How do we know when we are 'on track' with our lives?

'Once you can truly let go of the need for validation and approval from others, you are ready to follow the path of the soul.' Freja ♥

Most of us have clear idea of what we would like to achieve in life. For many people this may mean working hard to enjoy a comfortable life style, doing a good job bringing up children or achieving career success. While personal goals can be clear cut and easy to measure for some people, for others they can feel vague, changeable or even contradictory. Whether our journey is as straight as an arrow or meanders like a river, how do we know when we are 'on track' with our lives?

There are two entities that drive and steer your life journey; your ego and your soul. These two aspects of your 'self' often contradict each other because their way of going about things is diametrically opposed. How someone chooses to live their life will largely depend on which of these two entities gets to set the agenda and make the decisions.

We all need an ego in order to experience being a separate individual. However, the ego is far more limited and limiting than the soul. The ego acts like stabilisers on a bike – while you are learning they are supportive but at some point you need to let them go or they will just slow you down and get in the way. The ego enables you to define yourself as a separate individual, but at some point, if you really want to evolve to your greatest potential, you need to say good bye to its limitations.

Like stabilisers, the ego is also concerned with safety. It seeks make your place in the world safe by helping you to 'fit in'. First and most importantly your ego seeks acceptance from your parents and family. Then, as you get older, your ego seeks to help you to 'fit in' with peers and society as a whole. Its primary aim is to ensure that you don't lose favour because being rejected or abandoned makes your position unsafe.

From the perspective of ego it is easy to know when we are on track. The ego relaxes when we receive recognition, validation, acceptance, love, money, promotion, praise, popularity – anything which offers assurance that you are 'doing well' in the eyes of others. While we all need ego reinforcements from time to time, when we live in accordance with ego, the approval of others is all that really matters. The more people like, reward and and praise us, the more secure we feel.

Contrary to popular belief, a strong ego is both positive and absolutely essential to our wellbeing. The more ego re-enforcing 'positive strokes' we receive as children, the greater our confidence and self esteem will be. If we trust our place in the world, it is much easier to let go of those external 'stabilisers' once we reach adulthood. If we reach adulthood with an under developed ego, then we remain in a childlike 'egocentric' state, continually seeking acceptance and validation from others. It is very hard to take the stabilisers off when you feel anxious and wobbly inside.

The soul requires you to have a strong enough ego to be able to live your life regardless of approval, praise or reward. Being dependent on external validation limits your potential for growth and also makes you vulnerable to power games. Approval can easily be withdrawn, withheld or denied and the ego finds it hard to remain detatched or to rise above such manipulations. Once you can truly let go of the need for validation and approval from others, you are ready to follow the path of soul.

The hardest part of living from the soul is breaking the deeply ingrained habit of looking outside for validation and remembering to look within. Cycling without stabilisers requires you to learn to inwardly feel where the balance lies. In the same way, to enable your soul to guide you, you must first find your inner balance. Once you can easily locate your inner centre and comfortably keep your balance, you are ready to go where ever your soul leads you.

Following the soul is very different than living from the ego because it allows so much freedom and possibility – you can literally go where ever you like. With so many choices suddenly made available to you, how do you know where you should be going or what you should be doing? Well here's the rub; there really is no where that you should be going or anything you should be doing – if you find that you are thinking in terms of 'shoulds' then you know you are back to ego!

Following the soul requires that you feel where you want to go. What makes you feel excited or joyful? What intrigues you and captures your attention? What challenges you to grow and brings out the best in you? What feels good and sits comfortably with your values? Asking such questions about how we feel from a place of inner balance enables us to follow the guidance of our soul and to intuitively know when we are 'on track'.

Although the soul speaks through your feelings, it is important to distinguish between a compulsive feeling and a genuine message from the soul. If a feeling starts to pull you off balance, encourages you away from your inner centre or towards gaining approval or validation then it is not coming from your soul, it is coming from your wounded or frightened ego. Although the soul will sometimes challenge us to the very core, its gentle whispers are always lead you deeper into your inner centre while simultaneously encouraging you to be courageous and free.

