We had 18 coaching sessions, beginning with the assessment process focused on identifying the conditioned self and the authentic self, then moving forward with a series of exercises designed to identify her life purpose and new career options through which she could fulfill it. As our work continued to unfold, it became clear how intensely Rana’s family and cultural conditioning had been dictating her life. She’d spent her entire adult life doing exactly what her family wanted her to do. She’d gotten married because it was expected, and she’d pursued a successful career as a physician because it was expected. Now that she found herself wanting to make a change, she was terrified of rocking the boat, of how her family would react. She’d grown up in a culture full of rules, rules that she’d followed without questioning them. Rana was an extreme example of someone living against her nature, to the point where it was making her depressed and beginning to cause health problems. When she first came to see me, she was having chronic migraines. Living in a state of constant stress was beginning to take a toll on her physical health. When you’re living your life based on what everyone else wants you to do, versus what you want to do, it’s a setup for anger, resentment, depression, and—as in Rana’s case—even illness.
When we first began our work together, Rana believed that her unhappiness was her problem. She thought that if she could just try harder, if she could just be a better wife and daughter, then she could make her life work. That was her habitual pattern—doing what everyone else wanted her to do, taking care everyone’s needs but her own. In the initial phase of her coaching program, she remained in that pattern, determined to fix things. Then one day she had a breakthrough. During one of our voice dialoguing sessions, we focused on her ideal life. What would it be like? What would she be doing? Whom would she be living with? “Alone,” she responded. The answer stunned her. For the first time, she’d acknowledged out loud that she was unhappy in her marriage. It was frightening for her to admit that the marriage was in trouble, because, in her culture, divorce was out of the question.
Two pivotal changes occurred that enabled her to look at life differently. First, through our work and the books I asked her to read, she had an epiphany: it became very clear to her that she was responsible for her own life—that she, not her family, was responsible for the choices she was making. Second, she uncovered her passion: health and wellness, and, in particular, physical fitness. Once she recognized this, she fully embraced and honored it, and the more she followed her passion, the more her authentic self began to take hold.
The turning point came when she made going to the gym a top priority. She joined one of the best health clubs in the city, one with beautiful, state-of-the-art facilities and equipment. She started going to this new gym every day, and when she was there, she made a deliberate effort to reconnect with her old, happy, high-energy self. She took the initiative to introduce herself to people, make new friends, and be a source of encouragement to others at the gym. She was feeding her passion for fitness by exercising regularly. Her innate personality—outgoing, upbeat, and people-oriented—resurfaced. She’d found a place where she could be herself. “It’s become my playground,” she told me one day. “It’s a place where I can allow myself to be me. I just love being there.” Her workouts were giving her more energy, and she began to see changes in her body. The physical transformation helped change her perspective. She realized that if she had the power to change her body and her attitude, she had the power to change her life. The experience gave her a tremendous sense of strength and freedom—including freedom from meeting other people’s expectations.
Rana’s personal-development work was also changing her perspective on her marriage. Over a period of months, she addressed these issues with her husband, but he seemed to express no interest in pursuing a healthier relationship. As it became increasingly clear that her husband’s values dramatically differed from hers, she began to explore the possibility of leaving the marriage. She was beginning to recognize that she had based her life on her husband’s dream and her parents’ dream—but not on her own dream.
Interestingly, although Rana first came to me about work-related issues, she ended up leaving her marriage, and now that she’s retrieved her authentic self, she’s happier in her career as a surgeon. She’s rethinking her original idea of leaving medicine and may not end up changing careers at all. She explained it to me this way: “The other day, I had a new patient. She’s a teenage girl and she was really afraid of the surgery. I ended up singing to her. It relaxed her. I never would have done anything like that before. I’m approaching life from a place of love, compassion, and freedom instead of feeling trapped in a life I didn’t enjoy. And, as a result, I’m enjoying my work more.”
As Rana went through this process, a vivacious, passionate, excited person began to emerge. She was transformed. For the first time, she was living fully in alignment with her authentic self.
