So what is this knowing who you are all about?

24 November 2011 By

It’s a current buzz word, knowing and being who you are. In development work, we might be talking about being more yourself, finding who you really are, or being true to yourself. But what does this mean?

We can do work on ourselves to discover more about ourselves, the different “parts” of us, what we are aware of and not aware of, what we think are the parts we like and what we are less comfortable with, what characteristics cause us difficulty, what are our strengths, and so on. It can be a bit like peeling back the layers of an onion, not that it may seem that way, and – if you like onions that is! – the core is the sweetest part. The discovery of who we really are can be a major breakthrough for many people. However along the way we may need to work through some obstacles of the ego, both the layer we present to the world and also the areas we’re less comfortable with that we might hide from others and perhaps too those parts we might even hide from ourselves. Beneath all that lies the real Self. It’s a journey each makes for themselves, in their own time and in their own way, for some very quickly but for others more gradually; for some painfully, for others a fascinating journey into aspects of themselves. Many describe the ultimate breakthrough as joyous, or full of love or a great sense of peace, or a sense of coming home, that all is well with me and all is well with the world.

In the process, people often find they need to be honest with themselves, and probably in the end a lot more honest with others too. Honesty here is about acknowledging that this is who you are, warts and all. Yes, you can be like this, although it is probably your ego and not who you really are. Yes, this is what’s really been going on, this is how you’ve been, and you can change it, stop it or let it go. We might feel embarrassment or shame but that’s more ego, again not who we are. We might think we’ve been wrong, but that too is ego. We might think we’ve now got to get it right, but that too is ego.

It reminds me a bit of the yogic practice of “neti neti”, not this…not this, used in the search for ultimate meaning. We’re peeling back the layers of the ego, to find the jewel that lies within.

There also humility involved too, as we let go of all that stuff that we thought defined us and which we find we no longer need as it doesn’t serve us. This is why the narcissism found in so much personal development ultimately needs to be dissolved in order to find the real self. You just cannot continue to inflate the self and pretend that this is who you are. Not surprisingly, many who have had powerful awakenings in finding who they really are just aren’t likely to tell people about it. They tend to live in obscurity. What’s the point of making a fuss about you if for example you, in the ego sense, doesn’t exist, since All There Is is the One!

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Speaking with the power of authenticity

22 November 2011 By

I was running a training course in leadership for managers last week, about presentation skills, and what was so very clear for these people that what this course was really about was their ability to be authentic, to be who they are, to be true to themselves. When they came over most powerfully was when they spoke with passion, from the heart, like they meant every word, that what they said really mattered, as though in some subtle way it connected with something true inside them. And this connected us with them. We felt with them, right there in the moment, like it connected with something in us. Such power.

This is such an important leadership trait, and yet so sorely neglected: our ability to be authentic and to create resonance with others. I’ve seen people be very disconnected in this way and for people to be disconnected from them in turn. I’ve watched people try it, like turning on the passion bit, and yet still not quite convince. Or we think we are convinced but it turns out to lack substance.

It’s a journey, finding your authenticity. It means coming to know yourself, who you are, and then, in this case, to communicate from that place. So you need to know that self inside and you also need to learn to speak and interact with courage, from the heart, le cour in French, where many of your positive feelings lie.

This journey can be short for some, longer for others, but contrary to what people tend to want, there aren’t quick fixes. It can seem like peeling back the layers of the onion, to find your truth within, getting to know the different parts of yourself, letting go of certain aspects, emphasising others, dropping certain fronts that we present to the world that don’t serve us, healing hurts, recognising that what’s really there inside is OK after all, coming to like or love ourselves, indeed discovering the sheer magnificence of the Self that dwells within.

When you really know yourself, Who your really Are, people just get you. They just get the message. They trust you, believe you. You have true credibility, built on the authentic power of who you are, not on some fiction presented to the world because that is what we think works or what we think people want.

So in this course I mentioned at the start, when people spoke authentically, even the shy ones, even the ones lacking self-confidence, got our attention and engaged us. All very simple, really. No huge effort, just a matter of Being.

This is therefore where developing self awareness is so important.

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Taking action when truly connected to who you really are

5 November 2011 By

To be able to take action, make changes, move forward in life and/or in work we are at our most effective when truly connected to who we are. This is about understanding the nature of authenticity, our true self. But how do we know this for ourselves?

