Self Growth & Development

Jesus has been known to say several times that “You must lose your life to find your life, and if you do not let it go, you will never find it.”  Writing this we’re on the eve of Good Friday, too. Makes me think about how Christ had to lose his life to find his life, the everlasting one.

First we die before we truly live.

We’re most used to hearing we live then we die.

When we’re living from only one aspect of ourselves, we just live and die. It’s very true.

However, as we go through spiritual growth and personal development, we begin to integrate ourselves. We might have to die or lose the identity we’ve had for a long time. We might have to experience a great personal transformation and be reborn to a new reality, one where we’re not who we used to be.

With the veil of illusion pulled back, you find true life. Life in the kingdom, whatever that version of heaven looks like for you.

You lost your life to find your life.

I read a great article recently in the Spring 2011/Vol. 23 edition of the Light of Consciousness, Journal of Spiritual Awakening that I’m sharing an excerpt. The article is based on the 6 CD audios course, “The Art of Letting Go”, by Richard Rohr.

This excerpt here is about letting go of the false self (aka ego or personality) and becoming the true self (the soul).

“So you see why we are talking about letting go. If you are not practiced at letting go, you will hold onto your false self and never discover your true self. Many have said that we are all suffering from a terrible case of mistaken identity. We think we are what we have created, what our culture, our religion and our mistakes have created. We are, but we are much more than that. That “more than that” is what probably most of us mean by the soul. You do not have to create your soul. It is your inner, deepest, blueprint, your divine DNA. It is who you are before you did anything right or wrong. It is your deepest hidden and true self in God — the self beyond observation, beyond reflection, the self that can never be an object of your attention or a think that you can improve on or punish. It is only experienced when you live in a moment of pure presence, when you are not labeling, judging, analyzing, critiquing, rewarding or punishing. There, Merton says, like a small, shy animal, the true self shows itself.”

“The false self, the ego as Freud called it, ends up being the great illusion. It is not bad. You simply have to recognize that it is only a part. You do not let go of the part, you simply move beyond the part to the whole. …” – Richard Rohr

This morning I read an excellent tid-bit from Super Coach Michael Neill.  He shows that just by changing the way we think about something we can change the way we feel inside about it.

Much of what we want to change in our lives or have in our lives can be done through developing a practicing discipline and awareness over our minds.

Here is a great nugget Michael Neill shares:

There is No Stress In Life 

“The reason I don’t promote particular techniques for stress control is because I have come to see a simple truth:

There is no stress in life – there is only stress in our thinking

When I see that well-being is my nature, the only way I can feel anything other than well is when I am caught up in my own story (thinking).  To try and do something to “reduce stress” when it’s my own thinking that’s creating it would be like massaging my toes as a way of reducing the pain caused each time I drop a rock on them.  It’s not that my toes won’t feel better – it’s just traveling the long way round.

(I once heard someone ask supercoach George Pransky how he could say that their stress, which felt so real to them, was only a mirage – a trick of thought without any substance to it. George thought for a moment and then responded “Well, it’s a real mirage…”)

So what do we do when we feel stress if we know (or at least suspect) that it’s not real?

One of the most useful things we can do is use it as a feedback mechanism for our own state of mind.  If I am feeling stressed, I am out of touch with my natural state of clarity and well-being.  And if I know that, I can hold off on putting too much stock into my thinking, world-view, or story …

Recently, a friend called me to ask for a bit of informal coaching.  Her husband had had a heart attack over the holidays, her daughter was unwell, they were having financial issues, and their health insurance was on the line.

Unfortunately, I was caught up in my own drama that week, and I thought to myself that I should postpone our chat until I was in a better state of mind.  But based on the way I was feeling in the moment, I knew that my judgment was impaired, and my deeper wisdom urged me along to meet with her anyways.

After she unfolded her story, which included some undeniably difficult real-life situations, she talked about her uncertainty and insecurity for the future.  I then unfolded my own story and the uncertainty and insecurity I felt when I looked at mine.

Despite the fact that we made for a miserable pair that afternoon, there was one fundamental difference between us:

She thought the crap she was seeing was actually in the world; I knew that the crap I was seeing was on my own glasses.

We had a nice lunch, she got clear about what actually needed to be dealt with in the moment (which was considerably less than she had been concerned with), and later that evening she sent me this short note:

Thanks for today.
I shall get me back - I just have to be patient.

And therein lies the key to a deeper understanding of stress and thought and well-being and life.  If you go outside and it’s snowing, you don’t have to fix the weather.  You simply put on some more appropriate clothes or go back inside and wait until the storm has passed. Because no matter how bad the weather seems, the sun is always shining in the background… “

Here are 8 simple rules for change that have always helped me to reinvent myself, especially when I felt scared. I found them a long time ago in a woman’s magazine!

1. Follow Your Bliss – Think about what you like to do in your free time, what you’re naturally good at, what you enjoyed before marriage or children. If you’re not passionate about your new pursuit, you might be quick to give up if you don’t see success right away.

2. Dream Big – if you want to be an art collector, for example, see yourself with a gallery in many cities. “This way you’re more likely to come up with a plan that excites you,” says Karla Freeman, LCSW, a psychotherapist and author of Creating Magic in Midlife.

