The reality is, many of us don’t feel good in our lives.
We feel a sense that our lives don’t have purpose and meaning, that we are failing to ‘live our purpose’, that we don’t know what we want or who we should be but just know that who and what we are isn’t good enough.
We feel that we ‘should’ be achieving something we aren’t, that we should be accomplishing things we aren’t accomplishing or that we should be in a state we’re not in.
We feel an underlying sense of dissatisfaction, even when we manage to accomplish the things we thought would make us happy.
Many of us feel that we are continually striving and never arriving.
Many of us have parts of ourselves that we’ve been at war with for a long time - our bodies, our personalities, our ‘bad habits’ and the ways we seemingly self sabotage.
Many of us feel that no matter how hard we try, we can’t figure out what will actually make us feel happy and fulfilled, or we think we DO have the answer to what we need to feel how we want to feel, but struggle to get ourselves to a place of actually living that out in real reality.
Bottom line, we don’t feel good.
And rather than having a culture that is set up to help us actually figure out WHY we don’t feel good or what we need to feel better - we instead live in a culture that wants to profit off of our feelings of discontent.
We live in a world that is constantly telling us all the ways in which we aren’t good enough.
We live in a culture that is, in many ways, deeply invested in us NOT approving of ourselves because so much of what is sold to us on a daily basis is sold to us with the base message that we are broken, bad, wrong, shameful or otherwise failing in some way and need to be fixed, improved upon and changed in order to be made ‘better’.
We live in a culture that is constantly driving us to believe that who and what we are right now isn’t good enough - and due to the fact that many of us FEEL like we don’t FEEL good in our lives, when we are told that the reason for this is that we are lacking, we are prone to believing it.
Many of us grew up in households where our true selves weren’t loved, respected, honored or nourished. Rather, we were conditioned to believe that the way that we are needs to change, be fixed or must be altered in some way. We experienced being rejected, criticized, abandoned or shamed for being who and what we were and in order to try to make ourselves safe, we learned that we needed to change.
We also live in a culture that teaches us to numb and distract ourselves when we don’t feel good. That teaches us to either drive ourselves to fix ourselves when we don’t feel well OR to find some way of getting rid of that pain through entertainment, substance, risky behavior or something that simply numbs us out.
We have been taught to get rid of the pain as quickly as possible, to try to escape it or to blame that pain on ourselves believing if we can figure out ‘what’s wrong with us’ that we will be able to fix that and feel better, or believing that the only hope of feeling better is to engage in things that distract us.
We don’t feel good, and our culture is there to continually reinforce that it is because we are lacking something, that we are broken, that we need to be fixed or we need to consume something in order to make that pain go away - and this leads many of us to a kind of vicious cycle that we can never see to break.
The Cycle Of Fixing And Checking Out
Rather than our culture offering us any kind of actual tools to help us figure out what we need, we are instead fed a constant media diet of self help, spirituality, personal growth and wellness materials all centered around the idea that if we are to improve ourselves enough, if we are to make all the right choices, if we are to get rid of all of our ‘bad parts’, ‘negative emotions’, ‘limiting beliefs’ and so on, that THIS will mean ultimate freedom and happiness.
We are told that at the end of the day, the reason we don’t feel good is because WE are not doing things right, and that the solution lies in fixing ourselves.
Then on the other hand, we are offered a PLETHORA of ways to simply check out, numb out, stimulate and excite - again so that we don’t have to be bogged down with our actual feelings.
Many of us will notice if we take a step back, that we are on a constant merry-go-round of getting on the ‘self improvement’ path - doing our best to fix ourselves, transcend, heal or grow in whatever way we think we need to - then eventually finding that this doesn’t work, doesn’t lead to the results we wanted, doesn’t give us the relief we were looking for, and it leaves us feeling even more shameful, broken or bad about ourselves - which then drives us into a state of checking out, numbing out and succumbing to all of our ‘bad behaviors’ and the things we were trying to fix about ourselves in the first place.
We will generally experience a burst of feeling good when we get on that self improvement path - we will experience a few days, weeks or months where it seems like whatever program we’ve chosen or whatever new thing we’re trying is ‘working’ - we lose a little weight on the new diet, we feel a little better with the new spiritual practice or mindset technique, we feel empowered doing that 30 day challenge or feeling like we’ve turned a corner and are now on top of cleaning and organizing everything in our lives in a way where we usually don’t. We feel a sense of accomplishment. We can suppress our ‘bad habits’ and do what is ‘good for us’ for a while.
Then eventually, the willpower wears off. We start to get tired. Old habits and desires come trickling back in. We do our best to fight them off - but eventually we lose steam.
