.
Enjoy reading!
Much love
Sarah ♥