As Louise Hay and Cheryl Richardson often say, “Life has something planned for you far greater then you can ever imagine.”

This thought alone helped me get through the darkest times in my life.

When I was 27 I thought I knew it all. I thought that acquiring money, status, and having the perfect body would make me love and value myself. But no matter how many thousands of dollars I made in one day, or how cut my abs were, or how many times I was on TV, it was never enough.

I had always suffered from the beliefs “I am not enough”, “I am unlovable”, and “There is something wrong with me”. They were the driving force behind everything I did until eventually they destroyed everything I was and had.

From a young age I started dieting because I thought I was fat. In my teens I became obsessed with physical perfection as the solution to my lack self-love. I spent my life pursuing happiness in an image, a dollar value, and an external distraction.

With this, I built a million dollar fitness business, sculpted out my “perfect body”, was on TV all the time and was the expert personal trainer and health and fitness specialist in my city. But I was miserable inside.

My passion for health and fitness became boring; my passion for helping others flat-lined. My joy for life and business turned into resentment, as I had never dealt with the truth inside of me: that I had never loved myself; I didn’t know who I was and I was still that scared little girl who believed she wasn’t enough.

This foundation for my existence is what tore everything apart. I started drinking heavily to anesthetize the pain of my lack of self worth and, slowly, I lost it all. My business fell apart, as did my relationship, my sanity, my health, and all of my money—everything I had that gave me value was taken. All of my deep seated fears of not being enough—that I was ugly, stupid, and a loser—became real, and I was left to face the glaring truth of who I really was.

That’s when a miracle happened.

I was forced to surrender. I had to let go of everything I thought I was and go into my deep suppressed sorrow.  I spent about a year mourning the death of my “self” by drinking, crying, and just bearing witness to my personal pain of grief, shame and self-hatred. And during this time I started to pray. I started to ask for divine guidance and to be shown what to do.

That is when a shift happened. I found people like Louise Hay, Simran Singh, Gabriel Bernstein, Wayne Dyer, Michael Beckwith and Eckhart Tolle. I had nothing else to do but spiritual study and so it is what I spent about a year doing. I listened to and read their words while I rehabilitated my body, mind and spirit. I developed a strong daily practice of binaural beats, daily affirmations, life visioning, affirmative prayer, subconscious programming with psycho cybernetics, The Silva Method, and so many other types of meditations. I started asking my angels for help; asking my Higher Self; asking my future self; asking all the time for my life to become a life of sacred service.

With this, I found what I was looking for: my authentic self.

I found a piece of my soul once again.  I had created space for my authentic self to emerge and start directing my life, instead of my ego.

I discovered everything I was looking for was already inside of me. I just had to allow it to come forward with a practice. I had to give it space to emerge within my life.

With this daily practice, I was able to overcome my addiction, depression, guilt, shame, adrenal failure, IBS, weight gain, emotional eating, chronic fatigue and feeling like my life was holding me hostage.

I found joy, peace, power, source, and radiance. I realised this was who I was all along. I had clung to so many other facades out of fear, but once they were all pulled away I could ask the most powerful questions anyone could:

Who am I?

What do I want?

What is my purpose?

What is real?

What is real is that which never changes. What never changed in my life was my presence, my awareness, my being-ness.

This process taught me a very valuable truth. That my life means nothing when I live for material possessions that will never love me back, or an idealistic body image that is never attainable—allowing fear and lack to motivate me.

We are here for so much more and a part of this is unlocking our greatest pain or struggle to transmute into our life’s work. They are our divine gifts and our personal power lies just behind their challenge.

How can you unlock them? Here is a great daily practice to implement:

1.     Spend time in nature.

Do this with presence and use your breath. Make this a moving meditation of sensing, connecting, breathing and letting go of the labels in life. Allow the wonder of the natural environment to take you over—there is so much wonder ever expanding, transforming, growing, and evolving. Be with beginners mind and breathe in this wonder.

2.     Start living with intention.

Every day wake up and ask “What is my intention for this day?” If you woke up and were God, what would you want to create? If you had all the talent, passion, resources, power, time and money in the world and you could do anything, what would it be?

Intention is the seed to all manifestation. Set your intention, feel it, become it. Align all your actions, thoughts, words and expressions with this intention throughout the whole day.

3.     Eat a clean diet.

Your body is your vehicle for great awakening and it needs to be fueled with high vibratory foods. Make sure to choose these wisely and eat with what I call your ‘highest vision’. Hold your vision of your most powerful, luminous, radiant self in your mind and pull this energy into your food choices and the act of eating. It can assist you in fueling your body for this vision to become your everyday experience of being.

4.     Meditate, meditate, and meditate.

There are so many forms of meditation. Start with five minutes a day and work up to one hour. I meditate two to three times a day. In the morning I do chakra clearing and intention setting; I practice ‘no mind’ in the afternoon; at night I do gratitude meditations. I also turn every walk into a moving meditation.

5.     Ask for divine guidance.

All the time, every day. The universal law “Ask and it is given” is true. But you do need to ask first.

Have empowering conversations with yourself and the universe by using questions like “What would it take to____?” or “How is it so easy for me to ____?” instead of disempowering ones like “Why is is it so hard to ___?”

Where you attention goes energy flows.

6.     Focus on “How can I serve?” instead of “What’s in it for me?”

Our lives are meaningless without service. It is through service we heal, transform, and find what we are looking for. It doesn’t matter what you do—it’s the presence and the intention behind the act that matter. I try and stay in “sacred service” with every action I do for others. It energizes me and gives me the power to perform mini miracles all day. Hold this in your heart and allow for the universe to breathe new life into your daily actions.

7.     Seek inspiration every day.

Immerse yourself in this; find teachers that most resonate with you. Find them and listen to them every day.

Inspiration is where your spirit lies. You don’t need more motivation or discipline; you need to be inspired: in-spirit and in breath with God.

8.     Move every day.

Get your energy flowing and grow stronger. We are built to move and it is part of the healing process. Dr Christian Northrup says it best: “We heal with movement, sound, and tears”. Being stagnant will inhibit energy flow. Move your body and move it with pleasure, not self-punishment.  If it feels good, do it!

My addiction, grief, struggle and health problems were the best thing that happened to me because they forced me to heal, grow, and become an expert. They have been my greatest gifts of insight, revelation, and service. They are here to help us find our authentic self-love and creative expression so that we can share the universal unfolding through our unique talents, passions and abilities. All we have to do is create the space and allow this to emerge within our being.

You are the answer. You are your beloved. You are the source.

It is all in you.

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Author: Jannine Murray

Apprentice Editor: Hilda Carroll / Editor: Renee Picard 

Photo: Dmitri Kichenko/Flickr