What You Don't Have to Carry

Patricia Lim serves as Vice-President of Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Inteligência do Coração, and is nurturing Conecta — a movement dedicated to expanding heart intelligence, coherence, human connection and conscious action throughout Brazil. She shared this story in a recent Story Booth conversation; what follows is her journey, in her own words.

It's so hard sometimes for me to tell my story. People say, let me know about you, and I say, well — how many days do you have? It's like a soap opera. So many things, because I started my life really early. I got married, well, the first time, when I was sixteen. This is not common in Brazil, by the way; my friends started thinking about getting married, like, ten years after. So I started very early, taking care of my house, and working already as a manager of two restaurants. When I was twenty, I had my children.

I Was Born Old

You can only imagine, for a sixteen-year-old girl, managing your own house and managing dozens of people in those restaurants — and obviously they were all older than me, because it wasn't allowed for people under eighteen to work. So of course I had to put up a lot of armor, so that people would take me seriously. I became very serious about most things in my life, became very workaholic, trying, I guess, to get recognition for what I could do instead of what it could be.

As my daughter usually says, I was born old. I was born like an adult. I am a psychologist, and I always worked as an HR manager — a master's in leadership, teaching leadership development programs at the UN, chair of the HR network for the whole UN in Brazil. And I took life very, very seriously. Always.

Then, in 2017, I had this big turning point. It was a normal leadership program — I thought, I'm just going to go to another weekend-long program. But something really huge happened there. That was the first time that I felt the energy of the field, and my heart. And that was really, really strong. That's when I heard for the first time about HeartMath. And as you can see, I am a very intense person. I don't do, like, a tiptoe in what I want to experience. I dive in.

It was two weekends of retreat, but it was so strong that it changed how I lived my life. I heard this call very strong: I had to be in nature, by myself, so that I could listen to my essence. So I took a trip to Peru — first the Sacred Valley for a spiritual retreat, then a seven-day trek starting at Salkantay, different from the classic Inca trail with all the tourists. No one around. Only those majestic, giant mountains, and the whole sky as if it was five meters away from you. And that's when I started realizing how much my mind talks. I kept doing this exercise for seven days — just be present, just stop thinking. And I realized I failed. The whole time, the monkey mind.

Trust the Camino

So I decided to do the Camino de Santiago — over thirty days of walk, over 800 kilometers. Maybe six months later, I went to France, because I did the French Camino, and it took me thirty-two days to arrive. Amongst a lot of pain, a lot of why am I doing this, a lot of inner work — I learned about unconditional love. That was the strongest part. People that would help you without expecting anything back from you. If they had one pill for pain, people would give it to you, without having another one in case they need one hour later. And then, I learned we have to trust the path. Trust the Camino. Trust that everything's gonna be alright — and if it doesn't, somebody will help you.

So many people ask me why I did this alone. I truly believe that when you are in silence, when you are alone, that's when you have the biggest ahas. Even though I wasn't alone, let me tell you that — it's impossible. So many people, and they all want to help you. Till now, we are still in touch.

So, I learned about the essence. Everything that one takes too seriously in life, it can become heavy.

When you have to carry all of your stuff, you start to understand what you don't have to carry anymore. What you have to let go. What is really important.

For me it was very normal to be so responsible, taking care of everything, being independent. But there, I realized how much weight I was carrying — and it's not only a pair of extra socks. It's lots of things. The things that we need the most usually are not expensive, because they are in nature, they are among us. Human beings.

The Universe Guides the Way

During the Camino, I started to question my career. Many of the things that used to make me very happy — the status, being a UN executive, and blah blah blah — that didn't make feel fulfilled anymore as my heart was calling me in a new direction. But it took me several years to make the move. During that time I got certified bythe HeartMath Institute, the broader certification they had, because I didn't want small steps — I wanted to do all of it and feel if it was effective to me. And it did deeply. I started to heal myself in so many ways with the techniques I learned. But it was hard to leave the UN, you know? My family, especially my parents, were like, well, I'm sure you are in a midlife crisis. You must be going crazy. How are you going to leave the best job in the family, all the status, blah blah blah.

