[00:00:00] I think one of the biggest misconceptions about personal growth is that we're trying to become someone different, someone wiser, someone more healed, but what if we've got it backwards? Hi, I'm Nicki Kuurman, and welcome to The Practical Mystic Podcast, where universal wisdom meets modern life.
For years, I thought personal growth was about fixing myself, healing every wound, clearing every block, removing every limiting belief, becoming calmer, more spiritual, more connected to everyone and everything. I was looking for some future version of myself that I would eventually arrive at if I just did enough work.
Now, after years of self-development and hundreds of clients, I don't think that that's what this journey is about at all. [00:01:00] We were never broken. There's nothing wrong. I don't believe most of us need fixing. I think we're exhausted. I think we're disconnected. I think most women I know are over responsible, overthinking, people pleasing, carrying too much responsibility and load for others, and underneath all that, they're still there trying to find and be a better version of themselves.
Over the past few years, I've come to realize that my work was never about fixing people. It was never about helping them heal. It's always been about helping them remember who they are
I think I'm so drawn to this because there's been [00:02:00] moments in my life when I have completely forgotten who I am
25 years ago, I was a complete mess. I remember laying on the floor, begging the universe to take me, that I was done. I could no longer go on with this life, and a gentle voice urged me to get up, to keep going, to breathe in and out. That I wasn't broken, that there was nothing wrong with me. I just wasn't being true to myself, to my heart, to my desire, to who I really am. And that started a massive journey of remembering.
Remembering [00:03:00] why I got disconnected from myself and what I liked, my joy, and my pleasure. Why I got disconnected from my husband at the time. Why I felt disconnected from my children, my family, my friends. I was trying to be what I thought I should be. I never even paused to listen and think about who I really am. There was so much confusion in my heart and in my soul between what I thought a good woman looked like, versus how I feel a good woman shows up and lives her life now that I know different. I've had to remember who I am. I've had to remember my power, my gifts, my capacity for love, my kindness, my [00:04:00] intuition. And every day, I help other women remember who they are, connecting to their own inner knowing, their wisdom, their power, their truth.
Because if we remember who we are before all our conditioning happened in this lifetime, if we truly remembered the beauty and the pleasure and the gift that this physical life is, we would make so many different decisions. We would celebrate so much more and find joy in every little thing. We didn't forget who we were as we were born.
We were closer to our true self as children than we are now. We didn't forget overnight We forget because we've been busy surviving. [00:05:00] We forget because we've been socially and culturally raised to have belief systems and ways of being in the world that may or may not be in true alignment with who you really are.
We forget when we are so busy being busy, trying to be good enough, trying not to disappoint anyone, trying to fit in. This is a big one for me. Trying to be everything for everyone all the time, until one day We don't even remember what we're like anymore.
This is a funny story. When my youngest child went off to college or university, um, Rob and I were making all this food as if she was still living here, and we had [00:06:00] all this food waste for a few weeks. And then one day I just was like, "I am done with cooking." I have been cooking for everyone for so long, and I was done.
I didn't know what I felt like. I didn't know what I wanted to eat. In fact, I couldn't care less if we ate anything or not Every reason that I cooked every day was to nurture my family. And now that the kids were gone, I was like, "Okay, am I done? Can we just fend for ourselves now?"
Cooking has always been relaxing for me, and I enjoy it. But for about 12 months, I didn't want to know about it. I, I got Rob to take over some of the cooking. It was the decision fatigue [00:07:00] that thinking about what to cook every day when there wasn't the motivation of doing it naturally for someone else and it took me about another 12 months after that to go, "Okay Why, why did I love cooking in the beginning?
What was it that drew me to it? And I had to remember the creativity. the joy of putting new things together or trying new recipes I had to remember what I liked. I was so used to cooking food that everyone else liked
I didn't even know what I preferred anymore When we don't include ourselves in our life and we only live for other people, [00:08:00] we soon forget who we truly be.
I heard the term self-forgetting a couple of years ago, and it stopped me in my tracks because I realized that I had spent so much of my life self-forgetting. Forgetting about why I was here, what I was enjoying, what pleasure I was partaking in the purpose of my life. I had forgotten.
I'd been so busy doing That I had to learn and remember how to be. Because we're not human doings, we're human beings. It led me on a deeper path of curiosity in my spiritual practices about why I am here, [00:09:00] and why we chose to have a physical experience in the first place.
I remember feeling such great joy about choosing to come here. I had a memory or a, a vision of my soul choosing this life, and how excited I was and how excited everyone around me was for me to have this physical experience And I did some work with, um, Carolyn Myss archetypal work, and in her book Sacred Contracts, she talks about all the contracts we have when we come to have a physical experience. It made me remember what some of these contracts were and what I was getting out of being here. It is such a privilege to have a physical body, [00:10:00] to touch, to feel, to sense, to experience the physical things that we cannot do without a physical body.
When we remember gratitude for this physical experience, we can dissolve pain
When we allow our emotional body to be felt, we can receive the joy of the range of emotions that having a physical experience offers. I don't think spirituality is escaping life. I think it is bringing all our parts of ourselves home and to partake in this physical world that we create to experience all these wonderful things.
Even what we perceive as bad is chosen from love. [00:11:00] When we love every part of ourselves, even the bad stuff We become more and more whole and more and more complete, and we remember the power and the strength and the fragility of this one precious life. I don't think it's about pretending that everything happens for a reason.
I think it's about knowing that we have chosen every part of this for a reason. It's not about trying to stay positive all the time. It's about the range of our experience flavouring and colouring and making up our existence We come here for novelty, for fun to enjoy it but [00:12:00] I do think what spirituality asks of us is to be present, to be considered, to be honest, to be human.
Not to be less human by being more spiritual, but to become more human by including our spiritual aspects into this physical existence. Remembering doesn't have to be dramatic. It doesn't have to be these huge aha moments or bolts of awareness and awakening. Sometimes it's simply saying no to things that distract us from who we want to be.
Sometimes it's leaving things that don't work for us, setting boundaries, walking away. And sometimes it's crying and feeling the grief and the sadness [00:13:00] and the spectrum of all things. And sometimes it's finally admitting that this isn't the life that I want anymore, that I want something different.
I want to experience more. I want to be more. I want to touch and feel and enjoy every part of this life. That's what I'm here for. Maybe the real work of personal development isn't about fixing anything. It's not about becoming someone better. It's not about becoming more spiritual or more enlightened. It's not trying to fix every single part of yourself It's just simply remembering and accepting that every part of you, good, bad, or indifferent, is exactly what you need in this moment of now.
And [00:14:00] underneath that, the person you've always been, the person that you choose to be, is already there. Under the fear, under the noise, under the responsibility and the expectations, your soul is quietly whispering to you what it is you need to remember. If you'd like to explore your own remembering with me, please feel free to book in for a soul guidance session.
I'll add the link to the show notes. If you're watching this on YouTube, please like and subscribe, or follow on your favourite podcast platform. Remembering one tiny thing about yourself today, your own truth, what you love, what you care about, what you're passionate for, shifts your state and it [00:15:00] changes your story, and pathways will open to even more remembering
