Danika There’s a pattern I used to fall into without even noticing it.I’d go through my day trying to be the calm one, the helpful one, the one who makes everyone else comfortable. And on the surface, it looked harmless, even kind.
But the truth is that people-pleasing slowly erodes your sense of self until you become a supporting character in your own life. One night, when the house was finally quiet and my brain wasn’t buzzing for once, I was listening to The Miracle Power of Your Mind. I thought it would help me sleep, but instead it cracked something open in me.
A thought rose out of nowhere sharp, unsettling, but also super honest:“What if everything I think I am… isn’t even me?” What if all the versions of me that tried to keep the peace… the version who said yes even when my body screamed no… the version who shrunk herself to avoid being “too much”… the version who carried everyone’s emotional weight like it was her job……were just layers I put on to survive?That question hit me harder than I expected.
Because beneath all that pleasing and performing, I realized something quietly heartbreaking: I didn’t actually know what I wanted. I only knew what made everyone else comfortable. That night wasn’t dramatic. No breakdown. No spiritual fireworks. Just a soft truth landing in my chest: “I don’t really know myself… because I never actually ask myself anything.” And that moment that tiny inner shift became the beginning of a deeper remembering. A moment where the spiritual and psychological parts of me finally met in the same room.A moment where I understood that authenticity doesn’t start with big life changes…
It starts with awareness and honesty. Easing the pathway for coming home to yourself… One truth at a time.
The Identity We Inherit Not the one we choose
Growing up, we absorb more than we realize.
We learn to describe ourselves through labels handed down to us by our caregivers and the adults around us some have learn negative label such as: I am anxious. I am dramatic. I am responsible. I am sensitive. I am too much. I am not enough. If you have ADHD too, those might feel familiar but just because an adult told you that its means its true, nor do a belief that feels familiar means that it’s true.
Your brain isn’t a judge — it’s a recorder and when we are children our brain trust the adults around us to create it’s belief system based on their expressions, feeling and behaviour around or toward us. It (the brain) also takes your repeated thoughts and turns them into its operating system. It filters your experiences through what it already believes. This is why you can spend years healing and still feel like you’re fighting versions of yourself that you didn’t even choose.
When your thoughts tell you “I am this,” your nervous system responds as if it’s the absolute truth. But let me tell you a secrets the truth is You are not the labels. You are the awareness beneath them. There is a version of you beneath the noise, clear, soft, intuitive, rooted, sovereign, who has always been there. The part of you that watches, feels, and knows.
That’s the “I AM.”
Not the story.
Not the conditioning.
Not the roles you inherited.
Not the people-pleasing you learned as survival.
The real you is the one who notices all of that.
Awareness: The First Step Back Home
You cannot honour yourself if you do not first hear yourself. For so many women —> especially intuitive, sensitive, neurodivergent women like us <— the struggle is not that they don’t know what they want… it’s that they never pause long enough to ask themselves the question. Authentic living starts with the most unromantic yet powerful truth:
You have to check in with yourself every single day.**
Not once a month.
Not when you burn out.
Not when you cry in the shower.
Daily.
Awareness is the flashlight that shows you: what feels expansive, what feels tight, what drains you, what nourishes you, what triggers you, what excites you.
Without that awareness, everything blends together until life feels foggy, boring and confusing.
With awareness, things become clearer, softer, more grounded. And this is where the spiritual and the practical meet: When you know what you feel, you can finally make choices that honour you.
Lets be honest for a second ^ this is way easier said than done, this isn’t something that you can do one time and it’s fix, this is like climbing a mountain and the mountains is you, your history, your behaviour, your emotional pattern and all of those you’ve learned. Start small**, with something that is doable and take the time you need. Of course, daily is the BEST, but it might not be realistic for you and that is perfectly fine. This is the kind of work that is better done than perfect. Honouring you is the goal here.
Boundaries: The Daily Expression of Your True Self
This is the part nobody likes… but it’s the most important part.
Awareness tells you what you truly want. Boundaries honour it.
