What is transformation?

When you go on this self-healing journey, you might be tempted to see it as a path towards self-improvement, of bettering yourself so you can change and be a better version of you. These are certainly important components of the journey but you also need to recognize that you are not a home improvement project, moving from thing to thing, completing renovation on different parts of you.

You are an ever evolving, messy, feeling, flawed human being and that will never change. No matter how far along you walk down that path, you will experience highs and lows, have comfortable and challenging emotions, and times where you’ll be at your best and at your worst. You will never only feel “good” and life may never be exactly how you want it.⠀

So how do we reconcile our betterment with the struggles we’ll face throughout life? With the times when we will feel lost again, confused again, afraid, angry… ⠀

You’re on your journey because you want to experience life, not avoid it. The journey isn’t really about self-improvement. That is just an outcome, a byproduct. What the journey truly is about is your relationship to self. It’s about your willingness to love yourself, despite what’s happened to you, despite how you show up, despite whatever it is you’re going through. It’s a return to self, again and again, accepting yourself as you are, firm in the knowledge that everything is…

temporary.

Focus on your relationship to self. Focus on how you see yourself, how you judge yourself, how you are care for yourself… and everything else will follow. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Photo by Bankim Desai on Unsplash

When I finally stopped looking outside myself for self-worth and found it within, the world around me changed. Where my friendship world was only filled with married moms with kids my age, I started meeting women of all different ages, of varying backgrounds, marital status, childless, etc.

Sometimes I can hear the voice of the old, inauthentic me who is surprised that someone young, attractive and stylish would want to be my friend because I grew up feeling dorky and never cool…like I did in high school when I never really quite fit into any of the standard teen groups. But I know that voice is my ego and remember that my value doesn’t come from what’s on the outside but from the inside. ⠀

When you start living as your authentic self, you start attracting other people who are also trying to do the same. They don’t care what you look like, how you dress or how old you are. They see beyond the superficial, beyond the things that don’t matter, and notice your energy instead…your internal, emotional state. ⠀⠀

So much of our human interaction happens without words or even our conscious knowing. Human interaction is an energy exchange which either leaves you feeling fulfilled when the connection is real and drained when it’s not. ⠀

How has what you notice in others changed since you’ve been on your healing journey?

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash