Love Yourself into Your Next Evolution
The problem with concepts like self-love is they become interwoven into our common vernacular before their meaning is fully absorbed. Something so vital as loving yourself has become almost cliché-ish. We can talk a good game of self-love before we have realized it in our lives. Yet is central to everything else we become. The conversation is ripe for an evolution of where we go with it next.
Loving yourself is moving into a new era…
Grown up from its psychological and personal development beginnings in the mid twentieth century. We’re demanding a deeper meaning, a deeper “why,” a deeper self-care, even if we haven’t acknowledged it to ourselves. We want to know more about what loving ourselves will really do for our lives, our businesses, our relationships, our impact; to evolve it beyond its simplistic roots, the adrenaline rush of determined personal development, or the other-world-ness of the meditation corner.
Even the online thesaurus still references self-love with egotism, narcissism, arrogance, and over developed pride. There is a vortex of sorts still dissolving with false associations to loving the self, as if we cannot trust ourselves with it. Dare we cross the line into more?!
The good news is states of true arrogance or narcissism are merely another form of self-loathing, or feelings of inadequacy, not self-adoration. We hold them to protect ourselves from being seen, trying to hold up a self we think the world is looking for.
There’s more good news. The fruits of true self-love generate states of peace, depth, prosperity, vision, stability, generosity, joy, courage, bliss, and creativity. Is there really a limit to such qualities, or such a thing as too much?
Logically, we talk about loving yourself “first” in order to love others and cultivate more love in the world. I imagine a staircase with two choices, up or down, and a third non-choice of static ambivalence. But does love really grow in only a linear, polar opposite direction for self or anything else—either on or off?
I imagine deep self-love is sparked in a spiral movement gathering momentum, tools, and focus along the way and drawing into the spiral of our lives according to how we relate to ourselves. Here the deep value of self-love reveals itself spilling over into what we bring to the lives of others.
“What is it we are questing for?”,
asks Joseph Campbell in Pathways to Bliss.
Not-so-Secret Secrets to Work that Fulfills You
There’s something powerful about the role work plays in our lives, isn’t there? We want it to have meaning beyond subsistence; to have purpose, creativity, to make an impact, to feed our pocketbooks, to feed our souls. Where is the pure joy of work for the sake of work itself?
Chin Ying Chu talks of work as the highest form of play. I admit I’ve spent my share of time avoiding work from childhood to present. But I’ve also enjoyed work for the pure pleasure or even sheer exhaustion from working on a project, the physical labor of managing a small farm, or a hard workout and the soul-filled feeling at the end when I’m doing something I love.
Work often symbolizes our internal tension with identity. We find a sense of self in our work, our impact, our accomplishments. On the shadow side it can become a security blanket, a religion, an addiction or something we avoid. Either way, it holds potential for the discovery of who you are. Here are a few tips for evolving your present work situation-employed, unemployed, parent, entrepreneur-in the direction you would like to go.
1. See yourself as part of the whole no matter how you feel about your current work or situation. You’ve heard it said that, “all our problems stem from the belief that we are separate from God.” That perceived separation shows up in the different aspects of life, including work. Like a relationship isn’t merely giving to the other person, but to the relationship itself, seeing yourself as part of the whole, no matter what occupies your time, reminds you that your giving and exchange isn’t merely with an employer, or clients, or with yourself. It is with a whole.
Someone flies the planes so you can travel. Someone grows the vegetables you eat. Someone wrote your favorite book sitting on the nightstand. Someone manages the trails in national parks. Someone fixes your car. Someone creates art that inspires. Parents, teachers, caregivers and the community are raising the next generation. Someone manages a mysterious mainframe so money comes out of the ATM. Someone made your clothes. No matter what you do, your work contributes to the whole.
2. Recognize your work not as your purpose, but as a form of its expression. In a way, we could all change careers and still be living our purpose. Purpose moves with you, it is inherent in who you are. Someone who is brilliant at fixing things may enjoy expressing it as a mechanic, a farmer, a computer tech, working on docks, in humanitarian aid. What you do with it is its expression. Aligning that expression with your uniqueness is the bliss of purpose. Like Rumi’s quote, “Lovers do not find each other they are in each other all along.” Martha Graham says we do not even have to believe in ourselves if we are open to following the urgings within. Your intention and commitment to expressing your gifts and sense of purpose through your work will draw to you what you need to develop that expression.
3. Develop a relationship with your own strengths. It’s not enough to know your strengths and gifts or even to know how to use them. If you want the richest experience of work, learn to relate with your strengths and gifts. At the core of life is relationship. Your relationship to anything be it others, money, work, your ideas, your strengths, nature, Source, your self. This relationship eliminates the disconnect or connection you put with your gifts.
