Day 260/366 days Towards Self-Mastery.
Having your cake and eating it too. Being authentically successful and financially and worldly as well, is how Sarah's describes it.
I've always been an advocate for making a success out of what makes you most happy. I can't imagine a life of striving for something while at the same time feeling miserable and lost. My experience of this lasted 5 years and that was enough experience to stretch to a dozen lifetimes.
NEVER AGAIN!
Let that reverberate through time!
This question of success perplexes me, or should I say, has perplexed me for decades. Why are some people naturally able to access their talents and alchemise them into gold whilst others of us spend a lifetime struggling?
This question has lead me to study my way through psychology curriculum textbooks in my twenties, decades observing the human condition for clues of interrupting factors, YouTube lectures by professors in psychology and psychotherapy, and more recently a Masters is Gestalt Psychotherapy.
It's lead me to explore eastern philosophies to look at the question from the angle of a more wholistic approach to human development. I've studied the energetic nuances of time and space through eastern practices and modern day unified field theory of mathematical physics.
I'm pretty sure I have finally discovered the answers. Or at least a set of conditions that interrupt the ability for anyone to access their creative inspiration to flow into a life of success with the things they love the most.
My own approach is continually evolving, and I'm yet to discover the prevalence of my insight. However I'm fairly certain that any form of adverse childhood experience is going to interrupt the natural development of the psyche and hence sabotage any chances of realising authentic success, until, that is, it has been resolve.
If Carl Jung's insights can be explored, the development of the psyche is impacted both by our experiences, and our aspirations. He identified crises points that enable us to shed old patterns and beliefs that no longer serve us, to allow us to form new ways.
He was particularly impacted by dreams and symbolism, the signals from our world that help us to understand ourselves. And he realised that we needed to become familiar with the parts of us that we would rather not explore, the parts we project onto others, the parts that are too uncomfortable to bring into the light.
In Gestalt theory we simply work with what is. Where ever a person is at any given point in time is where their most valuable work is possible. How we show up in the here-and-now is how our past is being experienced today. Whatever is there that is contributing will surface, not always as memories but as physical sensations, habituated nervous system responses that when resolved, also resolve any trauma informed experiences and reactions in the now, triggers that we are all too familiar with.
To me this is the fast track to doing the inner work needed to restore the development of our psyche, which enables us to lean into our creativity.
When earlier relationships are disrupted, the mind is forever trying to find solutions. When those solutions are discovered the analytical, thinking mind can rest. Creativity has an opportunity to surface.
Can you have your cake and eat it too? If we are able to access our natural creativity through resolving our inner conflicts, primarily generated from adverse childhood experiences, we are able to engage in a path to success based on our creativity for the things we love most.
366 days Towards Self-Mastery
When I considered my New Year's intentions for 2020 I had just one: To allow my heart to love what it loved...and let it lead me. (If not now, then when?)
I've spent months working on integrating my life. To live life more fully with my home life, my interests, my work, my responsibilities, all coming together, all connected. I want to give each the attention that they desire and need, and still have time and energy for the others. That means living and working from the heart.
As I was clearing out my bookshelf over the Christmas break I discovered Simple Abundance. I set it aside to explore it on New Year's Day as I lazed through another delicious day of nothingness. Sarah, the author, says this book is about living in grace. Living in grace I realised, is about Self-Mastery.
My thirst for understanding the human condition has driven me all my life, and hand-in-hand with self-mastery it has been a life-long goal. And seeing as I love to write, that living in grace is about self-mastery, and I love a bit of a challenge, then if I am truly going to let my heart lead, I really don't have any other choice. So scary as it feels, I'm starting out on a daily mission of leaning into the suggestions of this daybook and making a daily post to keep me accountable. If not now, then when?
I'm Josie. You can find out a little more about me here.
Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy: by Sarah Ban Breathnach.
This book is written for the Australian and NZ market because it refers to seasonal changes. It's available on Amazon here if you'd like to follow along.