Shifting from feeling Lonely to feeling Safe.

The thing that keeps most people from feeling Safe?
Disconnection. It’s got tons of people feeling lonely and anxious.
Disconnection looks like spending more time (and money!) with coping mechanisms, keeping up with the Jones’ (or Kardashian’s) and doing anything to zone out & avoid feeling lonely (when you’re not desperately working to fit in)…
Rather than living joyfully, engaged with a Loving community & intimate connections while practicing an abundant passion. Disconnection feels like lonely strife, struggle and suffering. Connection feels like Love, peace and freedom.
Connection leads to understanding and alignment. It helps you know what to do, and how to make healthy decisions for yourself and your kids. Connection gives Life meaning, it gives us a sense of Purpose during our short time in this world.

A lot of people I talk to like to focus on outward connection.

It’s easy for me to see why our heads get caught up in things like comparing, materialism, or wanting to be “perfect”. We’re often our own worst enemy, mentally entertaining self-deprecation and destructive thoughts, without understanding the full impact because it’s “just in my head”…and you just keep wondering why you’re lonely.
Honestly though, more Valuable than any pound of flesh or drop of blood, is your Connection to your soul, your spirit, your psyche, your Self.
It’s not our fault that we behave in these ways. We’re socially conditioned to prioritize an extraverted perspective… to worry about how we’re being judged.
But, instead, when we do the work to invert our lenses and begin to explore our Life’s situation by tracing our actions inside ourselves, witnessing our feelings, thoughts and beliefs for the sake of meeting this Need we all have for Connection. It becomes easier to accept that we ALL must do better taking CARE of ourselves!
If you’re ready to accept responsibility for improving your self-CARE, but you’re confused or concerned about HOW – Worry not, we’ve got your covered:

You can not properly CARE for yourself without KNOWING yourself.

Self-awareness is a tricky concept. But stay with me:
The human brain, pulsating, lazy, tangle of nerves that it is, takes training and exercise before it can turn its clever, amazing powers in on itself.
For the sake of efficiency, since our brains are constantly being bombarded with sensations from our environments, (i.e., the sounds of the ticking clock mingling with the tic-tic-tic of the keystrokes, which I also feel press under my fingertips, as I read the words in my head while I’m typing to you right now)…
Your brain processes everything around you, at all times. When all is well, it tunes out the extra distractions to give your attention and focus to the task you’ve mentally prioritized. (When our mental health is suffering, things don’t always work so smoothly)
Normally, taking time to consider our internal reactions to our experiences, and how those reactions affect our behavior, doesn’t fall high on the priority list.
Developing self-awareness is an ongoing, fine-tuning of how your brain automatically prioritizes your actions based on your assessment of your emotional and cognitive climate.

Despite popular opinion, Self-awareness is a good thing.

Here’s the deal: Modern living wears down our spirit. Day in and day out, the monotonous droning of routine, of ‘normal’, that endless pattern erodes the ‘awareness’ from our consciousness, and makes it more difficult to challenge our comfortable perceptions.
It can be shocking, to look at your life and realize you’re on autopilot. Heck, even when you do realize that you’re lonely and just going through the motions of day to day living, accepting that fact can be downright painful.
Disabling autopilot often requires a person to challenge firmly held beliefs, and processing those discrepancies gets uncomfortable. Which is part of the cycle when the need for self-awareness kicks in; this is when you have to choose: Learn from the new information with the intention of making changes OR, continue on your lonely Autopilot track.
If you’re still with me, you know it’s time to Disable AutoPilot and truly put effort into caring for your Self so you can build the sense of Safety Within that’s keeping you from Thriving in your life.
Having Safety Within means taking control of life by taking action when you’re confronted with new information. This requires awareness of your thoughts, feelings, and actions in order to consciously choose life’s direction.
We know it’s increasingly easy to become complacent with sources of stress and how lonely we are made to feel. We understand that stress and coping mechanisms are readily available to the average person, and that settling for whatever life circumstances come along seems pretty mainstream.
Especially when you have to balance work, family, education, social interaction, housekeeping, hobbies, and all of the other hundreds of items that ‘must’ be taken care of on any given day.
Fear, aggravation, and uncertainty are unavoidable parts of life that we all have to learn to manage in our own personal balancing acts. Actively DECIDING to make conscious choices instead of automatic ones is the key to changing the motivations behind your behaviors which will bring greater self-awareness and add more meaning to your life – goodbye feeling lonely.

As for the “how-to”, the concept is simple:

Be conscious; actively think about all of your actions.
However, it can take a while to incorporate conscious living into your daily life. And doing it “on your own” makes it SO MUCH HARDER than it needs to be.. That’s why we’re pulling this cohort together and transforming the lives of 20 extraordinary people (and their families).
If you’re looking for a better understanding of the work we will be doing in the program, here are a few things our work together will emphasize:
1. Make reflecting on your life a regular routine. Whether you keep a journal, or make reflecting on your day part of your evening routine, or have a weekly session where you review your life or take some time away from the office to reflect on everything … it’s important that you give things some thought. Regularly.
2. Set or review your life’s goals (at least annually). What do you want to do in life? What’s important to you? How do you want your Life to Be? And how will you get there? Write it down, and keep it somewhere you will see it often, and take action.
3. Also – review your relationships. The people we Love are among the most important things in our lives, if not the only important things. You need to think about your relationships. Are you spending enough time with them? Do you show your appreciation for them? Is there a way you can improve your relationship? Is there anything you need to forgive or apologize about? Are there barriers that can be removed? Communication that can be improved? Also review your relationships with others, such as co-workers.
4. Consider your impact on the World. 2020 is opening A LOT of eyes and making people question all sorts of things. How does what you do, what you consume, and how you live, impact the environment? What impact do you have on poor people in Third World countries? How are the poor, the powerless, the voiceless impacted specifically? In what ways is your community impacted? Your life has an impact, whether you think about it or not. Being conscious of how your decisions affect others is important.
5. Consider the real costs of each purchase. We often buy things without really thinking about what we’re doing or what they really cost. Sure, it’s just $30 … no problem, right? $30 represents hours of your life … hours that you’ll never get back. Do you really want to spend your life earning money for trivial purchases? Is that what you want to do with your life? Worth some thought, I think.
6. Consider the real costs of the things in your life. Our lives are filled with stuff … our houses, our offices, storage units … and beyond just the cost of buying the stuff, this stuff takes a toll on us. Material things in our life must be arranged, cleaned, moved, taken with us when we move … it takes up the space in our life, it is visual stress. Later, we’ll have to get rid of it, sort through all of it, take time to throw it away or recycle it or donate it. If having the stuff is not worth all of that, then get rid of it.
7. Review how you spend your time. Until we do a time audit, and keep a log of our day, even if it’s just for one or two days, we don’t really know how we spend our time. And if we do audit our time, it can be very surprising. And if we know how we’re spending our time now, we can make conscious decisions to change how we spend our time in the future.
8. Explore yourself. Take some time to think about what kind of person you are. What your values are. Whether you live your life according to those values. How you treat people. How you treat yourself. Think about this: what do you want people to say about you when you die?
Some of this is heavy.
Adjusting to the weight of active thought and awareness of how you feel and why you behave a certain way is challenging.
Investing in space to explore these concepts AND learn actionable tools to help you navigate the changes you seek is an excellent way to start dealing with any discomfort you’re currently enduring..
Connecting with others on a similar journey exponentially expands our own self-awareness, and the consciousness of the whole group, this empowers all of us to make more intentional choices more quickly and consistently.
Safety Within is essential for cultivating Happiness and Success, qualities most of us are Seeking.