When I free write every morning, my #1 priority is to offload anything that feels like a grudge or grievance, no matter how small.

I’ve learned that if I let them grow, they almost always turn into creative blocks. Or money blocks. Or love blocks. 

So I follow the advice of our dear Patron Saint Julia Cameron: I put the drama on the page, and I leave the drama on the page.

A while back, I noticed a pattern: When I tracked these baby grudglets to their roots, almost all of them started out with a moment in time when I felt misunderstood.

Here’s a pretty common fact pattern:

• In conversation with someone, they say something about what I must be thinking, feeling or doing
• And they’re wrong 
• But the context is so trivial it doesn’t make sense for me to try to correct them
• Or I do correct them and they still don’t seem to get it
• So I’m irritated
• And the next day, I’m still irritated
• So I write it out.

Over the years, I’ve learned that living a masterful life requires practicing the fine art of minding my own business.

My business is my thoughts, my emotions and my actions.

My business is my relationship with myself and my Source.

My business is not to persuade, cajole or beg anyone else to understand me.

I’ve chosen instead — and I continue to practice a million times a week — to practice releasing the need to even feel understood.

Follow me here:

1. Taking things personally is the #1 source of drama between humans.
2. Being able to move through life independently of the opinions of other people is the #1 liberation lever from that drama.
3. When you expect others to understand you and they don’t, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll take that personally and get in your feelings (this is what the kids might call ‘butthurt’).
4. No one — not even the people who love you unconditionally — can fully understand you 100% of the time, even if they try very hard.

Because no one else is you.

No one else has the exact mix of experiences, beliefs and talents you do.

No one has the relationship with your Inner Being, Source, Spirit and All That Is that you do.

No one has your intuition or your calling. 

No one has learned exactly what you’ve learned about life.

No one possesses the precise, brilliant mix of inborn Divine Coding for Genius, personal history, ancestral potentials and collective wisdoms that your existence represents.

So when you’re seeking to be understood, you’re asking someone to do the impossible.

Which means you’re setting both you and them up for inevitable dissatisfaction.

And that’s not all.

In the effort to feel understood, you almost always end up telling a struggle story, which is the opposite of the story you want to practice if you want to live a magical, masterful life.

Now listen: Everyone loves to feel held, heard, seen and understood.

But I want to open up a new possibility: that you can feel held, heard and seen by people in your life even when they do not fully understand you.

In fact, you can feel and be approved of and loved by people who actively misunderstand you or disagree with your decisions.

Don’t believe me?

Think about the times you extend affection and approval to others, even when you don’t 100% understand or agree with them.

The desire to feel understood is often just a pretext for the need for approval or the need to be right.

These are just different ways of asking permission to make the moves you want to make in life.

If you’re waiting on approval, validation or permission, you’re watering down the edge you have access to: the pure power that comes from moving forward in life based on the Infinite Intelligence that flows through you in the form of inspiration, resonance, Inner Wisdom, intuition.

Three things happen when you stop seeking to be understood:

1. You begin to move through life much more freely and easily.
2. Your interpersonal drama decreases.
3. The joy and speed of your personal expansion increases.

Oh and one more thing:

Your relationships get better.

Way better.

Because when you practice your way out of needing to feel understood all the time, you do everyone around you a massive favor: you take them off the hook for your feelings.

This feels weird at first, especially if you have a history of being an approval seeker, people pleaser or achievement junkie.

But when you stop focusing so hard on getting people to understand you, over time, you’ll naturally begin focusing instead on the most important relationships in your life:

• the relationship between you and your Source, and
• the relationship between you and you.

And soon, you’ll learn how to feel good regardless of whether you feel misunderstood or not.

You’ll learn skills for returning to that good feeling whenever you want to or need to.

You’ll learn how to build on that feeling good momentum, so you can go from occasional, fleeting moments of goodness to a continuous drumbeat of freedom, ease, growth, joy and love.

That’s how you become invincible. 

P.S: Is it possible to become totally free of the desire to be understood? 

Maybe so, maybe not.

But you can definitely release a lot of it.

Visualize it as a ball you’ve got clenched in your hand.

And now: drop it.

And now: Sit still and feel all that energy, all that life force, flowing back into you.

Head up + heart out,

P.S.: Want more like this? Become a SoulTour subscriber for just $11 a month.

Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq.
The Inner Critic Coach™️
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranichollekirke on FB | TW | IG | LI