Take a moment to ponder quickly these next few questions: What do you like best about your personality? What do you like least about your personality? Was it easier for you to answer what you liked best or least about yourself?
One prominent area where we find discomfort in being ourselves stems from our personality structure. Sometimes it’s hard to fathom not everyone else views and perceives the world the way we do! There are several different personality types, and each type holds it’s own personal views, biases, and beliefs about themselves, others, and the world around them. This brings us to what we’re diving into today: “Instead of disliking yourself which causes you to deny a part of you, identify how those traits positively serve you. Then align yourself with using and appreciating those traits in those positive ways. Being able to embrace all of the parts of yourself, good and bad, is key to self love and inner peace.” While I still believe this to be very true, boy, has the approach to making this happen changed drastically for me since writing my original blog!
Here is an example of my past experience. Self reflection: I am really an impatient person. I work very diligently. I will just weave my impatience into my work and will work faster and harder than everyone else to demonstrate I’m a valuable employee. Then my impatience will be working for me instead of against me. Are you laughing at my irrational thought process? I promise, I’m laughing with you! The justifications we make for our own behaviors are quite entertaining, really.
I recently gained new perspective and techniques on how to align and appreciate all of the traits which make us who we are. Dr. Judith Swack, the neuroscientist who developed Healing From the Body Level Up (HBLU), studied personality structure for many years. She tracked and mapped individuals using the Enneagram. If you’re not familiar with the system there is endless information about it and each personality type online as it’s one of the oldest personality typing systems. Through all of the tracking Judith was able to identify common story lines running in the various personality types. These story lines very easily explain why people with each given personality type hold the beliefs and perspectives of the world as they do. As I perfectly outlined above, in order to try to mask the parts of ourselves which are self-irritating we create strategies to hide or rid those traits and behaviors. We spend a lot of energy, more than I realized until I studied it, trying to mask these irritating parts of ourselves. In my scenario, I would try to hide my impatience with work, but this was also self-irritating because being a workaholic brings me no more internal harmony than being impatient.
Think about your personality characteristics for a few moments. How do you compensate for the things you find irksome? Mapping and identifying is an amazing start, but alone it will not yield internal harmony. Knowing this, Judith created HBLU processes to assist an individual in transforming the self-irritating story lines of their personality into positive and desired traits which allows us to live through our true essence. Once the characteristics which we worked long and hard to get rid of or hide are transformed, we magically become less irritating to those around us too. Which brings me to my next point “Liking yourself is far more important than others liking you. Never sacrifice self approval for the approval of others.” I stand by these words while also now realizing we can achieve this rather gracefully. When you approve of yourself and aren’t focused on covering up and ridding certain parts of your personality, the desire for others to approve of you begins to melt away without effort. Not only that, but the easier it is for you to be yourself the easier it is for others to be around you while you stand in your true essence.
Have you thought yourself or said out loud “I can’t help it, it’s just the way I am”? Or have you felt like you were created to do, achieve, or act in a way you just can’t seem to bring to fruition? With incredible tools such as energy psychology this line of thought is no longer valid. The most resounding feedback I receive from clients is the practice of energy psychology is something to experience in order to fully understand its power and magnitude. I would love to answer any questions you may have. The comment section is FINALLY fixed below so feel free to use it! Or if a sampler sounds intriguing I will be at Mystic Fest offering mini sessions on September 28 & 29th at the Mid American Center in Council Bluffs, IA.
Thanks for stopping by!
Peace & Love,
Janessa