But over time, I realized that despite all the thinking humanly possi­ble, there were important questions in my life that I couldn’t know and couldn’t solve, not yet anyway. This truth was unavoidable and irrefut­able. I had to admit and accept that, with all my pseudo-knowing, my proposed and attempted solutions, I was still not any better off. Any knowing I had thought myself into was illusory. The more I tried to know, the more I felt like I didn’t know. On the other side of that admission and acceptance however, I found something unexpected…utter relief.

We live in an age of reason and science. We worship information, research, and logic so much that we named our era for it: the age of information. To reason is to think, to use the rational mind, understand, and make sense of our world. Over time, we’ve put more and more eggs in the reasoning basket, betting on thinking to save the day. The thinking mind is the road to salvation. At this moment in history, we’ve lost interest and, to some degree, respect, for all the other ways of knowing: bodily, intuitively, experientially, and so forth—all the ways we can know other than through thinking and logic.

When I present material as a public speaker, despite three decades of professional experience with human beings and their thoughts and emotions, I am almost always asked what MRI studies or research I can offer to support my observations on human behavior. Reason and scientific proof have been anointed as our kings. Thinking, we believe, will solve whatever questions and challenges life presents. And, with technology exploding, our faith in and reverence for thinking are only intensifying.

Living in the Question

“The only true wisdom is in knowing we know nothing,” said Socrates. A lot has changed in the 2,500 years since Socrates uttered those words. Our society now seems to disagree with the great philoso­pher on the issue of knowing. Here, in the 21st century AD, we believe that we should and can know everything. Our unceasing need to know the answers along with our unwillingness to accept the unknown sit at the root of our excessive thinking, and our anxiety.

Mystery, in our society, is not a real thing…it’s a flaky or woowoo thing. Not knowing the answer is not an acceptable answer. We’re taught from the time we’re born that knowing is good—we are good, worthy, if we have the answers. “You should know better” is what we hear when we’re young and have done something wrong. We feel shame and inadequacy when we don’t have the answers: It makes us feel weak and defective, vulnerable and lost. Not knowing is a form of failure.

At the same time, knowing feels safe; it feels like we’re in control. With the answers in place, we don’t have to face the impermanence that underpins our life, the reality that everything is constantly changing, whether we like it or not. We don’t have to feel how out of control we really are as human beings on this mortal and mysterious journey. As a result, we do a lot of faking it, “impostering,” when it comes to knowing. Simultaneously, we rush to answers that aren’t true or sustainable. We’ll do anything, essentially, to not reside in the unknown.

But despite what we’re conditioned to believe, life is forever deposit­ing us in situations where we cannot know and don’t have access to the answers we want, don’t know the way forward, to say nothing of the larger not knowing—what we’re all doing here, existing, in the first place. Given the frequency with which the experience of not knowing or at least not yet knowing shows up in life, we would be wise to learn how to inhabit it and, even better, to do so with a sense of acceptance and relaxation rather than judgment and fear.

It may feel unfamiliar, unwise, and even dangerous to sit with a chal­lenging, unresolved situation, to not know what it means, what we need to do about it, or how to get out of it. Uncomfortable though it may be however, it behooves us to learn how to not know, to feel what it’s like in the not knowing, and to await more clarity and the arrival of a path through. Living in the question, if we can drop our judgments about it, can become its very own place to reside. With practice, we can learn to actually relax with not having the answer.

When we offer ourselves permission to not know, we allow life to reveal what it wants to reveal, in its own time—without forcing it. The questions then, remarkably, become their own destinations. What’s more, we find that not knowing is a place that, if we have the courage to trust it, can deliver deeper and wiser solutions, real solutions, paths forward that are more reliable than anything we can mentally muscle our way into knowing.