If you’ve spent years pleasing others, being “the good one,” or carrying other people’s emotional weight, this will feel unfamiliar, almost rebellious. Even scary. Your nervous system might even feel unsafe- specially if you needed to accommodate everyone around you to be safe as a child.
But listen, now as an adult YOU are safe, and remember that Boundaries are not walls. They are pathways back to yourself. When you say stuff like: “I can’t do this right now,” “I’m not available for that today,” “This doesn’t feel good to me,” “I need a pause,” …you’re not being difficult, or being a B***. You’re being authentic and respectful towards yourself, we want more of that.
Authenticity isn’t always soft. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable. Sometimes it disrupts the patterns people liked you to stay in. Sometimes it makes you feel guilty or overthink for hours.
But the more you do it, the less you abandon yourself.
And the less you abandon yourself, the more your life begins to align.
People-Pleasing: The Habit That Disconnects You From You
People-pleasing is not a personality trait — it’s a learned survival strategy.
You learned, somewhere along the way, that being agreeable, quiet, helpful, or flexible meant being safe and accepted, but it comes with a cost:
You disappear inside your own life.
The cure?
It’s not becoming cold.
It’s not becoming selfish.
It’s not becoming unavailable.
The cure is self-awareness + boundaries + remembering who the hell you are. To choose that you deserve to be respected, that it’s okay to put yourself first and to learn how to become unapologetic about it.
The cure is choosing your authenticity over someone else’s temporary comfort. And this is not an easy things to do, but you are the MVP in your life, stop playing the NPC, this is YOUR life. Start saying no when your body says no — even if your conditioning says yes. Because this will allow you to build trust in yourself and feel safe again.
You Cannot Hold Boundaries Without Awareness
This is the connection most people miss.
You cannot honour your needs if you don’t know what your needs are.
And you cannot know what your needs are if you never pause long enough to hear yourself.
Awareness creates the truth.
Boundaries protect the truth.
Authenticity expresses the truth.
And identity — the real “I AM” — emerges from the combination. I have plenty of journaling exercises for this, in the SoulBlooming community I have an ” Ask me anything” section, if you have questions drop them there, I’ll be happy to work through those with you.
🌟 My coaching advice
Here’s a simple tool you can use before saying yes to anything:
The Three-Breath Truth Check-In
Take three slow breaths. Then ask:
“Do I truly want to do this…
or am I about to say yes because I don’t want to disappoint someone?”
Notice:
Does your chest tighten?
Does your stomach drop?
Do you feel heaviness instead of openness?
Do you feel guilt before you even respond?
Your body will always tell the truth before your mind does.
Then remind yourself:
“Saying no is not rejection. It’s self-respect.”
✏️ JOURNALING PROMPTS
What “I AM” statements have I inherited that no longer feel true?
Where do I abandon myself to make others comfortable?
What sensations in my body tell me “this is a no”?
What does my authentic self crave more of in my daily life?
How do I know when I am betraying myself?
What boundary is my future self begging me to set?
🕯 RITUAL OR SPIRITUAL PRACTICE
The “I AM” Clearing + Rewriting Ritual
1. Sit quietly and breathe into your chest.
Let your energy settle.
2. Write down the “I AMs” that feel heavy or conditioned:
I am too much
I am not enough
I am responsible for everyone
am difficult
I am the helper
(Write whatever comes up, those are exemple and stuff that often comeback during conversation with clients)
3. Place your hand on your heart
and take a slow breath.
4. Ask yourself:
What is the truth beneath the story?
Do I agree with that?
What are those thoughts purpose, does any of them serve me, now or in the past?
If you could describe yourself in 10 words (try positive one), what would they be?
5. Rewrite each identity into a remembering:
I am growing
I am learning
I am powerful
I am worthy
I am awakening
I am returning to myself
6. Close with the statement:
“I reclaim who I am.”
Repeat as needed. This is energetic recalibration, not affirmation.
It shifts the story and the frequency.
