Getting caught up in the hardship of doing “self work,” misses the fact that the self is the work happening inside “self work.” The ultimate purpose of “self work” is to grow into our selves and discover ourselves anew. This isn’t work. It’s progress. It’s revelation. It’s becoming.
It is my conviction that cultural beliefs around “self work” actually push us to do work over pleasure. We attune to the accepted standard of enduring over curious exploration. I find myself questioning if the way we go about “self work” does more damage than good - especially to the part of our psyche that we reject.
Today, I am writing about how to take the “work” out of self discovery.
I remember years ago in a graduation speech an admired teacher and healer telling our class that she had reviewed her homework from her own years oat healing school and, 20 years later, all the problems she had back then are the same in her current life. She went on to talk to us about how important it is to remember that our struggles do not magically disappear. She wanted us to understand that what changes is how we orient to them.
For us newly minted energy healers, this speech was a bit of a let down. It was kind of like the Buddha telling us there would be no enlightenment, only the path to it. This speech gave me an opportunity to question my motivations, my ego and my expectations around healership. Thus began a path forward in which I realized I was never going to heal the way I wanted to, but instead had to change something intrinsic in how I understood myself and others.
Here I am 13 years later recognizing the truth of my wise teacher’s words. I still get scared, feel shame, erupt in anger, judge, separate, defend, etc etc. I also cry more, love with more of my heart, and have a more balanced outlook towards my own insecurities and character defaults. Who knew? There are ways to transform the self that do not involve work and suffering. I know how to decrease my suffering in the midst of doing “self work.” Over the years, I’ve discovered crucial tools that can help anyone get over themselves enough to get into themselves. After all, a life that is filtered through compassion and self acceptance takes away the need to do so much work in the first place.
Today I am going to share my hacks with you. These come from my many years of personal experience as a transformation junky and also from the hundreds of people who have come through my practice to go on to live life with a change of personal perspective.
I am going to start with, what to me, is the most important aspect of self transformation.
1. Discover PLAY as an adult.
As children, play comes naturally. Over time, we age and start to take ourselves too seriously. Either we attempt to play as we did when we were children or we prioritize real life over play. Learning how we play as an adult is a completely different concept than playing like you are a child.
We need to create the capacity to take ourselves less seriously and move through the world with out goals and expectations. We definitely need space to vary how we navigate through life in our adult body. We have to be able to get out of our comfort zones.
When I say play as an adult I am not talking about sitting with a group of children and playing a children’s game (although that can be fun too). I am also not talking about buying expensive adult toys that are labeled as play (although those also can be fun). There’s a nuance to the word play as I am using it here. Pay attention to the words that surround it - “discovery”… and “as an adult.”
As you have grown into adulthood, your interests grew with you. You have changed in this process. Parts of you naturally get left behind that needed to be left behind. Some of what is lost, needs to stay lost. Some of what is lost, needs to be retrieved. There is a rigidifying process many of us believe is necessary to embrace as responsible adults that suppresses more flexible aspects of the self. This rigidity keeps us from knowing how to play and open to the world of not being in control.
The discovery of play as an adult is a concept that can turn into a way of living with freedom and joy. I invite you to unleash a bit. Discovering adult play beckons you into a new game within the expected confines of ”self work.” Aspects of life that are taken too seriously may need to be down played or given more freedom.
Play inherently includes being able to mess up and not care about the mess up or over examine the process. Play means letting go of your own performance judgement. Play opens the world. Play is a fun way to find unexpected thoughts, unfamiliar physical movements, and unsuspected vulnerable emotions.
To learn how to play as an adult, start with what interests you. Try to explore an interest without an agenda. Open yourself to the magic of your enthusiasm. Let yourself be imperfect. Let yourself enjoy process over results. Let your adult brain go and let your child self be present. Express. Mess up. Move freely. Feel new. This isn’t about following known ways to feel good. This is about not knowing. Play as an adult stretches the underused muscle of wonder and questions the constrictive nature of control.
The process of playing as an adult may at first feel awkward, weird, acted, or put on. Give it some time. Keep trying. When you learn to play as an adult, your perspective changes and innocence arises in unexpected ways. This is where personal growth happens with zero work. Through play there is an increased capacity to enjoy, be curious, and discover. Our adult self has a chance to remember what it was like to be excited about the unknown and what could happen in it. We get to take ourselves less seriously.
2. Build your CURIOSITY.
I hope that learning to play as an adult might evolve naturally into curiosity and make separating the concept of play from curiosity unnecessary. However, curiosity is too big a game changer in life to forget about it or even leave it under the subheading of play.