Wake-Up Calls: Signs from the Universe
Initially, Rana came to see me because her family had recognized that something was wrong. Rana herself identified the problem as unhappiness that centered on her work and thought she needed career coaching. The truth is, Rana was getting plenty of signals that there was a problem—migraines, depression, withdrawing to the basement every evening, and a lack of marital connection and affection. But her habitual patterns were so deeply ingrained that she wasn’t paying any attention to the signals. In his book Wake-Up Calls: You Don’t Have to Sleepwalk Through Your Life, Love, or Career!, Eric Allenbaugh, Ph.D., explains that that’s something we all do. Most of us are sleepwalking through life, trapped in the habitual patterns of our conditioned selves. Often, it takes a life-changing event to snap us out of it by interrupting the normal flow of our lives. Allenbaugh calls these events wake-up calls. I think of them as our soul’s attempt to get our attention and let us know that we’ve moved off course in our lives and away from our life purpose. If you’re not living authentically, at some point you’ll begin to get signs. Perhaps your wife suddenly announces—seemingly out of the blue—that she wants a divorce, and you didn’t have a clue she was unhappy. When a relationship isn’t working, there are always signs. But if you’re not paying attention, if you’re stuck in habitual patterns, if you’re sleepwalking, you don’t see them. Divorce tops Allenbaugh’s list of personal wake-up calls, which runs the gamut from losing an important friendship to experiencing a serious injury or illness, losing your job, or falling into financial difficulties. If we don’t consciously choose to become more aware and deliberate in our lives, often it takes a wake-up call to snap us to attention and motivate us to address whatever’s not working in our lives.
When I left my marriage, I hit bottom emotionally and financially. It was my wake-up call—the signal that I was off course in my life. As painful as this was, it was an opportunity for self-discovery, for learning, and for getting my life aligned with who I really am. Wake-up calls can lead to major shifts in awareness. “And those awareness shifts can lead to transformation,” Allenbaugh writes, noting that disruptive events are often viewed as “bad” but in fact can serve as springboards for greater learning. They can be the catalysts for transformation.
We’ve talked about living by default—when your modus operandi is driven by core limiting beliefs that aren’t based on your present reality—and trance states, in which you’re unconsciously reacting to current events based on the past. Oftentimes, those habitual patterns can cause accidents or health problems that serve as wake-up calls. When you live in conflict with your authentic self over an extended period of time, the symptoms tend to reveal themselves gradually. First, you might experience a sense of dissatisfaction. If you don’t pay attention and address your dissatisfaction, it can intensify into a depression. Then, if you still aren’t listening, the underlying conflict may manifest itself in physical symptoms such as headaches, gastrointestinal issues, and back problems. If you continue to ignore the messages that your system is sending you, the
problem can escalate to the point where the stress of living out of alignment with your authentic self begins to compromise and weaken your immune system. When that happens, if you have any predispositions to certain diseases and life-threatening illnesses, you can become vulnerable to serious health problems.
Often, when I’m working with a client who I can tell is living out of alignment with his or her authentic self, I’ll ask: “Do you have any physical ailments such as migraines, stomachaches, back pain, or any other health problems?” A great deal of the time, the answer comes back yes. In the early ’90s I ran a series of workshops for cancer patients called Cancer as a Chance to Live, which addressed the impact of thoughts and emotions on health and illness. In nearly every case, the workshop participants—all of whom were battling cancer—had been in a relationship, job, or other life situation for an extended period of time that was a source of chronic stress or unhappiness. Almost all of them had experienced a period of unrelieved stress that preceded their illness. Of course, that doesn’t mean that their life circumstances caused their illness. Cancer can be the result of many factors, including a genetic predisposition, environmental exposure, and lifestyle choices such as smoking. Whatever the root cause, long-term, chronic stress may have been a contributing factor—the tipping point that weakened their immune systems, leaving them more vulnerable to illness.
When you’re unhappy and dissatisfied, or grappling with a major life change, it can affect your focus and concentration. That means you may be more prone to accidents. Not long after my husband and I separated, I absentmindedly ran my car right into the back of someone’s truck. In fact, according to the American Automobile Association, traffic accidents are often caused by people who have recently suffered an emotional or professional setback, such as a job loss or a divorce.4Why? Because they’re under stress. They’re distracted. They may even be stuck in trance states much of the time. Maybe they’re experiencing depression or caught up in ruminating on the crisis in their lives. Their minds are somewhere else.
So, at this point, it may be valuable to check in with yourself. How are you feeling? How’s your health? Are you able to maintain your focus or are you distracted a lot of the time? These can be clues to whether or not you’re living in alignment with your authentic self:
• Your feelings. Emotional and mental distress can be a symptom that something is out of whack in your life. These feelings can range from a general sadness, dissatisfaction, or frustration to a full-blown depression. Lack of motivation, boredom, or a sense of hopelessness, ranging from mild to severe, can be signs that you’re living out of alignment with your authentic self.
• Your health. Physical ailments or illnesses are common among people whose lives are out of alignment with their authentic selves, particularly those illnesses that can be exacerbated by stress. If your immune system becomes compromised because you’re under constant stress, you’re more vulnerable to health problems.
