Doorway to the soul

Imagine for a moment that you are stood in an open doorway. The way ahead looks bright, bursting with possibility and potential, it’s inviting and electrifying and it smells like opportunity … but it seems so big and scary too, full of risks, challenges and potential pitfalls, a door you feel you want to walk through but fear you have to walk through it alone, not knowing what the outcome will be when you do.

You turn your head and look behind you, into the warm cocoon of your safe space, whether that be your home, your current job, your current relationship perhaps and it feels familiar, stable, secure but there’s a niggling feeling that to stay there, behind the closed door, would make you feel small and stifled. Like it’s holding you back from becoming the version of yourself you see in your dreams, the person you know in your heart you want to be.

So what do you do? Do you walk through the door feeling confident that the universe has your back and that all good things await you? Or do you take a step back and close the door, retreating inward to the place that feels safe, the place that invites you home with a warm hug and a comfy pair of slippers?

Perhaps you have walked through that door before and taken your first tentative steps towards that confident, dazzling, version of yourself. You have felt the glow, the endorphins, the inner knowing at a deep level that you are working in a truly soul aligned way …

and then someone sees you, really sees you

They truly appreciate that version of you because it’s the only one they have ever known, they haven’t been around to witness the years of crippling self doubt, of negative narrative from the shitty committee in your head, of constantly trying to make yourself small, they see you as the version of yourself you are projecting without all that noise, they see your essence and it scares the shit out of you, so you turn on your heel and run straight back to your safe space, closing the door behind you, reminding yourself that it was all just a play, you can never be that person, that it was a lovely fantasy for a while but now it’s time to return to your little life, where you can hide away and berate yourself for allowing the same patterns to repeat themselves.

Perhaps you have walked boldly through the door and realised that what’s on the other side is not what you want, that the lights and stars burn a little too brightly for you and that actually you are happy in your comfort and you gladly return and close the door softly behind you, knowing that what awaits you is warm, inviting, safe, enough.

On the other hand, the idea of even getting close to that open door and showing that version of yourself to the world is so anxiety provoking that the very idea of opening the door never mind walking through it is enough to send you spiralling.

When I try to help my kids make a decision, I tell them to envisage one side of that decision for 24 hours at least. To sit with the feelings it brings up, however uncomfortable and to gently observe what it feels like.

Then I tell them to make the opposite decision and sit with that in the same way. It doesn’t usually take that long to know which the right decision is, because your intuition, that still small voice inside you, knew all along which was the right way to go. You just needed to give it the time and space to speak to you.

Sometimes we hide away from the version of ourselves that we know we can and want to become, due to fear of being truly seen, of being vulnerable of playing big, but if we are willing to identify, learn and grow from that experience, we are already taking a step in the right direction. Other times we choose to step back because we recognise that we are not ready, we choose to care for the version of ourselves that has been our constant companion throughout life, to nurture them, protect them and gently encourage them. There is time, plenty of time.

Should the door remain open or closed? I don’t pertain to have the answer, I simply offer up both scenarios for contemplation and suggest from my own perspective, that sometimes its worth simply standing in the open doorway for a while, just teetering on the threshold and see how it feels. You’ll know when it’s time to take a step forward or when it’s time to take a step back, either way you’re still moving forward, because every perceived backward step leads to reflection and reflection can only lead to growth.