If the old ways of exploring your strengths leave you flat, spark new relationships, and put yourself in new situations. Relationships allow us to reflect, discover and choose who we are and who we are not. A popular tool right now is Tim Rath’s Strengthfinder 2.0. Buy the book and you receive access to the questionnaire. I found it spot on and affirming of the path I’ve chosen as well as enlightening.
4. Revel in the fact that you have the freedom to choose. To have the choice of how, where and in what you work is a relatively new phenomenon. Some may think of it as a curse because now they have so many choices. It wasn’t that long ago that you did what the generations before you did-parent, farm, merchant, sailor. Now you have virtually infinite options to participate in moving humanity forward by unfolding who you are.
5. Love what you do and if you cannot, make plans for change, even if you start only with an intention. It seems silly to say, “only” an intention, because this is where the source of the propulsion or power is that sets everything in motion. Loving what you do is for your sake, but it is equally as important to others. No matter what you do you’re actually “selling the love.” Your passion is infectious. No matter what it is you sell, people ultimately want more of you.
“When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. …And what is it to work with love? It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth…”
~ Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
6. The more you fill what you do now with you, with intention, purpose, and gratitude, the faster it will evolve or change form. This is a powerful secret necessity for manifestation. When you focus this way, you begin to fill the “space” of life that you’re in beyond its capacity and something new must materialize. It can’t not happen. It is an inevitability in the way the Universe works. You can acknowledge what you don’t like about it. That’s healthy and keeps you clear. But if you want to create change, you must hold the paradox of clarity that knowing what you don’t want brings you, while turning your focus to what you know now about what you do want.
If the only thing you know is the feeling you want to have, or you take the “don’t wants” and flip them into their opposites of what you do want and focus there, that is enough. Trust me. You are on your way to a new creation. Filling to capacity where you are now takes you out of “wait” or “shrink” or “doubt” mode. It is working in tandem with the change you desire.
“Live the questions and Life will bring you the answers.”
~ Deepak Chopra
Living in the sometimes uncomfortable, but potential of the power your questions and intentions hold, Life will certainly move you forward in the discovery or evolution of your work, especially its pure joy and playfulness.
| © 2012 Shelley Hawkins, The Self Connection™. All Rights Reserved.Your requests for reproducing this material in part or in whole are welcomed. Please note that without written permission from the author, this article may not be reproduced in part or in whole. Your requests receive prompt response at info@theselfconnection.com. |
The Year of the Heart: Making Friends with Uncertainty
The soul-driven life is an internally driven life.
It leaves space where the ego demands decision and it makes decisions and takes risks where the ego says drag your feet or be responsible. It is intuitive. It is powerful. It is playful and spontaneous, without being impulsive. It is creative, with a drive to press the edges of growth. It is organic yet ordered. It is trailblazing. And it is uncertain.
The uncertainty of the soul-driven life is its animation because it lives in a constant state of potential. That is, what is capable of being and becoming, what is possible rather than what is. Though the soul is never static, its natural state is peace and present. To make friends with uncertainty is not to be in a constant state of frenetic activity or ignorance. It’s more of living in the paradox of motion and stillness inside and out at the same time.
So what’s the point of making friends with uncertainty?
For those dedicated to the intentional creation of their life, their business, and the evolution of themselves it is the eye of the storm, the power center of creating.
Our first impulse when we learn about our ability to create our lives is to want to control it. You mean I can have “this?” Great, here’s what, where, when, and how. And take this thing over here away. Now show it to me so I know I can have it. But the greatest possibilities cannot happen from there. It’s stifling to the soul.
Within uncertainty is the power of real change, the highest possibility. Coupled with intention, they are the building blocks of the Universe. Like an artist who doesn’t know the outcome, but starts chiseling, painting, dancing, writing, mortaring, dreaming, and imagining with an idea in mind, shifting with the idea as the art emerges from their hands, so too, you create your soul-driven life.
It’s uncomfortable. We’ve all been in conversations with someone who is uncomfortable with space, or been the one who is uncomfortable leaving space. But have you also enjoyed conversations where the space just added to the flow of conversation? Every moment wasn’t filled with words. You could just be and experience the person all the more. The space only added to the connection.
Likewise, to make friends with uncertainty stokes the connection with yourself and the Universe at large for creating all that you intend. Enjoy the uncertainty of the space in the “conversation.”
| © 2012 Shelley Hawkins, The Self Connection™. All Rights Reserved.
Your requests for reproducing this material in part or in whole are welcomed. Please note that without written permission from the author, this article may not be reproduced in part or in whole. Your requests receive prompt response at info@theselfconnection.com. |
The Year of the Heart: Your Play Ethic™
What if we had a play ethic instead of or in addition to a work ethic?
Dr. Leila Denmark retired at the age of 103 as America’s oldest practicing physician, and here’s what she had to say…
“Anything on earth you want to do is play. Anything you have to do is work. Play will never kill you but work will. I have never worked a day in my life.”
