Why Self-connection works
When you are connected to SELF, the life you want becomes attainable. Let me show you why.
I am skeptical when gurus promise the all-too-shiny-carrot of “get everything you’ve ever wanted when you follow my strategy.” Not only is it a high bar, it takes away your agency by suggesting the strategy they own is the answer. And there’s no guarantee that if you do get everything you’ve ever wanted, you’re going to like it. Life is complicated. Our desires are complicated. Imagine spending ALL your energy trying to achieve something only to discover it’s not actually what you wanted. (I’ve got a dozen stories up my sleeve of famous novelists or actors who finally got what they’d been striving for their entire careers only to feel empty and depressed in the aftermath.)
You know how to solve this dilemma? By getting to know yourself. Really getting to know yourself. You ARE capable of having all of your needs met! But if you’re blindly guessing at what those needs are—if you’re not actually informed about your needs by getting connected to yourself—you will forever be chasing a carrot you can’t catch.
MY METHOD for self-connection:
It’s worth mentioning that these phases aren’t exactly linear. They’ll overlap a lot. As in, sometimes they’ll feel like they’re happening simultaneously. And sometimes you’ll circle back a few phases before jumping ahead. But I’m listing them out in this order to make it easier to see on a panoramic level.
PHASE ONE
neutrality
Alright. Here’s the deal. A LOT of people are horrible to themselves. Maybe this is you: you beat yourself up all the time, you take the blame for everything that goes wrong in your life, or you can’t stand to be alone because the idea of being in the same room with yourself—without distraction—is agonizing. (I’ve been there!!) A great mentor once told me, “when the idea of liking yourself is too painful, you’re going to reject loving yourself every step of the way.” How to bridge that gap? Being neutral! You’ve got to learn to tolerate yourself before you can build a meaningful relationship. Crawl before you run, my friend.
PHASE TWO
CURIOSITY
You know what’s really fun? Allowing yourself to explore your somatic cues. ‘Somatic’ meaning ‘felt sensations in the body.’ Because your body is constantly talking to you. It knows how to make the decision on which sofa to buy or job to apply for or whether or not your side passion is actually a passion long before your brain conceptualizes it. But to access this wisdom, you have to learn your body’s language—and it’s different for everyone. I’ll share tools to help you decode your body’s conversation skills.
PHASE THREE
AWARENESS
This is where you learn to engage with your cues. You see how you react to the world around you, what your natural go-to behaviors are. It’s a fly-on-the-wall space where you aren’t judging yourself, you’re just noticing. “Oh, my stomach churns in 90% of cases where someone touches my left shoulder. This makes me want to scream—and sometimes I do! Interesting.” That’s oddly specific, but you catch my drift. Together we’ll work on drawing awareness to your everyday behaviors so you can connect the dots on your specific patterns.
PHASE FOUR
UNBLOCKing
Once you hone-in on some of your patterns of behavior, you’ll start to notice that some of them serve you really well. Maybe you are excellent at naming your boundaries, or taking responsibility for your actions, and you feel really good in your body when you do so. Some behaviors do not serve you. Maybe your chest tightens when somebody asks you to speak to a group. Maybe your throat constricts when you receive a compliment. We help you get to the ‘why’ behind these blocks so that you can start to reframe your experience—keeping the behaviors that serve you and gently addressing the ones that don’t.
PHASE FIVE
INTERRUPTION
Arguably where the most ‘skill’ comes into play, this is the phase where you’re going to try to interrupt the patterns of behavior that don’t serve you. You’ve already worked to unblock the stories your brain has reinforced around these patterns and now you get to integrate your internal, neurological shift into your environment. Sometimes this will be as simple as ‘holding space’ for yourself, which I’ll walk you through, and sometimes it will require that you actually change your response when an old pattern of behavior arises. The ability to interrupt your reactions to your environment—to act in ways that serve you best in the moment—will build loads of self-trust and amplify your sense of self-connection. Because finally, you’ll be proving to yourself that you will always have your back.
Would you EVER hang out with a friend who didn’t know how to have a good time? No. You wouldn’t. Similarly, you’re not going to build a healthy connection with yourself if you don’t do the things you enjoy. Throughout all of these phases, you will be encouraged to allow yourself to get silly, to go on adventures, to dance, to exercise, and to participate in activities that make you feel good, recharged, and alive. This not only gives you insight into the activities that truly energize you and bring you joy, but making time for ‘recess’ from the work will keep you motivated and encouraged as you continue to dive deeper into knowing and embracing your authentic self.
PHASE SIX
PLAY
When all is said and done, your intuition is going to be on FIRE. You will have a deep understanding of your ‘why’—what makes you tick, what makes you hurt, what motivates and excites you. You’ll know that you can turn to YOURSELF when things get tough, and that you will forever have your own back. Decisions will become easier, rough patches will be smoother to navigate, and all of the shit you’ve been told to value your whole life that doesn’t actually align with your authentic self is going to fall away. You’ll stop chasing dreams that aren’t your own. You’ll craft new, more exciting, doable dreams—dreams you’ll want to see through and enjoy along the way. The carrot you’ll be after will be perfectly designed for YOU.
This is the power of self-connection.