The Gift of Clarity
3 steps to clearing resistance & aligning to your purpose
Women are tired of letting their dreams sit on the back burner. They have visions of working for their purpose, living life on their terms, and building generational wealth for their families, but it feels out of reach, and they can’t see what steps they need to take to get there. They have advanced in their careers and in their ability to earn enough to support their family in living very comfortable lives, but that’s no longer enough. They want to be in the driver’s seat, with the right roadmap, so they can clearly see the path they need to take. Seeing other women and women of color take steps toward their dreams gives them hope that they, too, can create this within their own lives. They are ready to take the leap but find themselves stuck, unsure of the right next moves to make. They need clarity, and to remove the barriers standing between them and their dreams.
Become Aware
Getting clear is about being willing to remove any resistance on our path. Resistance shows up as unhealthy thought patterns, feelings of lack and limitation, and feelings of the need to exert force in the pursuit of goals. These often go unrecognized in our cognitive awareness. However, they create feelings on a visceral level which serve as indicators of their presence. This resistance works on us, showing up as negative self-talk, holding us back from taking necessary action, and keeping us playing on a small scale, causing us to believe that it’s all that is available to us.
Clearing this takes dedicated practice and requires that we first have an awareness of what is actually clouding our thoughts and our vision for our future. It means we need to slow down, take notice, and become intentional about what we decide to believe about our dreams and our capacity to achieve them. We have to stop listening to any story that's different from what we want to show up in our lives and make a conscious effort to think about and believe in what we truly desire.
Eliminate Doubt
The next thing that is imperative for us to do is to eliminate doubt. We doubt because we have been telling ourselves a story about who we should be and that we are incapable of showing up consistently as who we need to be. We've let our inner critic take over and run wild! This story creates resistance on our path. It causes us to rethink the possibility that we are capable of achieving greatness or that more is available to us, and it is this doubt that keeps us stuck. Our minds are constantly being bombarded with programming that tells us how we are supposed to work. They tell us the salaries we should expect to earn. They normalize women taking the bulk of the responsibility for the home, for work, and for other people. It's time to challenge these ideas of what we SHOULD be. If we believe the story that we aren't worth more, we will continue to doubt our greatness.
Removing doubt allows our light to shine through and paves the way for us to live fully aligned with our purpose, but as women, doubt is not an easy obstacle to overcome. We continually doubt our capabilities and allow this doubt to hold us back from fully owning our gifts. A study by Cornell University found that men overestimate their abilities and their performance while women underestimate both when their actual performance does not differ. The same study shows that women are more prone to fall victim to perfectionist standards than men, setting their bar so unreasonably high that they set themselves up to feel permanently inadequate.
To get out of this vicious trap, we have to begin to recognize thoughts and beliefs that serve us, choose to find value in perceived failures, and then take imperfect action toward our dreams. Either we are going to let go of our doubt and move towards our highest vision for our lives, or we can continue dreaming but not living them.
Walk with Ease
Once we have done the work to become aware of what is creating internal resistance along our journey and we let go of any doubt that we can truly have what we desire, it’s time to begin our walk. As with any journey, challenges will continue to arise. The pre-work we’ve done will continue to be instrumental along the way. By approaching this work as a practice that requires us to return to the lessons learned when similar challenges arise, we train ourselves to overcome them continually and, therefore, create more ease on our path.
For internal conflict like negative self-talk and anxiety around our capabilities, we must reframe those unhealthy thought patterns into ones that support us in achieving any goals we have set. When we recognize that we are coming up against resistance to how we feel viscerally, we must redirect our flow by choosing to trust in the inevitability of our success versus our failure. As we find healthy reframes and learn to redirect the flow of our energy, we become capable of more finely tuning our energetic frequency to one aligned with the clarity of our purpose and the direction we need to move in.
Clear Resistance
The journey toward aligning with your purpose requires clarity. In order to get clear, you must learn to remove the resistance that shows up as internal conflict, preventing you from taking the steps necessary towards achieving what you desire. Becoming aware means that you have chosen not to stay clouded by indecision and feelings of inadequacy. Eliminating doubt means that you no longer wish to stay constricted and are ready to accept the lessons in each failure and still move forward. Walking with ease means you will no longer stay conflicted and have become capable of recognizing where and when you need to shift in order to get back into flow along your journey.
If you are seeking more clarity in your purpose or find it challenging to overcome resistance on your path to living your dream, visit our website and sign up today for a complimentary clarity call. It’s time to get to work removing these blocks and clearing the way for your vision to come alive.
Kenya Stanell Lewis, MSN, RN