3. List Your Barriers and Concerns – Putting obstacles down on paper gets them out of your head and into the open, where you can start dealing with them. Think of tools you used in the past to overcome similar obstacles, such as lack time or money.

4. Act Your Way Into Your Next Life – Every day, take a few minutes to stand up and teach that yoga class or gather inventory for your shop. “Pretending to be the person you want to be strengthens your actions and builds your sense of yourself,” explains Freeman.

5. Give Yourself the OK to be a little selfish – As a woman, you’ve likely spent years putting your family’s needs ahead of your own. Midlife is a time to put your needs first, at least part of the time, and not feel guilty because you want to be happy.

6. Try hard not to think about hard it is – “If you only focus on how much time or effort it will take to put your plan into action and make it happen, you’re not going to want to do it,” says Freeman. Alternate difficult tasks with ones that are relaxing and fun.

7. Align yourself with the right people – Discuss your plans only with family and friends who offer encouragement and believe in your ability to make over your life. Also, find people who are already doing what you want to do, and ask how they got started.

8. Ask yourself, “If not now, when?” If you don’t start now, you will still be a year older next year. “Once you take the first few steps, momentum builds,things start happening and you start seeing your life in a new light,” Freeman adds.

These rules for change can also work great when you’re starting to consider doing something different and new. They don’t necessarily have to be for reinventing yourself.

(Women’s Day, Live Well 8 Rules for Change -August 1 2007)

I have used these confidence tips from Michael Neil, Super Coach, Genius Catalyst. They really work. If you struggle with confidence, make sure you check these out. What follows are Michael Neil’s favorite ways of feeling confident in almost any situation.

Read these Confidence Tips from Super Coach, Michael Neil:

Confidence Trick Number One – Act As If

“Always act as if you have already accomplished what it is you are setting out to achieve.”

-Joe Batten

The most immediately applicable confidence trick is to simply act as if you are already confident. […]

Perhaps the single most important thing when creating confidence in this way is to stay physically relaxed. Physical tension mixed with “confidence” often appears as bravado or even cockiness, and we’ve all met people who seem permanently stuck in the first part of the “fake it ’till you make it” equation. The more you focus on relaxation as a key element of your confidence-building experiments, the more effective you will be.

Confidence Trick Number Two – Update Your Self-Image

Your self-image can be thought of quite literally as the image or images of yourself that you show in the movie theater of your mind. If you tend to reflect back on all the times you’ve failed, or you portray yourself in your mental movies as a weak, frightened, childlike individual, you will tend to behave like one in your real life. […]

A simple way to transform your self-image (and build your confidence in a variety of situations) is to see yourself in your mind as you would ideally like to be. This is not self-deception but self-creation – i.e., you are not trying to fool yourself into thinking you are already that way so much as you are rehearsing your future – practicing being the way you want to be in your mind until you are ready to behave that way in the world.

One specific form of self-image enhancement is the creation of what I call your “Success Highlight Films”. If you haven’t ever done it before, investing an hour or so to mentally edit together a two minute highlight reel of some of the most successful experiences of your life is a great way to make sure you can access confidence in a matter of minutes.

Confidence Trick Number Three – Practice Radical Self-Honesty

One of the definitions of confidence which is often overlooked when discussing self-confidence is “to trust someone with a secret”. In that sense, we can think of self-confidence as the process of confiding in oneself, and the more fully and completely we do it, the more self-confidence we will posess.

Why does this work so well?

In my estimation, it is because most of the secrets we attempt to keep from ourselves are the very source of our deepest fears. By exposing them to the light of our conscious attention, they lose their power over us, and we are able to explore, dispute, reject, or accept them. Even more importantly, as we honestly confide in ourselves we begin to fully trust ourselves, and that self-trust is at the heart of all lasting self-confidence.

Here are some of the “secret truths” many people try and hide from themselves. If they se em harsh, or you find yourself angry with me for writing them down in plain sight, consider the possibility that this may mean they are particularly important for you to explore further. I’ve divided them into objective facts and limiting beliefs that are pervasive in Western culture:

Some ‘Secret’ Facts

* We’re all going to die, including you, everybody that you love and everyone who loves you.
* You might, in fact, fail to reach your goals.
* Some people are willing to trick you, lie to you, and even cause you physical harm in order to reach their goals.
* Most people care about themselves more than they will ever care about you.

Some ‘Secret’ Cultural Beliefs:

* I’m not worthy.
* I’m never going to amount to anything.
* I’m a bad person.
* Sooner or later, I’m going to be found out.

While the idea of telling yourself the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth may seem to contradict the previous two offerings, it is in my estimation the direct (and most courageous) path to life-long confidence.

Today’s Experiment:

1. Choose a situation in which you would like to feel more confident. Use one of the techniques in the additional reading (via the link!) to act as if you are confident in the moment.

2. If you haven’t already done so, create your own success highlight reel. Block out a few minutes each morning and/or evening to run through your past success and upgrade your self-image.

3. Make your own list of “Secret Truths”. Be sure to separate them out into objective facts which must be accepted in order to move forward, and limiting beliefs, which can be transformed in the light of experience and rational exploration.

You may find this easier to do with the help of a friend, mentor, or coach who can see things you might be blind too; on the other hand, you may prefer to at least begin the process in the privacy of your own journal or diary.

-Michael Neil, Genius Catalyst Newsletter Writings, Super Coach