We try to ‘get back on track’ - feeling like we were doing SO WELL and that we failed. Again.
Eventually the struggle becomes too much, and we end up either giving up, or unintentionally falling off path so much that we can’t get ourselves back on.
Then we’re back to our old habits of numbing, suppressing, acting how we’ve always acted, doing what we’ve always done.
We stay in that for a while - only to eventually get to a place of feeling enough pain and discomfort that we want to do something about it - which inevitably leads to more self help/spirituality/personal growth/self improvement.
The cycle continues, round and round, and at some point we realize that we aren’t making progress.
We start to recognize that no matter the route we take, it’s all based on the same foundational theory that you are broken and in need of fixing.
This can be subtle or overt - there are many self help experts out there who literally label us as being ‘broken’ in some way and needing to be fixed - having a broken brain or metabolism. Much of our spiritual teachings revolve around the idea that we are fallen or inherently sinful or disconnected from our true nature and must fix ourselves or seek constant salvation.
On the most subtle side, we have teachings and teachers that offer their work from the vantage point of being ‘empowering’ and ‘taking responsibility for ourselves’ - telling us that if we just make all the right choices, if we do enough therapy and ‘work’ on ourselves, if we eat the right foods at the exact right times and if we pray the right prayers and think the right thoughts we can ‘manifest’ a better life/fix our bad habits by sheer will and force.
No matter the presentation, the root is the same:
You are doing bad things, and those bad things are causing you pain, and the reason you are doing bad things is because YOU are bad or wrong on some level and need to be fixed.
That’s the message. That’s the angle. That’s the approach.
And this is EXACTLY why the approach never works.
Why We Can’t Fix Ourselves
The reality is, we are not doing what we’re doing and we’re not in the pain we’re in because we’re broken.
We are not inherently flawed, messed up or in need of saving.
Rather, we are complex beings who live in a complex reality and we are ADAPTING to our experiences and what we have learned deep in our nervous systems the very best we can.
Everything we are doing is rooted in the desire to preserve ourselves, to escape pain and to have pleasure - and when we don’t understand THIS we miss the very first and most vital step in the process of actually being able to feel better in life.
We aren’t sabotaging ourselves for because we actually want to sabotage ourselves - we are doing so either because what we are trying to push ourselves to do is actually NOT what we really want to be doing OR because our conditioning is stopping us from feeling SAFE to do what we intellectually know is right/best for us.
We aren’t engaging in ‘bad habits’ because we just want to hurt ourselves - rather we are using these tools to help ourselves feel better in life when we have no other way of making ourselves feel good, helping ourselves numb and suppress feelings we don’t know how to process, to help ourselves feel or experience something we no know other way to feel or experience, in order to meet a need we know no other way to meet or as a way of avoiding situations we don’t know how to get out of.
We aren’t failing to ‘become’ what we think we ‘should’ become because we aren’t trying hard enough - rather we weren’t given the actual platform and support we needed to grow into our fullest selves. We have been conditioned, hurt, harmed, abandoned, abused, left without resources or help and are doing the best we can to function in a world that is constantly telling us that we aren’t enough.
We aren’t engaging in unhealthy relationship patterns because we just don’t love ourselves enough - rather we are doing what we are because to us, this is what we HAVE to do to be safe. Our nervous systems are wired for repeating patterns and staying in predictable environments because to our evolving ancestors who passed down their nervous system programs onto us, the greatest threat we could ever face was the threat of the UNKNOWN. We repeat patterns and seek out similar relationship dynamics to those we grew up in not because we want to keep living in dysfunctional love but because change feels scarier to us than staying the same, even if staying the same is deeply painful.
I could go on - but the bottom line is - we are doing what we are because we had to adapt to an environment that wasn’t ideal for us. We had to do what we could to try to get our needs met, to keep ourselves safe and to support ourselves within conditions that weren’t ideal for us. We are seeking external love and validation instead of learning how to really support and show up for ourselves because our first experiences as humans were all within the context of being fully dependent upon our caregivers for everything.
We are not broken. We are working with our nature, and how that has interacted with our nurture - and when we weren’t given a stable base of a secure connection and a proper education on how to identify what we want, what we need, who we are and what works for us, and when we weren’t given the space to create a life that actually MATCHES that - which, spoiler alert, pretty much none of us have had this experience due to the fact that our CULTURE is set up in a way that keeps us separated from our humanity, prioritizing profits over people and driving us away from what actually fulfills us as human beings - we are going to have to adapt in ways that aren’t ideal.
THAT is why we are where we are and why we do what we do.
We are adapting, responding and doing our best within what we have experienced, what we had access to and what holes were left in what we needed.
