Regardless of your beliefs, albeit religious or otherwise, I do feel that most people understand we all have an inner spirit. An inner essence that isn’t our mind or our body. But the true life force that makes us who we are. One of my favourite sayings was coined by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French philosopher and Jesuit priest,
“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
But how do you actually access your spirit and let it be the true guiding force of your life?
I had certainly forgotten what my spirit was truly like – in the unconscious dash to play out my life according to the plans of others I had somehow muted my spirit.
Occasionally it would bubble to the surface in a laugh, in a moment where I was in “flow”, or in an experience when I was truly present. But most of the time it was like being in a sound proof room with only a vague dull feeling that I could be something more.
But how does one go about the business of reviving ones spirit?
For me it happened in two ways. Firstly I realised that my self concept was flawed. Primarily because it was as a result of others expectations and not my own and because it was always in comparison to someone or something else. For example, my self concept equaled a strong, capable independent woman, with a successful career, wonderful marriage, great children, financially well off and happy. Sounds great right? (Even as I’m writing this my little voice is saying what’s wrong with that self-concept?!?!)
Let’s break it down.
“Strong capable independent woman” nothing harmful in that… it was something I’d heard my whole life from my dad who wanted nothing more than to ensure his daughters could stand on their own two feet. So I adopted it as part of my self concept. But then what I made it mean was that I couldn’t trust someone else (like my husband) to support me financially which meant I wouldn’t allow myself to be in a position where I didn’t have a job.
“Successful career” again nothing bad about that, except successful by whose standards? Certainly not my own but rather what my family, culture and society expected.
And so on.
What I realised is that I had not made conscious choices about who I wanted to be, or the person I wanted to become, but had rather adopted others views of me and then had mangled them into a self concept that was causing me grief.
Secondly, when I started to work on my self-concept I realized I wasn’t able to easily manipulate it into something I was comfortable with. Why? Because my underlying self-esteem wasn’t rock solid.
At the time I wouldn’t have described it as low self esteem because I didn’t really have the language or know how to ‘label’ it. But what I did know was that I was continually worried about being “found out” and exhausted from being the person I was assuming others expected me to be. So I did some research and discovered some of the common self-defeating behaviors and negative habits that are symptoms of low self-esteem:
- Lacking self-discipline or being unprepared.
- Being envious of others.
- Staying too long in a job/relationship/situation that you should leave.
- Pretending you’re fine when you’re not.
- Taking things too personally.
- Worrying about what others think.
- Not asking for what you need.
- Focusing on your weaknesses or having low expectations.
- Being impulsive or panicking.
(Source: The Business of Self Esteem)
And found that I ticked at least 9/10 boxes! So now what?
Well it took a little while and multiple avenues of investigation before I discovered some literature and exercises that really helped me. I ended up reading Nathanial Branden’s book “A Woman’s Self-Esteem – Struggles and Triumphs in the Search for Identity“. In it Branden walks through his famous “Six Pillars of Self-Esteem” (see below) however he does this using the perspective of numerous women he helped through his clinical practice. He also provides ‘sentence completion exercises’ which he recommends to aid in boosting self-esteem.
- Living Consciously
- Self-Acceptance
- Self-Responsibility
- Self-Assertiveness
- Living Purposefully
- Personal Integrity
So did I revive my spirit? Was I able to access it and let it be the true guiding force of my life? The truth is yes and no.
Yes because I am much more comfortable in my own skin now. I am definitely okay to be the “real me” and for people to see me for who I truly am, my inner essence. And if that is helpful to others then that really sparks my spirit!
But I also say No as it is a constant journey of growth and development and one that I am happy to have finally started and be on…
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