This is a guest post from self-development blogger Vincent Jousse that was brought to my attention by a reader. Here Vincent discusses the power of listening to yourself…

It’s easier to try to be someone else than to be you. Following a well-known template is what we are used to do. Since childhood, we’ve been taught to follow rules, to do our homework, to follow what our parents were saying. That’s what we know how to do: following what others have decided for us. It took me a while to realize that I was doing the same thing. I’ve always thought that I was doing “original” things: going back to school after having worked for many years, achieving a PhD in computer science, having three kids at the age of 29, working for a so called “American Startup” and so on. From the outside, those things were not so common. You may not know a lot of French people having done all of what I’ve already done. But when you take the time to look into yourself you realize that you’re looking for security and safetythe easy way. Just as everybody else.

You do all what you can to have the highest possible degree in your field. You’re looking for well paid jobs to have comfortable life and to be “sure” to be able to feed your 3 kids. You bought a house five years ago so that your kids can have a comfortable place to live. You now have to pay a loan for the next 25 years. But you’ve never consciously decided all of that. You’re just accomplishing the dream of other people. Have you ever taken the time to ask this question to yourself: “What’s my dream and am I living it?” Life should be about enjoying every moment and pursuing your dreams, right?

What’s my dream and am I living it?

I’ve asked this question to myself some time ago, and since, it has been a life changing question. I’ve quit my “secure” job and I’m now following my own path. Finding my way through life. But what if the answer to “What’s my dream?” is: I have none. No worry, I was here too. It’s not that you have no dream, it’s thatyour dreams are so deeply hidden inside yourself that you can’t bring them to your conscious mind for now. That’s fine. The good news is that you have already started the process to uncover your dreams right now by asking yourself if you had any.

Being a dreamer is not an utopia. Being a dreamer is harder than what everybody is thinking. Being a dreamer of your own dreams is having more courage than the average population. Being a dreamer of your own dreams is the best thing you could achieve in your life, no matter what others can say. But yes, it’s hard. You’ll have to think, to ask “why” to every limiting belief you could have, you’ll have to go out of your comfort zone.

If you feel stuck, paralyzed, not knowing what you should do, it should be a sign for you: you’re trying to live someone else dream. The problem that most of you will have is that you don’t know where to start, because you are afraid of where you may end up. You’re afraid of the future, you’re afraid of what you’ve already experienced in your past, and so you’re afraid to start because you may fail. Bullshit. Start now. You’ll thank yourself one year from now.

How to reconnect with your deeper self

Lot of people are driven by their logical mind. We’ve been perverted by the need to control life, by theneed to succeed, by the need to be accepted by others. We’ve been always told to reduce risks, to anticipate things, to think before acting. We have such a big environmental conditioning that most of us are now afraid to start (and are not aware of it). Today, for a lot of people, it seems to be better to not start than to start something that may fail. And so we continue to live the dream of others. It has been proven to “work”, so why should I try something else? Lot of people are doing it, so it’s “safe”. I’ll not get into troubles if I: do studies, have a job, pay the bills, have children, have holidays twice a year, retire, and then depress. I’ll not live a fulfilling life neither. And what is the goal of a life if not to be happily lived?

You may think: “yeah it’s cool, but now what?”. I can’t quit my job, I have to feed my kids, I can’t do what I love because Iéhave to pay the bills, I can’t because , you name it. I’m not saying you should throw everything away. Rome was not build in a day. But one day, someone started to put a stone on top of another one, and Rome was born, even if it was not named Rome at the time. So you can start right now to live your dream, even if you don’t really know what it is for now. You just have to get started. And how do we start leaving our dreams? We start by finding the time to listen to ourselves. By finding the time to let our inner self to speak freely. And how do we start to listen to ourselves? Here we go.

How I did it: acting now

As you can imagine, reconnecting with your deeper self and with what you can really give to this world is not something you’ll achieve in a day or two. It’s something that can guide you during your entire life. But there is a good news, you can start NOW and have immediate results.

I’ll not tell you here how to be happy and to smile during the rest of our life. Nobody can do that, even yourself. The only thing that you can control is the present moment, nothing else. And that’s all what you should be trying to “control”. You only have to get started, then the universe will take care of the rest for you. If someone is selling you happiness for the rest of your life you should run away. What I’m proposing to you are ways to get started on living your own dream. I can help you with that. If you’re able to start again every day, you’ll be happy every time you’ll do it, no matter what the outcome is.

So what you now need to do is to act. Nothing has never been done by the only power of a brain. At some point, your brain has to meet the reality. Let’s start small, baby step by baby step. The easiest way of doing it is to write. It’s so easy that you may have missed it until now. “But to write what?”, “I don’t know how to write”, “I’m a bad writer”, “I don’t have time to write” … Hey! Stop it now, shut up when you speak. We don’t care about what you know or don’t know, what you think you can or can’t do. The reality is that if you’re able to read this blog post, you are able to write down some words. Period.

Journaling: the best way to be in touch with yourself

The best way to start is to write a journal. You could blog, write a book or whatever, but journaling is really the easiest way to get started. I’ve always thought that journaling was a teenager thing that girls were used to do and had no real utility. I was wrong. And if you think the same, you are wrong too. Writing down your thoughts is so powerful that I would never have imagined the difference it would make in my life. What is it exactly? It’s just about opening a text editor or taking a piece of paper and a pen on a regular basis to write down what’s currently in your mind.

To do so, you need to free up 10 to 20 minutes and to try to let go. You have to be in alignment with your thoughts, so avoid doing it at work or when you can be disturbed. You need some quality time to do so. I love to do it when the kids are sleeping in the evening, twice a week or so. Don’t be afraid of what you’ll be writing, don’t expect anything except the pleasure of letting your mind going where it wants to go. It’s not a productive process. You don’t have to be productive, you just have to write down what’s currently in your mind, no matter what it is, no matter how trivial or dumb it may seem. This part is really important. Don’t limit yourself when writing down. Don’t bother, breath, relax, let go and write.

If you don’t seem to find the time to do it, use it as a “fallback” activity. Sometimes, you’re bored, and you don’t know what to do. You would like to play video games but you don’t really want to. You don’t feel like going outside and there is nothing to watch on the TV. It’s the perfect moment to sit down and spend 20 minutes to write. You don’t have to be motivated or anything else to do it, as you don’t expect anything from it, apart enjoying to write down what you are currently thinking. It’s pretty easy to do.

And how come, something so easy to do, could be useful to you? This is pretty simple: it will allow you to consciously read what you are thinking, and where you currently are in your life. It’s useful right after having achieved to write your entry, but it’s also useful to read again what you wrote some time ago. It allows you to evaluate where you were in your life and where you are right now. You can’t reflect on what’s in your mind, but as soon as you put it in writing, new ideas and insights will come to you.

So please, if you feel the need to understand who you are a little bit more, spend some time journaling. Your future self will thank you to have started, right now.

Act now

• Find 20 free minutes twice a week
• Use it to write whatever comes to your mind
• Once it’s written, re-read it right after to have new insights
• Read again what you wrote long time ago from time to time

If you want more from Vincent Jousse go here.