Learning to Listen

Sometimes I wonder if everyone gets the wake-up call. Do some just chose not to answer? To sleep through the call or use addiction -- drugs/alcohol, food, sex, etc. -- to muffle the call to awareness?

I've written about my wake-up call to unschooling, but I've had numerous similar experiences, and sometimes, shifting my life to align with my new awareness is so. damn. hard.

When my pediatrician was advising me to nurse my daughter every four hours, even if she cried to nurse, so that I could Train her to be on a schedule, I ignored him and listened to my inner voice (and my wailing, hungry baby). But that was relatively easy compared to some of the other wake-up calls.

Going against mainstream parenting has been a struggle for me. When we've all heard "eat your vegetables, clean your plate, tidy your room, mind your manners, do your homework" and have been accustomed to the idea that a parent's job is to TRAIN a child to fit into The Real World, shifting to a focus on what fits the child and partnering him or her can be a little difficult to wrap your head around. Wrenching the giant ship's wheel of your life around to head for this perspective takes courage and can be tough work until the shift "clicks", and it's (mostly) smooth sailing. But first comes the wake-up call. Without it, there's no reason for a shift.

Deborah Donlinger writes about her wake-up call after listening to experts and following the mainstream without questioning:

"But, somewhere along the way, another birth happened. What started as a small whisper grew into a joyous and adamant shout, saying “LISTEN TO ME.” My inner guidance made her voice heard. I realized I had been giving away my power. I realized, with an absolute heart-dropping thud, that mainstream doesn’t know the answers, and worst of all, it doesn’t know that it doesn’t know.

Somewhere along the way, I started hearing my own inner voice and somewhere along the way, I learned to listen."

What wake-up calls have you experienced in your life? In what ways have you begun to learn to listen to your inner voice and stop relying on the so-called experts? How have you been Brave? It doesn't have to be about parenting. It could be about your job, your marriage, your shift to vegetarianism -- how did you get The Call, and how did you choose to respond?