The Journey To Loving Myself

There are many ways in which to resolve conflicts.  I recently found a method that has begun to change my life.  It can be hard not taking things personally. Recently I began a year long evaluation of some of my longest relationships, relationships that I felt completed me and made me who I was, they were starting to leave me feeling misunderstood with a strong desire to explain myself.  Why was I seeking so desperately to be understood? What I found was that I was looking for myself and blaming others for not having the answer, an answer only I could find.

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The year was difficult leading me down a long dark path of introspection. This is where I found the answer, that finding peace in my heart and giving myself the validation that I needed is not something you can get from others. Our creative subconscious is known to bring us into situations that help us work through issues that we deeply want to resolve.  Realizing my part in these relationships was an unplanned lesson which taught me, rather than making up stories about why I was not good enough I can appreciate the relationships for what they were meant to bring to my life and me to theirs.

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These situations brought great realization into how much time I spent chasing unavailable people and ignoring the people that loved me for me.  Validation and acceptance needs to come from within. A lesson I long needed to learn.  When you love yourself you surround yourself with people who love you and all your imperfections. When I stopped paying attention to the things I was missing out on I started to see all of the realtionships I had been blessed with.

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Sometimes we need things to get really dark before we can see the light again. We need to trust that the light will come back at the perfect moment helping us grow into our best selves.

Logic is there such a thing

I recently read an article that scared me and excited me at the same time, bringing up the thought that this piece of knowledge is a wonderful thing to know and could really be used as an advantage if used properly.  I am sure we can all relate to making decisions too quickly at times in spite of what is actually best for us long term. Based on research done by Prof. Daniel Kahneman, from Princeton University, we can now have a new understanding of the human mind. In Toby Macdonald's, article “How do we really make decisions,” he looks at some of Kahneman’s findings regarding how we as humans actually make decisions.

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The findings are a bit alarming, most of our every day decisions are made with our intuitive mind, they are made quickly and without much thought.  The problem begins when we let this part of our mind make decisions that should be left to our logical brain, this is where we need to leave the thoughts for some time to be analyzed.  Kahnerman found that there isn’t much reasoning behind our beliefs and wishes, that our logical mind is very good at making a cover story to why we make the decisions we do.

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The scary part is that we tend to look for information that confirms what we already know. For example, buying a newspaper that agrees with our views. So how then can we maneuver around our brain and be sure to use the right parts of it when making certain decisions.  When asked to have a piece of cake or when shopping, buying a car, or anything highly stimulating, you can be sure that it is the intuitive brain making those decisions. If you want to slow down and think about purchasing that beautiful new car,  you could pass it over to your logical brain, just watch out for any stories that your brain try’s to tell you about why you need that new car.

Creating space to grow

Yin and Yang is a symbol used in Chinese philosophy which describes how two opposites are interconnected and give rise to each other. They actually need each other to be what each is. So if something is seen as bad, it needs a good to think its bad and vice versa. This could bring about many ethical dilemmas as who is one to judge if something, someone or some situation is good or bad. Maybe everything just is. It is we as humans who need to label things, compartmentalize, make a place for each and everything. Trying to make sense and bring order, or more truthfully control to our lives is the human condition.

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Labeling is something we all do, the problem is when it gets in our way of seeing the other side. Sometimes our decisions can come so quick we fail to see the others perspective or the many other ways in which something can be viewed. Our biases can be based on past experiences which we have long held from our past, either towards a particular issue or type of person, institution, experience, or even a way of living. This prejudice can get in our way of benefiting from seeing something as a learning experience or to simply just feel or see something in a new way for fear of being hurt, wrong, or maybe even right.

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When being right gets in the way of growing as a person this is where mental control is needed. We have the chance to learn something new that may enrich our lives.  So how does one keep the balance of being open at the same time as protecting themselves from actual harm? In Quigong which is a Chinese holistic exercise and daily discipline which consists of a mental, physical, and spiritual practise whose criteria to judge good or bad, is to ask,” is it true, kind, or tolerant?”  Quigong does not judge others, it’s belief system is based on Karma, where there is no good or bad, the opposing forces need each other to work in perfect harmony to continue the balancing act.