Ep 57 – Biggest Lie about Self Discovery

One of the biggest lies of the self-discovery industry is that self-discovery happens in the mountains or the beaches or the wellness resort or in a digital detox. The commercial industries of travel, aviation, and hospitality weren’t going anywhere and needed the money – and so we were sold the dream of people finding love, joy, and even themselves on vacation, staycation, away from work, relationships, and life.

But what happens when you get back to the same old house, to the same old spouse, the same old job, and the same old routines?

Here’s what you can expect in today’s episode:

I see a lot of my coaching clients fall into this trap. I’m too busy to work on myself. I need to fix this first then I’ll have all the time to improve that. If I could just go on a vacation and come back everything will be alright. Have you told these excuses? Here’s the bitter truth – nothing will be. In is the way out, nothing happens when we try to manage the external situations without fixing the derailing happening inside.

That’s denial, self-deception, and escapism to avoid putting in the hard work. To avoid coming to terms that something in your life in its current state is amiss and discomforting. Where you are here and now as you listen to the words I speak – the transformation can happen. Self Discovery can happen.

Jiddu Kishanmurti says this beautifully in the book What are you doing with your life, “You discover yourself, not in isolation, not in withdrawal, but in relationship—in relationship to society, to your wife, your husband, your brother, to man; but to discover how you react, what your responses are, requires an extraordinary alertness of mind, a keenness of perception.”

But a lot of us find it hard.

Change is hard. So we find ways to distract ourselves in many ways than to confront the cold truth that we cannot continue as we have been operating for so long. COVID removed all these superficial distractions and has forced humans to pause and reflect and look at the realities of life. The question is can you take full responsibility for where you are today and start the journey of where you’d like to be?

You need to stay amidst the chaos, observe yourself, witness your own self-sabotaging patterns and build awareness on what’s not serving you amidst the chaos. And you cannot do this work anywhere else.

There’s no denying that it is hard work. This is cleaning out the muck that is you. It’s unpleasant, scary and messy. But you’ve got to see it for what it is and process it so.

These are not Instagram-able moments. This is pure shadow work. You need agility like no other to be able to see and discern your own parts that are breaking down – little pockets of your personality that are dysfunctional and compassionately discard them without losing your sense of identity. You cannot skip that.

If you need support along the way reach out to a qualified therapist or a coach, but do not put it off for someday. That someday never comes.

#Own your everyday tip:

Stop falling into the trap that you have to be someplace or be someone else or wait for the new year to start making changes in your life. Change can begin at any now moment that you decide “This is it.” Life is too short to wait for an opportune moment. It’s here and now.

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