You probably already know it, for example when you feel “in the flow”, in the zone, you can be highly effective. “Flow” is a concept, also called “Optimal experience”, which was developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Another example might be being “in love”. You might have had the experience that when in love all things seem, or seemed, possible. You can read about it in poems, hear songs about it, and read novels. A whole era of Romanticism in the 19th century was devoted to it. When people are “in love” they often tend to think that they are somehow truly “themselves”, complete, at one with life. The problem for many of us with this is that it seems to be temporary, and like the Romantics we might find ourselves regreting its loss and be more engaged with that than being present with the feeling of love. People can also confuse wanting love, ie being engaged around the absence of love, than actually engaged with love itself.

However, there’s another aspect to love, one that is for example experienced by meditators or those in deep prayer or contemplation. Here, one may feel a deep sense of love that is not associated with a person and to which many might give a spiritual interpretation. Here there’s no object necessarily, but just the sense of love. Here too one might feel complete and as One.

People report this experience in group work, as I have found through my work, where the depth and level of work has brought the group to feel very bonded and, they often say, “there’s a lot of love here”. Each feels it, but it seems also “in the room”, like we all feel it. I tend to call this “Transpersonal” love.

Reports by people who have had strong breakthrough experiences, either in their own personal work or often in group work too, are similar. They can report that they feel and expanded sense of potential, full of love, complete, “at One”, connected to everybody, and no longer worried or concerned by anything. They say things like they know who they are at last, that they have “come home”, and all is well with themselves and with the world. You can read about this in the work of Steve Taylor.

So, if we’re going to talk about authenticity, there’s several levels to this. There is for example where you might feel you’re being genuine but maybe without a lot of self-awareness around that. Then you might feel you’re being yourself, then you might have found your authentic self as opposed to parts you might have played in the past. At a deeper level, you might move on to have reached a point of Oneness, unity and love. The authenticity we tend to speak of that offers the most powerful and profound breakthroughs is the last of these, that of Oneness, total love.

We work to help people get a clearer sense of who they are in our programs, such as The Point of Awareness.

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How to get that magic ingredient you need to influence others

4 August 2011 By

For me as a coach one major classic issue people want coaching with is how to be influential. It’s like a million dollar question as it can have a great impact on their careers – and/or their relationships.

At one end of the spectrum is the person who is less assertive and needs to step up and make more of an impact to get results. At the other is one who is too aggressive and over-bearing towards others: as one coachee put it to me not long ago, “I get results but I leave bodies.” For others, it is simply that they need to learn the art of navigating organisational politics. They need to promote themselves, build connections, get known, network, create allies, get support, or win friends in high or different places. Some simply need to be able to present themselves better, to sell themselves and their ideas.

I said it has a bearing on relationships, because the work often involves getting closer to people, disclosing more of themselves, listening to people more, and getting more of a sense of what makes people tick – and understanding themselves. One key is often self-awareness, knowing their own button-pushers in themselves and learning to manage themselves and their emotions better.

Yet, at core, I so often find, people who really undertake this journey need to learn to know, love and value themselves. Because, if you want to influence others you need self-belief, that sense inside that “I’m OK just as I am” and authenticity, “This self I am expressing to you is really me…this is me.” You’ll need confidence to do this but also that knowing of who you really are. People buy authenticity above all, from one who believes it!

This can be a challenging journey, because you might need to face truths about yourself and come to terms with them and resolve them. Yet, so often people report that the results vastly outweigh the apparent difficulty at the start, because they often feel better in themselves and, which is vital, others want to be around them more – hence this is one way you get the influence.

This isn’t the only or the fool-proof journey, but it’s one a lot of people take.

If you are curious, and think you might need it for yourself, you can get a free discussion with me about it and explore whether it is right for you.

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Nothing in excess

5 December 2010 By

I was watching a great BBC programme about the ancient oracle at Delphi in Greece. It provided what I thought was a superb overview of the history and the functioning of the oracle and its influence on the ancient world.

Many people probably know the famous inscription over the entrance, “Know thyself”. We probably hear less of the other one, “nothing in excess”. The two go together rather well.

Think of all those people going there to learn their fate! Let’s imagine it: “What is going to happen to me? Will I be OK? Am I OK? Will I conquer or will I be vanquished?” Etc. (probably expressed in varying degrees of grandiosity or inferiority-anxiety, say, if you were some patrician visitor).

The oracle was famous for giving sometimes ambiguous guidance to its visitors. It left the onus for interpretation on the recipients and hence the importance of self-knowledge, “Know thyself”. And whatever action you took, you then didn’t let your ego get the better of you and thus overreach yourself.

This is as relevant today as then. Think for a moment, as the programme pointed out at the end, of the boom and bust of the last few years, the credit crunch and the debt crisis. Retrospectively, many of us might be busy blaming the bankers, but who took out the mortgages and indulged in a spending boom thinking we’d cover it easily with rising asset prices? Egos went through the roof.

