Awareness – Self

Recently, I was asked what my purpose is.

Why do I do what I do?

For a long time now, it has been this:

To awaken people to reclaim their personal agency and maximise their potential to live a meaningful and authentic life.

This may seem abstract and perhaps a mere lofty ideal; I believe not.

Just as we aspire to do ‘good’, how ‘good’ is embodied, practiced, demonstrated or modeled each day is what matters. This exercise remains personal.

We are not seeking perfection nor are we infallible. We set out each day holding onto the intention for this purpose to be true in words and actions.

How do I know I have succeeded?

What is the measure of success?

Because mine is a transpersonal purpose, it is less about me and much more about the other. And success is then measured by the impact on and outcome for the other with whom I am in contact.

Life purpose makes what we do in our personal and professional life meaningful. As is oft said, it’s the journey not the destination that matters.

With each task and every interaction with one or many – be they family, friends, students, colleagues, clients, etc. – this purpose, like a lighthouse on the frontier of the known and yet unknown, shines the way and alerts us when we are at risk of drifting from the true course.

For me, I am not out to change another. Personal change cannot happen without their committed participation to their own growth. So it is that I seek to create, even if only in small ways, the conditions which activate or deepen their commitment.

To quote Ralph Waldo Emerson,

“…to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!”

Perhaps my measure of success is not lofty enough 😉?

Heading into 2023

I urge you to take time to reflect on what your purpose is and your measure of success. And consider this,

• How are your interactions with others?
• How do you approach your work?
• Are they aligned to your purpose?

May your 2023 be a meaningful year!

© Transfigure Therapy 2022

Where I am located, I sense a cultural impetus in our personal and professional life to be better and perhaps to be more. And there is much available to us for this pursuit of self-improvement of a kind which is observable and measurable.

I am curious by nature and love learning. For all the support I have for growth and development, I do stop and ask.

At what rate should self-improvement occur?

According to whose time? And to what end?

Should there be enough?

Do we need to pause from chasing the future?

What do the persistent evaluation of and judgment on our lives do to us?

Where is our felt sense of peace in all this? Is making peace (that is, being resolved and reconciled) with who we are now a necessary element to our contentment?

Is the pursuit of continuous improvement in opposition to being content?

Perhaps the issue is not in the pursuit, rather in what motivates or drives the pursuit. Why do you do what you do?

This poem speaks to a welcoming and acceptance of what is, now. Then perhaps what we set out to do will be done with peace.

Peace is This Moment Without Judgment
by Dorothy Hunt

Do you think peace requires an end to war?
Or tigers eating only vegetables?
Does peace require an absence from
your boss, your spouse, yourself?…
Do you think peace will come some other place than here?
Some other time than Now?
In some other heart than yours?
​
Peace is this moment without judgment.
That is all. This moment in the Heart-space
where everything that is is welcome.
Peace is this moment without thinking
that it should be some other way,
that you should feel some other thing,
that your life should unfold according to your plans.

Peace is this moment without judgment,
this moment in the heart-space where
everything that is is welcome.

© Transfigure Therapy 2021

Surprised by the fruit hanging on the tree covered with maroon leaves, I stopped to consider whether this tree has been there all along. I haven’t seen these cherry-like fruit before. I knew of course that the tree has been standing guard next to the entrance since I moved into this house some 5 years (!) ago. Now I can say I have a purple leaf sand cherry tree :-).

This little incident is much like 2020 – it takes something different and perhaps drastic to make us see what we’ve been blind to or missing.

This year has been a challenging year in many aspects, from adapting to different and often difficult work situations to increased demand in our homes and relationships.

Yet 2020 is also the year for which we can be grateful. This year helped us to

• acknowledge the importance of stepping off the productivity wagon
• embrace our capacity to live with uncertainty
• rediscover the joys, great and small, our family and other relationships bring
• appreciate the meaning of missing someone
• reconnect with our passions and desires
• realise the significance of our solitude and reflection
• be aware of how little we actually need to be happy
• reinforce the power of kind words and a smile.

Thank you for your community, the sharing of a common spirit and purpose.

You may wish to light a candle for the year passed and set an intention for the year ahead.

As we head to the final days of 2020 with hope that 2021 will be a better year, I ask myself this:

What does “better” mean? What does “a better year” look like?

Let us resolve to retain the positive changes 2021 has brought into our lives, and usher in a better 2021.

