Reconnect with Your Authentic Self Instead of Denying Your Feelings

I really loved this post. So heart felt, thank you! It reminded me not to forget about my dream as well :). To the author, my soul is profoundly grateful.

Thanks for sharing Tim! It’s inspiring to hear your journey and see how your understanding has evolved. Reading this has reinforced my own process and it’s amazing how sitting still can be at times the easiest thing to do…the hardest… and the most profound 🙂

“Looking back at my self-education is partially humorous and equally frustrating.

I now find it humorous that I worked so hard to “fix” something that wasn’t actually broken.

I find it a bit frustrating to have consumed so much information that
perpetuated this seemingly endless cycle of self-help stupidity.”

I’m currently stuck in this cycle myself and am trying to step outside of it and realize that I, too, am as I should be already.

I’m with you! Thank you for this beautiful post, and reminder that allowing all feelings, and experiencing all aspects of life is healthy and necessary! 🙂

I’m WITH YOU!! 🙂 <3

I love this post, and it’s just what I needed to read. Thank you.

Great article, Tim. Oh, the misery of popular self help mantras. You picked two of the most misunderstood. I like how you navigated a way through them, to understand that we embrace emotions, embrace our Selves….then let go.
We live in a culture of instant gratification. So many of us expect results immediately when we embark on a meditation, yoga, or spiritual practice. We keep the emotional roller coaster well oiled as we struggle with expectations. When things don’t work out the way we think they should, we crumble into a big dump of depression. We give up. It doesn’t need to be that way. It is a normal course to wax and wan and find oneself back to where one started. No big deal, unless you let it be.
Your simple plan is the most effective: daily practice. Fully breathe and know that you are always connected. You are never alone. We are One, in together. All of us, without discrimination. It takes an instant.
And by the way, thank you for using my pic to illustrate your article. I took this self portrait during a time when I was struggling with my personal sadhana (daily practice) and reconnecting. I was distracted with life around me. I decided to go to the beach before sunrise and tune in. I took the shot after I finished sadhana, just after sunrise. I hung it on the wall to remind me how wonderful I felt that morning.
Exhale and inhale…an instant.

Great, great stuff Tim! Keep it coming! 🙂

to the reader my soul is now fulfilled. Thank you.

Thank you very much my friend.

Thanks to Thich Nhat Hanh, since 2011, my mantra has been “I have arrived. I am Home.” It’s helped me a great deal with the whole “I should be somewhere else” feeling that creeps up on me from time to time.

I’m glad to be with you as well.

Right on Shelly!

That positivity thing works sometimes, but when people find out about my book the stuff I do online they think I’m “Mr Positive” and expect me to never have negative reactions. I tried for a while to live up to that standard, but it made me feel worse. Authenticity was all I had left.

It takes time. I had the hardest time accepting myself. Matter of fact, if I don’t practice either mindfulness or meditate on a regular basis, I slip very easily back into self-loathing.

YES! Lori you just earned an extra long hug next time I see you!

It’s my pleasure!

I so want to impersonate Yoda right now…. 😉

Breathe through it Phil. We all get stuck in that mind-loop and live in the land of should far too often.

Let me know if I can help you get unstuck.

Mathilda,

That’s a wonderful reminder, you know Although, I don’t practice that thought to the degree that would be beneficial for me, whenever I do it, it helps me a great deal and amazingly, after a few moments, I do start to feel better about things 🙂

Thank u for writing about it here and reminding me to incorporate it more in my thinking.

Can u explain, though, what u mean about ‘physical imbalance’?

Love and wishes,
Have a wonderful day ahead! 🙂

Darla,

Thank u so much for posting such inspiring words. The part about instant gratification really hit me. Being slow and steady is natural to me but when I saw the world racing ahead, I increased my own pace and ran with them. That, I now see, was the loss of a part of my own authentic self. I’ve never been the one to believe in instant gratification and my choices and actions reflect that. But because I think I should believe that, I land myself in trouble.

Thank u for this important reminder. I can see various facets of my own truth when I dwell upon this.

Best wishes to u! 🙂

This is really the best self-help advice I have read in ages…thank you! I had just come the same conclusion today when I saw this pop up in my inbox. Having spent over a year clinically depressed with seemingly one false start after another and huge problems piling up in my life as a result, I finally realised the missing link was not being true to myself, always pretending and forcing myself to be and do things that really were not in my best interests at that time. I’m really happy to read this today, it has reminded me to just stop and breath.

Tim, I’m really stoked to meet you too. i so happy to discover the Tiny Buddha blog. The mudra that I am holding in this pic is ego buster for pranayama Breath of Fire. It’s a good one!

Thank you so much Willow. I deeply appreciate your comment. I think we all struggle with wanting “to be”… It has taken me many years and many hours of meditation to understand my perfection syndrome. I have learned to catch my mind when it gets looped into a competitive or perfection cycle. When I do, I laugh. It’s funny how our habits have a way of sneaking up on us. Keep up, even when you don’t even feel like it, and the reward will embrace you.