Surrendering to living in the questions feels like dropping through a trap door. Suddenly we are deposited into the present moment; we have permission to be here, to experience what life is like—now. We have permission to get interested in the experience of this reality and allow the answers to reveal themselves on their own timeline. Just for now, we don’t have to do it all ourselves, don’t have to push our way through with our mind, as we’ve been taught. Relaxing into the questions, unexpectedly, allows us to join a larger unfolding, a process bigger than ourselves, and thankfully, one in which we don’t have to be respon­sible for controlling our life at every turn. At last, it isn’t up to only us. Living in the questions, no matter how uncomfortable it might feel, is living in the truth, which, once we get the hang of it, contains its own safety and trustworthiness. The safety we experience in the truth, however, is not because we have all the answers or because the truth is comfortable (the usual markers of safety), but rather because the truth is inarguable…because the truth is what is. Surrendering to not knowing means planting our feet in moving ground and accepting that we’re in a process without a known outcome and that the process is the destination for now.

The post How to Relax When You Don’t Have the Answers appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Knowing also gives us a sense of control.  If we can know something, we believe we can control it.  If we can control it, we feel less vulnerable, and less at the mercy of our ever-changing (uncontrollable) life.  And of course, if we can control life, we can be happy.

When we’re young, we’re taught most of what we need to know in order to function well.  We’re schooled in the process of living.  As we get older, however, we’re no longer taught what we need to know and seem to know less and less.  And yet the belief persists: we have to know in order to stay safe and be okay. Great anxiety thus forms within us, in the space of this gap.  As a result, we start desperately trying to figure out life.

In our modern world, we know through our mind.  We make sense of things, organize ideas into rational patterns and linear progressions.  Causes and effects. Knowing involves stringing together our thoughts about what’s happening, why it’s happening and what we need to do about it.  Whatever we want, whatever problem we think we have, we’re convinced that thinking more about it will lead us to the answer we need.  We think we can think our way out of and into everywhere, everyone, and everything.

Simultaneously, we all crave a sense of serenity that can withstand the ever-changing ups and downs of life. We want to trust in something that can hold steady in the midst of the unknowable and often difficult reality that is life.  And so, we bring this same figure it out/knowing paradigm to how we view the attainment of the peace we desire.  We imagine that we can mentally muscle our way to serenity, that more thinking about life will ultimately lead us to peace.

One of the inherent problems with this belief system, our great faith in and reverence for figuring it out, is that it relies on the premise that our thoughts (the building blocks of figuring it out) are not just our thoughts, but rather, the truth. We think that our subjective experience is an objective reality, simply what is.  And it follows then that everything that’s built from our thoughts, every narrative we construct from our thoughts should also be absolute truth.

If I have a fight with a friend then start figuring out what happened and what needs to happen going forward, I’m basing that interpretation, that entire storyline of thought, on my subjective experience, my particular mind with its particular wounds, conditioning, history, thoughts, core beliefs, and everything else I’ve ever lived. I believe that my thoughts about what this other person was doing is what they were doing and therefore, what I think they need to stop or start doing in order for me to feel better is also an inarguable fact.

But the problem is, what I think this friend is doing may have nothing to do with what they think they’re doing or what I’m doing for that matter.  Their intentions and inner reality may and probably does exist on another planet than mine.  The whole narrative I’ve constructed, the way I’ve figured this situation out, is irrelevant and useless then.  I’m operating in a universe (my mind) with rules and systems that make sense inside this particular mind, but which have little or nothing to do with what’s happening in other minds.  What makes the dots connect in my thought system is of little use when applied to someone or something else’s reality. That said, figuring out life, based on our personal narrative, is an exercise in futility and to some degree, absurdity.

This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to understand our experience.  But rather, that we need to be aware that our knowledge, our version of what makes sense lives only in our own mind.  Our truth exists within us, and only within us.  And, it co-exists with billions of other truths that exist in other people’s minds.  We can still present our version of reality or our truth to another person but we can stop assuming that our subjective experience, our thoughts of what makes sense, are also true in some absolute way.  We don’t have to work ourselves up into a lather believing that we have the keys to the castle, we know exactly what’s happening and the way it all needs to go. And, we don’t need to worry that if it doesn’t go the way we’ve scripted it, the way our mind tells us it must, that something is wrong and we are being wronged.

It’s profoundly liberating to realize that our version of the truth, which not coincidentally always places us at the center of what’s driving everyone and everything else, may not and probably is not the truth for anyone else.  When we believe this, we suffer alone (and we really suffer), trapped inside the certainty of our own figured-out and usually unwanted reality.