Freja ♥

How do we know if we are following a dream or chasing a mirage?

'Whatever it is that feels so acutely missing in our lives, is the very thing we must take responsibility for nurturing in ourselves.'

Over the last 12 months I have had to let go of every single dream I have ever held dear. I never realised quite how attached to them I was until one by one, they each came up; all bright and rosy only to be burst with a big loud 'bang'. I have discovered that these dreams I have so passionately pursued were actually mirages and that continuing to chase after them was self destructive. So, how can we tell if we are heroically following our dream or foolishly chasing a mirage?

Secretly I have been waiting for my 'real' life to start through the the fulfillment of at least one of these dreams. Like a petulant child, I have tried bargaining with God many times and have often bitterly complained – please can't I at least have one of them come true? I suspect that somewhere deep inside, most of us feel we are missing something and if we could only our hands on it, we would finally be able to relax and enjoy life.

For many of us there is at least one thing we crave - I call it the 'happy ending' dream; finally finding our One True Love; finally having a 'not so wonderful' lover magically transform and turn out to be our One True Love after all; finally healing a devastating life long family rift; finally being validated in the 'right' career; finally achieving success, acclaim, or a fabulous salary, and if all else fails then we may pine after the ultimate escape – finally receiving a big fat windfall so you don't have to worry about anything at all!

It may sound embarrassing admitting to any of these flights of fancy, but it really is no joke to feel that your life is worthless until something external has been granted to you. Because ultimately that's what all our 'happy ending' dreams are about - finally receiving some form of external validation that we are loved, valued and accepted for who we truly are. The natural response any wound is to seek something outside of ourselves to 'make it better'. Hopefully this will save us from the devastating inner belief that somehow - without this external validation - we are simply not enough. Whether it is love or sex or success or money or acceptance that we desperately crave, it is a painful lesson indeed to realise we can never fill that gaping hole.

There is a huge difference between following a dream that is born out of recognising our heart's desire and one that stems from trying to avoid pain or save us from wounds that have been inflicted on us in the past. Chasing or pining for the ever elusive happy ending is a dream based on fear and will only takes us further away from our authentic selves and deeper into our pain. Whatever solution we seek 'out there' can only ever turn out to be a mirage. The continued lack of closure and the devastating feelings of failure, shame and despair that go with it, leads us ever deeper into a negative cycle that becomes increasingly difficult to let go of.

Once we step back, we will discover that we have become addicted to trying to change the outcome of a sad story, instead of finding a way to accept it and come to terms with our loss. Whatever it was that happened to cause our wound, if we are waiting for those who hurt us to finally see the error of their ways or to magically change we will always feel disappointed and betrayed. We often find ourselves repeating the same patterns over and over again because we do not want to accept the ending has already happened. All we can do is find a way to come to terms with the fact that it wasn't happy and that we were wounded by this.

Of course, the more unhappy our ending was, the harder it is to accept. But if we are ever to stop reliving the pain and our powerlessness over the past, then accept it we must. This becomes much easier to do this when we decide to finally give ourselves that which was originally denied us, instead of desperately trying to get others to give it or naively waiting for the story to change. Whatever it was that feels so acutely missing in our lives, is the very thing we must take responsibility for nurturing in ourselves.

We must learn to give ourselves the love, acceptance, security, validation and respect that we need because in the end, the rest of world is just as lost and wounded as we are. It is only a vulnerable child who must look to the world outside for validation; as an empowered adult you can find a way to give yourself whatever you need without chasing after mirages. And if you don't know how? You can choose to get help and learn how. Allow the story ending be whatever it was and find some other way to give yourself what was lost.

And if instead of feeling a fearful craving you feel excited, joyful and expansive when following your dream – then you know it is not a mirage you are chasing, but a genuine calling from your soul.

Freja ♥