There is a decision we make about what we call work and what we call play. I have found the most difficult physical labor or recreation to feel like play, while the simplest office project could feel miserable. I have felt wonderful doing something completely for myself and felt miserable serving.
We grow up with a lot of supposed to’s and ideas about service, “real” work, laziness, paying our dues, doing our part, responsibility, obligation, purpose, and success. All of which can have their place, yet unfortunately have little to no relationship to who we are as individuals and teach us little of our inner world and how to listen to our own voice, the soul that guides us.
Functioning becomes priority to listening. But when we reverse that order, restoring our connection with ourselves, everything changes. Many people are waking up to this simultaneously as humanity moves through this great shift.
The answer to your personal play ethic™ is not simply to blur the lines between work and play in what already exists in your life, a more linear approach. Rather, to connect with your individual ability to create and see what unfolds before you, riding the adventurous wave of uncertainty.
If you know you want—need—to restore play to your life or business, begin with an intention. Intention is more than a goal. Intention is the power of creation set in motion. It is a declaration to invite the forces of the Universe to work with you and you to surrender with them—step one to more play because it is not simply up to your efforting. Whew!
Start with a simple power statement to affirm your intention such as:
- I live and work playfully
- I intend to live and work playfully
- I choose to live and work playfully
Then pay attention to the subtleties. For example, are you receiving more fun tasks at work? Are your clientele shifting? Are the more arduous parts of your life shifting? Do things feel like they get worse? Are you drawn to get the help you need to make changes? Are new opportunities arriving? Are you finishing your projects faster? Do you feel more creative? Are you inspired to recreate more? And always take action. The action you take builds your intuition and connection with soul.
Play gives life meaning and focus. Einstein said, “Play is the highest form of research.” So remind yourself as your play ethic™ unfolds that you are opening your mind to ideas, increasing creativity, amplifying your focus, and invigorating your mind, body and spirit for more life adventure—including work and livelihood.
“The soul has no other wish than to have an unlimited number of fearless, joyful, playmates on the journey home.”
~ Penney Peirce
| © 2012 Shelley Hawkins, The Self Connection™. All Rights Reserved.
Your requests for reproducing this material in part or in whole are welcomed. Please note that without written permission from the author, this article may not be reproduced in part or in whole. Your requests receive prompt response at info@theselfconnection.com. |
Year of the Heart: Living in the Potential of You
“Even if you live to be 100, it’s really a very short time. So why not spend it undergoing this process of evolution, of opening your mind and heart, connecting with your true nature—rather than getting better and better at fixing, grasping, freezing, closing down?” ~Pema Codron
There are a few words in my life that I have had to bring back from the brink of extinction in my vocabulary. I rescued them for myself from wayward meanings I’d accumulated like Velcro and infused them again with authentic meaning, or least what they mean for me.
“Serve” is one such word.
I had come to associate it with what I saw around me of servitude, that profit and service didn’t mix, the pressure of obligation instead of inspiration (according to whoever was judging at the time), and with people serving more to fill their own egos of service-status than a no-strings-attached giving.
I happily rescued the word from my own judgment and endangered list many years ago restoring it to its place of purpose, fulfillment, and meaning in my life. True selflessness is born out of a fullness of self. And the richest service is born out of this paradox.
The word “potential” is similar.
At first I loved the word, it told me I was capable, I could accomplish what I set my mind to, and there was more to me than I had yet discovered. It inspired me to strive for excellence. Then for a time I tossed it onto the heap of an over-committed, type-A, exhausting, unbalanced lifestyle where no accomplishment was ever enough, let alone would I be fed by it.
But I couldn’t authentically leave it there. It was in direct conflict with my self-driven nature. I love the thrill of accomplishment, growth and learning, even if on my own terms. I needed to reclaim “potential,” too, from the pile of mis-defined words.
At the root of the word potential is power and possibility. Potential points to the capacity within each of us; the power of choice we each wield to bring forward what is within us; not what is, but what can be. It points to our ability to create.
How we do that is part of choice. For your potential to have meaning, it must be connected with feeling, with your inner world, with your soul as well as your mind. There are not enough techniques, classes, or business methods to take the place of what your inner freedom and evolution will do for your business and life.
Here lies the new balance and definition of potential, well, not really “new” just renewed. It is what Pema Codron refers to above… our evolution is to open our hearts and minds to connect with our true nature—yours and mine—and that is what evolves our businesses, our relationships, and Life itself.
| © 2012 Shelley Hawkins, The Self Connection™. All Rights Reserved.
Your requests for reproducing this material in part or in whole are welcomed. Please note that without written permission from the author, this article may not be reproduced in part or in whole. Your requests receive prompt response at info@theselfconnection.com . |
 |
 |
 |
 |