Strengthening your Relationship with Willingness and Committed Action

Believe, Ask, Act – the basic formula for working with guidance.

A while back, I did a series on how to start to develop your internal guidance system (click here for part 1 and part 2 in case you missed them, it might be helpful to watch those and come back 😊). I shared this formula in those blogs and offered a few exercises you can do to start to hear, sense, feel, and know the “answers” that your body, soul, and/or divine guidance were sharing in response to you opening a dialog with them.  

While the formula is simple in its makeup, the last part – Act – can be tricky to actually implement.

Matching your actions to the inner wisdom and knowing you receive can feel at times super easy and then when the guidance requires change that is outside your comfort zone, it triggers old protective or control parts of you making it feel like it is crazy hard to follow through on.  

In truth, learning to work with the formula believe, ask, act, means you will be learning how to strengthen the muscles of trust and faith within yourself, your soul, and your divine guidance. Co-creating with the universe typically invites you into change and releasing old ways of being so that your thoughts and actions come into alignment with your true essence.  

True healing requires change. Healing requires the willingness to hear and walk with truth. Healing requires you to become conscious of negative and false beliefs. Once you are conscious of what is informing you, you can shift into choosing belief systems and mindsets that actually empower you and those you interact with.  

One of the major frameworks I utilize to help strengthen the muscles of trust and faith for myself and my clients is a therapeutic model developed by Steven Hayes, PhD, called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or the ACT model. In his model, he teaches an approach called committed action. This part of his model helps support a person’s mental body to coming into willingness based on the development and commitment of matching your values with your daily actions.  

I love introducing people to Committed Action because it opens them to the Truth about how guidance actually works.  Guidance is interactive.  Your inner guidance system needs you to be willing to be a partner with it.  Think of the difference between a passenger and a co-pilot. The passenger can be informed that something is coming but the co-pilot is right there working with the other pilot to address, work with, and create. True guidance wants you to be a co-pilot with it, co-creating and working together. When you are willing to act and you actually follow through and do act in alignment with the guidance you are interacting with. The more you interact with your inner guidance the stronger and stronger your connection and trust with it becomes. If you never act or only sporadically on the guidance you receive, you will find that your connection with your inner guidance system will become more distant, harder to hear, confusing, and ultimately disconnected.    

Let’s move into action with this teaching!  

I invite you to explore a journaling and reflection exercise that I often give to my clients when they are struggling with the “Act” step of the formula. This exercise is a part of my course Unbridled Soul, where I serve as your guide to learning the Arts of Healing and Spiritual Development.

Step One: Creating a Sacred Space and State to Open to Guidance

• Acknowledge to yourself that following guidance can be scary. Remind yourself that change and healing is a process and sometimes that process can feel uncomfortable and that is okay. 
• Open to your heart center and allow a channel of grace to flow through you.  
• Invite in the grace of understanding, the grace of courage, and the grace of peace. 
• Breath in….breath out….
• Ask for the spirit to help you explore your relationship with willingness and committed action.

Step Two: Open to Guidance and Ask for Support with Awareness and Acceptance

Now that you are in a prayerful meditative state, journal and reflect on the following:

• Am I willing to step into the sensation of uncomfortableness so that I can trust and match my actions with my guidance?
• Am I looking for my guidance to come with a 100% guarantee of what will happen as a result of that action?
• Look at the areas that you are willing to act on and the areas that you are not or are on the fence with.  
• What do any of those areas need?  
• What resources or support can you call forward to address those needs (internally, through spirit, externally)? 
• In what areas do you not like the guidance you are receiving and what is behind that resistance? 

(Note: these are the big steps and there can be many different little side steps that go with the answers to each of these questions, but for now let’s stay in a general clearing 😊)

Step Three: Action Part 1 – Clearing and Releasing

Once you have explored the above questions, invite your body, mind, and soul to open to shifting your attachment and the energy of any limiting beliefs, thought patterns, and behavior patterns that you are now ready to release so that you can move into freedom of choice and willingness.  

Step Four: Action Part 2 – Committed Action and Rewiring

Once you feel a shift in your inner willingness, ask what action steps would help support you in strengthening your new connection with building trust and faith through committed actions.  

Suggestion - start small. Ask what can you step into action with right now – without an influx of time and resources. Here are examples of some of the smallest steps I typically suggest to clients in matching your actions to guidance around what your body needs to better support you in feeling balanced: 

• commitment for a meditation date with yourself for just 5 mins each day, 
• an exercise commitment like walking for 5 mins a day, 
• commitment to drinking so much water a day and so on.  

Small steps build up the muscle strength with trusting yourself to match your thoughts and guidance with committed actions – say what you mean, mean what you say. When your system is stronger with trusting and acting on the guidance you receive your connection with interacting with your full system will increase as well.  

I hope this exercise is helpful in just some of the next steps you can take to strengthen and expand your inner guidance system!

Want to dive deeper into the process? 

I’m super excited about my new upcoming course Unbridled Soul where I help support you on how to implement and be with all the different parts of each of these steps and so much more! I designed Unbridled Soul to be a comprehensive, deep dive into learning and working with the Healing and Spiritual Arts. In the course, I share with you the wisdom and knowledge I have gathered over my own healing journeys and over the past 20 years of working with, teaching, and supporting my clients as they walk through their own healing and growth journeys.  

What I also love about the course is that in addition to learning and gathering the wisdom and frameworks of the Healing Arts I also take you into ACTION.  With each “teaching” I offer you opportunities to dive into action, develop your own sacred listening, and asking how you can bring that wisdom and knowledge forward through action steps to help shift, break free, and create a new way of being with yourself, your soul, and your life while you are traveling through the learning journey!  

My hope is that the course truly does unbridle your life! Unbridled Soul helps open doorways for you to bring your thoughts, heart’s desire, passions, and values into alignment with your daily actions and choices.  

Click here to learn more about the course and to see if it might be the next perfect action step that is in alignment with helping you ignite your own Wise One Healer within.

PS – Enrollment for Level 1 of Unbridled Soul is open just twice a year. The Fall 2021 cohort that starts in September is forming now. I only take 8 seekers into each cohort to help create an intimate beautiful container for you to learn, grow, and heal in. So, don’t delay, move into action if you are feeling called! 😊