I stopped writing blogs for a little while because it turned into a “to-do”. I stopped living my life based off of things I “have to” or “should” do. Instead, all of my days are scheduled based on inspired action. I stopped feeling inspired to write blogs or work on my book. I thought it was because all of my inspiration went into writing my Facebook posts, and maybe that’s true. Maybe I just needed a break from everyone’s expectations of me.

You see my life from the outside and create opinions based on a past story. That’s how we create opinions about anyone. I used to live my life trying to please people, but one thing I’ve learned intensely over these last couple weeks is that if I allow opinions of others to dictate who I am then I no longer know who I am.

I’m having a really weird realization that I’m partially writing this blog to family members, partially writing it to my ex, partially writing it to all my readers, and partially just writing whatever the fuck is coming up for me.

I’m so very aware that we read personal development blogs, posts, books, etc and feel incredibly inspired to change our lives. We feel incredibly inspired to make those changes, even when the author is completely honest about how low the lows are. It’s all worth it to get to the other side, right? It’s hard to really know, though, what the low will feel like when you’re in it yourself. I’m also becoming incredibly aware that “technically” you’re not supposed to share shit until you’re on the other side of it. You’re supposed to work through it first. I don’t like rules. I like to do things the way it feels good to do it and being honest with my readers is what feels best.

Here are some things I’ve learned about growth:

People who are fucking miserable don’t want to see you grow. They don’t want to see you happy with yourself because it would be much easier for them if you would stay stuck in the, “I’m sorry, everything is my fault” stage. Here’s the extra kicker — when they’re telling you how shitty you are, BECAUSE you’re working on changing your patterns it requires you to take the gut punch, pull up your big girl panties, and bite your fucking tongue. Yes, you can scream and cry behind closed doors but even through the tears you’re repeating to yourself, “When they attack they’re asking for love. When they attack they’re asking for love. Clearly they’re really hurting right now.”

It often feels like bargaining with God. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried the, “If you’ll just let this be ok, I promise to not go back to old habits.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. When it comes to your soul’s growth, you kind of have to take the good with the bad. You have no control how long people are meant to be in your life. The more you try to control how long that will be, the deeper the pain gets. Every time you try to resist what is (because clearly you know better) you’ll end up on the floor sobbing again.

Feeling your feelings is all fun and games when teaching others to do it. When it comes to feeling them yourself, it always sucks. You’ll become so self aware that you’ll think, “Can’t I just eat pizza and ice cream and call it a day?” But then you remember how badly you want to move past the emotional eating and choose to feel your feelings fully…and it still sucks.

When you know your purpose in this lifetime is to help shift the energy of the world in a big way, you can expect big ass lessons. Even when it feels like punishment in the moment, it’s not. It’s ok if no one understands. Sometimes you’ll feel really alone. You’ll have moments through your growth where you start to feel like you have no one to go to because you’ve outgrown many of them. You don’t want to bitch about things but you also don’t want to take full responsibility for the creation of your life. You simply just want someone to sit there and compassionately remind you there’s another side you’ll get to.

There will be moments you so badly want to be seen and moments you don’t want to be seen at all. In reality, you only want to be seen by those you’re trying to prove yourself to and you’ll never be able to prove to them who you are. They can only see you for who you are at their own level of awareness and that can feel extremely lonely.

And at the end of the day, what it all boils down to is loving yourself. The only way to ever get to the other side is to truly love yourself. Love yourself through the anger. Love yourself through the tears. Love yourself through loved ones attacking you. Love yourself through others perceiving you in a way you know isn’t who you are. Love yourself through feeling like you’re being pulled back into fitting into your old box. Love yourself through wanting to emotionally eat. Love yourself through wanting to emotionally drink. Love yourself through the fear.

Do what feels good. If you want to sit on your meditation pillow all day and not talk to anyone, do it. If you don’t want to respond to emails or texts, don’t. If you want to go through a purge-fest to get rid of lots of your stuff, do it. If you want to not shower and watch a Friends marathon, do it. If you want to have a dance party, dance it up! If you want to just sit and stare at the ceiling, that’s totally acceptable. Whatever gets you to the point of saying to yourself, “Man, I LOVE hanging out with myself” is always the right choice to make.