Trust Your Heart: Lead Your Journey to Self-Discovery From Within
By Najwa Zebian
4.5/5
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About this ebook
Trust Your Heart: Lead Your Journey to Self-Discovery From Within is a deep dive into self-awareness, self-trust, and self-empowerment from Lebanese-Canadian activist, author, poet, educator, and speaker Najwa Zebian. On this powerful new journey, Zebian provides the necessary tools to help you begin to heal old wounds, embrace your intrinsic value and worth, let go of outdated notions about traditional gender roles, and get clear about what you really want in an intimate relationship with another human being. She also guides you toward finding the right connection, one built on an unshakable foundation of genuine love, caring, and mutual respect.
Zebian begins by gently walking you through meditative inner reflections on the pain and heartbreak of subconscious childhood trauma and past failed relationships, using fascinating and illuminating examples from her own experience growing up in a reserved, patriarchal family in Lebanon. Encouraging you to let go of the trap of “comparative pain,” she helps you to understand how, when, and why certain choices were made and empowers you to make very different ones in the future that will truly reflect who you fundamentally are.
Through a series of simple questions, she supports you every step of the way in gaining valuable insight into how to rebuild yourself after someone else broke you. As you discover your often detrimental and self-sabotaging conditioning about relationships, you'll learn to forgive yourself for past failures and reframe them as opportunities to grow. Slowly, you’ll begin to trust your body and leave your safety blanket behind, while setting clear boundaries as you redefine your ideal relationship from a newly fortified place of self-trust, self-understanding, and self-love.
Editor's Note
Building healthy relationships…
Have your past heartbreaks made you wary when you approach new relationships? Activist and author Zebian provides helpful advice on how to heal from past traumas with partners, parents, and friends to foster a healthy relationship with the most important person in your life — yourself. “Trust Your Heart” is a spiritual journey of self-discovery.
Najwa Zebian
Najwa Zebian is a Lebanese-Canadian activist, author, speaker, and educator. Her passion for language was evident from a young age, when she delved into Arabic poetry and novels. The search for a home — what Zebian describes as a place where the soul and the heart feel at peace — was central to her early years. When she arrived in Canada at age sixteen, she felt unstable and adrift in an unfamiliar place. Nevertheless, she completed her education and went on to become a high school teacher, speaking at multiple schools about poetry, diversity, inclusion, education, equity, culture, and more. She has both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in education and a doctorate in educational leadership. Her first students, a group of young refugees, led her back to her original passion: writing. She began to heal her sixteen-year-old self by writing to heal her students. Since self-publishing her first collection of poetry and prose, in 2016, Zebian has become an inspiration to millions of people worldwide and a trailblazing voice for women everywhere — name-dropped by the New York Times, HuffPost, and CBS News, among others. Zebian’s unique journey of breaking out of the mold that society and culture suffocated her with has been an inspiration to millions of people worldwide — many of whom have chosen to have her words tattooed on their bodies. Her ability to articulate soul-deep feelings sets her apart from the rest of the world; that uniqueness coupled with her extensive knowledge of educational pedagogy and teaching in a manner that effectively educates makes her a powerhouse in the field. Through her five books, her podcast (Stories of the Soul), and her own digital school (Soul Academy), she continues to give a voice to countless souls out there aching to be heard.
Read more from Najwa Zebian
Sparks of Phoenix Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Book of Healing: Selected Poetry and Prose Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for Trust Your Heart
40 ratings7 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Whether you are currently dating, have been dating, or have been in a relationship, Read this! It will help you overcome trust issues and build better relationships.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Be your own leader, your own home, first place to go for love & validation!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Great read and easy to understand book, will recommend it to.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Really well written and direct. Was relatable and exactly what I needed.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5great book, i loved the way it was written concisely
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Every page of her words are perfect for the woman recreating her value within hercellf. This book is my top 5 now.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a very powerful, heart-potential unlocking book. The language in the pages speaks directly and deeply to the soul at the critical point of despair.
Book preview
Trust Your Heart - Najwa Zebian
Introduction
I don’t think people understand how hard it is to trust someone. After you’ve been completely burnt and someone walks into your life and sees you as this strong, confident person, they don’t even think twice about the kind of leap you’re taking… the voices you have to silence in your head that are telling you, Remember what happened last time and the time before that, how you’ve been let down.
You have to silence all of that and say, I trust you. I’m going to open my heart up to you.
It’s not easy to do that. You’re constantly fighting all these internal battles that are saying, Don’t do this. Stay safe. Don’t do this unless you’re 100 percent sure this person feels about you the way that you want them to feel about you.
So you take these little validations and confirmations from them in moments when they’re telling you, You’re safe with me. Start developing feelings toward me,
and at every step you’re taking one more risk, one more jump, and it’s always with the hope that you know they’re going to catch you.
And they do, a few times. They catch you and validate you, and when you’re in too deep, you take that big jump. And you fall flat on your face. All those voices that you silenced before come back to tell you, I told you so. I told you this was going to happen.
You start beating yourself up: You should have known better, and maybe there’s something about yourself that you need to fix before you open your heart up to someone else. Maybe there really is a problem inside of you that needs to be fixed.
The real lesson after falling down so many times is, there’s nothing wrong with taking that risk because you wouldn’t know what the result is going to be unless you take that risk. I would rather try, fall down, and hurt myself, then get back up and show myself how resilient I can be. I would rather that than live with what if. What if I had taken that leap? What if this person actually cared about me the way I cared about them?
That could be the most beautiful story. I would rather live with the pain of trying than with the security and safety of my heart.
As you cry many tears over someone, or over the potential of what could have been with someone, it purifies your heart in a way which prepares it for that one person who’s meant to be with you, who’s going to walk in and say: That’s beautiful! And I love every single part of this heart of yours, every damaged part that had the courage to heal, every dark place that had the courage to say,
I accept that this is part of who I am but I’m not going to allow it to define me. I’m going to define myself." It just prepares you to appreciate the kind of love that you actually deserve from someone instead of taking it for granted.
I said these words after a dead-end talking stage with someone I was involved with who seemed very promising. It turned out to be more disappointing than an actual relationship. I’ll explain that part later….
For now, I want to share a pivotal moment in my life. I looked at the words above. I read them over and over. At times, sadness would overtake me because I’d think, Ugh! That really hurt!
During other moments, I’d feel stupid for falling for someone’s potential.
And then I’d feel angry when the thought would cross my mind that this guy I was in a situation
with played me and knew what he was doing.
But then I decided to do something I’d never done before. I decided to turn these words on myself. The truth is, I trusted someone else more than I trusted myself. I didn’t open up to myself. I didn’t listen to my gut when it repeatedly told me something was off. I didn’t keep my own promise to always put ME first. Instead of thinking, How could he hurt me this way when he knew what I’d been through? I asked, How could I have let myself down by trying so hard to read between the lines of all the mixed messages he sent me? I knew what I’d been through more than anyone else out there knew… more than he knew, yet I was upset with him for not being mindful of how hurt I’d been. I was seeking safety and security for my heart inside of someone else when I couldn’t be that for myself. On that day, I decided that I