In 2018, when I resigned from my career as a staff psychologist at a major hospital, I donated the one suit I owned.
The voices in my head and around me counseled against this. “Are you sure?”, “What if you need it again?”
My heart knew the truth.
The suit was a representation of the piece of my career that never fit.
By shedding it, I was honoring the freedom my soul was craving from the limitations of my credentials and licensure, despite how hard I had worked to achieve them.
Despite my investment in the suit itself.
Throughout my journey toward living in line with my soul’s purpose, I have continually been asked to let go of aspects of myself that no longer serve me. Sometimes this is an easy and welcome process. Sometimes it’s excruciating, as I grip the comfort of familiarity and expectation.
Rituals themselves make the shedding process more palatable for our minds.
Consider birthdays, graduations, and funerals. All normative ways for us to acknowledge a letting go of what no longer is, while welcoming what is yet to come… Like getting rid of a suit.
Here is another ritual I use that has helped me break free from my limiting beliefs around being a healer, and it is one I use often with clients:
- Get a cardboard box.
- Write all of the beliefs you have related to your various roles in this world.
- Burn the box in a fire-safe place (like a fireplace or fire pit).
- Say a blessing with the intention for all of these beliefs to fall away.
- Once fully burned, take the ashes from the box and bury them in the earth or spread them in flowing water so they may compost into the earth and become something beautiful.
- Witness the ease with which you make decisions about your career and how you show up in the world.
Rituals like this one are powerful practices that help us clear energetic and emotional obstacles that stand in our way toward aligning our soul with our life.
Try it today and let me know what you think! I would love to hear from you.