Making peace with the noise in my head — a reflection from Awakened Leadership Retreat

Apart from the paradise snapshots, coming to Bali instills a lot of insecurity in me. I’m grateful to be surrounded by many wholesome individuals — conscious leaders, successful entrepreneurs, people who look beautiful and self-confident in and out. I was inspired but at the same time, quitting my job and dealing with uncertainty made me question a lot about my worth and identity. I caught myself doing a lot of comparison and feeling lack inside. I judged myself for feeling petty. Why after such much work in honoring my authentic self, does this noise still come back? Am I not progressing? Am I regressing?

The Awakened Leadership retreat came at the right time as I grappled with this strain. Each day, we dove deep into subjects that we all run away from. Insecurity, death, money, sexuality, trauma. As I named all the noises in my head, the laundry list of “Someday when I … I will finally feel.. “, I realized that I’ve put so many conditions in my ability to love, be loved, and feel whole from within. As each person poured their heart into our sacred container, reaching new depth by revealing our shadows, I learned that everyone, no matter how fine they look from the outside, has been broken inside. Being broken, in fact, is a universal trait in our experience of being human. My nervous system calmed down as I internalized this fact.

I realized that no matter how far we are in life, that inner noise, the doubting, the comparing, and criticizing will never go away. There will always be a new challenge, relationship, and trigger that push our button. It’s just an inherent design of being human. Pushing the noise away will be denying our humanity. Denying our broken pieces and pretending to be okay will be a performance. Doing affirmations without accepting what we’re not is what births imposture syndrome. So I’m learning to sit with all the pain, anxiety, and discomfort. I’m learning to embrace each of their shades, and take as much time I need to feel, grieve, release.

I’m allowing myself to be lost and stuck. Instead of forcing things to work my way, exerting…