My lovely friend Mandi* recently said she wanted to know herself better but didn’t know where to start. Sometimes she reacted to events in ways she didn’t understand, and didn’t always feel proud of.
‘How can I get in touch with myself?’ she asked. ‘How can I understand myself better?’
Mandi is in her 20s but her questions can arise at any age. She has reached a tipping point in her life where she wants to know more about who she is. She feels brave enough to begin the tentative walk on the path to self-discovery.
So how can she start?
Years ago, a wise woman (my acupuncturist, who I still see today) gifted me a wonderful technique to help me gain clarity about what I really wanted. I was twisted up inside myself, unable to make decisions and move forward. I was a mess.
‘Go somewhere quiet where you feel safe and won’t be interrupted,’ she said. ‘Then simply write at the top of a page, Dear Lucy, What do you want?’ Then write until you cannot write any more, read it aloud to yourself, then destroy it. But don’t edit as you go – you must just write everything that comes to you, without judgement.
What I wrote that day was a revelation. In fact there were many revelations that I didn’t realise (or want to admit) were in my heart. The process helped me connect into me without my brain overlaying its rationalising and judgement. I have used the technique multiple times over the years and it always, always helps me to gain clarity and cut through the murkiness of my thoughts to the truth.
I know I’ve touched on this process before in my blog but I haven’t necessarily focused on the next step, acceptance. Because some (not all) of the things written in your letter will be things you don’t want to deal with. It will be the truth and so often we don’t want to hear that. We don’t want to face that we are miserable living a certain life and need to make changes. We don’t want to face that our perfect relationship (as viewed by others) is hollow. We don’t want to acknowledge that our definition of success and happiness no longer aligns with the expectations of our parents or how we were raised.
We won’t feel comfortable with the knowledge we must make the difficult choices required to transform our lives into what we want them to be.
I judged myself terribly on the contents of that first letter. It made me face so many things about myself that I had been avoiding for years. If I followed my heart, I would have to upset other people and change my life significantly.
Self-judgement was a regular visitor at my door. But eventually (many months later), I realised I could choose to move forward and follow my heart or stay miserable. And that realisation came in a single moment after a lot of torment and telling myself how awful I was to even consider hurting other people, letting them down, and so on.
But once I accepted I could hide from myself no longer, action came to me swiftly. Although it was still painful, I knew I was taking the steps that were right for me.
Opening up to the truth of my heart was the first step.
Acceptance of myself was the second one.
* all names have been changed.