How to Find Your Way in Life

There are so many spiritual, new age and natural health practices out there nowadays that we are trying to parachute into our modern-day lives. The result is this grinding juxtaposition of your Tuesday night yoga class, Wednesday night massage or week-long yoga retreat against the chaos and spiritual distress of your everyday life.

You might feel this clash as soon as you make the lonely commute home after the classes and events that fill your heart, or during the social night out full of alcohol which barely scrapes the surface of what you really need to feel nourished.

Or perhaps you feel it most when you wake up to another day in a concrete jungle overwhelmed with technology that’s meant to help you connect with people –  when in reality people barely feel comfortable raising a smile as they walk past you in the street.

Along the way there are glimpses of the compacted dreams you’ve got stowed away from the day you were born, but there is no time to muse on that as you’ve got to keep pushing to get things done.

Waking Up

Nobody told you it was going to be like this, did they? These ideas were force-fed to you as the norm from the day you were born: ‘real life’ they call it. And you were meant to fall for it, hook, line and sinker, and you once did.

But the only problem now is that you’ve started to wake up. The connection with your soul has been made by your engagement with these soulful natural practices such as yoga, dance, mindfulness and time spent in nature, and now there is no going back!

You can try putting your head back into the sand after the bliss of your class or retreat, try getting back to the ‘real life’ you are meant to dutifully play out, but it’s too late.

Whether you like it or not, you’ve been reborn into your own soul wisdom and now the chance and opportunity is here to live out your birth right and be who you actually are.

Finding Your Way

In my late teens and early twenties, I had to dig really deep to find my soul, as I had become so disconnected at times. There were periods that were full of a darkness and emptiness, as I wasn’t doing things to let my soul off its leash or to fulfil my being.

In discovering my soul, I found a sense of peace and direction I’d never accessed before. I was finding my purpose, realising that I have a powerful healer living inside of me. Growing up, being an acupuncturist or yoga teacher wasn’t really on the list of occupations that you’d usually choose. I didn’t really give myself a sense of permission to do those things I was drawn to.

Initially it felt a bit like trial and error, as I made the switch from what I call ‘external navigation’ to ‘internal navigation’. With external navigation we tend to make decisions based on the value judgements of the people around us or societal norms, whereas in internal navigation we are making choices that come from within.

External vs Internal Navigation

Over time I’ve increasingly moved to internal navigation. I get my answers from within and act on them. In doing so I have very much narrowed the gap between soulless aspects of my life and the peak experiences (such as the retreats and workshops) which were full of soul. Now every part of my life is touched by soul.

Listening to the soul isn’t a one-hit wonder which always takes you towards the fun stuff; it’s something you have to do often. You have to find ways to constantly access it. Here’s where your regular practices need to come in, so you don’t lose track of what’s inside and talking to you.

The Long Walk

As we connect with our internal navigation, we sometimes we have to do what I think of as the ‘Long Walk’. The long walk is where the soul is seemingly asking to move on from a situation we have become overly comfortable with, or which is no longer feeding or nourishing us. I’ve had this many times in my life.

My father passed on after an illness in 2003 and I went back to live in his house towards the end of his life. It was somewhere I felt comfortable and at ease, and it was a joy to just be with my dad. However, I ended up staying way longer in his house than perhaps was for my greater good.

I remember one day standing and looking out of the window at the field in front of his house and asking myself if I should stay or go. I realised that by the time I was asking myself this question it was already too late as the situation was no longer fulfilling me. It was time to go.

When taking a long walk sometimes you don’t know what’s going to happen next, and the first part of the journey can be a bit arduous, but you don’t know what riches are around the corner when you start moving! Following the soul’s much greater perspective can be much like this.

Facing Resistance

As we follow the soul’s calling we might find ourselves meeting resistance. Our resistance isn’t always about coming out of a situation, it can also be about going into a situation. We find ourselves resisting change. At this point of the journey, the ‘dark night of the soul’, all you have is faith and that sense of inner knowing that if you trust you’ll end up somewhere much better.

And what happened for me, upon deciding to leave my father’s house completely encapsulates what I’m trying to communicate here. I decided I needed to go…but where? My conscious mind and value judgements kicked in with all the sensible options of what to do next. I researched renting, or sharing new places, moving cities, and also had the possibility of living at a local Buddhist centre.

My conscious mind at the time put that option way down the list of possibilities, favouring a house share elsewhere. So what did I do? I went and danced! I danced at a local 5Rhythms class (it’s a kind of spontaneous free-form dance practice, non-choreographed so you don’t have to ‘think’), and bang, in a flash, I found myself having a vision of moving into the Buddhist centre.

So I did, and it was good!

Setting the Internal Compass

This is how I do my internal navigation, and how you can to. It’s not always dance or visions – sometimes I get a feeling or what seems like a gentle whisper while in the deep relaxation at the end of a yoga class.

And sometimes I just feel clear enough no matter what I’m doing, and this is the point we are trying to move towards, that we become clear enough and familiar enough with it to recognise the whisper of the soul throughout our daily lives!

I feel my soul does, in some aspects of my life, has a sense of destination, although to some degree I also have to fill in the gaps as I go along. That’s where the fun is and paying attention to what opportunities the universe presents to you: look out for the buzz in your heart as it will tell you when something is relevant.

And remember, it’s also not always about the big stuff and overall life direction. Your soul prompts you about everything: relationships, getting up and doing exercises, making the phone call to your loved ones you’ve been putting off, and putting away the serious stuff and over-application by going out and having fun. Or vice versa!

What I know for sure, is that when we turn inwards and strengthen our soul connection we find that fulfilling life we used to crave. The moments of connection to our deepest self become our norm and our life is so much richer for it.

To read more grab a copy of my latest book Understanding Human Nature – A User’s Guide to Life,  available now.