Learning from life’s stumbles and the path to finding your own inner mission in fall forward. A practice in self-relationship with the architecture of designing life from the place of empowerment begins with shifting our intention. Being EM-POWERED, essentially means (and here is the hard news) that you are the only one responsible for yourself, your choices, your thoughts, your feelings; it is always in YOUR POWER to shift, change, and grow yourself into a life that feels most true to you.

Regardless of where you are in life, we all have things we are working through, learning, growing, and healing from. Even if we are not aware of it. It is our human design to seek ease and peace, and to be resistant to change and get stuck, harden, and be resistant to change. Building ourselves up, recreating and designing ourselves once again after a season of struggle, is a key to the mission towards growth. The optimist in me says this is one of the most magical parts of being alive! Being able to keep making some “bad” decisions or having hard things happen. Now with that life experience, you have material to examine, learn, and grow from.

Maybe the same hard pattern keeps happening until you finally hit the wall of your own awakening. I have learned from my years of being a counselor, sitting with others through their own hard and potentially lost moments (which is where many BIG awakenings happen, by the way). From there, your bottom, your fall, whether it be a broken heart, a career disaster, or years of making the same choices over and over again, feeling stuck without escape.

Then one day, typically once you have felt the worst you have ever felt for long enough. The tide turns within you. The wave crests over, you fall within yourself, and potentially even literally fall. You just can’t do “this” anymore. If you can, in that moment of your doneness, choose to fall forward. In that forward motion, you are surrendering to the knowing that something new is possible and on the way. Then you can practice the turn to yourself, inward deeper than you ever have before, to listen for your next answers, for new mornings, new love, and a new way of life that feels more true to you than where you are right now. From there, you can decide to start doing things differently. With intention, you can practice and realize that we each are writing the story of our life. The em-powerment to write your next chapter, and the rest of your life chapters, the pen is in your hand and no one else’s. Letting past failings become lessons and not holding regrets. With gratitude practice, everything changes. Literally, everything can change, even if it’s just how you look at it.

There is something about resilience and the nature of going forward. Look at the river that leads to the stream, which comes from the lake or ocean. What does the water hold: power and resilience to keep going forward. While taking the lessons from nature and the energy it holds. Learning to move on from what was behind you, you keep looking ahead and build with new dreams. The next chapter of your life can be aligned with what you feel you can create and what is true for this part of your story. It doesn’t have to be big, or showy, or for others’ approval or acceptance (if anything, that may be where the trouble began, but that is for another day and story).

With the falling forward belief, you can begin to grow within yourself, you can have increased freedom, and make choices that feel right for you in your life with less fear and more certainty. You can accept that part of the human experience is to make mistakes, for things to break, not be as you expected, and for things to begin again. This is a beautiful cycle of the human experience and awakening to yourself with the realization that you were here to learn and grow a deep relationship with yourself, which can be a powerful shift in the current of how you live your life.

This is also an opportunity for self-forgiveness practice. It is OK to tell yourself that you made a mistake when we have an understanding that we learn from our experiences; therefore, having experience gives you the opportunity for learning.

It is most important that you fall forward, find your resilience, in a way that invites practicing daily self-compassion, forgiving yourself when you miss the mark, and being determined and open to learn from it. Making it a mission to get up again and again with the next goal you set, and remembering that the answers can only be found in the deepest part of your centered self. You hold YOUR own power.

This is a hard concept for healing from intense trauma, grief, or loss, which is where getting support from a therapist, the community, or a close friend who has navigated through their own pain. Doing the big life things with the right support in your life is a tool of wisdom and a big part of you living WITH an empowerment life design as well.

With Gratitude, Everything Changes
Always,
Jaclyn Fortier, LCMHC
Founder @ CCWA
www.carolinacounselingwellness.com
www.jaclynfortier.com