Embrace The Wholeness Of Who You Are
Every adventure starts out as a journey of self-discovery. Part of the discovery is who you are deep down inside. As you learn about the parts of yourself that you have hidden away even from you – you will learn to face your own shadows.
“When you know yourself you are empowered. When you accept yourself you are invincible” – Tina Lifford
What are your shadows? They are the parts of you that you disowned as a child because you were made to feel that they weren’t acceptable. They peep out at you, when you see the same shadows in other people.
What triggers you to instant anger, shame, rejection of others – there is your shadow. Once you face and embrace your own shadows, you will quit attracting them into your life experience of others.
The values you have at your core, also come from your childhood. Some of them are from your parents. You either choose to emulate their values or you could go 180 degrees in the opposite direction.
For example, my mother used to say in complete truth for her, “Do as I say, not as I do.” One of my core values is not being a hypocrite, because this was a real hot button for me. My other core values of being truthful and honest, come from this same place. The one thing that I will not tolerate from my friends and family is being lied to.
“If you don’t know yourself, you don’t know your nature. If you don’t know your nature, you don’t know where to exist. By knowing your nature, knowing yourself, you know what to be and how to live. And that only comes from knowledge of self, knowing yourself.” – RZA
“Knowing yourself is life’s eternal homework” – Felicia Day
Part of really knowing yourself, is understanding what are your core values, and where did they originate? When you begin on the journey of self-discovery you will find things that surprise you. You will find things that may dismay you.
The great thing about this journey is that you have the ability to adopt new values, transform the existing values and basically transform your life from the inside out. You have the ability to attain self mastery.
Attaining true wisdom, means that you have invested in yourself. This means an investment in both time and money. Some things are easy to do by yourself. Some things are easier when you have a coach or mentor that can help you to see the things that you are blind to. You are the one who has to begin the journey to self-enlightenment.
You can start your investment in reading books and eLearning for self-education. Then you could add in a personal coach, begin taking courses with seminar or workshop programs.
The investment in yourself helps you to explore your creativity, innovation, ideas for your life purpose. You learn how to plan and achieve goals with less effort. You learn what motivates you. How to brainstorm new ideas for the vision you have for your life.
Fear takes a partial bit of truth,
then makes the worst catastrophe possible all around it
and sells it to us as the absolute truth.
Fear will try to hold you hostage to limiting beliefs about yourself. I have always loved this quote, because what you have identified as the fear is never the fear.
It is in the investigation of what is hiding behind the fear, that you can truly identify and then release the real fear that is holding you back from your life.
Reality of Fear:
You’re not scared of the dark – you’re scared of what’s in it
You’re not afraid of heights – you’re afraid of falling
You’re not afraid of the people around you – you’re just afraid of rejection
You’re not afraid to love – you’re just afraid of not being loved back
You’re not afraid to let go – you’re just afraid to accept the reality that he’s gone
You’re not afraid to try again – you’re just afraid of getting hurt for the same reason
It is in being courageous that you accept that vulnerability, is what is going to help you get in touch with your true self. Everything you have experienced in life has a purpose. There are no mistakes or coincidences in your reading this today.
It’s time to focus on you. It’s time to commit to who you are beneath the surface. The world won’t stop spinning because people choose to not accept you, or understand who you are beneath the surface.
- What makes you happy?
- What makes you feel at peace?
- Focus on loving what you think is weird about yourself.
- Focus on loving your personality flaws.
- Focus on your true purpose in life.
“To know yourself as the being behind the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.” – Eckhart Tolle
“You have to get new knowledge and force yourself to really implement what you’ve learned. You have to set boundaries in place for yourself. The important thing is if you don’t know real love, someone will teach you self hate.” – Tony Gaskins
Take swimming as an example. You can read a book about it. You can watch a video about it. You can watch others swim. But your actually learning how to swim means that you have to get into the water and experience how you can move through the water and not sink and drown.
The important part of about truly knowing yourself, is the application of what you are learning through and from all of the different mediums.
It’s about effecting real change deep inside of yourself. It’s about not just planting a seed of knowledge, it’s about watering it, weeding around it and pulling out the things that might stagnate or keep that seed from growing into a healthy plant. It’s about first transforming your inner world, and then your outer world, and then the whole wide world.
“The most important relationship we can all have is the one you have with yourself, the most important journey you can take is one of self-discovery. To know yourself, you must spend time with yourself, you must not be afraid to be alone. Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” – Aristotle
