Dating, Marriage and Divorce Conversations (DMD)
Analyzing, navigating, and trouble-shooting all stages of our romantic lives.
Dating, Marriage and Divorce Conversations (DMD)
Month of Relationships Part 4: Connecting With Your Inner Self: A Journey of Self-Worth and Soulful Service
Have you ever paused to consider the relationship you have with yourself? In this episode, we take you through a recent mountain hike that sparked deep introspection on self-worth and the overlooked necessity of self-care. We explore the common pitfalls of getting lost in external relationships and social media distractions, stressing the importance of dedicating time to connect with our inner selves. Discover how creative and personal expression can help us overcome the fears of failure and success that often block our path to self-discovery. Through shared experiences and honest trial and error, we uncover insights that make us wiser and better equipped to tackle life's challenges.
Moving forward, we shift focus to living a soulful life of service beyond the confines of ego. We examine how the soul embodies our unique talents, potentials, and the sources of our joy and purpose. By understanding the ego's protective nature, we learn how to channel its energy towards serving a higher purpose and co-creating with God. This journey involves sharing our gifts selflessly without the craving for fame or recognition. Embrace the tools and capacities you have, trust in your role within the grand tapestry of life, and find fulfillment in your contributions to the world around you.
Hello everybody, welcome back to part four of the month of relationships, and this time we have one more relationship to talk about Not an easy relationship to talk about and that is the relationship between us and ourselves. And I want to start with sharing with you a story of something that just happened to me literally three, four days ago. There is a mountain with a beautiful hike that I went climbing on and literally within 10 to 15 minutes of the climb, the elevation was significantly high and allowed me to have a beautiful view of the surrounding area of the mountain. And all of a sudden, my eyes fixated on seeing in the distance all these little things moving at significant speed. And then I realized that they were cars on the local highway. And as I stared at them and for a minute almost felt the sensation of looking at like an ant farm, because they were so small in their appearance, just tiny objects moving, and many of them so almost uniform. Because there were so many cars moving in both directions of the highway and out of nowhere, the following question popped up in my mind Will anybody care about me? Will anybody notice me?
Speaker 1:And for a minute there there was this uncomfortable feeling of that really, truly in the big picture of life. Are any of these people preoccupied, thinking about me or other people in life? And if they are, who are they thinking about me or other people in life? And if they are, who are they thinking about? Most likely people that actually matter to them, people they care about. As I probably would do the same, how much will I be thinking about people in those cars passing by? Probably forgot them five, five to ten minutes after, seeing those cars moving and this heavy reality settled in of nobody's really going to care about me other than me, I need to be the one to care about myself, and it was such an interesting concept because we live in the world of relationships and very often people are spending their entire lives surrounded by relationships, and to a degree that there isn't even an opportunity to actually take the time and be able to spend time with oneself and appreciate having a relationship with one's own inner world, whether it's through artistic expression or creative expression that may be lying deep inside us. Instead of doing that, we're so busy either interacting with the relationships we already have or spending a lot of time on social media and other outlets that take us away and essentially create an environment of anything but time for myself, anything but relationship with myself.
Speaker 1:Today, even people like to throw around the phrase self-care. I have to make sure I do some self-care, which to me is basically a fancy way of saying carve out some time to be with you, time to be with you, and it's amazing how much flows out of that space, the more there is a sense of I love myself, and not from egotistical standpoint of you, not, it's all about me, others should be hurt. I'm hoping to go into a little more depth on ego and its role in our lives, but I'm talking right now about just one perspective of hey, there's a real me in there, there's a real person with uniqueness and potential and hope and optimism and creative ideas about how to do this thing called life. And instead of being able to spend time connecting to that voice and not only connecting to it but even giving it expression, going even one step further, like really truly giving expression to that voice Instead I'm busy constantly with an output. There's always either something to learn or another podcast to listen to, another voice to get into my brain, but nothing in my soul. See, because it seems to me from all the adventures I've been on and all the approaches I've taken. What so far has come clear to me is that there is time to take in information, to learn and to grow, but then there's also time to grow. That is really a transformation, namely an experience in which me creating something, me reaching into myself, finding my inner voice and, yes, many times through trial and error and through stumbling and fumbling my way through experiences, experiments, ideas, but through that process I get to learn more about myself. I go through an important self-discovery journey that allows me to learn how to be wiser and how to be better at handling various situations in life.
