The courage it takes to choose healing

The courage it takes to choose healing

Healing is messy at times. Like it happened to me, there might come a moment in your life too when you have no choice but to go all in on your healing and creating positive changes.

I had already read all the books.

I had attended all the workshops.

I had set all the intentions.

And I still hadn't reached my nirvana, even though on a surface level, people thought that I had it all together and was coping really well..

Instead of thriving, I got really ill, physically exhausted by years of high stress levels. That was when it dawned on me that there was a more profound truth waiting underneath it all: healing takes courage. Not the heroic 'saving the planet' kind of courage, but the quieter, daily kind. The kind that asked me to commit to myself, every day, even when it was uncomfortable, even when no one was watching. And I had to accept that, if I really wanted to heal, I had to be okay with it getting messy.

That is precisely where I found myself, and trust me, I did not feel courageous at all. I was scared to open 'a can of worms' inside of me. But I also knew that I couldn't go any further in the direction I was going. So I committed myself to doing all I can to facilitate a process of growth, healing, and creation.

I practise this work every day. Most mornings, I start the day with intention-setting in my meditation, not just for the day but for my future as well. And during the day, I practice noticing my inner dialogue, I feel what’s actually happening in my body, and I pay attention to the stories I tell myself about who I am and what I've been taught to believe I'm (not) capable of.

There are days when I find it really challenging, and I'm trudging through an emotional quagmire. On other days, it flows easily. But I keep showing up for both. Because when I chose to heal a lot of old wounds, it wasn't a one-time declaration with an expectation of overnight success. For me, it is a daily decision, made over and over again, a repeated commitment to myself to let go and grow.

There are many moments of reckoning, moments in time where I know that I can’t keep repeating the same patterns that were never supposed to be mine to begin with. The awareness lands differently every time: sometimes with compassionate curiosity, sometimes with heart-wrenching and painful awareness. I have come to fully embrace the knowledge that my inner world is writing the script for my outer one. The story I hold about myself sets the boundaries of what I believe to be possible for me. If I allow my story to stay small, the box I fit my life into stays small too. If I really want my outer world to be better, more, different... then I need to start on the inside.

Shifting that story takes both tenderness and bravery, and I embrace both as often as I can. Every day, I sit with myself to uncover the parts that have been hiding and to unlearn a few things I was taught to believe that aren't true for me at all. And I replace them with a focus on what I want instead, and step into to the flow towards that as best as I can.

And I'll be honest: my healing doesn't look glamorous as it's messy, painful, nonlinear, and full of moments where I doubt whether I'll ever 'get there'. All of those awkward moments present me with choices. It’s in the seemingly small, unremarkable, everyday decisions to change instead of staying in my rut that I'm setting myself up for lasting transformation.

Commitment to healing means showing up for myself when it’s easier to numb out. It means choosing radical responsibility over distraction, curiosity over judgement, and patience over perfection. The aim is to keep rewiring my relationship with myself so that my nervous system, emotions, and energy begin to trust the new, much nicer story I’m telling myself about me.

The shift became real for me when I realised that it's not enough to use mental affirmations. You can tell yourself all you want that you deserve abundance, but if, at the same time, you feel unworthy, poor, or focus your attention on everything you don't have, then affirming abundance with just words is not going to get you anywhere. I had found the secret sauce…

There’s something powerful that happens when you let yourself feel your intentions instead of just thinking about them. Following the above example, imagine what it would FEEL like to be abundant. Peaceful? Calm? Safe? Don't just think these things, you have to feel them. Your body needs to get involved for your chemistry to shift. The cells begin to believe you.

Feeling is the bridge between knowing and becoming.

And maybe that’s the real courage of it all: to stay with yourself and your emotions through every layer of the process, to keep choosing healing even when it's painful and the results aren’t immediate, and to trust that every small shift matters. But this is the only place where lasting change is possible.

The next time you feel the pull to start over or set a new goal, try feeling into it instead of forcing it with thought alone. The most effective way to get to the outcome you want is by allowing yourself to experience what this change would feel like if it were already true.

Healing will never be a finish line. It’s a practice of returning, creating, unlearning, compassion, and self-care. A commitment to yourself, to your breath, to your truth. And every time you choose it, the story you live inside begins to grow a little wider.

Healing is how you come home to yourself.

With love,

Renny

If you want to know more about the safe and sacred healing space called The S.T.O.R.Y. Sanctuary, just ask. We enter the Sanctuary on the 3 of November to rewrite old inner narratives, and you can find out more at www.thewiselearner.com. .