Tuning Back Into Yourself

July 19th 2020

Sometimes all you need to do is reconnect for to what makes you, you~

I have been thinking a lot about the idea of “losing” yourself and “finding” yourself again. You see, I don’t really view what has happened to me over the past year to be “losing” myself, per se, but more of burying myself or losing connection with myself. Because, in moments, I would still see the same old Jessica staring back at me in the mirror and I would still experience some of the same child-like joy I always would when doing my favorite things. But I feel like some people, things, situations, etc., sort of caused me to bury the me I’ve grown to know and (mostly) love because I developed a sense of shame around who I was.

I think the moment I lost sight of myself is when I started feeling like the way I was didn’t really fit in with the people and the life building around me. I felt like, even if people started to like me for who I really was, they would grow tired of me for those same reasons. So I tried to become this different person. I can’t really say if I was trying to be a “better” person, really. I think I was just trying to be whatever I thought would make people want to stick around.

That burying myself under insecurities and, for lack of better words, crap made it really difficult to tell myself apart from the piles and piles of negative thoughts and feelings around me. I forgot what genuine self-love was and how to love myself when I was completely alone. I forgot how to get by without affirmations and emotional support and I lost my love for spirituality, the divine, and for myself.

So how does one tune back into themselves and clear out all the garbage you’ve buried yourself under? Well, for starters, it is not a simple process. It is actually quite painful. I found that when you’ve buried yourself, you have the do the labor to dig yourself up again. And sometimes that means admitting that you have been faking who you are to everyone, including yourself. Sometimes, it is telling yourself that you made some mistakes and forgiving yourself for those mistakes, understanding you can’t take back lost time, but you can continue to grow in the hopes of not losing any more.

For me, tuning back into myself has been an uphill battle where I have really had to push myself. I have been trying to develop routines, eat better, get ready more often, and move my body more in ways I used to love. I am beginning to tap back into divination methods to ask my angels for help. I am beginning to share my honest thoughts and opinions with friends and I am also take a lot more private time to myself.

I have gotten in the habit of leaving my phone in other rooms while I prep meals or while I work out or even while I write this post because I feel like moments of disconnecting from constant contact has helped me be a little more self-reliant. But I have also been learning to lean on my friends more in productive ways. Instead of calling friends up to cry about what isn’t working or what I haven’t achieved yet, I am calling them up to tell them what I have accomplished, what dreams I have, and what I have been doing to get through some of the things that have been holding me back in life.

In the book Flux by Orion Carloto, she explained that sometimes life is like a wishbone, and things have to break for all of our biggest wishes to come true. I really see that in my own life. I originally thought that all of this personal growth as of late was in relation to my break up, however, the deeper I get into working on myself, the more I feel like this was just something the universe has been setting me up for for a while and now the environment is right for me to do what needs to be done.

Quarantine has kept me home a lot more which has encouraged me to take in more media like I used to, read a little bit, exercise, reach out to new friends and new people to get to know. I sort of feel like I woke up from a year long nap that all started when I moved out of New York. I think I am finally starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel of moving away from what is familiar into something new.

My life is by now means perfect right now, but I am so proud of the little steps I have taken to genuinely improve my physical and mental health. And it all started with tuning back into myself.

If this is something you’ve been struggling with, here is my advice for how to tap back in to the true you:

1. Take stock- I have talked a lot about the importance of this with my therapist. I have this belief that every once and a while we all need to “take stock” or an “inventory count” of the things we have in our lives. The people, the relationships, responsibilities, worries, dreams, etc. I think we all need to sit down and look at everything we have and decide what needs to stay, what needs to be worked on, and what needs to go in order to give ourselves the space to grow. If you don’t take stock often enough, I believe you can start hoarding things and feelings that stifle your own growth.
2. Acknowledge your personal deception- The card The Moon in tarot ties back to emotional deception either from others or from yourself. I think that a large part of tuning back into yourself is admitting in what ways you have deceived yourself. Whether it be convincing yourself that you’re happy in a situation that makes you miserable, telling yourself you can’t achieve something you want, or telling yourself you want something that you truly don’t feel passionate about because it seems doable are all ways you could have deceived yourself. For me, I think I deceived myself most by convincing myself that if I just “wait it out” things would get better in a lot of situations in my life, when I really needs to take some inspired action.
3. Set up a plan- Sometimes it is going to take some work to get back into being the person you once were and who you consider to be your truest self. For me, it has been forcing myself to do yoga practices, avoiding unhealthy snacks at the grocery story, writing whenever I’m inspired, even if I’m feeling too lazy, talking things out with people I love and trust. While the things I do are things I love, I had to start doing them forcefully to get through my mental block caused by burying the person I am for so long. The buried me grew dispassionate in a lot of things out of stress and sadness and now the freed me is trying to remember what all these things that made me feel good actually felt like. It is getting a little easier each day.

So for now, I think I am still buried in a little crap, but I am getting closer and closer to tuning into who I really am. And I think by doing so, I am going to be one step closer to realizing what I want out of life and manifesting the things in my life I truly deserve.

What is one way you plan to tune back into yourself?

Jess~