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How To Make Decisions That Are In Alignment With Your Highest Self
Life is full of choices. Some are small decisions we’re not even aware we're making while others feel like they carry the weight of the world. If you're in the process of making one of those big decisions, here are some tips for navigating it from a heart-centered place.
Be aware that you have a choice.
If you feel helpless or victimized, you may not realize that you're making an unconscious choice. The first step is to make the unconscious choice conscious. For example, if you’re unhappy at your job, you may be choosing security over happiness. Recognize that as a choice and remember that you can always change your choice.
Question your choice.
If you’ve been making a choice (consciously or unconsciously) to do something that doesn’t feel good, be sure to ask yourself why. When you question your choice, you can simply be curious. Stay open. Don’t judge yourself. Notice your thoughts. Pay attention to what hurts and what feels good. Don’t attach to even finding an answer. Just be curious.
Notice when fear is taking the lead.
The Small Self (some call it the “ego” or the “protective personality”) always wants to be in control. It wants to weigh in, vacillate, doubt, argue, and, most of all, avoid uncertainty and loss at all costs. The Small Self is terrified.
If you’re not aware that your Small Self is making decisions based on fear, you’ll keep choosing what your Small Self deems certain and secure, even at the expense of your health, happiness, life purpose, and financial potential.
Surrender your decision.
When you decide to let your soul make your decisions, you’ll likely have to drag your Small Self with you, kicking and screaming. It does not trust that we live in a universe where the soul can make its own heart-felt choices.
It can help to practice the art of spiritual surrender. Surrender your decision to the divine. Ask your soul to help you make your decision. Then, be on the lookout for inner and outer guidance.
Ask for help.
Once you’ve surrendered your decision to something larger than your Small Self, ask for help—be it from the spirit realm or from a trusted therapist or friend. This guide can hold up the mirror for you and skillfully nudge you towards the decision that already lies within you.
Be present and look for signs.
Spiritual guidance is everywhere, but often we miss it because we’re not paying attention. Once you’ve surrendered a decision and asked for help, be on the lookout for signs.
For example, I was recently trying to decide whether my "soul twin" Dennis and I should lead a writing workshop in Peru. I didn’t want to leave my daughter behind. He had some other commitments. But we had put money down on reserving a space, and we only had 24 hours to get our money back. So we remembered to surrender the decision, ask for help, and watch for signs. About 15 minutes after we made our offering of the workshop to the Divine, I walked into a coffee shop where a big sign literally read, “Say yes to Peru.” I’m not kidding! They were sampling new Peruvian coffee. Within the next 24 hours, I got three “yes” signs. Dennis got two. So yeah, we’re going to be teaching that workshop.
Moral of the story: Look for synchronicities, billboards with messages, song lyrics with answers, unexpected emails, and people with messages for you. I’ve even gotten answers from bumper stickers or license plates!
Trust your intuition
Intuition hits us in a few different ways. Some people just know (claircognizance). Some people get visions (clairvoyance). Some people hear a little voice in their ear (clairaudience). Once you learn how intuition shows up for you, and once you’ve started collecting evidence that things go well when you follow your intuition, you’ll recognize it more easily and trust it more.
Pay attention to what your body is telling you.
When you’re trying to make a decision, start noticing how your body feels when you think about Option A. How does it feel when you visualize choosing Option B? Sometimes a choice will feel scary, so you might be confused by butterflies. But are they the butterflies of excitement or the flutterings of dread?
Your body is a compass that steers you toward that which is aligned with your soul and guides you against that which is out of alignment. Stay connected to where yours is steering you.
Look for answers in dreams.
Often, your unconscious knows the right decision, even if your conscious mind feels confused. Try interpreting your dreams using a dream journal to start to get hints about what your unconscious mind is trying to tell you.
Notice what hurts.
If something hurts, it’s trying to send you a message. This can aid your decision-making. For example, when I was trying to decide whether to quit my job as a doctor, I was in a lot of emotional pain but I didn’t trust it meant anything. How could I quit my job? How would I pay the bills? Ultimately, those things become less important when the pain of violating my soul's integrity became too great.
People often ask me how you know when it’s time to take a leap of faith. I say that when the pain of staying put exceeds the fear of the unknown, it’s time to leap.
Lissa Rankin, M.D., is the New York Times bestselling author of Mind Over Medicine, The Fear Cure, and The Anatomy of a Calling. She is a physician, speaker, founder of the Whole Health Medicine Institute, and mystic. Passionate about what makes people optimally healthy and what predisposes them to illness, she is on a mission to merge science and spirituality in a way that not only facilitates the health of the individual, but also uplifts the health of the collective. Bridging between seemingly disparate worlds, Lissa is a connector, collaborator, curator, and amplifier, broadcasting not only her unique visionary ideas, but also those of cutting edge visionaries she discerns and trusts, especially in the field of her latest research into "Sacred Medicine." Lissa has starred in two National Public Television specials and also leads workshops, both online and at retreat centers like Esalen and Kripalu. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her daughter. She blogs at LissaRankin.com and posts regularly on Facebook.
More from the author:
A Six-Step Process For Radical Self-Healing
Check out Identify Limiting Beliefs That Are Holding You Back From True, Full Healing
More from the author:
A Six-Step Process For Radical Self-Healing
Check out Identify Limiting Beliefs That Are Holding You Back From True, Full Healing
Lissa Rankin, M.D., is the New York Times bestselling author of Mind Over Medicine, The Fear Cure, and The Anatomy of a Calling. She is a physician, speaker, founder of the Whole Health Medicine Institute, and mystic. Passionate about what makes people optimally healthy and what predisposes them to illness, she is on a mission to merge science and spirituality in a way that not only facilitates the health of the individual, but also uplifts the health of the collective. Bridging between seemingly disparate worlds, Lissa is a connector, collaborator, curator, and amplifier, broadcasting not only her unique visionary ideas, but also those of cutting edge visionaries she discerns and trusts, especially in the field of her latest research into "Sacred Medicine." Lissa has starred in two National Public Television specials and also leads workshops, both online and at retreat centers like Esalen and Kripalu. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her daughter. She blogs at LissaRankin.com and posts regularly on Facebook.
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