Awakening to Your Future Self

I recently returned from my third Dr. Joe Dispenza seven-day advanced meditation retreat in San Diego, Entangled Soul.

There was something different about this retreat.

Having experienced this work before, I was able to look back at my previous retreats and recognize just how much had shifted within me. I could see how much my mind had released and cleared through years of healing, breathwork, meditation and intentional practice.

It reminded me that there comes a point in our healing journey when we begin to look in a new direction.

We stop asking only, How do I heal from what happened?

And begin asking:

Who do I want to become now?

This is the inspiration behind September's theme: Awakening to Your Future Self.

Healing Is Not Linear

When we experience trauma, grief, loss or a significant life change, it can take time to reorient ourselves.

The life we knew may suddenly look different. Relationships change. Roles change. Our identity can change. The future we thought we were moving toward may no longer exist.

How do we make sense of that?

How do we grieve what was?

How do we rebuild?

And eventually, how do we learn and grow from the experience?

Healing is not linear. I think of it more like a spiral. We may return to familiar emotions, memories or experiences, but each time we meet them from a slightly different place.

It takes the time it takes.

Seven years ago, I experienced the abrupt ending of a nearly 40-year relationship. Along with my marriage, I was grieving relationships, a family structure and an identity that had been part of my life for decades.

I had to learn how to be on my own in a way I never had before.

At the beginning of my healing journey, yoga and meditation became my touchstones. EMDR helped me process thoughts and memories that continued to create stress and emotional arousal in my body. A women's writing group gave me a space to document what I was experiencing and to feel seen, heard and witnessed.

I am incredibly grateful for the toolbox and resources I had available to me.

Little by little, I began rebuilding.

When Healing Becomes Transformation

Even as I rebuilt my life, I noticed how easily my mind could return to memories of the past.

A person. A place. A conversation. A familiar feeling.

We can become so accustomed to certain thoughts, emotions and behaviors that we continue repeating them even when the circumstances that originally created them are no longer our present reality.

Eventually, I began to understand that healing wasn't only about making peace with what had happened.

I also needed to envision what could happen next.

When I began listening to Dr. Joe Dispenza's work on my beach walks, something started to shift.

His teachings encouraged me to stop placing all of my attention on the past and begin envisioning a new future.

That distinction became incredibly powerful for me.

We can honor our past without continuing to live there.

We can allow what happened to become part of our story without allowing it to write every chapter that comes next.

We can let the past become the background while bringing the life we want to create into the foreground.

What Are You Repeating?

One of the most important parts of creating change is becoming aware of the thoughts and patterns we repeat unconsciously.

Where does your mind automatically go?

What stories do you continue telling yourself?

What behaviors keep creating the same outcomes?

What emotional patterns no longer support the person you are becoming?

Awareness gives us an opportunity to make another choice.

If we continue thinking the same thoughts, making the same choices and repeating the same behaviors, we often continue creating familiar results.

But when we catch ourselves in an old pattern and consciously choose something different, we begin creating space for transformation.

It doesn't have to happen perfectly.

It happens one choice at a time.

Creating Space for Something New

This is where practices like yoga, meditation and breathwork can be so powerful.

They give us an opportunity to slow down.

To become present.

To notice where we are placing our attention and energy.

To sit with discomfort instead of immediately reacting to it.

And to reconnect with ourselves.

I like to think of it as dropping out of the thinking mind and into the feeling heart.

Instead of constantly analyzing what has happened or trying to control what will happen next, we practice being present with what is.

From that place, we can begin connecting with feelings like love, gratitude, joy, abundance and wholeness.

We aren't pretending difficult experiences didn't happen.

We are practicing the possibility that something else can exist alongside them—and eventually beyond them.

Get a Taste of Your Future

The unknown can feel scary.

For many of us, there is comfort in what is familiar, even when what is familiar isn't necessarily what we want.

When the future you once imagined changes, stepping into the unknown requires trust.

But I've learned that the unknown is also where the magic happens.

It is where possibility lives.

Rather than needing to know exactly how everything will unfold, what if you allowed yourself to get curious about your future?

Ask yourself:

What do I want my life to look like?

More importantly, what do I want my life to feel like?

Who do I want to become?

What do I need to leave behind?

What patterns, beliefs or behaviors belong to an older version of me?

How would my future self think, feel and move through the world?

Don't worry about having all the answers.

Begin with the feeling.

Maybe your future feels peaceful.

Free.

Connected.

Joyful.

Creative.

Abundant.

Whole.

What would it feel like to practice embodying a little bit of that person today?

Keep Choosing Yourself

Transformation isn't one grand moment.

It is a practice.

It is noticing when something pulls us back into an old pattern and choosing differently.

It is learning to regulate our emotions rather than allowing familiar reactions to determine our behavior.

It is paying attention to our inner world and asking whether the choices we are making align with the life we say we want.

It is choosing ourselves over and over again.

There was a time when so much of my energy was focused on understanding what had happened to me.

Today, I am much more interested in what I am creating.

That doesn't erase the past.

It honors the healing that allowed me to move forward.

Awakening to Your Future Self

There is wisdom in our past, but possibility exists in what comes next.

When we commit to healing, we don't simply return to who we were before.

We become someone new.

We learn our strength.

We discover our resilience.

We understand what it means to stay connected to ourselves.

We grow personally and spiritually.

And perhaps, in that process, we become the heroine of our own story.

As we move into September, I invite you to turn your attention toward your future self.

Let the past become the backdrop.

Bring your future into the foreground.

Imagine the life you want to create and, more importantly, the person you want to be while living it.

Choose joy.

Choose gratitude.

Choose kindness.

Choose love.

Choose yourself.

Again and again.

And little by little, you may realize that the future self you've been imagining isn't someone waiting for you somewhere in the distance.

She's someone you're already becoming.

With love,
Melanee