Looking in the mirror and discovering the real you - Part 3 of 3
Discover Your True Self
Along with knowing who you are on a physical and emotional level, you must also realise that another component of yourself is unrelated to your physical traits and is not defined by your emotional attributes or personality type. It is the experience of who you are that is not influenced by your thoughts or opinions and is not a product of your background or upbringing. Because it is the ultimate nature of who you are, this component of yourself is frequently referred to as your real nature, your being, or your essence. Essence also refers to the most permanent and unchangeable aspect of you—the part of you that is important to establish who you are.
We generally regard our bodies, personal histories, and emotional makeups as the most distinct and unchangeable components of ourselves, the ones that identify us and set us apart from others. However, they are simply a tiny portion of who we are. They merely serve to define our outer shell.
Negative signals from your parents (spoken and unspoken) developed an overlay on top of your essence, frequently masking it from your consciousness. You may need to delve underneath the negative parental messages you got, behind the inner critic, and beneath your self-judgment to reconnect with your core.
Byron Brown, author of the excellent book Soul without Shame: A Guide to Liberating Yourself from the Judge Within, describes essence as follows:
The genuine essence of the soul exists most profoundly as nowness; it is a nature that is not dependent on the past or the future, nor on the experience of being a physical body. The more you understand yourself as a soul, the more you realise that your body does not actually determine who you are. It is also not defined by what you have previously learnt or known. Who you are is far more intimate and immediate, enigmatic and difficult to define. Awareness of this is the first step toward opening to the genuine essence of the soul, your own beingness in this life.
According to Brown, each person's essence (or real nature) presents itself uniquely. That uniqueness is embedded in who you are from birth. It cannot be attained nor destroyed. It has nothing to do with your physical beauty or anything else you do or achieve. However, you might lose touch with your inner nature—or even forget it exists. Unfortunately, many of you reading this book are in this situation.
Belief in the existence of essence implies that you feel you possess traits or talents that go beyond those taught or ingrained in you by your parents and other caregivers. Although many spiritual teachings advocate the concept of the soul's essence—that as human beings, we do not begin life as a blank slate or a lump of clay ready to be shaped by our upbringing—as Brown states in his book, you do not need to believe in the concept to benefit from this information and connect with your essence.
Your essence or fundamental nature comprises what is known as essential qualities—attributes vital to what is most genuine in the human experience. To mention a few, these attributes include honesty, joy, compassion, will, strength, awareness, and peace. Essential traits are beyond habit, choice, and early upbringing and always exist as potentials buried in each person's unconscious depths.
The ultimate worth of who you are is based not on your characteristics—your physical beauty, IQ, abilities, or financial success—but on the astonishing fact that you exist and that you are fundamentally kind, thoughtful, and powerful.
Practice: Honouring Your True Self
1. Create an interior area representing your kindness, knowledge, and power. Say your own name using your internal voice. Fill in the blanks with your name. Pronounce your name proudly and warmly, and think it represents your life's significance. Recognise that there is only one you, that no one else is like you, and that you are unique.
2. Write your name on your chest so you can feel alive on the inside. Remind yourself that you are valuable, just as everyone else is.
Although we all want reinforcement from others, the source of your self-esteem and strength is within you. You must maintain contact with yourself to access your power. You must make it a habit to go inside and connect with your innate ability, goodness, and knowledge. Doing this throughout the day, every day, will not only help you boost your self-esteem but it will also give you a sense of inner power and security.
Getting Over Your Idealised Self-Image and Accepting Who You Really Are
We learnt as children what was expected of us to be loved and accepted by our parents. As a result, we were obsessed with an idealised but inaccurate image of ourselves. This "ideal self" creates an inner vision of how we feel we should be for everything to be okay and for us to be loved, accepted, and valued. Personal criteria for action, thinking, feeling, conduct, appearance, and accomplishment are all included in this ideal self-image.
The most challenging aspect of chasing our ideal self-image is that it does not work. Striking for the ideal as a youngster may have earned you parental approval, but it did nothing to bring you personal peace. Constantly comparing oneself to the perfect is both stressful and draining. We are doomed to fail since it is impossible to achieve an ideal, and we are continually missing, defective, or not good enough. This just serves to increase our feelings of shame and guilt. Even if the ideal is excellent, we must ask ourselves at some point how beneficial it is when we use it to constantly reject ourselves.
• Those who were emotionally abused or mistreated as youngsters frequently do not have a clear, undistorted vision of themselves. Survivors may obtain a clearer understanding of themselves—their likes, dislikes, values, ambitions, and dreams—by making a Mirror Journal and a self-portrait, among other things.
• Parents reflect unresolved difficulties from their own lives onto their children. To recuperate from the harm caused by this, adult children must reject the distorted mirror their parents have placed on them and develop a new mirror that more correctly represents who they are.
• Those who were emotionally mistreated or neglected as youngsters tend to become indifferent to their emotions, feel side-tracked by them or feel overwhelmed when they accumulate.
Accepting and Embracing Your Less-than-Perfect Self
1. Review your self-description and the list you generated previously in this chapter. Make two lists from your description, the first of which includes all your good characteristics, abilities, talents, and areas for improvement. The second list will contain harmful elements, attributes, limitations, and undesirable behaviours.
2. Go back over your list of favourable attributes and truly absorb them. Allow yourself to feel the pride from realising you have these positive attributes.
3. Review your list of harmful or less-than-perfect characteristics. Try to remain objective and just notice these parts without criticising yourself. For example, "It is true that I am impatient and critical, and I lack a great deal of athletic skill."
4. Determine which of your less-than-perfect attributes you want to improve and which you should just accept. As an example, "I'm working on not being so impatient and judgmental of myself. Concerning my lack of physical talent, I believe I simply need to accept that I will never be a jock."
5. Review the list of your best qualities once again (your sense of humour, your intelligence, your generosity, your courage, your strong legs, your shiny hair, your smile, your ability to dance, your ability to empathise with others). Now read the list aloud. Take note of how you feel after reading the list. If you are self-conscious about your good qualities, try reading the list louder and with a stronger voice. Feel proud when you read about how wonderful you are!
6. Choose two or three aspects of yourself that you want to strengthen. Make a determined effort to recognise and/or encourage these characteristics whenever possible. Praise or praise yourself whenever you notice these features or actions can assist in boosting your self-esteem.
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You Belong Here.
