To thrive in the current environment of fast change, aggressive challenges and hard lessons you have to be all that you have within you to be.
To live life to the fullest you have to realise your potential, you have to know how to relate to others effectively and you have to know yourself.
This leads to the question “What is our real self?” What is the real you behind the personality you have developed during your lifetime? You adapt your behaviour to fit your current circumstances - you put on a mask. Be this mask one of cruelty or kindness, happiness or depression, generosity or selfishness it is an illusion. Our masks are often donned for good reason, indeed no-one is denying that their occasional use is appropriate in much the same way as we dress differently when attending a party or a wedding, but they cause stress, unhappiness and discontent when they become stuck.
To be authentic, to achieve a way of being which allows you to be your true self you must learn to live without your mask.
The way to achieve wellness and contentment is to allow the deepest truths within you to come out. You can do this in many ways but finding a place of stillness is a good place to start.
Many claim to have tried meditation and given it up. Meditation is like any skill - it needs daily practice for the benefits to be felt and for mastery to be achieved. The thoughts which interfere with meditation come from consciousness. This does not mean you need to be unconscious to meditate! Rather think of your consciousness as being like a shiny tap. The thoughts flow from your consciousness in much the same way as water flows from the tap. If you choose to turn the tap off, water no longer flows - if you choose to turn off your thoughts your consciousness remains but it is not permitted to interfere with your quietness.
As humans we grow - this is a natural process unless we deliberately limit ourselves in some way. You will know people who appear to be more advanced, more developed or more “together” than you. Such development is available to you if you simply stop selling yourself short and putting things on the too-hard-to-do list.
So often our focus is on acquiring more things to allow us to do what we want to do in the hope that we can be happy, content and fulfilled. Ask yourself, has this strategy worked for you? Have you stretched yourself to unrealistic financial limits in order to acquire more? Do you have debts incurred for articles which you seldom look at or use? Did the acquisition of these things give you the enduring contentment and happiness you sought?
Surely if you turn this process around, if you can be your true self, you will do things which really give you enjoyment and pleasure and then you shall have all you want!
Adapted behaviour or masked behaviour can be maintained for a short time but not without cost. It is a bit like wearing someone else’s shoes. They are fine to nip out to the garage but not to wear all day! To force yourself into being something you are not is to rub yourself sore, just as the shoes will inevitably rub. You become a square peg in a round hole. You begin questioning your purpose. Masked behaviour can even differ between the sexes. How many men do you know who find it difficult to express their hurt so instead demonstrate anger? How many women cannot express their anger so experience hurt instead? What does this concealment of the true way of being cost the individual and their relationships? Can you see how much additional stress we induce by not being authentic?
Real change occurs in our lives when we become what we are, not when we try to become what we are not! Is this a challenge you are ready to embrace?
Donetta Harrison is building http://www.wellnessforlife.info, an information resource on all aspects of wellness in all domains of life, to encourage individuals to take responsibility for their health and wellbeing in order that that they may live life to the full. More Information from wellnessforlife@btinternet.com.