However, self-knowledge is every bit as relevant to personal development, as readers of this blog will know. To be able to see when your ego has you in its hold is to use the skill of self-knowledge, which is derived from the intentional cultivation of self-awareness. So we have within us a vital resource to help us gain wisdom.

With that though comes “nothing in excess”: the ability to exercise intentional self-restraint, to moderate our actions, to discipline our thoughts, to see when our egos have gotten hold, to manage our thoughts, to use the will to let go, and to keep the focus, as for example yogis do, on our connection with who we really are.

In moderation, there is also an excellent tool at hand, humility. This is where we can exercise discrimination, to distinguish when our ego is at work, to not let ourselves become over-inflated, for example, on our own self-importance, to not get carried away on flights of fancy about ourselves and our anxieties. Humility involves letting go and connecting with simplicity.

In reflecting on where we get carried away on an ego-attack, on letting it all go, there’s a relaxation, a settling back into a simple awareness of who we are as the Self, pure and simple, unjudging, accepting, loving, peaceful, nothing to “be”, nothing to pretend, just Being, in peace and contentment of I Am, just as I Am.

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Being who you really are

27 October 2010 By

When we talk about honesty and consistency, we also get into transparency, “who you say you are” is who you really are. They should in theory all go together. But that might be assuming people know who they really are. This raises the question of authenticity.

I think some can “do” the open bit really well, some find it really hard and others think they are doing it when they aren’t. Now they might be doing a good job at disguise. And then they might honestly think they are being real, when they aren’t. They just don’t know it.

This is where awareness work is so incredibly useful, especially when you also get feedback from others. I used to do a really good job at disguise, thinking I had to “be” a certain person that worked in the world. After a while I wasn’t aware I was being like that. Until someone on a seminar told me she knew me but she didn’t really know me. That was a shock, but set me off on a journey to find the real me. And learn to be transparent in communicating that “me”.

One of the major developmental shifts people can make is into the authentic zone. You might have to shift some baggage out of the way in the process, but when people really hear what’s really there for you, they really “get” you. It can be a process of peeling away layers of the onion skin. This will vary from person to person, but you’d need to know more about what goes on inside, how your body feels in different situations, how you are feeling in those situations, and what thoughts come to mind.

This is self-awareness training, learning to monitor your on-going process, and catch those patterns that don’t serve you. The point of authenticity is to learn to be able to resonate with your own internal process. And be willing to be with others from that space. So that you are being real. It sounds scary and people think it will get them into all sorts of messes. And this is the point. We so often do this stuff because our ego, which is there to look after us and ensure we survive, is probably busy saying, “Hey, watch out! Don’t go there. It’s scary. It’s dangerous. You’ll get trouble. People will laugh at you, ridicule you, get angry with you, not like you.”

Often it’s the last one that really hurts, the fear of not being liked. So we cover up, behave differently, etc..

Once you learn to shift your ego and be authentic, you can take it to another level still, and this is where it gets really interesting – that is, if you are interested!

This is where you can then learn to connect with your candle flame within, who you really are at a fundamental level of your Being, where truth really resides, where pure joy lives and where there is lasting peace and contentment. Then you are being authentic with your Beingness.

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Knowing who you are

30 September 2010 By

“I want to work out who I really am.” This is a classic awareness challenge that many express in one form or another. But what might one mean by it?

It’s an ancient quest: back in ancient Greece, the words “Know Thyself” were emblazoned across the entrance to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi when one went to consult the Oracle, to “get a reading,” as we might say today. The desire for self-knowledge, knowing what makes us tick, probably fascinates many of us. Certainly the wisdom gained can provide a steadiness and certainty in life that helps us gain greater inner calm and confidence in the face of what can occur.

Self-knowledge can operate at a number of levels. My identity, who I am, is constantly expressed in our language and has an everyday currency. “I am hard-working….I am kind…I am moody…” The “I am” statement is one way it shows up. It can reflect beliefs we hold about ourselves. It can also reflect what we are creating: “I am hard up” is a powerful way of reinforcing a scarcity mentality.

At another level, who we are is revealed in our varying ways that we share the different sides to us: “A part of me wants this…, but another parts wants that.” “One part of me might be respectful and patient” but “another part of me might get very impatient at times”, let us say. So there can be different parts of us. Sometimes these parts can seem at war with one another, or one part can mostly be the dominant part, but every now and again another part can sneak in and undermine our efforts! This can be seen in the “fatal flaw.”