Speaker 1:I was recently speaking to a client. The client says but I don't know how to access my own inner voice, I don't know what if it's the wrong thing. And the answer I gave is something that I learned both from my own experience and from seeing from the work that I've done with clients, which is sometimes you just have to engage. The process Meaning just doing the work allows us to create a self-feeding back mechanism where we're getting feedback by virtue of the experience of doing the thing and then, as we're doing the thing, we could say oh you know what, last time I did it this way. That didn't really work for me. Well, you know what? I did it this way and I think I want to tweak some things. Maybe I went too fast, maybe I went too slow, maybe this isn't really the right way to handle this situation. You know, last time I decided to put up more boundaries in my relationship, I see that it created some isolation. Maybe I need to be a little softer, a little more gentle. But the only way I would learn any of this stuff is only by gathering data, having empirical evidence that can demonstrate to me whether what I'm doing or not correct, not correct, what I'm doing or not correct, not correct, needs to be modified in any way, and there's no escaping the life's experience of just doing the thing, doing the work, engaging the process. There's no escape from doing this in order to continue to refine, sharpen, to hone understanding of what is the best way for me to handle any given situation and therefore, understanding and accepting that mistakes, failures, errors, shortcomings are absolutely essential part of this journey.
Speaker 1:So often people seem to be afraid they might fail, some people are afraid to succeed and because of these fears we stay bound to our seats, to our posture, we don't wander outside the box, we don't step out of the comfort zone, so to speak, and so instead we preserve the status quo, which is another way of saying we kill off the future possibilities, especially the future versions of ourselves that are waiting for us to come closer towards that self-actualized being. I was once listening to Les Brown, a famous motivational speaker. He said imagine lying on your deathbed, and surrounding you on your deathbed are the ghosts of the potentials not realized, and they come to you and they say you were supposed to become a great business person. You were supposed to become an amazing teacher. You were supposed to be me person. You were supposed to become an amazing teacher. You were supposed to be me.
Speaker 1:And now you lost this opportunity because you were too busy dealing with other things, or you never focused sufficiently, or you were just paralyzed by fear, and because of that, all that's left for you to see is the ghost of your potential, the pain, the discomfort, just the utter I don't know what to call it suffering I would feel inside if I was lying on my deathbed and I saw these images of my potentials not actualized, and so to wake up in the morning and say I might be rejected. Today, somebody might be upset at me today. I might hurt somebody's feelings today, but then to immediately follow up to that noise, heard somebody's feelings today, but then to immediately follow up to that voice, yes, that's true. But that those failures and those shortcomings are the gifts with which I will grow, I will persevere, I will blossom. And therefore, working on the relationship, especially in this month, the month of relationships, right, we're always sad.
Speaker 1:Well, give benefit of the doubt to other people. You see somebody, you want to judge them. Try to give benefit of the doubt first before you make a negative conclusion. Right, try to look at people in positive light, encourage people, help people feel empowered, believe in the possibilities of the future. And I want to just turn that light around and shine it right back and say well, what about us? Do we treat ourselves that way? Do we view ourselves that way? You know what. It takes courage, it takes perseverance, it takes resilience, it takes real mental judo.
Speaker 1:I feel like I'm sometimes in the judo studio in my mind to engage in these battles with internal thoughts and the negative beliefs and the limiting beliefs and all the naysaying and all the voices trying to call out and say don't go there, I'm telling you there's nothing waiting there for you but bad news. And I say but maybe not, but what if? But what if I'll be surprised? What if there's something else behind that door? What if I will discover a totally different possibility or perspective on what is really going on? And instead of just settling on my own predetermined outcome that I've already painted for myself, instead, what if I did turn to the world of possibilities and said this is so beyond me, the world is so much bigger than me. This is all just my own made up experience in my mind. And so the question that becomes is why does our mind do this? Why do we lean towards negative thoughts, pessimism, limiting beliefs, questioning and doubting ourselves? Why do we do this? And enters the scene the very interesting character it's really our Siamese twin, which we are going to call the ego.