We are all just doing our best to get our needs met in an unideal world - and that is the base, root truth of the matter.
THIS is why ‘fixing ourselves’ is not the answer. We aren’t broken.
Rather the SOLUTION that we are ACTUALLY seeking starts with self awareness. It starts with becoming aware of WHERE we are hurting, WHY we are hurting, where we didn’t get our needs met, where we were abandoned and neglected, where we never got to develop into our full selves because we were trying to be what others wanted us to be so we could feel safe - and then learning how to get our needs met NOW in ways that are actually SUPPORTIVE of our growth.
The path of change is one where we learn to get our needs met in the best ways we can - and THIS is what fosters healthy, positive growth and change.
Safety Is The Foundation
When we start to feel a sense that we are going to be loved no matter what - this reads as safety to our nervous systems.
Whether or not we are actually going to then have access to everything we want and need, whether or not that means we are going to be able to express ourselves, whether or not that is actually going to provide us with the ability to be fully alive in this moment - it doesn’t matter.
Because of the way our nervous systems were wired in childhood love = safety to us.
When we grow up with a secure attachment, feeling that we are going to be loved no matter what - THIS is what creates the conditions we need to GROW.
To figure out who and what we are, what we want, what we need, what we like, what we don’t - and in this discovery we can then create a life that works for who we really are so we don’t NEED to cope, numb, stimulate and self sabotage.
We get what we need in order to learn autonomy, to learn that we don’t need to be approved of all the time to be safe and to get our needs met. We get what we need to eventually learn how to feel and process our emotions as they happen rather than feeling shame or guilt around what we feel. We learn how to embody ourselves and how to live from a place of true self expression. We learn to FEEL our way in life, vs. trying to intellectually figure everything out based on what we are being told we ‘should’ do and be.
When we get this safety, we are set up to then grow in the best ways we can within the conditions that exist.
We also have to understand that no amount of making the right choices or doing the right things can create ideal environments externally. We have to take into account that a BIG part of our experience here on earth involves NOT being in total control of our circumstances - which means we may not always be able to get our needs met, to work in an environment that’s supportive for us, to have healthy and thriving bodies and so on - and thus we can’t pretend that doing enough ‘inner work’ will always lead to the PERFECT outcome. Rather we do the best we can to support ourselves within the conditions that exist.
Loving ourselves as we are now is the key to beginning to see where we were programmed and conditioned to believe that we had to be a specific way in order to be ‘good’, where we can let those stories go, and where we can start to embrace who and what we REALLY are, and how we can get our needs met in new and different ways now that we are autonomous adults with more power and choice than we had as children.
You see, in order to grow and change we don’t want to be continually forcing ourselves to be something we aren’t or to stop doing or being something that we are.
Rather, we want to shift our perspective to one of seeing that what we REALLY need is to be UNDERSTOOD. To be seen in our pain, to be understood in our emotions, to be supported in where we didn’t get our needs met. We need to be given COMPASSION in all the areas we are seemingly hurting ourselves so that we can understand WHY we are doing what we are, what we need and how we can start to support ourselves in different ways.
We need to understand that it’s through loving who we are right now, through supporting who we are right now and learning to see ourselves as beings with NEEDS not FLAWS - that we then create that solid, secure connection with ourselves that we may have never gotten from the outside world.
It’s through this compassion that we are going to be able to transform, one small step at a time.
Self improvement doesn’t work because it’s based on a flawed foundation.
You don’t need to be fixed.
You need to be understood, and then supported in getting your needs met and in processing what happened to you, one step at a time.
This process is not as flashy as the self improvement path.
It takes a lot longer, and tends to be a lot more subtle.
But it’s also the true path to change.
Self love doesn’t mean accepting that life will never change and feeling like we have to learn to be happy with what we have.
Rather it’s about ending the war of SELF BLAME so we can figure out the REAL reason we are where we are. Then we can start to figure out what we need to feel SUPPORTED - and in THAT we will find our way forward.
It’s a whole new way of looking at and working with ourselves - and it will literally transform your entire experience of life.
You aren’t broken.
Can you start with looking for where you need SUPPORT vs. where you need FIXING?
Just that shift alone will take on a whole new path.
You’re not broken.
Safety with yourself is the KEY.
And the thing that makes us feel safe is love.
The more you can have compassion for yourself, the more you’re going to understand yourself and in THAT the more you can meet your needs and foster your own growth path.
One small step of curiosity and compassion at a time.
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Are you sick of the self help roller coaster that leaves you constantly striving and never arriving?
Are you ready for a true spiritual path that connects you to yourself and reality so you can feel good about your life?
Then come check out the Mystery School.
