When she was little and looked around her home, she immediately knew where to put the sofa, where the art pieces should be placed and what colors to paint the walls. She also loved painting on canvas. She was born with these natural gifts; they were how she expressed herself to the world.

Then as life went on, something changed. There was a pivotal moment that shifted the trajectory, but she didn’t even know it. It was subtle yet profound.

When she was 14, she came home from school one day and a ball of paper rolled out of her backpack. It was a love letter from a boy she didn’t even know. The boy had a crush on her and described how beautiful she was (and her body) in the letter.

The crumpled up paper rolled out of her backpack and her Dad found it. He read it, was caught off guard, and immediately got upset and started to yell. She tried to explain that she didn’t even know the boy, but her Dad didn’t listen. He pulled away and ignored her for 2 weeks.

She felt her Dad’s disappointment and his love being withdrawn. She didn’t know what to do or how to regain her Dad’s love, trust, and appreciation. She felt so ashamed and embarrassed, even though she hadn’t done anything wrong.

When she started applying for colleges and looking into medical schools, her Dad slowly became more engaged. He always wanted to be a doctor, and it would make him so proud to have one of his children fulfill that dream.

She picked up on that, and without knowing it as a way to “win” her Dad back, she decided to go into medicine. This wasn’t her passion, but she always heard her parents say how going into medicine is a respectful field.

Medical school didn’t come easy for her; she tried really hard. She even failed some classes.

Now 15 years later, as a doctor, she’s completely bored and uninspired. Not lit up from within.

She always wanted to be an interior designer.

She’s been trying to find herself in her work, and until we uncovered these series of subtle choices she made in her childhood, she was stuck making very little movement towards her passion. She kept feeling like a failure because not only did she feel blocked in being a doctor she also wasn’t making moves to follow her true passion either.

After our work together, she began to understand that she didn’t choose to become a doctor because she loved medicine, it was from a desire to keep her Dad’s admiration, love, and trust.

She started to see everything from her past differently. Literally, each moment in her past where she felt she had failed herself in becoming a doctor was completely transformed.

Seeing her past differently gave her space to follow what she wanted now.

After this realization she was able to make venturing into something new safe, and realized that it didn’t have to come at the cost of her Dad’s appreciation and love. She is now following her dream to be fully expressed in her work. To follow her passion for the first time since she was a teen.

Each of us has these kinds of moments. Where we made a subtle choice when we were younger that we didn’t even realize we made. It was our way to keep the love of a parent, to belong, or to rebel.

And even today many many years later, you are stuck in that choice. A choice that most likely you have outgrown and is no longer serving you.

And the key here is this choice that you may or may not remember, wasn’t a choice at all. It was in response to those that raised you. It wasn’t your soul’s path, it was a path taken in response to the external. This is what we call conditioning.

Conditioning causes us to feel stuck, anxious, unclear, striving or in a state of fear because there is an internal misalignment. It is so incredibly important for each of us to come back to our soul’s purpose.

It’s important because that’s when we feel the most free, expressed, and excited about life and who we are. And the path to that is awareness, looking at WHY we have chosen to do and be who we are today.

To unlock our inner truth.

One way to unlock your truth is to look at something in your life you feel stuck around, whether it be love or something else in your life, and travel back in time.

Travel back constructively, not to just sit in the pain or the story of the past, but to see if you can locate a moment or moments where you chose a certain path that wasn’t yours. A path where you thought you had to protect a parent (or someone that raised you or a sibling) make someone else happy, or to prove that you’re right and good.

It’s not easy to locate some of this I’ll admit, and yet it’s worth the self inquiry to see where it takes you.

Leave me a comment below and let me know what you discover. I can’t wait to hear your realization.

In Love,