There is yet another flaw in our assumption that we can figure out our way to happiness. The belief that bringing more thoughts and mental understanding of a challenging situation or relationship will automatically benefit that situation or relationship is false. We believe that the mind is the proper tool for every situation, but it’s not.  It’s often the worst tool we can pull out of the shed in fact.  In many cases, what’s needed for actual improvement, growth or change, is something else entirely.

Sometimes, if we’re dealing with a difficult person, the best thing we can do is nothing—not try and understand their behavior or what we need to do about it. Sometimes the best thing we can do is to just let it be what it is.

Often, when we stop trying to figure out what’s wrong with and how to fix everyone and everything (which we know as masters of the universe), and just let it be the way it is, for now, our whole experience changes. We discover that in all the trying to understand and fix, we actually exacerbate the problem, not just on the outside but on the inside too, scratching at the wrongs, fomenting anger and resentment, which always intensifies our own suffering.

Sometimes, when confronting a problematic person, it’s wise to simply offer it the generosity of compassion, the serenity of not trying to control it, and the wisdom of not trying to figure it out.  It can be helpful to realize that the other person’s behavior probably comes out of their own suffering or ignorance, and also remind yourself that they also want the same things you want—happiness, safety, and peace—even if the way they’re going about it may not seem wise to you.  Keeping our attention focused in kindness, while resisting the urge to go up into our sense-making mind, frequently serves to improve the situation far more than any mental gymnastics could.  The felt experience of wishing this person well, even if we cannot or choose not to try and understand their behavior, is the choice that brings the most change—and relief.  And most importantly, whether or not we can find compassion for this other, it is an act of profound compassion–for ourselves–to stop trying to figure it all out.  Nothing ultimately feels better.

Knowing feels fundamental to our safety and control.  But in the end, surrendering to not knowing, realizing that if what we really want is for the situation to change or us to change in relation to the situation; if what we really want is peace, then understanding it more is not the wisest choice.

In place of figuring it all out (which I spent umpteen years doing) I now like to turn difficult people and situations into opportunities.  In place of trying to make sense, I focus on being the person I want to be in the situation.  I turn my attention away from figuring out what’s making the other do what they’re doing and how to get them to change (according to my reality), and towards how I am being in the midst of this reality.  This profound turn from something I can’t control something I can gives me back my power and more importantly, my freedom.

What’s ironic too is that if my underlying desire is for my external world to change with regard to this difficult situation, I’ve had far more success when my focus is on my own behavior and not the others.  Taking my eye off the self-diagnosed problem and putting it on myself, how I’m being in this difficulty, just plain works better.  But even when the situation doesn’t change on the outside, my experience of the situation on the inside radically changes when I shift my attention in this way.  Challenges become opportunities to grow and evolve; in moments I actually even look forward to them.  I get to practice being who I want to be, my best self; I get to choose what my own participation in life will look like.

The process of taking care of my own side of the street has never failed to be a nourishing and rewarding choice.  It always changes my experience even when it doesn’t change a single thing on the outside.

If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say (something like) “When I don’t try and figure it out, I’m happier and things go better,” I’d be a very wealthy woman. I sure know that’s it’s been true for me. Figuring it out may give us a pseudo sense of control and safety, but it doesn’t make us feel better, which at the end of the day is what we really want.

The post Why You Can’t “Figure Out” Your Way to Happiness appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Most of us learn early, as young children, that we’re supposed to know—supposed to be on top of life, understand it, control it, make it go our way.  We’re supposed to have a plan and if we don’t, there’s something wrong with us; we need to work and try harder.  When we don’t know, we feel vulnerable and unprepared; we’re failing at be one step ahead of life.

When we know the answers we feel safe and most importantly, in control.  We have a plan, an idea, a certainty of mind. We are in charge.  We’re most content when the mind is leading the way forward with a plan of action, a plan of its own making and certainty.

Furthermore, having the answers allows us to dodge out on the present moment, which is another one of our favorite pursuits.  When we know the answers, have it all wrapped up if you will, we no longer have to be in the present moment; we don’t have to remain open to the ever-changing conditions and experiences that might guide our way.  Once we know, we can turn away from now; our path is paved even if life changes that path or us as we go.  We’re sticking with the plan; we’ve got the map so we can throw away the path.  Knowing allows us to stop paying attention to what’s actually happening, the place where we actually are.  Paying attention, staying fluid, is not needed because our mind has decided what is so and what will be.  Thankfully, we’re done with now.

