Receiving Depends on You Knowing You

Because women have been programmed to look to others to get their needs and wants met, we often don’t understand the importance of Returning to, or knowing, ourselves.

If you wonder what returning to your truth has to do with creating the life and relationships you want, you’re not alone!

When I invite women to turn their attention to themselves, I can practically see a thought bubble forming above their heads. It says something like:

• I have a lot of issues I’m dealing with here. We need to get on with focusing on what’s really important. (Which is usually what someone else is doing or not doing.)
• Focusing on myself is a waste of time.
• You don’t understand! My spouse/child/boss/etc. is abusive/struggling/not paying attention to me (fill in the blank), and I need to do something about it — NOW!

I get it.

Turning your focus to yourself may feel like a distraction from your problems, issues, relationships, or whatever has your attention at the moment.

The deeper meaning just underneath the resistance is more often rooted in one of these beliefs or habits:

• I feel uncomfortable, awkward, or nervous when I focus on myself.
• I was taught that it’s self-indulgent or selfish to spend time focused on me.
• I need people — or circumstances — to change so that I can feel better. I can barely tolerate taking my focus off of others and putting it on myself because I’m terrified that if I do I will never get my needs met.

I relate to all of these because I’ve experienced every single one.

We are trained from a very young age to focus on other people.

I was taught — mostly without spoken words — to read other people’s moods, their nonverbal cues, and between the lines of their sentences for the purpose of figuring out what I should think or how I should feel or what I should do next.

Were you taught these lessons too?

This unintentional and largely unconscious programming causes us to become dysfunctionally comfortable with focusing outside ourselves to identify our reality or our truth, or to get our needs met.

This way of being is living from the outside in.

Outside-in living means we don’t know what we need, want, or desire because we haven’t looked inside to find out.

It’s not your fault. But it is within your power to change.

When you don’t have this vital information about yourself, there is no way that you can pursue your desires.

And when you can’t pursue your desires because you don’t know what they are, you lose hope. You may become resentful and bitter. And if this condition lasts too long, you may completely give up.

The consequences of not knowing how to return to your authentic truth are powerful — and completely avoidable.

If you’re ready to make a different choice, I invite you to ask yourself three powerful questions any time you’re feeling stressed, irritable, or unhappy:

1. What do I think? What are my thoughts/perceptions/opinions?
2. How do I feel? What are my emotions (including body sensations)?
3. If I had the power to create the ideal outcome in this situation, what would it be? In other words, what do I want?

You will be tempted to answer question #3 with some version of what you want another person to do. For example, you might say, “I want Richard to ________________.”

It is within your power to ask another person to do what you want them to do, but it is not in your power whether or not they agree to do it.

If your answer to question #3 relies on what another person must do or not do, I invite you to go a little deeper and ask, “What would I have if the person did what I want them to do? How would I feel?”

Your answer to this question will get you closer to the heart of what you truly want.

A simple way to understand this is let’s say you are feeling chronically stressed because your income doesn’t pay your basic bills. Your logical conclusion would be that you either need to increase your income or reduce your bills.

But the deeper reason behind why you want more income is that you want to experience less stress, more ease, and more abundance in your life. This is how you would feel if you weren’t struggling to make ends meet.

So when you consider question #3, focus on the ultimate outcome of what you would be experiencing if you had what you wanted. How you want to feel rather than how you think you would get there, or who needs to make it happen for you.

Discovering who you are and what you want through answering these three questions is the power of Return — the first portal of The Radiant Threefold Path.

Returning to you means you know what lights up your senses, you know how you feel (your emotions), and you are intimately aware of your thoughts — including honoring and trusting your intuition.

When you have this vital information about yourself you will know how to give to yourself — creating the conditions for receiving more of what you want from others.

Returning to you may seem too simple. It may seem selfish. It may feel like a waste of time. But knowing you is absolutely necessary for you to create the life you desire.

What stops you from returning to your authentic truth? I’d love to hear in the comments below.

© Victoria Priya (2023)