One thing that’s for sure: if you do not listen to your inner guidance, you are going to experience an increasing degree of inner conflict.

The heat is only going to get turned up on your depression, your anxiety, your drinking, your drugging, your over working and your dependence on outside substances to try to keep yourself steady.

Let me tell a story to illustrate my point.

Years ago, I worked with a woman who was suffering from stage IV breast cancer.

Personally I wished she had come to me much sooner, but she came when she did.

As she and I worked together, the core issue became evident.

Although she had been married for well over 20 years, she had fallen in love with someone else.

She was married, he was married, and they were in love with each other.

Even though their romance had gone on for several years, neither one of them had the courage to face their true feelings.

She even told me, “My mother would rather that I die than get a divorce.”

She was allowing at least one of the 5 Ps – parents, peers, professors, priests and politicians – to guide her life rather than listening to her inner guidance.

And this begs the question: is it TRUE that your parents, peers, professors, priests and politicians would disagree with your path in life, or do you just simply think they would?

I could always tell when she had been with the man she was actually in love with because her energy shifted so radically afterwards.

In the end, she died.

Although her official cause of death was breast cancer, by my estimation I would say it was unresolved inner conflict.

There are times when your inner promptings push you to go in another direction, often initially scary and pushing you outside your so-called comfort zone.

If you don’t follow your inner wisdom, there is only one of two reasons:

  • You refuse to listen.
  • You are not able to follow your guidance due to outer control, for example, in the case of extreme control by your parents, peers, professors, priests or politicians.

I often feel that people who are drugged up – whether that be with legal or illegal drugs – should simply take a week off their medications, sit with themselves, feel their emotions, tune in to their inner guidance and figure out what promptings they have been refusing to hear.

If you have been feeling terribly anxious, angry, depressed or mentally/emotionally unsettled in any way, my recommendation would be to sit with yourself and ask the simple question:

“Is there something I am supposed to do that I have been avoiding?”

Maybe it’s a huge message that sounds super intimidating.

Leave your marriage?

Quit your job?

Take up a new course of action, even though it sounds totally outrageous at the time?

Your soul is always trying to guide you in your true life direction towards your highest good and greatest happiness.

If you don’t listen and simply drug yourself up, you can feel totally miserable and even make yourself terminally ill.

Why drug, drink, over work or engage in any other manner of addiction, be it legal or illegal, when you can simply listen?

Even if you do not immediately act on your intuition, just hearing what it is that your soul has to say can clarify things for you.

Your life is still up to you.

Your happiness is 100 percent up to you.

Even if you can’t act right now, you can take your soul guidance into account and make a plan to move in that general direction.

You would be surprised just how much your anxiety and depression eases up and how much less you need to drug, drink, over work or otherwise numb yourself if you simply allow that still quiet voice to drop in and speak.

You don’t have to call yourself psychic.

You would probably be amazed to see how much of a connection there is between your ongoing self numbing process of addiction and your refusal to listen to your soul.

Trust your soul.

It alone knows what you are here to do in this lifetime and what will actually make you happy.

Have the courage to listen, even if you are not today just quite ready to act.