Beyond the Pages

I like to read.  I read a lot of non-fiction.  One of the things that subconsciously drives me to read all the books in my field is I am looking for the answers.  I am looking for the perfect manual for life.  Sigh.  I know this is unrealistic.  Yet still, I keep reading and hoping there’s a book that will tell me what to do.  And while there are some very, very good books in my field, and even some good books in similar categories, the book I am looking for doesn’t exist.This year, I started reading a book daily, ​Learning to Let Go​, and on one of the days, I saw a quote that said “There is no guidebook for setting boundaries….each one of us has our guide inside ourselves.”  I had a moment.  Good news, bad news.  I could stop reading all the books and looking for the answers in books.  This was the good news.  I needed to cultivate more inner guidance, more self-trust.  That may not be bad news to you, but this was bad news for me.  It would be easier for me to read the books and find the answers and do the things that are the answers than to go inside and find the answers and trust what comes up. Friends, I am not brand new to this practice, though.  I have been working on building more self-trust for a while now.  I encourage it and teach it to my clients.  And it is just that….a practice.  You don’t need a book or even this blog post to tell you how to trust yourself, you learn how by practicing it.  It starts by being intentional and after practicing enough, it becomes mostly second nature. I thought about offering some ideas on how to build more self-trust, and maybe I will in a future post, but for now, set your own intentions and build your own practices, your inner guidance will get you there!  I will be working on this, too.  This doesn’t mean I stop reading the books, either.  I just read them differently now, with less pressure on them to have all the answers.