Finding your true self, beyond the conditioning of your personality, is the most important thing you can do for self-development, and to achieve real happiness, fulfilment, and wellbeing. Finding your true self is your biggest life solution. It is the master key that unlocks your full potential and purpose in all areas of your life, opens you to wisdom and authenticity, and guides the setting of your true life goals. I want you to grasp this key so that you understand how it unlocks everything else I write about.
What is the True Self?
What is the true self? I wrote about it in The True Self. It is the real you—your true nature and identity found at the deepest core of your being. It is more fundamental to who you are than your roles or the identities you create, adopt, or have assigned to you. It is the you that exists behind all of these, even behind the psychological construct of your personality or ego.
Your true self is the source of your greatest passion, creative power, talents, wisdom, and love. You experience it when you are most yourself and can find it in the space between your thoughts. So busy and distracted are our minds with thoughts—some 50,000 per day—that we are often unconscious of the true self. We may only catch a glimpse of it during a major life crisis, when facing our own mortality, or in a peak experience where life is felt with sudden, ego-transcending intensity.
Finding your true self, as your ultimate identity, empowers you to develop and direct your personality so that you can be more yourself, more alive, and live your full potential and true life purpose. By connecting you with your most fundamental state of being, which transcends the narrow identity of your ego-self, your true self also enables you to experience being more at one with life itself, fostering a deeper connection with others and the planet. Finding your true self is, therefore, essential for meaningful self-development and authentic living in general. You are meant to maintain contact with your true self and integrate it into your personality, grounding its light into material reality.
4 Ways of Finding Your True Self
- Meditation. Still your mind and place your attention on the space between your thoughts, becoming aware of the centre of your awareness that is beyond thought or feeling. Let everything go and expand into this centre. This is where your true self can be experienced.
- Mindfulness. Be mindful or conscious of your daily experience without becoming distracted by or attached to thoughts and emotions that can take you daydreams or unproductive states of mind. As you come back to centre, your true self is more able to emerge, enabling you to live more authentically and respond with wisdom to your daily experience and life challenges.
- Visualisation. Close your eyes, still your mind, and visualise yourself walking along a path to the centre of your mind, or climbing to the peak of a mountain that represents your highest perspective. Visualise your true self waiting there for you, personified as a wise teacher who is ready to guide you. The symbolism carries the deeper message.
- Journal writing. After stilling your mind and setting an intention for a connection with your true self to be made, write down, on a piece of paper or in a journal, words or sentences that might express the qualities of your true self. Avoid writing down the qualities that other people want you to have, or the qualities you have adopted. What you write down will bring you closer to finding your true self.
Staying Present to Your True Self
Due to the demands of others, the stress of life events, or your own reactivity to unprocessed emotional triggers, staying present in your true self may become challenging, leading you to drift back into your reactive ego. If this occurs, practise mindfulness as described above and assess whether your boundaries need strengthening in a healthy way so you can commit to your practice without other people or things overwhelming you. As you continue to practise connecting with your true self, you will gradually improve at staying present and strengthening the connection. Techniques to release negative patterns that might take you out of your true self will be addressed in another post.
Remember, finding your true self is key to finding your true life purpose and to gaining the best perspective on your life.
Next step: book a Guidance Call to dive deeper into your authenticity and learn how to make the necessary changes to embody your true self and live an authentic life.
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The True Self
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