Living the Life of Your Dreams
Part One: Awakening to Your Inner Wisdom

By Darla Meulemans

Whether it’s eating well, enjoying exercise, being playful, quieting your mind, loving your work, or feeling content in your relationships, everyone seeks to live a meaningful and fulfilled life. Are you one of those people who upon the New Year or even as spring draws near, takes the time to reflect on what areas of your life might need some fine tuning? What will it take to strike a better balance between home and work, to get back on track, or to rev up your walking or exercise program? Maybe you’ve reached a plateau and you feel like you are just going through the motions. In this series on Living the Life of Your Dreams, you will begin to raise your awareness and awaken to your inner wisdom because creating the ideal life begins within you and actually has nothing to do with circumstance. You will discover how to make your mind and body a better place to live. You will realize that you already have everything you need.

Awakening to your inner wisdom is the foundation for living the life of your dreams. The path of discovery will be both easy and difficult. It will at times seem too simple to actually be the truth — to actually make a difference in how you live your life. At other times, you might feel a struggle and think this is too complicated because your old habits or old beliefs have such a hold on you. Wisdom is always available to you and the only thing that blocks you from accessing it is your belief system and your negative emotions, which result from your past. The past, however, is the past and only you can keep it alive by recreating it in your mind. The past can obstruct your inner wisdom and keep you from realizing your true potential. This is your choice.

Learning to navigate through negative emotion and binding beliefs will allow you to hear the quietest voice of wisdom within you, even in your darkest moments. Every human being is hard wired and born with the capacity for innate wisdom. Not everyone is awake to their wisdom, which explains why it is that people do crazy and hurtful things. Wisdom is at work in your body, in your mind, and in the world around you. In your body, the second you cut or burn your skin, there is an intelligence that goes to work to repair the damaged area. You simply need to clean the affected area and the rest is the work of your body’s intelligence. This same intelligence is at work in your mind allowing for the production of certain chemicals or neurotransmitters so that you can respond to situations and circumstances appropriately.

Wisdom also works in the mind when you have been emotionally wounded. Something goes to work immediately to help you recover and get over things so that you can function. On a given day you might be really angry or sad about something and the next day you have a different perspective. Perspective is the result of wisdom at work. Deep emotional wounds sometimes need more cleansing or they can become infected, which can result in mental illness including but not limited to depression and anxiety. Emotional wounds that become infected manifest as beliefs and mental habits that hold us hostage and predict the way we see the world. Cleansing old wounds is an essential process to awakening to your inner wisdom and living the life of your dreams.

The clearer your mind, the more easily you can access wisdom and creativity, which lend themselves to living a fulfilled life. As you become aware of your experience, both positive and negative, and recognize the correlation between your state of mind and your experience, you will see that life happens through you, not to you. You will recognize your personal power to affect change and you will begin to choose a path that nourishes your body, mind, and spirit. You will remember that it doesn’t serve you to be hard on yourself, to criticize your body, or to dwell in the past. You will begin to find yourself in a place where you can honor the choices you have made and you will begin to pave the way to make new choices — choices that will help you live well and create a better life for yourself.

I encourage you now to slow down enough to hear the quiet voice of wisdom within you. This is the voice that lifts you out of the monotony, that gives you creative ideas, that allows you to experience insight, that fills you with inspiration, peace, and contentment. This inner wisdom reminds you that you can trust yourself. It allows you to move past your old thoughts and habits that have for so long been holding you prisoner. And if you should find yourself gripped by negativity and fear, slow down and proceed with caution as if you were driving on slick roads. No gunning it and no slamming on the brakes. Simply recognize the feeling and remember that you are creating this from your old beliefs and old wounds. Face the challenge of moving through your negative habits as you would face a new walking trail or workout routine. Face it with enthusiasm and confidence because inside yourself you know that you can do it.

As you remember your own power and awaken to your inner wisdom, you will begin to break your habit of analyzing your mistakes and shortcomings and acting based on old beliefs that more than likely do not serve you any longer. You are choosing the path of wisdom and personal freedom. You are choosing to create the life of your dreams.

Darla Meulemans, M.A., founder of Northwest Insight LLC, is a master’s trained counselor and life coach who works with individuals and organizations to foster resilience, promote mental well being, and enhance the quality of living. She can be reached at 503-757-9557 or darla@nwinsight.com.