~ FlorenceT

© Transfigure Therapy 2020

Seth Godin, former dot com business executive and author, said,

Instead of wondering when our next vacation is, we should set up a life we don’t need to escape from.

What a challenge!

A rich internal life is an antidote to the pervading sense of dread and anxiety that we come across each day. When we are in touch with the richness of our internal life, we will no longer be dependent on an external life for escape.

The present external life

No matter where you are on this quest of setting up a life which you don’t want to escape from, you’re likely experiencing a degree of disappointment and dejection in the current environment. The prospect of the next vacation is bleak, and international travel almost non-existent.

Where do you go now, when options to escape from a high-stress or dissatisfied life are narrower than before? The distractions you allow yourself as consolations or rewards, the activities you indulge in to remind yourself that the way you live is worthwhile indeed, the activities you attend as temporary anesthesia – they are now severely reduced.

Even the most outward focused of us are compelled to reconsider our options. We now must find our respite from our work and in our home, and to maintain our sense of connection and belonging within a smaller social group.

Why an internal life?

This is the epoch to return to our internal life. 

It is time to return to greater appreciation of introspection, depth and meaning. It is necessary especially when we have to keep our own company more often than before.

And this internal life can be scary. Consciously or otherwise, many of us have taken quite resolute steps to not peek into this space while others have been oblivious to the need for it. And many more are tapping into it to varying degrees.

Where are you?

An internal life is the world within us, encompassing the mental and emotional spaces and spiritual by nature.

A rich internal life means you are self-aware and clear about your values, and well-equipped to manage your emotions. It means you have a calm and focused mind, with optimal level of resilience. 

To attain a rich internal life

Here are the preconditions to having a rich internal life:

• time alone – in this place where  you are not performing nor entertained, and you are required to keep yourself company. 
• independence – you must do this exploration and interrogation of your internal life on your own; no amount of discussion with close family and friends will assist in a resolution, in fact it may be counter-productive. Take time to nurture your ability to comfort, discipline, inspire, educate and entertain yourself.

Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company. ~ Seneca

• curiosity – and here, you will give yourself permission to explore all aspects of yourself, the desirables and the undesirables. Let your imagination and fantasies take flight.
• focus – you will spend time making friends with your thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. Learn to discipline your thoughts, and to choose what you pay attention to. Most importantly, focus and choose your daily behaviours and habits. They matter.

Remember that at any given moment there are a thousand things you can love.  ~ David Levithan

Necessary growth

When we emerge from the current environmental restrictions, will we be more aware? Will we know ourselves better? Will we like ourselves better?

This is the growth to aspire to. 

© Transfigure Therapy 2020

I facilitate growth, whether personal or professional.

This is the simple answer to the question I get asked often, “what does a psychotherapist or coach do?”

This is then followed by, “why do you do it?” Because it makes me happy, which of course begs the question, “but why?”

Clients have come to me wanting to know how to make their life “right”, to be happy or how to make the right career decisions, how to climb the mountain in their way, how to achieve certain career goals, how to feel less discontent, how to overcome their malaise… And yes, there are interventions, techniques and strategies which I employ.

And in their questionings, there is one thing underpinning the multitude of wants or desires – it is to move on, to be unstuck, to grow.

Every client at some point in their journey with me expresses the need

• to experience being alive in their everyday life,
• to feel a sense of accomplishment in their personal or professional life, or
• to know there is a reason, the why, to their existence.

This is to find their raison d’être.

I am the sounding board which provides a safe space for clients to  give voice to their life – past, present and future.  I am the mirror upon which they see who and what they are and could be. Clients test out and then spread their wings so to stretch beyond what they know, to explore and take some risks which they are emotionally or psychologically ready or prepared to take.

When the necessary conditions are created, when there is fertile soil, the growing will happen. Each person’s growth is unique. There is no comparison.

This work that I do (which is echoed in my other life as an educator) – to create, to lift, to give others the necessary tools, to give them space to explore and find their way, to create systems or conditions which motivate them to be better versions of themselves – is my raison d’être.

The immeasurable privilege of being able to hold space for another, to be a repository of another’s story, to be an agent of another’s personal or professional growth is second to none.

Social reformation or organizational change always begins with the individual. My work means much and has greater ramifications. Within it, I find great joy and fulfillment.

Find your raison d’être. Seek work so you can live it. There is your fulfillment.

© Transfigure Therapy 2020