How To Decide Where To Live: Start Your Journey Right

 Whatever the reason you’re deciding to move, there is a lot to consider: school systems, business and personal community, nature, dating scene, environment, etc. 

Or at least your mind believes there’s a lot to consider. The goal of this post is to help you simplify what seems like a complex decision to one consideration.  

The mind isn’t designed to make decisions. No matter how much you write pros and cons lists, your mind will be able to make a case for either direction. That’s because your mind is a supercomputer not designed for decisions about your direction in life. 

Your body is your compass. Your gut is your compass. Your heart is your compass. 

With that said, I want to offer you some ideas and tools on how to trust your body more deeply when you’re making these big decisions. 

First, My Personal Experience

At the time of writing, I just moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Last year, I felt the call strongly to move here and came for a month. But then, against what I deeply knew in my body, the logic of my mind and emotions of my heart had me follow love to Colorado (just 4 hours north) even though I could have explored that love from Santa Fe. 

Alas, as always happens when I don’t listen to my body, while the relationship was beautiful in so many ways and we created lots of beautiful memories, being in Colorado and immersed so deeply in the relationship wasn’t what I needed. My body had been trying to tell me that. My body knew I needed some time to reset and relax after an intense 18 months in California.  And it created a lot of pain unnecessarily.

Now, I had been listening to my body for years before that moment. I knew the consequences if I didn’t follow its guidance. And yet, I still overrode its intelligence.

I’m sharing this with you so you know it’s a practice that takes patience and gentleness. In this particular case, the pull of the Love and the logic  my mind: “we’ll better be able to explore if we’re in the same city” had me go against a Truth I knew deep within me because I so badly wanted love. One of my deepest wounding patterns is thinking I need to sacrifice myself in relationships to prevent myself from being abandoned. And then I end up hurting myself and another by abandoning myself.  I’m aware of it and have come very far in this arena and so, I give myself a LOT of leeway to make mistakes when I make decisions out of fear in those contexts.

Gentleness is key to true healing and sustained behavior change.

And I’m proud of myself for making the choice to move back to Santa Fe, to the quiet and solitude I need for this juncture of life. And to trust my own wants and needs even when others don’t understand or agree. And even when it’s tremendously painful for my heart. It’s a big step in my healing journey

The Compass Leads To Santa Fe

Santa Fe doesn’t “make sense”. While I have a couple close friends here and some acquaintances, it isn’t like the locations I usually live. I usually choose locations with a little more bustle and big communities. Austin, which almost tempted me to ignore my body again made a lot of sense. 

But that logical “sense” is being filtered through so much of what I’ve learned I should be over the years. For example, an old belief that I need to have a big community around in order to get noticed and create the impact I want to create. 

But what I KNOW to be true deep in my bones is that Santa Fe is the energy I need right now for a home. And that will best support me in having the impact I’ve meant to have. I already have some travel planned to support my impact on the planet AND have a couple of key meetings with influential people I had no idea lived here – but met synchronistically since arriving here.

That is what my body knew that my mind didn’t.

“It’s All In The Mind” Can’t Be More True

So as you’re making this decision of where to move (or any big decision really), I invite you to notice what your mind is thinking. Is it rooting from the past and everything that you’ve already gone through? Or is it letting your body find its needs and decide for you? Write out the pros and cons if you need to, but pay attention to what your body is doing when you’re thinking about one decision or the other.

You can also practice making smaller decisions. Practice with what you’re going to eat, where you’re going to go each day, what you’re going to do, who you’re going to spend time with. Start trusting your body and its needs and wants while making these smaller decisions. Eventually, you’ll notice what happens when you don’t trust your body and see the beautiful things that happen when you do. 

 And if you haven’t read it yet, I also wrote a blog about “How To Be Happier and More Positive”. In that post, I talked a lot about how to get back into your body and trust your body so you can achieve happiness more easily.

Now, how you’re uniquely designed to listen to your body depends on how you’re body is uniquely designed and how energy uniquely flows through it. You can learn this through  the Human Design System. I create a free 19-page report for you that is personalized to you. 

 All you need to do is enter your birth information and you’ll get the report that will tell you how YOU’RE uniquely designed/wired to make decisions (through the gut, emotions, instincts, talking it out, getting in the right environment, or a combination of those, etc.). The report gives you everything you need to know to confidently make decisions from a Truth that needs no logic or validation. And you’ll start to build the courage to follow it even when it doesn’t make “sense”.

If this post resonated with you, I invite you to join the “Human Design Applied” Facebook Group where you’ll find support and inspiration to embody your Human Design, align to your truth, and trust yourself like never before!