Cynthia's Story

Doing the Inner Work

Working on you is so much more than deciding to hit the gym to lose a few pounds. More than deciding that you have goals and passions that you are now ready to begin working towards. It’s truly spending the time on you to focus on reflecting on all you’ve come through and have gone through. Spending the time to see about what changes are so vitally important to you. It’s realizing that you want to move forward from your past mistakes and now are in a place that you would define as taking the kind of action to help you.

When I finally had come to this place of so desperately wanting to change and have more in my life, I felt the need to find peace about many of my past traumas and trials. I made a bold move and reached out to a therapist in the hopes that I would gain a deeper understanding of my life, and why I had made certain choices in those times.

Instead, I received new perspectives on things I didn’t even know still had a grip on me. Resentments that I had buried within were too deep that only could have come up to the surface through counseling and allowing myself to be vulnerable through those sessions. Thank God I did!

Now, even though new perspectives were what I needed at the time to help me understand why I even found myself in certain situations, there were still some days I came out completely shocked to see that there was another human being that was on my side, that could understand the wars I was dealing with. Shocked, because it took some effort on my part to dig through the mess, that I was carrying in my heart. On other days I was given homework like making a list of all the things I wanted out of a relationship setting boundaries that gave me a roadmap on how to not break them.

I realized that I had a bad habit of trying to reason with myself all the time while allowing others to change the very essence of who I was, by not speaking up for myself when boundaries had been crossed. Every time I had done this through the years, I was silencing the woman of power I was designed to become in Christ Jesus. Free from stigmas, and curses, free from mental turmoil, free from the lack of self-confidence, and free from the lusts of this life.

Let’s face it, nobody wants to take the time to “work on themselves”. Why? Because it means, dealing with difficult things. It means WORK. It means that you are no longer going to continue on the person you are right now. It means accepting the past, and what it was and finding truth in it, loving yourself enough to want to become better. It means you see an area or areas that you need God to intervene in, and that takes courage to first accept. That you recognize that there are some life changes you may need to make. We all have areas where we need improvement. But some of us either aren’t aware of them or are in denial that we have any at all.

It took me a long time to see that reaching out to a therapist was a good thing. YOU may even have reasons why you won’t. But, I believed that talking with a therapist about the questions I had from my life and even the current relationship I was in, was something you just kept to yourself. Even ashamed that I was having conflicting thoughts about it.

I knew then that this was certainly a red flag, and some of my beliefs were preventing me from becoming the best version of myself. I was allowing older thinking patterns from the past traumatic experiences I had gone through to define and shape the person I was then. It was controlling me from reaching out to gain fresh ideas to people who do it as a profession and are good at helping you cope through. I wasn’t living and walking in total freedom. I was bound to this.

After I had started having sessions with a therapist, we began walking through what looked like a series of events that seemed to have an identical lifespan, making me come full circle, yet again. Does this sound like you? Have you found that you keep attracting the same kinds of women, and men that aren’t good for you?

For me, working on myself, was a decision to choose myself in times when it was easier to want the needs of those around me met simply because I cared.  I was always neglecting myself. I didn’t know that everything that had to do with me continuing a relationship within, was in question when I didn’t do what I really wanted.

For example in dating, we meet a guy, we think they’re great, and somewhere along the dating scope, we forget ourselves. I felt like I was making this mistake repeatedly because I wasn’t aware of why I was on default.

If we truly want to see a change in our lives, we must make those changes because no one else is you. Nobody else battles in the same ways that you do nor would they do life like you. So, choosing to decide to live it on your own terms that brings you true joy is always the better option. I had to decide this. But first, life had to show me through painful experiences that I needed to want this. I needed to learn and want more than anything in the world, to care for me.

I needed to want to love myself so much harder than when it came down to how I served others and those around me. When I gave 100 percent in relationships, I needed to know what it felt like and looked like to give me 110 that much even more, and so do you.

Lastly, we need to see our dreams through and care about making those a reality. The same way I loved the person I was with, was the same way I needed to want good things for myself. You need to want good things for yourself. And you need to give those good things to yourself. Do the things you keep putting off, and love yourself every day especially when you don’t feel the greatest about yourself, that is the perfect opportunity to be gentle, sweet, and kind to YOU. All the moments you give praise to someone, run and take 5 seconds and go look yourself in the mirror and say the exact same thing. You are now, in stride to becoming everything you see about you, and making that your truth, and reality.