Developing curiosity keeps us engaged with our environment in a way that nothing else can.
Life without curiosity is depressed, bland, and full of dead ends. Knowing how everything is going to turn out does not create vitality. Whenever we engage in life in a way that does not allow for obscurity and, dare I say, magic, we are perceiving reality with an outlook of death. Nothing in life is set in stone. Your own expectations can create an illusion that life can only go one way. Ironically, when we view life as set we miss out on everything else. Our blinders literally blind us not only to unexpected possibility but also to the unexpected minutiae that allows us to see the world as an open canvas for growth.
To develop curiosity we need to consciously find or develop our curious mind. School success and job performance don’t actually encourage us to ask questions and remain open. Simply attempting to wonder about curiosity however it wants to be approached is a less controlling method for developing curiosity.
Our own interests guide our curiosity.
Curiosity can be cultivated through interests such as hobbies, art, work, other people, or intellectual stimulation. The important aspect of developing a stronger ability to be curious is to engage with your personal interest through an open mind. Questioning what interests you with judgement closes you off from curiosity. Any time you try to squash a natural impulse, you are avoiding curiosity.
As your ability to hold a mindset of curiosity progresses, it is time to involve the other. From a “self work” perspective, your container needs to be pivoted towards relational curiosity. When you observe someone and attune to what they are saying, curiosity has the potential to arise. As you allow yourself to develop an interest that is unique to the other person, you provide a space of engaged relating. This isn’t about thinking about yourself. This is about allowing your mindbody to respond to the stimulation of the other in order to curiously relate in the relational field of the unknown.
Relational curiosity is the most accessible healing modality available to us all.
Relational interest needs curiosity to survive. I could go on to say that all relationships need curiosity to thrive. We all need relational interactions to heal the parts of ourself that we want to transform. Because we cannot heal alone, we need to question how we interact with people. If we can interact differently and develop curiosity as an inherent way of being, we can increase our capacity to be relational and relate-able. Curiosity is NOT judgement, superiority, self-depreciation, comparing, striving, fantasy, or desire. We need to be able to remain open. Separation closes us off from curiosity. Curiosity is an innate inquisitiveness that comes with an open mind and, as time goes on, an opening heart.
Curiosity is an integral medium for self acceptance, compassion, and the growth of a healthy adult ego.
The truth is that without being able to engage in adult play and the wonders of a curiously open and relational mind, “self work” is always going to feel like a job, an adult imposition, or labor. Until we can soften the parts of us that want to rigidly control our experience, we cannot learn how to grow ourself and let go into that growth with pleasure. Of course self growth means that there are going to be difficult times and hard to experience emotions. By taking the self less seriously we can learn to soften even those times into an experience of open exploration.
Personal Note: Before I started learning about healing, I wasn’t actually curious. I hadn’t understood the importance of play. I was too focused on my own demand of what being a healer meant to recognize how important curiosity and play are. My markers for healing success in my own life and in my clients got in the way of curiosity.
At first, I began to develop curiosity because my teacher told me I had to in order to expand my healing presence and therapist’s mind. As time went on, I began to relate curiosity to fulfillment and joy. This simple way of being with myself and the world changes everything. I’m not really good at explaining how much my life has changed over the course of my adult hood. It’s hard to put in words what I experience as a reality now. Life just feels vibrant and interesting most of the time.
These days, I am not just curious about people. I walk around and notice minute details in my surroundings and engage in my life with vital curiosity. I am excited to see new things or to notice something new in normalized surroundings, and allow questions about what I notice arise into a desire to explore more. Through activating my relationship to curiosity, my entire life has transformed unexpectedly. What started as a development on behalf of an ideal (“healership”) has become an integral part of my being that nourishes my soul.
Ok. Now that I have written about the tools you could choose to develop to make self transformation more about opening into yourself and your life and less about striving and working towards an impossible goal, I want to throw a few ideas out to you as methods to explore yourself using the concepts of play and curiosity.
Hint: All activities suggested below are meant to be CURIOUSLY PLAYED with!
Activities That Build Self Awareness
The following activities are what I often suggest to clients who tend to experience themselves in a way that is too adult and closed. Remember that judgement and expectation kill a curious playful mind. If you cannot change your outlook on yourself and your life, you are doomed to stay static and shrink into old age.
Want to feel younger as you age? Why not play a curious game with one (or all) of the activities below? Use the games to cultivate an open mind set. From there, anything can happen.
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