What a beautiful post, Tim. Great timing for me. After years of being convinced I’d “cracked it” I just had an experience that took me back to my old personal challenges and boy has that hurt!

I like your advice of not listening to the “you just have to be positive” stuff. I’m a real believer that the more you stay with upsetting feelings, the sooner you’ll move beyond them. Your post reminds me to do that with real self-compassion. After all, the worst thing is not just to feel bad, but to judge yourself as well!

Hiya Tim,

A lot of what you’ve written resonates highly with me. One, in particular, is giving in to letting it all hang out. I can’t always think positively either. I would back out of mindfulness and get bummed out because all my positivity got me was an even greater realization of the negativity still in my life. It is like setting myself up for a fall. The higher the expectations the greater the disappointment. I’d been in the center or on the periphery of personal growth and self-improvement work for ages, maintained a shelf [shelves] of books on the subject, and engaged online with others in pursuit of the same self-imposed excellence. Where did it get me? As you pointed out, more anxiety. The biggest thing I learned through much of this is that those of us who take this path are the ones who are hardest on ourselves.

What I got [and have] is a toolbox full of tools that are ready for use, some used, some not. If I take this path in stride, I remember what instruments I have if and when a situation arises that requires more than I may have previously applied. “Oh, yeah, I can do THIS instead of doing THAT.” Then I place the tool back in my box. After a while, the tools begin to arrange themselves so that they nestle more comfortably. They become more readily and automatically available. It’s like anything in life, that which we use most often becomes a habit. Our goal is to create good habits, so we use the tools we have to build that structure. Negative tools are the ones that get tossed in the box haphazardly, so the more we use what does us good, the more noticeable the errant baddies become and, eventually, they get tossed in the recycle or refuse bin.

This doesn’t happen overnight. Where the stress comes from is that it doesn’t happen in the context or time that we feel it should. Our egos tend to push from behind and say we aren’t looking good if we don’t get our collective stuff together within certain time limits. If we don’t “succeed” or “grow” or “get better” within peer parameters or our personal expectations by a certain time or age, the self-deprecation sets in and what we may have learned to this point gets denigrated. Set back. Not a good way to treat your tools. Or yourself.

Another temptation is to take literally the message in “Fake it until you make it.” I don’t believe Dyer meant to theatrically put on a mask and display a false [or inauthentic]face. I believe his message, and that of others in this vein, is to encourage us to be our better selves, to act and react as our “higher self” would act. To respond in the way that we aspire to once we have reached our new plateau. If I’m cut off in traffic or served the wrong drink or get bad news in my inbox, perhaps the old me is going to want to flip off, toss the martini or fire off a nasty-gram. All that serves to do is perpetuate old, bad habits. Using the broken and worn tools. If I pause for a moment and exercise my higher thinking (between fight or flight), I am going to act more appropriately and respond in the manner more befitting to my “higher self”. It’s not faking it, it’s performing differently. It’s not the same old tired rerun, it’s a new release. Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” It’s a way of honoring your vulnerability by using a new tool to build a new bridge across despair. If, as Gandhi said, you wish to “Be the change that you wish to see in the world” then, indeed, you’re not going to bail yourself out of the muck by standing in the bucket.

It’s not an act, it’s a deed. A task. It’s taking the good tools we have such prodigious access to and breaking them in, wearing them down until they are as comfortable as the old [bad] ones we tossed. It’s growing in integrity and authenticity as we learn and build from one failure to the next. It’s a way to, as you say, “honor where you are right now” and grow in our own time, our own space.

Thanks for your sharing. It’s always a trip

~ Mark

I really appreciate your view on this Mark. I turned 29 today and I’ve had a habit of being so hard on myself and trying to force myself to grow because that’s what everyone tells you you need to do after a loved one leaves you. All it has done has given me more anxiety on top of the mourning the loss.

Now I’m so worked up over the results or lack there of, and the energy I put in to obtaining tools that I’m burnt out. But the good news is like you said, I now possess these tools whether I recognize them now or not. They are there to be used when the job arises that requires them.

Thanks again!

Depression is tricky Willow. One of the top researchers in the country teaches Psychology at Stanford and he says that we should look at depression the same way we do Diabetes. Just like with Diabetes certain activities and foods will help alleviate the symptoms, but only if they are practiced.

Brain Chemistry, hormones, and genetics determine most of our experience we determine the rest by the manner in which we direct our minds, thoughts and actions.

Seek balance in all that you do Willow.

Wow. Very nice Mark.

I know what the “fake it till…” and the “act as if…” philosophy is trying to point me to, but the first step for me was to really just sit in the here and now of my feelings. To allow them. To feel them.

I think that’s one of my biggest challenges. I have always been quick to tears, and growing up in Appalachia that was not permitted. I was told to “man-up” “you’re not allowed to feel that way” and a bunch of other nonsense.

So, before I was able to get my brain to wrap around those concepts I had to first be comfortable to honor my own feelings (even when my feelings were over-reactive and childish).