8 Keys to Authentic Living
Last month I had the honor of being onstage in Anchorage, Alaska, giving my talk, “Transform Your Heart. Transform Your World: 8 keys to unlocking the true self.”
Being a spiritual being on a human journey is hard, and I love developing vocabulary and ideas that inform my own understanding of the journey and also help support others on their path as well. Transform Your Heart is part of that mission and purpose, and I hope to soon give the the talk on Kauai as well.
I promised at the end of the evening I would put the 8 keys in the next Intuitive YOU for anyone who wanted to revisit them and use them as a journaling prompt or jumping off point for their own self-exploration. Below you’ll find the 8 keys along with a few additional concepts from the talk.
If you’re seeing this information for the first time, I totally encourage you to grab onto any idea that resonates with you and process it. Journal, meditate, make art with it. Write your own keys if you feel called. Change the wording to reflect your truth. Remember we are all in this together, all learning, all exploring, all creating, and we’re each writing the story of our lives as we go.
The 8 Keys
Our hardships hold alchemical power which has the potential power to transform us.
Hardships have the potential to crack us open and depending on how much we allow ourselves to break, new space is created which helps us find new perspective and go through an evaluation process.
In this evaluation process, we are able to do a deep dive examination of our life.
There is great potential in this space of examination where we can find the hidden lights that help us transform (i.e. compassion, love, forgiveness, self-discovery, resilience, etc.).
The intelligence of our heart will guide us through hardship when we listen to its wisdom.
The heart actually sends the mind more signals than the mind sends the heart, which means the heart has a powerful capacity to inform the mind.
We can learn to intentionally tune into our heart and listen to its wisdom in order to receive direct guidance.
The heart is highly intelligent, creative and intuitive. The heart has a non-linear process: it speaks to us through images, resonance, an inner knowing, music, nature, colors, emotions, intuitions and inclinations.
We have to learn to say yes to our dreams and give ourselves permission.
Each of us has something inside of us we are meant to bring out into the world; if it’s within us it’s meant for us to actualize.
Our hearts don’t hold somebody else’s dreams, they hold our own. Even if we don’t know how, we can know we are meant to create some form of our dreams.
We are the only ones who can know our hearts and give ourselves permission to say yes to what is inside of them.
Disillusionment is a potential doorway to deeper authenticity.
The hidden light in disillusionment is that it helps us see things as they are and not how we wanted them to be.
When we see things as they actually are, we can empower ourselves to make choices from a more honest space.
Disillusionment is an opportunity for us to choose whether or not we want to keep our heart open to our self, our process, and our journey; this is where some of our deepest spiritual growth is going to be found.
If we are truly seeking personal growth then how we think it's going to happen will be different from how it actually happens.
We are here for growth, and when things go as expected there is no growth to be found.
The mind wants to maintain the illusion of control by knowing how things are going to look, but the heart always knows there are deeper forces at work and that our true self wants to come out and grow into a higher expression.
As we say yes to our hearts and align with ourselves, we will often pull challenges and obstacles into our path so we have the opportunity to practice new ways of thinking and being, which truly support us in becoming a higher expression.
If we want to become a higher expression of ourselves, we have to heal our wound with self-trust.
The self-trust wound exists in all of us: we doubt ourselves, questions our choices, wonder if we’ve missed our path.
The self-trust wound is created by layers of life experiences, which reinforced the false idea we cannot trust our own experience of self.
One way to work with healing this wound is to work with the affirmation, “I trust myself.” Make this unique to whatever facet of your life best suits (i.e. I trust my experience of self, I trust my heart to feel what it feels, I trust myself to make mistakes, I trust myself to learn and grow, etc.)
The energy of love is wild and wise, and we can trust it.
Love is an heart-based, intuitive process, and Love is a highly intelligent, untamed force of energy.
Love seeks to keep revealing itself to us in new forms.
We can intentionally send the energy of Love to areas in our life that need healing and we can trust that Love will bring about healing in its own form, so we don’t have to understand it, we just have to be open to the process.
When we choose love, we innately align with our true self.
The choices we make from our heart are the choices of our authentic self, our soulful self, our true self.
As we make choices from our heart, we begin to create the path that aligns us with our true self.
We can intuitively allow our path to unfold without having to know how it will look, we know love and love knows us, so love becomes our guidepost, even when we are walking through the unknown.
Looking to shine your light in more powerful ways and embody a fuller expression of yourself? Here’s three free, easy tools for your journey:
Watch this 8 minute video on the importance of becoming our own experts: Your Greatest Magic is You.
Try my free course specifically designed to inspire and facilitate heart based wisdom: Finding Your Heart Magic.
Read this post on cultivate a radical relationship with appreciation in your life: Reclaiming a Grateful Heart.