How to Live Forward & Flourish

My first experience of recognizing how my thoughts can cause me to suffer happened after the loss of my mom when I was 13.

After her transition, for several months I was furious with my mom for dying and furious with God for allowing her to die.?

Months of being angry at what I couldn't change led me one evening to read what I'd been writing in my diary during those months.

As I read the words on the pages of my blue diary, I began to cry about the life I had had before my mom's transition. I remembered how excited I was about attending my first year of high school with friends I'd made in junior high.?

I thought about the plans I'd made once I was in high school that would prepare me to get into college and make my parents proud.?

I thought about how my dreams of the future now seemed futile as I was attending a high school where I knew only a few people from grade school. I only liked one of my teachers during my freshman year and I really didn't want to be at the school.?

I thought about how my grades had plummeted and no one seem to care about why an A and B student was now bringing home C's and D's on her report card.?

I was tired of being angry. I missed my friends. I was upset with myself because of my grades and how they could impact my ability to get accepted into college.?

I had been using food to numb my grief so I'd gained almost 30 pounds during this time.

And my dad's lung cancer had begun to spread in other areas of his body. I grew up knowing that he had lung cancer and that he had accepted the reality that he would probably die from it.?

The thought of both of my parents dying before I became an adult was a lot to process.?

?As I sat on my bed reading my diary and thinking about how the reality of my life had been completely disrupted after my mom's death, I just felt it was too much for me to bear. At that moment, I?had come to the end of myself. I said a silent prayer, " God, please help me."

Although I was angry with God, I couldn't deny the existence of the Divine in my life and in the lives of my family members.?

Shortly after my prayer, I felt a sense of relief from the anger which caught me by surprise.?

It was after this moment I?knew in my heart that I had to accept the harsh truth of my reality. This truth was glaring at me through the words I'd been writing in my diary for all those months.?

I was 14. So, I wasn't conscious of how the answer I needed to end my suffering was already within me.?

This truth led to more heart-wrenching cries as the tears from my eyes kept falling on the pages of my diary.

An Encounter With My Inner Wisdom

When I finally stopped crying, a thought came to mind, instead of focusing on the loss of my mom, I should focus on what I admired about my mom and all that she had given me.

The mere thought of shifting my focus off the loss of my mom felt foreign yet something within me knew that it was the way forward.?

I took aligned action with this one thought and it literally shifted me out of my depression, inspired me to develop a daily exercise regimen that helped me to lose the extra weight I'd gained and?I made the decision to stop focusing on the high school I wanted to attend and make the best of my experience at the high school I was at.?

This experience where I listened to the intuitive wisdom in my heart and soul and took action that help me to make progress in my life remains one of the "strong moments" in my life that I refer to whenever I need to rev up my courage to take action towards a goal.

Because of this experience, I began to develop trust in the voice of my intuitive wisdom. I couldn't explain it in a way that others would understand when they would ask me, "How do you know that's the best way to do XYZ?" I had no practical response because I've always felt it in my body.?

Over the past few years, one of my interests has been the research of The HeartMath Institute. A primary definition is an ability to understand or know something without conscious reasoning.?

?There are three types of intuition - implicit knowledge, energetic sensitivity, and nonlocal intuition.??

When I learned that energetic sensitivity is a type of intuition, it helped me to understand why I've always felt my inner knowing within my body.

My trust in my inner knowing within my heart and soul and my faith in the Divine were pivotal personal practices that inspired and empowered my ability to go from earning minimum wage to managing and leading several successful teams and 7-figure business units during my award-winning corporate career.

My faith and intuition led me on a journey of processing the grief in my heart from the loss of my son by developing a mindfulness practice.?

Cultivating my mindfulness practice helped me to connect the dots to the intuitive habits of mind that enabled me to transform my life and the life of my children by building a successful career.?

In addition, I was able to see that they were also a key reason why I have been able to bounce back better from the challenges and adversities I've faced during my life.?

My personal practices of faith and trusting my intuition led to the development of the habits of mind that literally empowered me to live forward and flourish which is why they are the framework I use in all of my group training and coaching experiences.

How often do you trust your intuition to make decisions in your life?

If you did follow your intuition, were your results what you expected? Share your experience in the comments below.

The Role Willingness Play In Creating Better In Life

None of this would have been possible had I not had the willingness to accept that the way I was perceiving the loss of my mom was causing me to suffer.

Even as a teen, I couldn't imagine myself accepting that I would live my life angry because of my life experiences. The thought of doing so didn't resonate with my soul.?

My friend, are you willing to accept that the only way to live life is based on what has happened in your past and what is happening in your present causing you inner distress?

Don't you feel deep down in your heart there has to be a better way??

It is my belief that we weren't designed to live our life suffering. Suffering is a result of how we perceive life, people, and our experiences. It's not based solely on our circumstances as many people believe.?

I've experienced other heart-wrenching experiences in my life and yet, I've been able to navigate them with a sense of trust and certainty that I always have access to Divine grace.?

This means to me that I will have what I need to move beyond any circumstance. The roadblock to doing so is only in the perception that I have about the experience.?

Once I'm willing to shift how I perceive a situation in my mind, I am able to experience the peace and power that's always available to me to make clear choices and decisions and take new actions toward changing what I can in a situation.

Can you look back over your life and see the difference in your results when you were willing to embrace a new state of being versus allowing your inner resistance to prevent you from taking an action you knew was necessary to create the change you desired?

How do you manage your inner resistance to change now?

Life Is Evolving. Are You?

Life is always evolving. It's not going to stop evolving because we don't choose to.?

We either choose to evolve or become astute at maintaining what is familiar to us only to wake up and realize that we've allowed our fears, doubts, and insecurities to box us into living our life based on what is familiar to us, instead of what inspires us to grow and flourish.?

When you are willing to perceive yourself, your past and present life, and what's possible for you in life from a more empowering perceptive inspired by your inner wisdom, shifts happen.

When you are willing to acknowledge the truth in your heart to release disempowering patterns that have kept you circling the same mountains in your life while making little to no progress in those areas of your life, your truth will begin to free you.

Your willingness to process the feelings and emotions associated with past experiences with a heart-centered self-inquiry approach will inspire fresh perspectives and new energy.

Nothing changes in your life until you change.

Your willingness to begin the process of doing the inner work necessary that leads to you reconnecting to the true essence of who you are instead of your ego helps you to be receptive to the wisdom in the seat of your soul.

Connecting to the wisdom in your soul is one of the most empowering habits you can develop to help you make decisions and solve problems.

Just understand, your soul is infinite and so are you. You have a human body but you have access to infinite intelligence.

That is if you're willing to embrace the truth and power of who you are and the wisdom within you.

About the Author

Jackie Capers-Brown is the Success Story Strategist. She helps people from all backgrounds come home to themselves by connecting to the wisdom within to unlearn patterns that cause them to suffer and empower them with transformational perspectives that inspire and motivate them to take control of their lives and use her signature self-leadership success system to magnetize their manifesting power to experience new possibilities in their lives.

Jackie is the mom of Dee and the founder of The School for Soulful Success, a heart-centered training and development business. She's the author of five books, a corporate speaker, and a trainer at women empowerment and leadership events.

In addition to her business, she's passionate about empowering youth living in working-class households through her Leader In Me training program.

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