There is a running joke in my family that I won’t be able to find my way out of the woods if I got lost. This is because I don’t know my cardinal directions. Sometimes I can figure it out, but it takes a lot of effort and if it’s cloudy, or I don’t know what time of day it is, you might as well forget about it. In my family, I am surrounded by “good” navigators. You can bring them into the woods blindfolded, spin them around, and they can point out N,E,S,W without hesitation. Point me in a direction and ask me what it is, and I’ll tell you it’s that way.
It makes sense, we think of good navigators as the ones who know their directions. It is a skill that allows you to communicate clearly with others where to go and is a valuable tool to have. I don’t have that skill, but I’ve always felt I knew where I was going even though I had no logical way to explain it. My family didn’t understand how I navigated, and it was hard, if not impossible to lead the way because it was always overridden with the way that made sense. It was frustrating. I felt they saw me as incapable and needing to follow their lead. If I wanted to take a detour they wouldn’t listen, it was discredited because I didn’t “know where I was going”. I felt I was powerless to effect what I wanted or get what I needed, so for a while I tried to stop wanting or voicing my opinions. It was easier to ignore it. For a while, it numbed some of the pain, but it also made everything feel numb, pointless, boring, and I started to see myself as incapable as well. Not wanting wasn’t that answer. If I wanted to follow my path, I had to believe in myself.
Recently I got an opportunity to shine and allow my family to experience what I always knew. In March my husband and I got the chance to take our son to Italy to train for soccer. We were excited, but Italy was a little disorienting. The roads twisted and turned in different directions that would circle back to the same spot even if you went off in a different direction. My husband would have been able to compensate for this, but it was cloudy, so he couldn’t find a reference point he could make sense of, he was lost and noticeably frustrated. I don’t think he’s been lost his life!
I lead the way through the city. Twisting and turning, weaving and bobbing through the streets. As I followed my inner GPS, I navigated my way around the city. To my husband’s amazement, I knew where I was going. He started to test to see if it was fluke asking to go to certain places, and every time I got him to where he asked to go. He wanted to know how I could do it. I couldn’t explain it, I just did, but by letting him experience how I navigated it allowed us a new way of understanding each other. We discovered that I can lead where his mastery ends, and he can lead where my mastery ends. Shortly after this discovery the sun came out and we were both navigating together through the city! It was a beautiful co-navigation.
In the past, I would have stayed silent, doubted that I could lead others through a city I had never been in so I would have done nothing. Why would I make that choice in the past to let us stay lost? Because I didn’t want to try and find out I was wrong. Before, I would convince myself to see it as they did because I believed that others knew better than I did. I thought that by doubting my own experiences and refusing to share what I was thinking a feeling with those around me, that they wouldn’t see how lacking I was and they would still love me.
In this part of my life I felt isolated and alone and thought that no one would understand me. What I didn’t realize then is that I wasn’t allowing anyone else to see me. But this time, I chose to believe in myself. I chose to let my intuition lead me. Yes, the doubt still bubbled up, but I didn’t buy into it. Instead I saw that we were already lost, so what was there to lose. I chose to bet on myself.
Can you relate? Do you doubt yourself? Stuff down your voice and what you want because you don’t think anyone else will understand? Some might not, and that is okay. The rest of my family that wasn’t in Italy still doesn’t understand. In fact, now that my husband believes it, I think they try harder to get me to see that I don’t know how to navigate. With how they define navigating, they are right. I don’t know my cardinal directions well, but that isn’t the only way to navigate (But I’m getting better at that now too). They haven’t had the blessing my husband had on expanding how they define navigating! So now I have more compassion for where they are coming from and I still believe in myself! It’s so cool! Decades of pain and self-doubt eliminated by choosing to shine.
I took me a while to move from feeling powerless to taking chance on myself and believing in myself. How did I make this leap? Yoga. Yoga helps me connect with my body and tap into my intuition, my inner GPS, so I always know where I want to go. Yoga allowed me to rewire my body so I could respond differently by seeing situations differently, feeling differently, and being me authentically and trusting myself. Even when I was scared, even when I was lost, even when I doubted myself.
This isn’t possible for only a chosen few, it is possible for anyone who is willing to tap into the power of their body and allow the wisdom to flow into their life. That is your body code. It’s what lights you up, allows you to feel radiant in your body and confident in your skin. To trust yourself and your wisdom even when no one else gets it (and sometimes when even you don’t get it!). They don’t have to, you don’t have you, you just need to let your body code to lead the way.
Do you let your intuition lead you? Tell me! I want to hear your stories.
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