A very familiar way these different selves can show up is with the false self referred in a recent blog posting (“Observing egos at work”).

With self-development awareness work, we can tap into the authentic self. This takes us to a new level of being, when the self we have projected on to the world to some extent falls away to release a more genuine self-expression. This is when we can really get what someone is saying. We believe and trust them, and often will feel safer around them. It gives a greater sense of freedom and self-confidence. This is the sort of breakthrough commonly seen on our workshops.

However, one can take self-knowledge to another level still. This is the breakthrough to a connectedness with Self which gives one a feeling of completeness, unity, at-oneness, an inner self-belief where someone feels utterly contented and at peace. The ego has receded into the background and there is a sense of expanded awareness.

It is this last phase that fascinates very many on their life journey today, because it has the feeling of having “arrived”, of “coming home”, of how things were once and are again, no more striving, no more unfulfilled desire, and hence the feeling that this is who we really are, that this is how things are meant to be.

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Say it with flowers or presents at Christmas, or just say it

24 December 2007 By

Today its Christmas Eve, the day before the Christmas feast day. Next to the café where I’m writing is a florists and large amounts of flowers are pouring out. The jewellers across the road is packed with I think largely men (!) getting last-minute presents. Lots of people are meeting in the street and smiling as they greet one another and say “Merry Christmas!” There’s a real cheerful atmosphere, not like it usually is. This place is again packed with families and its 09.45.

Typically it’s families who gather at Christmas and give each other presents. It must be an annual ritual for many. And there will be those families where there is perhaps one less there this time. Someone maybe moved further away or out of the country, or chosen not to come, or someone has died.

What the TV soaps are usually about at Christmas is some family drama, some eruption, that spoils the Christmas party. Many must have it: people who don’t usually get together; old issues that simmer under the surface and come out on special occasions, well oiled by plentiful drink. Christmas is an emotional time, full of people’s expectations, usually that it’s going to be perfect – or that it should be. Neale Donald Walsch says in “Friendship with God” that there are three love killers: need, expectation and jealousy. They’re all really around some version of a desire for love not being met.

Then there’s the stuff that doesn’t get said, resentments and regrets that people hold on to, as it’s not their way to say how it is to someone else, or they’re afraid of the consequences if they were to be honest about something. It’s worth thinking of how one might feel if one never got to say what needed to be said.

This is also the time of year for completion. Not only is the earth cycle at its still point at the Solstice but the calendar year is almost at its end. We use this time of year to assess the year that’s gone by and think about what we want to come. And when families get together this process is heightened as far as one another is concerned. What needs to be said that hasn’t been said?

We’ve been very aware this year of people around us who’ve had or been having cancer. One of our friends is in intensive care at the moment as a result of it. My aunt died of it this autumn. And there’s been others. Cancer at the emotional level is about what is held within, not expressed, a deep hurt, grief or resentment eating away, a repressed anger. Cancer can run in families, as can that emotional pattern.

I deliberately used various opportunities during my father’s last few years to say to him things I’d have found it unimaginable to say previously, unfinished business and also appreciations for what had been, including most recently before he died how much I felt he’d contributed to my life and in what way. He thought he hadn’t done anything! When he died, it all felt very complete. All that needed to have been done had been done, and I could just let him go with love.

So you never know when people will leave you. If there’s an opportunity this Christmas to say something to a loved one or a family member or close friend, say it. It might be an appreciation just as much as it might be a regret. Maybe you need to tell someone how much you love him or her. Call people up if they aren’t with you. Just do it. Don’t delay, or you’ll just be left with your reasons for not doing it. Say it with responsibility. Take ownership of your feelings, not dump them on the other person, or blame them. If you feel some way, say that it’s how you feel, using “I” language. But say what’s been on your mind. And then let it go. Be complete with it. If you choose to hold on to the matter and not express it, then start to work to let go of it within you. Give it up. It probably isn’t serving you.

The point is, when we’re complete, we’re whole once again.

Interestingly, as I was writing this, a child just screamed at the top of her little voice! She wanted to push the push chair that her smaller brother had taken over pushing. She just let rip, an earth-splitting yell that impacted the lot of us. Her mother intervened but what was clear was that she’d said just how she felt. Clean, clear and direct. We got exactly where she was coming from. People trust honesty. They respect it. They know where they stand. That’s one of the beauties of living from a place of authenticity. The trouble is that children lose it as they grow older and need to navigate the adult world.

Use this time of year for celebration and completion. Find a way to let go of what gets in the way and connect with the joy of celebration that’s in the air and really enjoy your feast day.

Happy Christmas!

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