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There’s something in the personal and spiritual growth world that really gets under my skin.
And to be fair, I’m not innocent in this either. I’ve bought into it plenty of times myself.
But what really bothers me is how many people in this space tell you what you should do in order to be happy, or successful, or healed. It’s always presented like it’s so simple.
Just do this. Just think that way. Just follow these steps, and then apparently everything in your life will fall into place.
You’ll be happy, free and healed.
I’ve bought into that messaging before, and I’ve noticed that when I can’t seem to pull off whatever the promised result is supposed to be, I start to feel like I’ve failed.
But the more I’ve lived inside this human experience, the more I’ve realised that it’s not the tool that matters most. It’s the person using it.
And more specifically, it’s the relationship that person has with themselves while they’re using it.
You can give two people the exact same exercise, the exact same meditation, the exact same healing session, and they will walk away with completely different results.
Not because the method is different. But because the people are.
Obvious relationships are with other people. But it goes much deeper than that, because absolutely everything in your life is based on relationships. How you relate to a specific thing.
You have a relationship with nature. You have a relationship with your body. You have a relationship with the way you dress, the way you move, the way you live in the world.
And most importantly, you have a relationship with your internal world.
Your emotions. Your thoughts. Your body. Your soul.
You are the one living inside that body. You are the one experiencing all of the things. So therefore no one outside of you can truly know what that relationship looks like.
When you start to pay attention to how you relate to all these different parts of yourself, something powerful opens up.
Choice. You can choose how you relate to yourself, rather than running on a disconnected autopilot, looking for peach out side on yourself.
You can change your external circumstances completely and still be stuck inside the same internal struggle.
Because the restlessness is inside your own head, your own heart, and your own nervous system.
That’s why awareness matters so much.
When you can see what’s happening inside yourself, you suddenly have the ability to choose how you relate to it.
Do you resist it? Do you fight it? Do you collapse into it and become the victim of it? Or do you observe it and decide how you want to respond?
One of the most helpful things I’ve learned to do is something surprisingly simple.
When a difficult emotion shows up — anxiety, loneliness, stress, whatever it may be — I notice how quickly my system tries to get rid of it.
Our instinct is to push it away, fix it, override it, numb it, bypass it or transcend it.
But instead of doing that, I asked myself a different question in order to try a different approach.
What if this feeling never goes away? What if I have this feeling for the rest of my life? Can I accept it and stop fighting it?
At first that sounds almost impossible. Because when something feels uncomfortable, the natural instinct is to make it stop.
But when you stop fighting a feeling, you make room for it to just be. You allow it to exist without trying to control it or eliminate it.
And when the fight stops, the feeling often changes on its own. It softens and is able to move through you, rather than stay stuck in you.
This has everything to do with the nervous system. The instinct to resist.
But the act of constantly trying to avoid a feeling keeps the nervous system stuck in defence mode.
And this is what keeps you stuck, not the emotion.
People in the transformation world love giving advice, and sometimes that advice is helpful.
But the truth is that no one else can tell you exactly how to live your life or heal your inner world, because they don't live in your body.
They can offer suggestions, and share what worked for them. But you are the only person who truly knows what it feels like to be you.
You are the one living inside your body and your self awareness is the most important guide you have.
Imagine that the most powerful shift you can make isn’t learning a new technique or following a new method, but rather it’s simply putting down the fight with yourself.
Because when you stop fighting yourself, understanding, compassion and peace become possible.
And from that place true transformation potential is unlimited.
Picture credit: Brandon Siu
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