Your Triggers Are Your Biggest Teachers
How to Find Freedom

How to Find Freedom in Relationships and Beyond 

Over the next 4 minutes, I’ll share how you can turn what triggers you into catalysts for your personal evolution.

Many of us find ourselves at the mercy of external events and people—feeling emotionally triggered by others’ words, actions, or opinions. This constant reactivity can leave you feeling frustrated, powerless, and stuck in an endless cycle of anxiety.

If this continues, your emotional well-being will always depend on factors outside your control. Your sense of peace will be fleeting, easily shattered by a critical comment or unexpected situation. Your whole state is then at the mercy of others. A very weak way to live and a very low way to perform in this arena of life.

What if these emotional triggers weren’t just challenges? What if they were actually your greatest teachers and opportunities for spiritual evolution?

By recognising and embracing these triggers, you can turn them into catalysts for self-mastery. Leading to a life of inner peace, grounded leadership, and the ability to consciously create and navigate relationships – both personal and professional.

Those who trigger you are your greatest teachers. 

When something emotionally triggers us, our immediate reaction is often to blame others for how we feel. This way, we become convinced that our state of mind is a direct reflection of how others treat us or what they say to us.

But ask yourself: what if your state of mind continues to be controlled by what your mother-in-law, boss, or partner says? Your whole life would be nothing more than a reaction to the outside world—a never-ending cycle dictated by circumstances beyond your control.

What Your Feelings Are Really Telling You

What if the way you feel isn’t about what someone else said or did? Your emotions are actually a guidance system, a signal that how you are thinking about a situation, yourself, or another person isn’t aligned with your true essence or power.

Triggers are often signs that some form of doubt, insecurity, pain, or shame has been activated within us. These emotions are often buried deep in our subconscious, rooted in past experiences we might not even clearly remember. When these triggers get activated, we may react irrationally, leaving us confused about the intensity of our own anger, hurt, or reactivity.

Two Choices When Dealing with Emotional Pain

In one of my favourite books, The Untethered Soul, Michael Singer uses a powerful analogy: imagine a thorn stuck under your skin. When touched, it causes pain. You have two choices:

You could spend your life avoiding anything that might disturb the thorn. In “real life” this may look like avoiding relationships to feeling insecure, not starting your dream business because of feeling like a failure. It might look like continuing to have a hostile relationship with your mother-in-law because she triggers you.

Singer explains, “If you do not remove the thorn, you will end up responsible for both the thorn and everything you pulled around yourself in an attempt to avoid it.”

This choice never really solves the root cause. Instead, it compounds the problem, making you live a life far from who you truly are.

Never really achieving the meaningful connections you’re capable of or creating the career and/or business you dream of.

The second choice is to confront the pain directly and remove it. This means you don’t want your life dictated by this emotional trigger anymore. You want to be free of your own mind.

You want relationships for joy, not as a shield against loneliness.

You want to build a business for the excitement of growth, not as a refuge from insecurity.

You appreciate your mother-in-law because she provides words that actually allow you to see where you need to do your own inner work.

The Real Work: Turning Triggers into Growth

“You free yourself by finding yourself. You are not the pain you feel, nor are you the part that periodically stresses out… You are the one who notices these things.” Singer writes.

It’s about letting go, allowing the energy to pass through you, and understanding that “since your inner thorns are simply blocked energies from the past, they can be released.”

It’s important to understand that our relationships are a mirror of the relationship we have with ourselves. Every trigger is an opportunity for internal expansion and growth. When you approach your triggers as teachers, you find real freedom and liberation.

When triggered:

It’s a process of relaxing and releasing. Many times this may be to journal your thoughts, speak to someone about it, and simply going for a walk and letting go imagining your thoughts like helium balloons, rising high into the sky out of the stratosphere of your mind.

This is what the Athlete of the Mind practises daily to live freely.

It’s not easy but it’s the price we pay to Lead From Within and live a life of inner alignment, inner peace and high performance.

Reflection Question

What is one trigger that often gets to you? How can you start to view it as an opportunity for growth rather than a source of pain?

Ready for your transformation?

I’ve launched a new 1:1 Coaching Program for the high-achiever who desires breakthrough to their next level from the inside out.

If this sounds like something of interest to you, I have two 1:1 coaching spots remaining. You can find out more and apply here.

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