How to Listen to Your Inner Calling (Part 1)

It takes a lot of courage to stay true to yourself, because there's pressure everywhere to conform, and we live in a world of systems designed to disempower us, systems that thrive on us being disconnected.

Take social media, for example. It's something built to keep us scrolling, comparing, consuming, just to sell us more ads or capitalism, which feeds on our sense of inadequacy, constantly telling us we're not enough, so it can sell us something to fill the void.

Over time, all this noise disconnects you from yourself. You forget who you truly are, and you start to mistake the world and everything it says for truth.

Inner calling is a space to remember, a reminder of what you've always known inside you, even if the world around you doesn't validate it, you have a light within you, and it's radiant and beautiful and nothing, no system, no voice, no circumstance can take that away. Today we return to that light, to that knowing inside you, to the truth of who you are.

When I was a kid, I read a book called The Secret Garden. It was about a lonely girl who had heard stories of a beautiful garden on her uncle's estate, a place that had become lost, overgrown and locked away over time. Most people believe it no longer existed, and some people said it never had. But something within her kept searching, and she found it, and when she did, it was a place of nourishment, a place of restoration, a place of comfort and friendship, a place that helped her become herself and who she ultimately was meant to be in the world.

This is actually the story of our lives, because it turns out that you, too, have a secret garden within you.

It's a place of incredible beauty, a space inside yourself that is sacred, holy and set apart. It's a place that nourishes you, that holds you. It weeps when you weep, it strengthens you and provides your deepest needs. And you may sense it's there, but it can also feel lost or far away, or maybe somewhere along the way, you began to tell yourself it wasn't real, like it was just a dream or a story, this feeling you have inside yourself that there's something more inside you or to your life, and maybe you're depressed or angry about that.

But what I want you to know is this: even if the path to it is now overgrown or lost or is buried underneath years of pain and fear, the garden is still there. It's waiting for you, and there is something inside you that still remembers and longs to come home to it.

And today I'm going to tell you how to find your way back to the Secret Garden within yourself, and it has to do with learning how to listen, to really listen and honor your inner voice.

First let me be clear–your inner voice is not your thoughts. Your depression or anxiety may give you negative thoughts of hopelessness or self doubt, and those voices can be loud, but they're not you. I'm not talking about those voices.

I'm talking about your true inner voice, the voice of your deepest truth.

It's the one that's always been there, waiting for you. It's the one that you had before the world taught you to doubt it, to question it. It's the voice you had before you learned to silence it, or to think that it wasn't really there just to cope and survive in the world and deal with all its realities.

Some people call it intuition. Other people call it a sense of inner knowing, or the voice of the highest self. Or for others, it may be the voice of Spirit or God or love, but whatever name you give it, it's there inside you. It's the wise, steady presence within you that already knows the way.

Why does listening to this voice inside you matter, and why can it change everything?

Because once you learn how to hear your inner voice, it can truly transform your life. There are actually seven reasons it is important to listen to your inner voice, and they're simple but very powerful. You can remember them with one word, listens.

L is for live from your highest self.

Listening to your inner voice helps you live from your highest self. And you can't live your truth if you don't know what it is, and you can only know what it is if you're listening for it. Your inner voice is the part of you that can help you live your truth.

So for example, if you're facing a difficult decision and you pause to listen to know what deep inside is really true for you and what you need, you'll be able to move forward in a way that honors your highest self.

Now, why does that matter? Why would you want to live from your highest self? Because living out your truth is the entire purpose of your life. It's becoming who you really are. That's what life is really calling you towards.

I is for inner alignment.

Listening to your inner voice helps you stay aligned with your values and your purpose in life. Your life starts to feel more meaningful and more grounded more you.

For example, if your inner voice tells you it's important to spend time with your kids and you actually honor that, you'll feel a deeper sense of peace because your actions match what your inner voice and heart say matter to you, and that alignment is where fulfillment lives.

S stands for spiritual compass.

Your inner voice is not the same as your thoughts. Thoughts are anxious, reactive, and they pull you in all different sorts of directions, and you might feel uneasy or on edge, but your inner voice is different.

When you listen to it, you feel steady, you feel peaceful. It's wise and quiet, and you can always turn to it for clarity or grounding or direction when things feel uncertain. The interesting thing about your inner voice is that it's in you, but it's not of you. It's in you, but it's not of you. It comes from a place beyond fear or your ego, the part of you that is compassionate, kind and deeply wise, wise beyond what you could even think of yourself. Think of it like your spiritual GPS.

For example, when you're navigating a relationship where something feels off, your inner voice might quietly whisper to you something's not right, even if everything looks fine on the outside, it helps you sense the truth beneath the surface for yourself, and that's the power of your inner spiritual compass.

T is for trust and protection.

Your inner voice can actually help keep you safe. It helps you sense when something or someone is off, and you might not always be able to explain it or have the words for it, but something inside you might just know. You might just feel it in your body or in your gut or on the hairs behind your neck, and when you learn to listen to that knowing, when you start to trust it, you begin to trust yourself.

I once heard an Oprah episode where women shared stories of having this gut feeling this quiet warning right before they were attacked, and they all said the same thing. I felt something inside myself. I felt it in my body, and I just didn't listen because I didn't know to listen.

Because, as women, so often, we're taught or conditioned to be nice and to set aside what we're sensing for whatever relationship or greater situation is happening in front of us, to be kind to the stranger and ignore what body signals or information we might be receiving.

So I just want to say your inner voice is not paranoid. Your inner voice is something to honor. It's protective. It's there to help keep you aligned and safe, and the more you honor it, the more you learn to live in that trust next we have.

E is for emotional peace.

When you're connected to your inner voice, you will feel more calm. You will feel more grounded and more present. You're able to comfort yourself without needing the outside world to fix everything, because there's something inside you which is already bringing you a deep kind of peace, and it's a place that you can always go to no matter what is happening around you, it's always there.

N is for natural confidence.

When you listen to your truth and inner voice, you begin to believe in it, and you begin to believe in yourself. You don't need as much validation from the outside because you started trusting in your own voice, and that changes everything in your life. You feel more confident and authentic because you're simply being you. There's nothing to be or to pretend or protect, because you're doing what's true inside of you, and you're speaking and living outside of that place.

The final S is Spirit led living.

You have a light inside you. It's a fire, an inner light. Listening to your inner voice is how you honor the flame of the light inside you. It's how you keep it alive and how you nurture it.

Your inner voice is something you've had your entire life. Is actually not new. It's just that the world teaches you to doubt it, dismiss it, and tune it out. So it's possible it might be really soft right now, something you can barely hear like a whisper, or you might even doubt in its existence, and if so, if that's the case, that's okay. That's actually really normal and natural. What I want you to know is that listening to that place inside you of deep, quiet wisdom of your inner voice is essential for living a life that's aligned peaceful and true to yourself.

So this week, I invite you to reflect on what part of listen speaks to you the most right now, and why might listening to your inner voice matter for you in your life today.

What are the things I've got in the way of your secret garden?

Do you remember it still exists?

Do you remember the way back?

Or does it feel lost or forgotten?

Listen to the full episode of the Inner Calling podcast “Essentials: How to Listen to Your Inner Calling Part 1” to learn more about this here, & get the workbook to go along with it in our Resource Library!