Speaker 1:Ego has a fascinating and amazing role in our lives. On the one hand, it is conditioned, trained, to protect us. Everything ego does is to ensure our survival. Even though, culturally, we've now associated the word ego with being selfish, being self-centered and there is truth to that there is such a thing as a really unhealthy ego. However, it's still very important to be able to understand how ego works and, more importantly, that in order to succeed in this game of life, we will need to learn how to recruit the ego to serve us, to be on our team, to help us go through this journey. There is a way to do this process, and this is where it really really comes in this journey of relating to ourselves.
Speaker 1:How do we relate to ourselves? How do we process the eternal resistances and the challenges? And um trying to push off, um engaging our life to the fullest? How do we overcome all of these things? And I don't think the answer is going to be to push ourselves to bulldoze through the struggle. I'm just going to suck it up. I'm going to push my way to the outcome. First of all, you won't be able to commit for too long. First of all, you won't be able to commit for too long.
Speaker 1:Ego doesn't like to be put through that level of push against resistance, challenge. Instead, what it has to become is that ego has to realize that it plays an invaluable role in our lives, and so the first thing that people often do is they'll say oh, why am I doing this? Because I felt insecure, right, that's ego. Ego saying I'm not comfortable, don't go there. Or people say I'm afraid of the critic, I'm afraid of the voice of the critic. And again, right, the ego is basically saying look, I'm here to protect you, you're not going to like what the critic has to say.
Speaker 1:And once again, the opportunity that is being presented is how can we turn to the ego and say you know what? I appreciate so much everything you've done for me until now? I know you've flagged things to protect me. You've insulted people to protect me. You've found flaws in others, you told me why I shouldn't go in this direction or the other direction, and all because your ultimate goal was to protect me, because you know that down the road there may be waiting real pain, there may be waiting real discomfort, and so when you made me do those things, sometimes it wasn't just purely to be selfish and mean to others. It was genuinely to protect me and us from getting hurt.
Speaker 1:And I now want you to know that I want to move forward and I don't want to continue living in this way. I don't only want to live on an ego level of my existence, I want to live on a soul level of my existence, and my soul is so much bigger than my existence. I want to live on the soul level of my existence and my soul is so much bigger than my ego. My soul is a depository of everything all my talents, my potentials, everything that I could become and be and do in this world, things that will give me joy and meaning and purpose and ego. I know you're there to flag all these things and you curve my excitement and enthusiasm and ambition because you're nervous, you're afraid what will happen, what's going to be, and it's very understandable, but I want you to know, now that I'm here to serve the world and I want to share with the world my gifts and my talents and the gifts that God gave me, to share with this world, and I want to be able to do that, and I want to be able to do that without the ego, and not that you are not important anymore. You are important. You give me a certain purpose and meaning, but I want to do this as co-creators with God, and so what we're going to do is, instead of worrying about how the world is going to react, why don't we redirect that energy and focus on how we could serve from this place?
Speaker 1:How can I serve God from whatever circumstance he puts me into. If, right now, I have to deal with children and they're screaming, how can I serve God from this place? If I'm dealing with tension in my relationship, how can I serve God from this place? If I'm dealing with tension in my relationship, how can I serve God from this place If I want to share with the world something that's been on my heart and my mind? Not because for me, for fame, for money, for recognition, for clicks, for a number of views. I just want to share this because it's me attempting to co-create with God. It's me touching my divine soul, through which I feel connection to the world, to myself.
Speaker 1:And the only way I could truly access it is when I ask the ego to step aside and to trust me that we're going to be okay, we're going to get through this.
Speaker 1:And you know, from time to time ego will get jumpy and dysregulated and concerned and nervous, and in those moments it's not time to demonize the ego, to judge it, but it's that to say thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1:I know right now you're here and you're acting up to protect me and I just want you to know that we're going to be okay. We're going to be okay. We have all the tools we need. We have all the capacities, potentials gifts are needed are all right here in my toolbox, inside of me, that I can use and co-create with God and create something beautiful and special, something that will impact the world and not impact the world on my terms, but impact the world based on whatever God believes needs to be impacted. I give it all back and this way I get to live a life of service where I can experience both feelings. I can experience a sense of meaning and purpose and value, while at the same time seeing that in the bigger picture of it all, I'm just another person passing through life. However, I can serve the world as a fellow traveler, then let it be according to God's wishes and let the impact be whatever it's meant to be.
