By Virginia Nava Hieger
What would we do differently if we were driven by unconditional love? How differently might we serve? What if how people perceived us didn’t matter? What if criticism or praise could be seen as simply feedback?
I recently listed my inner critic concerns and after I did the list I noticed a trend: lack of love, fear of what others will think, their reactions or rejections, and it was a really liberating moment for me. I was liberated in less than 10 minutes, because I realized that what I do isn’t driven by the outside, it is driven by my inner truth. All of these concerns weren’t in alignment with my truth. I realized that I am already loved just as I am, and that if I shifted my perspective about every one of my concerns, my life could change in an instant.
In this moment, I realized something else – that freedom and unconditional love are best friends, co-partners in life, and that unconditional love comes when we are able to see our circumstances, lessons, and growth processes from the eyes of compassion instead of judgment. When we can see our lives from compassion, we are truly liberated – and in that moment, the lessons we were supposed to learn become available to us and even more available to others.
Being a CEO of my own company has been one of the major GIFTs I have ever had. Being in charge of my company has made available to me my major strengths and resilience, on top of all the inner work that is available for me to create. I can no longer look around and find someone else responsible for my mistakes or shortcomings; the only one to look at is myself in the mirror, and there I always see who has ownership for everything. At the beginning of my journey, there were areas I didn’t like to see there, so I tried to hide from myself. As I matured, I realized that I needed to see my whole self, not just a snapshot of myself. I needed to embrace myself fully without judgment. When I do this, I am open to renewing myself.
Loving myself is the most important life objective for me and my life, business and clients, because when I love myself I am free to learn and innovate. When I am willing to fail, I am free to see others with compassion, to connect to the Divine Love available to support me and sustain me along the way. I am free to fly, to share fully versus partially; and most of all, to be human. I am liberated from my own inner critic to keep moving forward and to continue accepting life. I am free to be a GIFT to the world and be of service to others because I have shifted from my cloudy view to a more authentic inner view. Love and compassion give me the courage to expand beyond my own self-imposed limitations.
I invite you to recognize how many things you aren’t doing because you are seeking external feedback or praise. If you’re avoiding something, ask yourself how this is serving you. And how is it serving others?
Writing books taught me that life lessons are meant to be shared with others, and I am amazed and humbled when someone shares the impact the books I have written have made in their lives. This feedback helps me realize that there is a direct IMPACT on me when I don’t share with others, because just as something can be really liberating for me, it may be for others as well. I have come to realize that loving oneself isn’t selfish at all. To the contrary, it is valuable and even necessary for the communities we live in. It brings a new energy to the work we do and the reasons why we do what we do. The quality of my work changes by the energy it’s been created with, when I create with love vs. apprehension or fear I can feel the difference.
Your story matters, your lessons matter; share them from a space of inner love, and quiet your inner critic with a prayer (you may choose words that are meaningful to you such as God, Universe, Divine):
I accept my Divine GIFT, for the service of the world. God, I surrender myself to your divine aid, for you are my protector, my council and my courage and strength.
Please show me the way, send me your divine angels and archangels to sustain me so that I may share this GIFT with the world.
God, you are my wings. In you I put my trust. I open my heart to your guidance; surround me with your strength and unconditional love.
Because I am infinitely loved by you, always and forever, I will remember that rejection is only an illusion. And so it is.
Living free is loving ourselves. And living free is on our daily decisions. It is a lifestyle to love ourselves. The part that we most need to love from ourselves is who we are inside, our essence, our natural gifts, our own ideas and qualities. When we start accepting ourselves we start discovering our whole selves and we start bringing all of who we are into the world. All these processes start inside of us, they are the foundation to live from the inside-out, to live free and authentically. Think of this this way you take away the barriers within yourself to loving yourself, you create environment of full love, acceptance and self-compassion and within this environment you allow yourself to overcome perfectionism into acceptance and growth and learning, inner criticism and judgment into compassion. All that we have internalized becomes that something we learned and we can then make a decision of a new way of being.
Virginia Nava Hieger is the Founder of Your Gift Journey a university for personal development, women empowerment to live in alignment with their true essence, authenticity, freedom and into wholeness. Your Gift Journey™ is called this way because you are a gift and claiming yourself and who you are and unwrapping yourself from the molds of the world is a journey of self-love and self-acceptance. Your gifts are the tools for making a difference in the world. There also the tools to live free, authentically and with meaning while you are serving others with your talents. You are the gatekeeper of your essence and gifts and you get to choose your mission and how to live in communities and roles that are supportive of who you are.
Virginia Nava Hieger is also the author of Your Unique Gift: Finding Life’s Unique Gift Proposition and Meaningful Freedom: Finding Freedom Through Wholeness, two books aimed at empowering women on a journey of self-discovery, authenticity, wholeness and personal freedom. As a Transformative Power® guide, she believes each one of us has our own source of inner strength and that we simply need the tools to reconnect with it to let our light shine back out into the world.