Most of the answers we come up with, particularly the ones that we rush into before really knowing, come from the mind, not the heart, gut, experience, or our deepest wisdom.  We think our way into knowing.  And, we feel more comfortable when the mind, the thinker, is in charge; we are most comfortable when we are a separate entity, a little head doing life.  From its throne, the mind comes up with the answers and then steers our body and spirit around according to its plan, regardless of whether its plan matches our deeper truth.

What we’re really afraid of is to be in life, in step with it and not a step ahead of it, trying to control the way (as if we could).  We’re afraid to leave life open, unresolved, to let life reveal its answers as we go, to be present in our life and not outside it, managing it, controlling it.  We’re afraid to be vulnerable and not in charge, to surrender to the mystery of what we can’t yet know and may never know.  When we live in the questions and stop trying to know what we don’t know, we’re choosing to pay attention to what’s happening now, our experience, and the choices we want to make given these truths.  We’re agreeing to discover rather than know, based on what’s actually arising—not our predetermined idea of it; we’re forming a handshake with our experience, relaxing the reins and letting life show us the way.  When we stop trying to know everything, we’re reassigning the CEO role in our life—from the mind to life itself, the truth, our experience, not the mind—whatever you want to call it, which can only tell us what we need to know as we go, and only if we will humble ourselves and listen.  Living in the question, in essence, involves a shift from knowing to listening.

It turns out that the questions are a place we can indeed inhabit.  We don’t know it, we’re taught not to know it, but we can in fact plant our feet right here in the not knowing. The first time someone suggested that I live with a question, I had no idea what that phrase meant, or perhaps more accurately, no idea how to embody that sentiment.  Living meant knowing and so if I didn’t want to disappear or live with extreme anxiety, I had to solve the questions that were unsolved.  Living and questions were contradictory.  I needed sure ground, which for a younger me meant known ground.  Known, not just for what was happening in the present moment, but known as to where I was headed, what was happening and to be done with what was happening.

But I can also remember the first time a friend told me that he didn’t know but was living in the question.  Maybe it was a change in the verb or preposition he used, from live to living or with to in, or maybe (and more likely) it was my own evolution, the earned wisdom to know that I was not in control even if my mind told me I was.  But with the aliveness of the word living and the inclusiveness of the word in, an undeniable sense of relief descended upon me, like an injection of relaxation, of presence.  It felt like I had dropped through a trap door—into now, like I had been given permission to live here in what was true now, the not knowing now, and let the answers (if they came) reveal themselves to me.  It gave me permission to not have to go out and make the answers happen or manufacture them from my mind.  Living in the question meant that I could follow the truth as it unfolded.  With permission to be in the question, I was offered residence in this moment; I could give up my delusion of control and better yet, my responsibility for being in control.  Blessedly, I didn’t have to be in control.  All that living in the question meant was agreeing to be awake and aware, to be present and discover the answers as I went, and, to stay open to the answers changing.  Living in the question allows us to be in life, letting life guide us rather than our minds endlessly trying to steer life.  Living in the question allows us to open to the infinite mystery, life unfolding in its own way, with us as part of it, along for the ride…to open to being part of a larger universe which is not in our charge.

When we don’t know, not knowing is the truth, anything else is made up, a way to try and feel safe, to control what feels uncontrollable at the moment.  Living in the question, no matter how it feels, is living in the truth, which, once we get the hang of it, contains its own safety and trustworthiness.  The safety and trustworthiness of the truth is not, however, gauged by what we usually gauge safety by, namely, solidness, knowability, and contents we like.  But rather, the truth, the not knowing in this case, offers safety because of its inarguable-ness, its is-ness if you will; the safety of not knowing is unharmed by the fact that the situation is fluid, not solid, transforming and evolving, shifting beneath our feet.  Living in the question means planting our feet in moving ground, accepting that we’re in a process without a known outcome, that the process is the destination, for now.  In so doing, we’re also agreeing to be humble, to surrender our badge as master of the universe, to admit that we don’t have all the answers, that we await further clarity, to be offered by something larger than ourselves.  Living in the question, while not familiar perhaps, ultimately, proves to be the most alive, fresh, and real place we can hope to inhabit.  We thought courage meant knowing all the answers, but as it turns out, that answer itself was wrong.  Courage means being willing to not grab for a mind-made shore when we’re genuinely at sea, to not shut life down and out with answers, but to simply keep living, here, in our humble not knowing, awake in the mystery.  At the end of the day, our questions are our portals, the doorways through which we access now.

