We all want to reignite our passion for life and flow with life instead of fighting against. We want to ditch the stress and worry and feel peace and joy instead.
Spiritual teacher, healer, writer and speaker Deirdre Cartmill reveals the three steps she took to reignite her inner fire.
“When I had two heart attacks in a week at 43 I had to rebuild my life from scratch and find out how to relight the fire inside me and get back in the flow, peace and joy. I’m sharing three of these steps with you here.
“We often feel powerless. I remember that feeling. Before my heart attacks I had what looked like the perfect life. I was happily married and owned a beautiful home. I was a published poet, was working in my dream job as a screenwriter, and I’d just signed to a London agent. But I’d been through a lot of personal trauma and inside I felt empty, deadened. I was a robot going through the motions.
“The only thing I could do was to keep going, because I was afraid that if I stopped I would have a breakdown. So I worked and worked. I kept the mask on. But inside I was an anxious wreck. I felt like a failure and this void was growing inside me that nothing would fill. The mask had to crack.
“Now I know the real truth is we all have the power inside us to transform ourselves and transform our life. During my second heart attack I had a moment of epiphany that changed my life. I knew I could choose to close my eyes and go – because I knew without doubt that my body might ‘die’ but ‘I’ would go on. In that moment I faced death and chose to live.
“I was no longer afraid of dying – I was afraid of not living. I went searching for a deeper meaning to life, the truth beyond the everyday that I’d experienced. I had to journey inside me to discover how to truly live instead of merely exist.
“I turned my life around and now I’m a spiritual teacher, healer, speaker and writer. Â
“I discovered that it is the simple things you do every day that will change everything. By taking the small actions that change your perspective you move towards the authentic life you’ve always dreamed of.”
Here is Deirdre’s 3 ways to reignite your inner fire and how she got back in flow with life:
Step 1: Don’t Let the World Tame You
Don’t be a crowd pleaser. Walk your truth. Only you know what keeps the passion inside you alive. Only you know what works for you. Don’t listen to those other voices that try to make you fit a mould. You are an adult now. You get to make your own choices and decisions.
You no longer have to listen to what anyone else says. Be brave enough to step outside the crowd. Do what makes your heart sing. Stay wild at heart.
You are born unique with unique gifts and talents. There are things only you can do in this world – so it makes no sense to try and conform to a generic type or to someone else’s expectations.
How many of your decisions are made on the basis of what will make other people like you? But as long as you live from this, you will never be free. Shoulds and oughts smother your passion and your inner fire. Do one thing you love today that goes against the voices of your grandparents, your parents, your teachers.
You can change the world if you live as you see fit – not as others see fit.
Step 2: Return to Your Heart
Have you felt that emptiness, that void inside, as if you’ve lost a vital part of you? The only way to fill it is to be brave enough to open your heart again.
We have all suffered so much pain and trauma that we have closed our hearts down to try and protect ourselves. But when you close your heart down, you lose a vital connection to your inner self, your soul. You start living half a life, detached from this essential part of you.
Your actions don’t just become mindless, they become heartless, empty, devoid of meaning – and this is what makes your life feel empty.
Find the courage to open your heart just a smidgen today. Let the armour crack just a little. Connect with someone heart to heart, not just mind to mind. Do you feel more real? Is it worth opening your heart just a little more tomorrow?
When you connect with someone heart to heart, they will feel you are coming from a different place of love, truth and authenticity. You will love how it makes you both feel.
Step3: Trust in You & Take the Leap of Faith
Sometimes the moment when your life is falling apart and you wonder if you can ever rebuild it is the very moment your life is truly beginning – you just can’t see it yet.
That’s how I see my heart attacks when I look back – a moment of letting the old fall away, so you have time and space to build the new life, the life true to you.
No matter how gradual the change, there will be times as you change when you feel you have been swept off your safe island and flung into a stormy sea with no solid ground under your feet. At these times you usually try to swim against the storm, back to the place you’ve just left. However, if you stop fighting and resisting and instead lie back and flow along the stormy waves, they will bring you to a new island, a new shore and you will soon find solid ground under your feet again.
Keep the faith. Ride the storm. Believe in you. Step out and leap.
See Deirdre at the SOMA Body & Soul Festival:
Deirdre is one of a number of exhibitors who will be attending the TONIC Health & Wellness organised SOMA Body & Soul area as part of the main SOMA Music Festival on July 16 and 17.
The SOMA Body & Soul area is unique event offering the perfect opportunity for people and families to try something new, with activities including The Sound Healing Spa, and Meditation to therapies such as Indian Head Massage, Meditation and Mindfulness, Aromatherapy, Baby Massage, Bowen Therapy and Reflexology.
As well as exhibitors, workshops and talks, taster sessions for complementary therapies and full treatments will be available from the information stands, as well as some fabulous natural products. Also available this Body & Soul weekend will be Angel and Tarot Card Readings, Palmistry and Astrology readings, with practitioners also selling cards, books and crystals.
Admission to the SOMA Body & Soul area is FREE. Exhibitors and Practitioners will charge for their services, prices vary.
For full programme information log onto www.somafestival.com, or follow TONIC Health & Wellness on Twitter @TONIC_Wellness or Facebook – www.facebook.com/
Deirdre is a spiritual teacher, healer, writer and speaker. She is giving two talks and meditations to Reignite Your Inner Fire at Soma. These sessions will run at 4pm Saturday and at 12.15pm Sunday, and are aimed at helping you to heal and to rediscover your passion for life.
She co-founded and works from The White Feather, 7 North Street, Belfast, BT1 1NH and will be offering healings and more at The White Feather stall at SOMA with co-founder Helen Logue. You can find out more at Deirdre’s website www.deirdrecartmill.me and contact her at [email protected].