Don't we all want to feel in control of our lives? Here's a complete GAME CHANGER.

Don’t we all want to feel as if we’re living our lives the way that we have purposefully created it?

Don’t we all want to feel as if we are living our life with the support of ourselves?

I’ve struggled with depression for as long as I can remember.  One of the worst parts of depression for me was ruminating thoughts. I would have these deeply negative thoughts about myself that would cycle through without pause. “You’re not good enough.” “What are you doing?”  “You’re not doing this right.”  “Nobody likes you.”  “You’re not going to be successful.”  “You’re doing that wrong.”

I was deeply unsupportive of myself.

I looked for things to help me feel better. People. Substances. Food. Nothing worked. 

That’s a lie. Sometimes it worked, but never long term.

My mom would always tell me that I need to be nicer to myself.  She would say that I need to show myself compassion.  These things were all true, but I didn’t know how.  I was able to recognize the negative thoughts within my mind, but I couldn’t stop them. 

Looking back now, I thought that these thoughts were a part of me. I don’t think I understood the difference between the thoughts and who I was (and am).  While a part of me understood that the thoughts were not true, I think a larger part of me believed them.  When you’re having 60-80,000 thoughts per day, it’s tough for the negativity not the penetrate into your soul.

Over the last 6 years I’ve really put myself through the ringer to figure out how to stop these thoughts, or at least how to understand them.  I’ve learned so much through therapy, exercise, yoga, reading, journaling, community, work, colleagues, etc.

I want to share one of the things that continues to inspire me and is a total GAME CHANGER.

Developing Consciousness.

If you’ve ready any of my blog posts or followed me on Instagram, you’ve probably heard me babble on about this.  LET ME EXPLAIN.  My goal is to come up with a totally user-friendly way to understand this concept without being insanely boring.

You know when you’re driving and you have this completely crazy thought like, “What if I just rear end the person in front of me?” and then you think “OMG what is wrong with me?! I can’t believe I just thought that!” <— that is consciousness. The part of you that thought “OMG why did I just think that” is the awareness of your thoughts. You are the awareness of the awareness of your thoughts.

The reason why this is important is because when you can separate yourself from your thoughts, the significance of what they’re saying decreases. When you feel in your soul that your thoughts are NOT who you are, it simply doesn’t matter what they’re saying.

I had this “aha!” moment regarding Consciousness last year. I was upset about an event and a choice that I had made. I was beating myself up about it, and my thoughts were first in line to swing the bat. I was reading Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth” and his thoughts about Consciousness. It suddenly hit me that my obsessing over the event doesn’t matter. The judgment I was placing on myself was my ego & it was rooted in my fears. Once I took a step back from my thoughts and observed them as someone outside of myself, I was overwhelmed with relief. It didn’t matter. The thoughts I was telling myself didn’t matter. They weren’t me. They weren’t who I am.

When we can separate ourselves from our thoughts, we can relax a little and find freedom: freedom to choose how we want to feel, freedom to choose not to listen to them, freedom to make the choices that we want to make.

Now, to truly understand what this means, I highly encourage you to check out the latest meditation in the library section of this site. The meditation is called “Developing Consciousness Meditation.” I walk you through a beautiful visualization to help embed what it means to separate yourself from the thoughts and chaos in your mind.

In the library, you will find workbooks & meditations that will help you integrate what I’m talking about here into your actual life. This will help you meet those goals of decreasing stress, finding clarity, and making decisions that you WANT to make- not just what you feel like you have to do.

To access this amazing meditation, all you have to do is sign up for the FREE password. Yup, that’s it. You’ll find the sign up page HERE or simply go to the homepage and sign up there!

Please let me know what you think! As always, DM me with any questions or feedback, or email me HERE.

I do have spots available for private mentorships or therapy (therapy in CA only). DM me or email me for more information on how we can work together.

- Shelby