From Coping to Thriving
A couple years ago, I was comfortable. I was "making the best of it". I was taking care of stuff around the house, going to work, hanging out with friends, but under the surface I was participating in the same habits and patterns as always. I wasn't learning anything new, I wasn't doing practices that were good for my body, I wasn't creating. I was in lots of physical pain, I was gaining weight like crazy, my relationship was falling apart, I wasn't being the ME that I was put on this Earth to be.
I wasn't doing anything wrong necessarily, but there was a whole lot more that I could have been doing right. I decided to look at all of my habits that I was using to cope and decided to stop coping and start living with intention. One by one I started replacing my bad habits with good habits. Replacing coffee with ginger tea, replacing screens in the morning with meditation, replacing relaxing on the couch with qigong and yoga, replacing easy comfort foods with a nutritious natural plant-based diet. I started stalking my shadow, When I would find myself doing something, anything unconsciously out of habituation or comfort, I questioned myself. I started orienting myself around what makes me happy at the end of the week, the end of the month, and applied it to the now. Why did I do all of this? How did I create these changes?
The biggest reason that all of this happened is because I replaced consuming entertainment with learning. I surrounded myself with conscious material, healing books, trauma books, shame books, books on perception, plant nutrition and superfoods, learning about myself, pragmatic spiritual-oriented books, philosophical books, mindfulness books, conscious living books, psychology books, plant medicine books, breathwork books, qigong books, Reiki books, Vedic books, Buddhist books, Toltec books, and Shamanism books. Everything that sparked something useful to create the reality that I truly desire. I started learning more and more about why we do the things we do and how we can take small steps to change them to align with our higher selves. Day-in and day-out I had my nose in a book and if I couldn't have my nose in a book I would have an audiobook playing in my ear.
The way I conducted myself in everyday life started changing drastically. I stopped doing the things that I wanted, and started doing the things that I TRULY wanted. It wasn't a one and done experience, every day still has its challenges. Triggers, negative external influences, past traumas, old habits, my shadow side, all still play a role but how I look at them and manage them shifted exponentially.
I found myself in need of a lot more of a social life, wanting to share and develop the things that I was learning in a social setting, to be able to have philosophical conversations, have critique, devil's advocate, work with me to figure out the closest things to useful truths possible.
I lived a ways out of town, I had a very small social circle but I utilized it as best as I could, but I was still gifted with the solo time to work through everything that I was learning, everything that I was getting closer to the truth on, and I had to get it out, I had to digest it and create with it. So I started writing, writing about practicing love over fear, writing about society, writing about social dynamics, writing about creating your own reality, perception, the nature of consciousness, the ego, self-importance, individuation, deautomatization. All the things that I was figuring out that was really helping me turn my life into the life that I wanted to live. I wanted to be able to document what was helping me make these changes, what had shifted my perspective, the things that I was learning that really helped give me a fallback, a foundation for what I chose to do, why I chose to do it. Slowly but surely all this writing turned into different chapters of my new book, "Love Over Fear: A Foundation for Autonomy". Now a couple years later, I have studied many healing modalities, learned an incredible amount about psychology, philosophy, coping with grief, shame, and trauma. I help witness people's experience and offer conscious guidance through holistic counseling with Love Healing & Expansion. I've had an amazing plant-based diet for so long it doesn't feel like a diet, I truly enjoy all the food that I consume and aligns with me in every way. The relationships that weren't beneficial to me, faded away, and the relationships that are beneficial to me blossomed into existence.
Now, I've published a beautiful new book; a meaningful, applicable contribution for the world, based in Love. I built my own tiny home, moved to a small island for a simple, creative way of life that aligns with my values. Now I'm married to me “other whole” with a little one on the way and we are just beaming with excitement towards exploring the next beautiful chapter of life, ready to embrace all the new challenges. And I have to say again, the biggest change that happened to start all of these amazing pieces of evolution for me, was consuming conscious material.
My life isn't perfect now, but I've taken massive steps towards my own freedom. I'm on the path of Love and in turn, on the path of joy, creation, and abundance. I know for me one thing that I will always continue to do, is consume and develop conscious material; as it's such a powerful, inspiring frequency to tune into.
Inspiration leads to change. Inspiration doesn't often fall into our laps, we need to seek it out.
Peace & Love,
J. Wesley
