Dear Hearts,
Welcome back to our journey. Before we begin, can we greet each other with a warm hug? Not a modern-day, unfeeling, barely-there hug, but a soft, warm embrace that appreciates one another; one that affirms and reassures, and stops time, if only for a moment. See, that feels better, doesn’t it? Now, let us walk together as we discuss the beauty and power of conviction.
What is conviction? A textbook definition describes it as a firmly held belief or a strong feeling that something is true, right, or worth standing by. And that is precisely what we are here to talk about today: why some things are always worth standing by, and how that belief acts almost as an invisible bridge between you and the life you ultimately envision for yourself, flourishing in the garden of your mind’s eye.
I have often wondered what differentiates an individual who ascends through life steadily from those who succumb to the many treacherous pitfalls of modern living. And, through nearly every scenario, one thing becomes evident: those who ultimately manifest their dream lives are those who never truly doubted the dream. Because dreams, my dear hearts, have always been messages from the universe and, indeed, I believe, perhaps even voice notes from your own time-travelling heart, guiding you towards what was always meant to be yours.
However, conviction can often be misunderstood and, at the best of times, leave the bearer feeling isolated and alone. This is because so many of us have become disconnected from the belief that there are forces in the world working in our favour. Consequently, believing wholeheartedly in our own specific dreams can seem strange, foreign, and even deluded to those who cannot yet see what we see. But no matter how dire the circumstances, and no matter how great the adversity, when we shift our perspective to understand that things are happening for us and not simply to us, we become the victors of our own stories rather than the victims of circumstance.
The conviction that everything we envision for ourselves is within our reach, and that every action we take each day brings us one step closer to that dream, has the power to pull us out of bed, to stop us from remaining in a toxic relationship, to leave an unfulfilling nine-to-five, and, most importantly, to keep us aligned with ourselves so that we may continue to grow, evolve, and ultimately ascend to the versions of ourselves we always knew we could become. Because, in conviction lies our strength.
As we walk together and talk about the power of conviction, dear hearts, I want you to know that it is natural to feel conflicted, and perhaps even more natural to question. There will be times when life challenges you to the point of making you feel as though all the dreams you once held for yourself were merely the imaginings of a lost child. But what I want to remind you, and indeed remind myself, is that if all things have meaning and change is made through action, then every action fuelled by your dream has the potential to lead you closer to the life you were always meant to live.
Some of us have days when life feels so heavy that it is almost impossible to get out of bed. And on those days, when your blanket feels weighted and your heart feels anchored to the scant soil of reality, it is the power of conviction that can lift you from your bed, with invisible hands caressing your back and steadying your feet, so that you may stand tall, live another day, and continue to fight for the life you are so worthy of inhabiting.
Your dreams are the voices of you; they are reminders that no dream is ever too big, regardless of the opinions of others. Of course, the distinction between dreaming and taking action is a conversation in itself. And yet, I would like to believe that if you have read (or listened) this far, it is because you have always done what you could to honour the dream you hold for yourself.
And so, in closing, I would like to say, just as much to you as I do to myself, that conviction, when paired with action, is like a stairway to heaven that only you can climb. But how can we climb if we cannot see the stairway? How can we ascend if we cannot move? How do we leap without trusting what lies beneath us?
To all these questions, my dearest heart, I say this: we do it with conviction.
Love,
love always,
Avastavé by Dmitri Ruwan
Listen to the audio narration of this article here.
