Appreciating the Journey Towards Authenticity with Ash Alves
Season 4 Episode 6
On this episode of Wellspringwords: The Podcast, Nkem speaks with friend, author + coach, Ash Alves, about healing, the impact a spiritual journey has on creativity, and the relationship between values and self-worth. What does it feel like to cultivate an inner space and outer sense of direction for life? Hopefully, this conversation will help you on that quest. Scroll below for the topic timestamps.
Ash is a multifaceted individual with a passion for helping people achieve wellness. As a writer, she uses her words to inspire and inform others, sharing her insights on self-examination, expanding self-awareness, and personal growth. Alongside her writing, Ash is also a trainee psychotherapist, using her training to help individuals work through their emotional and mental challenges, as well as the founder of her platform “Warrior Reminder”. Through her various endeavors, Ash's work is centered around promoting wellness and helping others live their best lives.
“It’s not the thing that we’re creating only that hold the value it’s the act of the creating, it’s the who we are when we’re creating.”
Nkem and Ash discuss the creative zone, and how it feels to be in and a part of it. The creative zone is a space where you can connect with something greater than yourself. In order to access this state, we need to regain a sense of awareness. Ash's work revolves around understanding people and seeing who they truly are. This involves coming towards awareness, which is a journey rather than a destination. The key thing is the importance of having honest conversations with yourself. This means acknowledging your strengths and weaknesses, your fears and hopes, and being open to exploring the depths of your psyche.
Sometimes the process of healing can be challenging, however, there are so many ways to get through this journey. Ash talks about how asking yourself questions can be incredibly powerful. Ash's own journey has taken different forms, including reflection and journaling, having conversations with people, and surrendering to the fact that she doesn't always know the best ways to deal with things. For a long time, she felt like she couldn't reach out for help, but a way she battled this was by letting people in. She found ways to deal differently, gaining knowledge and asking inquiries about techniques of somatic healing, therapy for cognitive healing, and other methods of self-care. Knowing how to return to a level where you ask yourself who you are and what your purpose is on this earth is important – that is knowing how to connect to life as a spiritual being.
Writing has always been an outlet for Ash, a way to express her thoughts and emotions in a deeply introspective way. She started by writing reflections on her own experiences, without any expectations of it going anywhere. It was simply a calling to share what she had learned with others. Over time, this calling evolved into a purpose, to share the lessons she had learned on earth with others. Activism and community work became another way for her to share her message.
“Living authentically is being uncomfortable sometime.”
One of the said methods in which Nkem and Ash dive into is how social media can be one of those powerful tools for sharing and connecting with others, but it can also be overwhelming and draining. Nkem believes that we can make social media work for us by practicing boundary setting and curating our feeds to reflect the kind of genuine connections we want to experience. If we feel dissonance, it's important to stay away, but if we feel resonance, we can choose to gravitate towards it, creating a reality that aligns with our values and beliefs.
Discovering and aligning with your personal values can be a transformative journey that leads to a deeper understanding of oneself. For Nkem, it was a spiritual moment that called her to ask existential questions and prioritize her writing based on her values. It was a beautiful experience that she had never considered before. For Ash, the importance of finding her values came from being in the world and observing what she liked and didn't like. She wanted to gravitate towards authenticity and justice, even if she didn't always practice them. Through a process of sensing her boundaries, what moved her, and what she wanted to come back to, she was able to discover her values and theme them. Through this journey, she has learned that personal values are not static and can evolve over time, but they are always a guiding force in how she lives her life.
“How much you value yourself will reflect how much you honor your principles.”
The duo open up about how our personal values are deeply connected to our sense of self-worth and how we move through life. When we have a strong sense of our own value, we are more likely to make decisions that align with our principles and beliefs. It's one thing to talk about our values, but it's another thing entirely to implement them in our lives. Sometimes this can be uncomfortable and require us to revisit things we may have been avoiding. The fight or flight response can kick in, and we may feel the urge to back away from our values when they become uncomfortable or challenging. However, it's important to remember that by honoring ourselves and our values, we are living a more authentic and fulfilling life.
Nkem and Ash end their conversation by opening up to the journey of healing and how it can be a challenging but ultimately rewarding experience. It requires compassion for yourself and the process, as well as a commitment to staying true to your authentic Self. It's important not to romanticize the healing journey or to expect it to be a linear process with a set destination. Healing is often messy and nonlinear, and it requires us to embrace our vulnerabilities and imperfections. When we can approach the journey with compassion and openness, we can begin to unravel the layers that are holding us back and return to our authentic selves. By commissioning ourselves to the process and staying committed to our own growth, we can begin to create a more fulfilling and meaningful life.
Enjoy the episode! Let us know if this conversation brought anything to mind or heart for you in a podcast review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser, on Instagram, or via email at bewell@wellspringwords.love. Be well!
Topic timestamps
0:10 - Introduction
3:18 - Values, self-worth, and creative power
4:11 - How does Ash work with others on self-awareness?
6:45 - Ash’s personal journey with deepening into her more authentic self
12:54 - How personal transformation has impacted Ash’s creativity
17:25 - We can make social media work for us
19:53 - Becoming aligned with your values
23:38 - Values as a changing, morphing element in life
27:55 - We can create values that work as purposeful structures for our lives
32:36 - Is there a connection between our values and our self-worth?
35:15 - A message for those of us moving through misaligned energy
38:12 - We’re mindful not to oversimplify the process of healing
42:52 - The beauty of opening up to “journeying”
47:30 - Stay connected and dive into more!
References and resources mentioned in this episode
Find Ash here:
Find Nkem here:
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