The post Living In The Question: When Not Knowing Is The Answer appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Surrender is too often misunderstood, boiled down to a few affirmations about “letting go,” and then misused as a self-help instruction. But, in our misunderstanding, in our trying to do surrender with our minds, like we do everything else, we drain surrender of the true miracle that it is.

What surrender is NOT

Failure or defeat.

Punishment.

A decision to “let go.”

A task that we can do/accomplish with our mind.

A state that we can will ourselves into.

The decision to be comfortable with what is.

An ending.

What surrender IS

Everyone of us, at some point in our lives, encounters a situation that rocks the foundation of who we are and what we think we can bear—is past our limits if you will.  Sometimes it’s a situation we’ve been living with for a long time and sometimes it’s a sudden event that overwhelms us and for which our usual coping strategies are useless. While the content may differ, what these experiences share is the power to bring us to our knees, figuratively and often literally as well. And, the power to change us.

Our minds try to control everything they come in contact with, that’s just their nature. Ostensibly, to try and make us happy, our lives better.  We have elaborate and seemingly endless strategies for trying to make sure that our lives contain the experiences we want and don’t contain the experiences we don’t want.  Our minds will fight with, reject, ignore, push against and keep maneuvering to change those situations that we don’t want.  And then there comes a time, a situation, when we can’t keep fighting, either because it’s too painful, or because we finally know at a body/heart level that it’s futile and some other as of yet unknown path is needed.  Surrender begins here, where all other strategies end.  But, surrender is not a strategy; it is the absence of strategies.

Surrender happens when we know that we don’t know anything anymore and certainly not anything that can help us.  It arrives when we know that we cannot think or see our way through where we are. In true surrender, we don’t know if what’s to come will be better or worse, more comfortable or even less.  All we know is that we can’t do it this way, the way we’ve been doing it, a moment longer.  Surrender happens when it can’t not happen.

Surrender itself is easy; it’s the path to surrender that’s excruciating.  But what’s amazing is that when surrender does arrive, it is accompanied by a great sense of ease and peace. It’s not like the situation remarkably gets better or easier, but we feel better and more easeful when we know in our bones that we cannot fix or figure it out. Oddly, something deep within us relaxes when we acknowledge that we don’t know how to do it, don’t know the way.  We feel an inner softening when we agree to turn it over to something larger, the unknowable, or simply to the truth of our own not knowing. From our knees, paradoxically, we feel a remission from the suffering.

The post Why Surrender is So Powerful, and How to Experience It? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

There is no doubt that people and situations can be the cause of our discontent. If someone swings a baseball bat into my knee, the pain I feel is directly caused by that action. If a friend speaks unkindly to me, I feel hurt, a direct result of his choice of words. We impact one another; there are people and situations—infinite ones it seems—that can cause our suffering. That said, there is nothing wrong with trying to change a situation that we don’t like or that makes us unhappy. Such efforts are wise and adaptive and a way of taking agency in our lives. We need to try to change what’s not working, if we can. But this is not a post about how to more skillfully change those around us so that they can better fit into how we want them to be. This is about what happens when we are not successful at changing those around us, and cannot change the situation that is causing us pain.

I guess you could call it Plan B.

When we cannot change the cause of our suffering, many of us continue to blame the other person or situation. This may provide us with some relief, at least for a while. But what happens when trying to change the other has failed and continuing to blame is not actually making us feel better either?

Where do we go when we have run out of moves?

