Lesson 7: Honouring your Best Self
This lesson examines your commitment to yourself and what is unique to your current circumstances that you want to grow through. We will look at your level of openmindedness and your desire to connect to your greater self.
What's True for You
It may seem difficult to remember you have a best self, right now, but you're in there and waiting patiently to exert yourself.
It becomes a matter of committing to growing beyond your current circumstances and supplementing your life with any additional learning you may find useful.
It can be both freeing and exciting to reconnect with your true self. Allow yourself the time to experiment with your evolving self and accept that your growth will occur at your pace.
The best place to start is by accepting who you are right now. You may have experienced abuse, trauma, or in less dramatic ways, lost touch with who you are at your core. You coped with life the best you could. Life has changed. It's okay to let go of the old coping mechanisms and liberate your life.
Getting inside the idea of what is true may be a new concept for you. It will only develop the more you consider it. This skill enables you to rise above the reality around you and accept what is, without assigning judgement or blame. You may need to examine what is true about your life, about yourself, about other people, and what you believe is true about truth itself. At first, you might not like what you see, but I encourage you to continue. To recognize truth is to accept it, then you can decide what you want to do with it. You may look for it, accept it, hunt for it, share it aloud, or even come to enjoy it, because in itself, it has no power over you. It simply is.
When you see what is true in a situation it puts you in a place of choice. You have options when you know what is true. If you are constantly overdrawn at the bank and you don't know it, you have little option to improve your situation. Once you see the truth in the red ink, you are more able to make appropriate changes - or not. But ultimately, the choice is yours.
It's also about recognizing you have greatness within you. It's about seeing yourself as whole and healed. It's about honouring what you have experienced and moving through it.
It is recreating yourself as you wish you had always been. Thomas Elliott said, "It's never too late to be who you might have been."
Be creative. The subconscious will believe what you tell it.
1. What does your best self look like? Feel like?
2. How does your best self parent?
3. How does your best self do relationships?
4. What personal business might you have to take care of in order to liberate your best self?
Are you struggling with this notion of a best self? During a time such as separation or divorce it can be difficult to imagine yourself any other way. I encourage you to focus on that better self, even if right now, you don't think it's possible. I want you to be willing to dream yourself big. Insight and foresight will provide the power to move you along your path.
How you see yourself and your situation will greatly impact how good your best can be. For instance, is your cup half empty or half full? If it's half empty you may be limiting your thinking and viewing the world through eyes of lack. If it's half full than you are viewing that cup with optimism and anticipation of enjoying its contents. I'm sure you are familiar with the phrase 'perception is reality.' That is true of your best self, too. If you perceive it, you can achieve it.
You may only be able to see the loss right now. You may feel that a door has been slammed shut on your life. Just remember that doors operate in two directions. They close and they open. When your life's door opens again, what will be waiting behind it? Will it be the same ole you, or a best self?
1. How strongly do I believe in a best self?
2. How strongly do I want to be that best self?
3. What am I willing to do to become that self?
