Life is made up of decisions – both big and small, seemingly unimportant and critical, one after the other.
Those decision which seem huge, important and will forever change the path of your life – I think of these kind of life decisions as crossroad moments.
A turning point where you declare your decision to the world and step boldly onto the path ahead and turn your back on the other paths.
The experience of life and all of the years she has bestowed upon me has given me more and more crossroad moments. I can pinpoint those pivotal moments where I have had to choose – and in doing so stepped boldly onto the path ahead. I can also see that as life fills with more responsibilities, layers and complexities these decisions have become clouded and more difficult to make.
It is essential in these moments to listen to your soul – and it is also in my experience one of the most difficult things to hear.
Other people’s opinions, other people who are relying on me to be who I’ve always been, other people who are challenged by change – all have added up to cloud that communication channel between soul and mind.
How can I leave this job when I left my university degree to work here in the first place?
How can I quit this job when I have so many projects/clients/other staff relying on me?
How can I leave this industry and work in a completely different field when I have put countless years into study and work and built my reputation in the market?
How can I turn my back on something that feels bad and misaligned with who I am when I don’t have an alternative completely mapped out and a sealed tight guarantee?
These are all familiar responses that the mind has to drown out the sound of the soul.
A little retrospect though has me devising a way to get my soul a clear communication channel to make sure she is not pushed into the background when making decisions.
There’s a beautiful connection that the soul has with the body – and if you pay attention – there is often a light bulb moment – someone says something – you read something somewhere – and your body drops instantly into a place of ease.
Your shoulders relax, your heart beat slows and you momentarily feel as though you are sitting on a beach without a care in the world.
Fleeting as this moment may be – that is your soul speaking. That is direct confirmation that this is the direction you need to head. This should help form the basis for your decision.
When I was deciding to leave my job in the bank, I saw a guidance counsellor – I was tossing up whether to leave and go back to university to study Interior Design. I had not yet been accepted into University but when I spoke to the counsellor she said “when you talk about leaving the bank, your eyes fill with passion and your body takes on an incredibly light energy”. And it struck me – that soul body connection was telling me (and the counsellor) that leaving the bank was what my soul desperately wanted – more than a place at Uni. And I followed through by resigning the very next day.
My soul body connection spoke very loudly during the last few years of my career as an Interior Designer. Every day I woke up dreaming of walking away from it all – that was like my motivating factor for getting out of bed everyday. But my mind clamped down very hard on her until she was no longer loud enough to get through the mind chatter about responsibilities and money and the unknown.
I clearly remember that as I crawled into bed very very late at night after pouring my energy into meeting some deadline in between attempting to be mummy and wife, that just as I stood on the cusp of deep unfeeling sleep, I would literally hear my name shouted – loud enough to wake me – just once but with such force that I had to get up and make sure there wasn’t someone else in the house besides my sleeping family.
I now know this was my soul begging for attention – because I had totally tuned out that soul body connection. And eventually circumstances put me on the path that my soul had be seeking all along.
Now in my quest for a soul driven life, I am tuning into this soul body connection. This language that arrives in my reaction to messages and signs. My mind is always looking for answers – but I am using my soul to filter through all that my mind is finding – to those words, those concepts that deliver an instant feel of calm and ease. Sometimes the tears come with the body connection – because I know my soul is at times tired and she doesn’t want us trapped and driven by the mind anymore. But I know to search – like minded people, concepts that appeal to my soul – intuitives, astrology, oracle, colour and crystals all things that hold so much soul body connection for me – and the way through my crossroad moments.