• Your ability to focus. Distraction and lack of focus; being accident-prone, dropping things—these can all be signs that you’re off course in your life. You’re using a lot of mental and emotional energy just to keep the old mechanisms in place that override your innate nature and authentic self. Trance states are the ultimate distraction. When your mind is preoccupied with memories of and feelings from the past, it impedes your ability to maintain your focus in the here and now, and you have less emotional energy to fully activate your potential.
Midlife and the Authentic Self
For many people, midlife is the ultimate wake-up call. The midlife transition can begin as early as the age of 30 and as late as 60. Midlife is a time when many people find themselves stepping back and evaluating how they want to live for the rest of their lives. They’ve had the chance to build a life and reap the rewards of their endeavors. As they look toward the second half of their lives, they may find themselves asking: Who am I? What’s the meaning of my life? What do I really want? Women approaching midlife are confronting many of the same life changes that adolescents experience: Their bodies are changing, and, for those who have raised children, their life purpose may be shifting. They’re embarking on a new phase of life that leaves them asking: What am I going to do now? Who am I? The physical changes they’re experiencing may add an edge to those questions. As Christiane Northrup, M.D., author of The Wisdom of Menopause: Creating Physical and Emotional Health and Healing During the Change, reminded viewers on a recent PBS special: if you have unresolved issues in your life that you haven’t dealt with by the time you get into menopause, they’ll come up and hit you right between the eyes. Of course, in midlife, men and women face many of the same questions—about mortality, what they’ve achieved, their life’s purpose, and whether or not they’ve fulfilled their life dreams.
This kind of intense reappraisal often lends itself to feelings of turmoil, insecurity, or even despair. In response, some people do a lot of acting out—they buy that wild sports car, have an affair, leave their life partners, or resort to addictive behavior involving alcohol, relationships, sex, or work. In his book The Seasons of a Man’s Life, Daniel J. Levinson writes: “Every genuine appraisal must be agonizing, because it challenges the illusions and vested interests on which the existing structure is based.”5In other words, it’s threatening—even frightening—to examine your life, particularly if you’ve reached a point where you recognize that your life might be based primarily on illusions.
This reappraisal process can lead to the dismantling of what Levinson calls The Dream. The Dream, according to Levinson, can be “modest or heroic, vaguely defined or crystal clear, a burning passion or a quiet guiding force,” but it’s the thing that’s kept you going—the thing you wanted to achieve, the focus of your life, or even the thing that you couldn’t really find. The Dream can be a reflection of your authentic self—your purpose—but for many people The Dream is based on the conditioned self, the layers that have overridden the authentic self. The Dream is whatever you’ve imagined you need that will make you happy, whether it’s the perfect relationship, a successful career, your dream home, successful kids, or a trendy lifestyle. The truth is, when you reach midlife, you know whether or not you’ve achieved your dreams. That knowledge can be a double-edged sword. If you didn’t achieve your dreams, you may feel like a failure. But what if you succeeded in realizing your dreams but you still didn’t achieve the sense of happiness and fulfillment you’d imagined? When that happens, you feel a tremendous sense of despair. Midlife is the time when you start to see the cracks and holes in The Dream. Then, when the wake-up call comes—in the form of a divorce, a life-threatening illness, the death of a parent—it can turn into a full-blown midlife crisis. Your dream is falling apart; your life is losing its meaning. That can trigger a profound transformation. What feels like a breakdown can be a pathway to breaking open.
When I work with clients who are going through this experience, I encourage them to listen to what I call their inner voices. Often, these are the parts of them that became submerged when they were younger—the parts that typically start to reemerge during our voice dialoguing sessions. We all have lost parts. These lost parts are components of the authentic self. By listening to your inner voices and allowing those lost parts of you to resurface, you’re taking an important step toward reclaiming your innate wholeness. Maybe it’s your creative part, the voice of your sensitivity. It may be the part that longs for independence or the one that loves adventure. Perhaps it’s the assertive, strong part or the playful, spontaneous one. In order to become aware of what parts of yourself may have gone underground as the result of your conditioning—and that long to reemerge and find expression in your life—it’s important to begin to listen to and embrace what they are communicating to you.
Uncovering the Clues to Your Authentic Self
Retrieving your authentic self is like putting together the pieces of a puzzle. For Rana, the path to uncovering her authentic self involved acknowledging, embracing, a
nd acting on her passion for exercise and wellness and addressing the root causes of her unhappy marriage. When I began my own personal-development work, I started to uncover the independent, fearless, and creative person I was before I got married. The work involved peeling back those layers of the conditioned self and being able to differentiate between what was mine, what was true, what was in alignment with my authentic self, and what came from someone else’s belief system that I had adopted as my own. Making those distinctions—between the parts of your true self and your conditioned self—is a critical step toward uncovering your authentic self.
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