Between 2018, when I did the Camino, and 2021 — now I can see the universe was guiding the way. Like: I'm trying to show you in the loving, caring way, but if you're not doing it, then I'll have to show you in another way... the harder way. So, I got into a really toxic relationship. And in 2021, I got really, really, really bad burnout. Which was something I couldn't accept — I am a psychologist, I was always the psychologist of the family, the one with emotional intelligence, always well. But that was my body telling me: you're not listening to your heart. I was incoherent. I was in this deep dark night for a year, trying to release myself from the job and from the relationship. It took me a whole year to cross this valley.

In 2022, I divorced, and I quit, finally, the job. I sold most of my stuff, gave away another huge part of it, put the rest in a deposit — my kids were already grown up, living by themselves, independent — and I started traveling. It wa a journey that I planned for several years since the Camino. But, in the beginning, I wanted to do a PhD in Happiness and travel the world to find out (or actually to confirm my hipothesis) that happiness usually resides within simple things...

But, as my plans changeg with the burnout, I dediced to go in a self-healing and experientional learning journey. So, the first challenge was that I decided that the plan was to not have a plan, and just follow my heart. That was a huge challenge, because you can only imagine how controlling I tried to be my whole life. You would laugh so much if I showed you the spreadsheet I used to have with my kids' schedule for the day during their first years of life. It is hilarious. But by the time, that was the best I could do. So to go with a one-way ticket and only ten days planned — it was a leap of faith.

I Asked My Heart What I Should Do

That year was the biggest connection with my heart and my intuition in my life. It was so intense, like, ten years in one. And one of the things that I learned is that we suffer because of attachment — to status, money, people, everything, actually. When we flow with the universe, the universe is actually very generous. The suffering comes when we try to fight against it, when we try to have the control of things — and this is an illusion.

When I was in Nepal and went to Everest Base Camp — it took me, like, ten days to get there. We started with nine people; six left by helicopter, they had to be rescued because of the altitude with acute mountain sickness issues. I was traveling with a big friend of mine, and at the base camp she was very tired, and she decided she wanted to leave by helicopter — which was really expensive, you can only imagine. And she said, come with me, I'll give you a ride, you don't have to pay anything. It was freaking cold. Everybody was like, take me, take me! And I said, okay, give me five minutes. I sat down, and I asked my heart what I should do. The heart does not use the same language as our mind — usually it's a nuance, a feeling, sometimes not even a word. And it just came as a peace in my heart: no, I'm not going back by helicopter. That was not the plan. I'm feeling well. As soon as I opened my eyes, there was a cloud on the top of the Everest mountain that was just like a white bird. For me, that was the confirmation.

Along the way, we find lots of angels. Sometimes we don't recognize them, because they are disguised. Others, they light our lives without even nowing. One of them, is the Dalai Lama. When I was in his presence, in India, I felt the most beautiful and strong loving kind and compassionate energy of my life — such a strong wave that hit me in my chest. He didn't say a word. He just held my hand, and looked at me deeply in my eyes — I still feel it every time I talk about it. That picture is not on Instagram. I hold it so deeply and so dearly in my heart.

Everything We Need Is Already Inside of Us

After I came back, the universe started asking me to work only with heart intelligence, which for me is a blessing. Every time somebody gives their testimony about how much it is helping them in their physical, mental, emotional health — I just love what I do. And I'm listening to the call again: in October, I'm going back to the Camino de Santiago, the Portuguese coastal route. I did the French Camino, and this one is totally different. And I am different. From 2018 to now, I'm totally different. Even if I walked the same Camino, it would be a different experience.

Do I still carry armor? I'm sure I still carry a lot. And I'm sure during this Camino I'm going to learn about other things that I need to let go. And then the next one, and then the next one. When I see people I haven't seen in twenty years, I say:

I am younger now than I used to be, because I was older when I was younger.

What I tell myself every day — and I'm still learning — is that everything we need is already inside of us. All of the love, and the life we want to live, is already inside of us. 

Trust your heart. Trust the process. Trust the path. You have to start with one step — which is to trust yourself.

— as told by Patricia Lim in a Story Booth conversation