Freedom from the whole blaming/fixing cycle, ironically, comes from moving our attention away from the other person/problem that is to blame/fix, and turning that attention onto ourselves. When you hear that it’s time to look into yourself, you may assume (as most people do) that someone is telling you to discover how you are also to blame for the suffering you are experiencing.

This assumption would be false.

I am not suggesting that you are to blame for anything, nor am I suggesting that you search yourself for fault. This step in the process—self-investigation, the step that creates real freedom from suffering—has nothing to do with blame.

To turn your attention into yourself is to ask the question: What does this situation or person’s behavior trigger in me? What pain is generated in me when I am confronted with this behavior or reality?

The post You Can’t Change Someone Else But You Can Do This appeared first on Nancy Colier.

We are taught that we should not get too close to our feelings, and certainly not get inside them, feel them in the flesh or inhabit them.  We don’t want to experience suffering so we keep our feelings in the realm of the mind, a safe distance away, through countless rational and seemingly self-protective strategies.  We believe that if we were to feel our feelings directly, close the gap between the person who is experiencing the feelings and the feelings themselves, we might never come out the other side, never survive.

But here in lies one of the greatest mysteries of life.  When we stop doing something to and with our feelings and just feel them directly, in our body as sensations and our hearts as raw emotion (without any story to go with them), those feelings have a way of transforming on their own. There is a natural process, a flow of grace that kicks in when we give ourselves permission to actually feel what we feel, the truth in its nakedness, without any narrative on what it all means or what to do with or about it.

I was not confident when I first started practicing this simple (but not easy) teaching.  I did not believe that anything good could come from refraining from using my mind to learn from, understand, empathize with, interpret, narrate or manage my feelings in some way.  It seemed a waste of time, and worse, that feeling what I feel directly, in the body and heart, from inside the feelings themselves, would (I believed) extend the presence of the feelings I already did not want.  I knew what I felt so why did I need to feel it anymore or any more directly than I already did?  How would that help?

When I began the practice of feeling my feelings directly, without the accompanying story or strategy, my mind kept telling me that without its help, nothing good could happen and nothing good would happen. But in reality what I experienced when I set the mind’s narrative aside and invited the rawness of my feelings to be felt in the body, was far better than anything I could have thought up, and effectively blew my mind out of a job!  Astoundingly, when my feelings were given permission to experience themselves, from the inside out, they did change—on their own.  As it turned out, the feelings themselves had a wisdom and an energy.  Amazingly, I didn’t have to be the one in charge of changing them, didn’t have to do anything with or to them.  All I had to do was get out of the way and provide them with the invitation to breathe and be felt.  With that, my feelings relaxed and transformed on their own.

Once experienced directly, felt in the body and heart, with no middle mind, my suffering loosened and ironically, the feelings could actually become my teachers (as I had previously hypothesized so eloquently).  This was a revelation, not that the feelings could transform or teach me, but that they could do so on their own—without my having to make it happen.

Through this practice I discovered that I can surrender to life, don’t need to be vigilantly in charge of creating change internally or managing my experience to fit a desired outcome.  When I took the risk that it is to let my heart simply feel what it feels, I got to experience a larger, more magical and mysterious process at work.  I got to experience grace, which moves things forward on her own, myself included. Had I never taken the leap, I would never have trusted the river of life that is flowing us onward, no matter how much our mind tries to convince us that we are flowing it.  What I learned through this practice of directly experiencing what is is that it is safe to sync up with my experience, to get inside it if you will, so that there remains only one entity, experience and self as one, rather than a me and a separate experience that I am having (and must control).  So too, I discovered that my feelings know how and what they need to feel better, and they know this better than I ever could. I can then relax and trust life, trust grace, trust the process of change itself, all of which is happening on its own.

The post How to Feel Better and Trust Life: The Practice of Surrender appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Even if you don’t have a stack of books on your bedside table detailing the newest ways to fix yourself, you still might be. And it wouldn’t be your fault if you were. Our  conditioning from a very young age is to believe that we need to become better, new and improved versions of ourselves, even if at first we don’t know exactly how or why. But soon enough we have filled in the why’s with our shortcomings and failures, and self-help provides the how-to’s with unending methods for self-correction. Armed with our story of deficiencies firmly in place and a surplus of paths toward improvement, we set off on our life mission—namely, becoming someone else. And we are proud of, and celebrated for, this mission. Growing and evolving, becoming a better person—it all sounds so virtuous. Who would turn down such an opportunity?

And yet, growing and evolving are too often code words for what is really “fixing” or correcting our basic unworthiness. From the time we are young, we are infiltrated with the belief that the basic problem underlying all other problems is, put simply, us. We are what’s wrong. As adults, we search the globe for the right teacher; we attend seminars, buy books, hire coaches, consult shamans, and everything else under the sun—all in an effort to make ourselves into something good enough or maybe just enough.

But are we good enough for what or whom? Did you ever wonder?

If we boil it down, we keep fixing ourselves in the hopes that we can, finally, just be as we actually are. Once we’re fixed, enough, worthy—whether that means more compassionate, more disciplined, or whatever shape our more’s have formed into—then we’ll be entitled to feel what we feel. We can think what we think, experience what we experience—in essence, be who we are.

The fear that fuels our self-betterment mission is the belief that we are, at our core, notwhat we should be: We’re faulty, broken, unlovable, or some other version of not okay. To give ourselves permission to be who we are, to give up the mission for a better version of ourselves, would be tantamount to accepting our defectiveness and giving up all hope of fruition. And that, of course, would be unwise, naive, lazy, and a cop out. To suggest that we stop striving to be better than who we are is not just counterintuitive, but frightening and dangerous. Such a suggestion incites fear, scorn, anger, confusion, amusement, and an assumption of ignorance.

Self-help, while useful in certain ways, strengthens our core belief that we are inherently defective. Self-help starts with our defectiveness as its basic assumption, and then graciously offers to provide us with an unending stream of strategies by which to fix our defective core—which, once fixed, will award us the right to be who we are.

The problem is that the strategies keep us stuck in the cycle of fixing—and more important, in the belief that we are broken. If you notice, we never do become that person who is allowed to feel what we feel, and experience what we experience. We never do get permission to just be who and as we are.

This is where spirituality enters, and offers something radically different than self-help.

Most people think that spirituality and self-help are the same thing. They’re not. In fact, they are fundamentally different. We have tried to turn spirituality into self-help, another method for correcting ourselves, but to do so is to misunderstand and eradicate the most profound (and beneficial) teaching spirituality offers.

True spirituality is not about fixing ourselves spiritually or becoming spiritually better. Rather, it is about freedom from the belief of our unworthiness, and ultimately, about acceptance. Spirituality, practiced in its truest form, is about meeting who we really are, and allowing ourselves to experience life as we actually experience it.

In this way, it is more of an undoing than a doing.

In truth, we need to take the risk that it is to lean back into who we actually are. We need to do that before we even know that who we are will be enough, or even that there will be anything there to catch us. We need to relinquish our self-improvement plans before we believe that we have the right to stop improving. The whole thing—true spirituality—requires a kind of faith. It’s not faith in a system, story, or methodology, but a faith that trusts that we can’t think our way into what we truly want. No matter what path we practice, there comes a point where we have to let go of the reins; when we have to give up the quest to be good enough.

What happens when we stop trying to change ourselves into something better is nothing like what we imagine: We envision stepping off the self-help train and landing smack inside someone incomplete and unsatisfactory. And yet in truth, the simple (but not easy) act of inviting ourselves into our own life has the effect of placing us at the center of something beautiful and extraordinary. Giving ourselves permission to be as we are miraculously creates a kind of love for ourselves—not so much for our individual characteristics, but for our being. It’s not just for our being, but for the truth, whatever that is. It is as if whatever we find inside ourselves, whether we wish it were here or not, is okay and we are okay. Ultimately, we shift from trying to become lovable to being love itself. And amazingly, from this place, the not-enough person we thought we were has simply vanished, or more likely, never was.

Try it out for a moment—this moment. Just let yourself be. Give yourself permission to have the experience you are having, whatever it is, with no story about whether it is right or wrong, good or bad. Feel how you actually are. It’s that direct and that simple. No judgments allowed. It won’t make sense…it takes a leap…so leap.

The post When Is It Time to Stop Trying to Fix Ourselves? appeared first on Nancy Colier.