3 Ways to Strengthen Your Connection to Yourself
There’s a collective desire right now for us to strengthen our self-connection and trust. But many of us lose our voices because of the constant noise from “influencers” and other outside voices. This is why self-connection becomes so important, so I’m exploring what self-connection really is, why it’s non-negotiable, and three things you can start now to begin the journey of connecting to yourself.
There's this huge tipping point happening right now. This big craving for each of us to find that inner wisdom and that trust within ourselves. I hope that I'm not the only person who feels right now that you're being spoken at by so many influencers, so many thought leaders, so many experts, and you're tired of hearing those voices. I'm tired of hearing those voices.
And maybe it's a growth stage that I'm at, or you're at, or whatever, but I'm tired. I want to learn to hear my own wisdom. My own voice. So it's been heavy on my heart. And I've been sitting with it for a couple of weeks. If you're tired of hearing those voices and messages being thrown at you what’s the next step? What do we do from here? This is where true self-connection becomes important which we'll talk about in today's episode.
It’s not a mistake you’re feeling this way. This is a sign, this is a sign that you’re on the path to authentic power. Your soul is making it super clear you’re ready to start trusting yourself and guiding your life by that inner wisdom, which has all the answers you need. There is no one uniquely qualified on this earth to know exactly what is good for you, except for you and God/Universe.
What is Self-Connection?
There's a slight difference between awareness and self-awareness. Scott Jeffrey, the founder of CEOsage, says, "While awareness is knowing what’s happening around you, self-awareness is knowing what you’re experiencing. Self-awareness is the ability to know what we are doing as we do it and understand why we are doing it." In this context of listening too much to outside voices many times, we do it because we don't trust ourselves.
The reason I didn't trust myself is because of a lack of clarity and action. I didn't know why I was creating the thing I was creating. I also didn't have proof of concept where I tested an idea in the market to see what people wanted. I also didn't trust I could figure challenges out in my own way.
When we don't have clarity we can mistake it for not being capable. Out of fear, we give power to social platforms and people thinking there's The Path and The Way. The world's attached such importance to visibility and success that many of us fear being seen as invisible or irrelevant if we don't obsess over social media and constant connectivity.
It's interesting how many of us have no problem being 100% connected. Social media. Email. Streaming. But the one connection that has the most power, the inner one, we ignore. It's not your fault at all. Many of us are in environments that condition and reward us for living this way.
The good news is once you realize where outside voices are infiltrating your life you start waking up. I started asking harder questions of myself about why I'm on Instagram. Why I want to release a product. What I started noticing is I was doing a lot of things that drained my energy. That fought against what my inner wisdom was telling me. So I started releasing things that didn't feel aligned and practiced tuning in more.
This act of tuning into that inner wisdom again is what Abraham Maslow describes as authentic selfhood. In Toward a Psychology of Being he says, "Authentic selfhood can be defined in part as being able to hear these impulse-voices within oneself, that is, to know what one really wants or doesn’t want, what one is fit for and what one is not fit for, etc." We know what we want or don't want. It's a matter of getting into the habit again of listening and being honest enough to embrace and act on the answers we receive.
To pack a little more power to this punch let's get into why self-connection is important with a few studies.
Why self-Connection is Important
Connection beats happiness or even mindfulness in creating meaning. In a study conducted by Kristine Klussman PhD they "asked 66 people to take a test that assessed their level of mindfulness — a measure that tends to correlate with life satisfaction — and then journal every day for one week. Half the group was asked to write about things that had happened that day, and the other half was asked to write about aspects of their day that related to self-connection. One month later, the group who’d just journaled about their days still saw no change, but the people who had journaled about self-connection tested significantly higher on mindfulness than before they’d started the study."
She continues, "by focusing on cultivating connection (rather than happiness, mindfulness, resilience or any other single concept), we naturally build lives rich with meaning and satisfaction.” Why do we lose this ability to begin with if it's the most powerful in make us feel meaning and satisfaction? James F. Zender Ph.D. says:
"Often children who are dealing with overwhelmed and pre-occupied parents are faced with a horrible developmental decision. Focus all their being on the needs of the parent and sacrifice their connection with self which is necessary to remain in relationship to the parent, or remain true to inner connection and sacrifice connection to the parent."
For 99.99% of kids in this situation, I bet remaining true to inner connection isn't an option. They often see their very survival attached to their parents. I don't believe this is the only way one can find themselves disconnected but it's probably one of the biggest. Either way, we learn early in life to trade in self-connection for other ways of being.
The good news is James F. Zender Ph.D. also says, "The core of self-healing begins with awareness and recognition that there is inner discord that has perhaps sounded from the beginning of one’s existence. Simply understanding how the separation from self may have resulted can bring a sense of relief. Learning to recognize and validate one’s own needs is a huge step towards self-healing."
So far we got down what self-connection is and why it's important to have. Before I jump into a few ways you can strengthen that connection again I want to make a distinction between getting support and making your own decisions.
Busy-ness Isn't a Badge of Honor
Busy-ness isn't the badge of honor the world makes it out to be. It's only because no one knows how to measure productivity outside of factory line work so they needed another physical representation. Busy-ness should do the trick. Like back in the 1800s when people were still planning cities around the need to board horses.
Then the car came into the picture changing everything. Those city planners had no foresight into what would replace the horse and buggy. How could they? They only knew how things had been done until that point.
So just like in the industrial era where productivity was measured by the amount of gismos you made each day we haven't had the equivalent of the car come into the picture and change how we view productivity. So we see busy-ness as the new gismo. Businesses expect employees to be connected 24/7 and to turn over subpar work at faster speeds.
Cal Newport to me is the car version of productivity. His book Deep Work* dives into these concepts and proves that great work is about doing less. About having less distractions and noise. Besides, your ability to connect with yourself and produce deep work goes for a higher price in the economy than shallow work. Work like posting on social media, scrolling social media, answering emails, etc.
We need to stop hiring out the deep work only we can know the answers to. I'm a copywriter and see the difference between the clients who have a clear vision of who they're serving and ones who hope I can figure it out for them. The ones with clarity grow with ease and get the coolest collaborations. One of my clients worked with a huge public figure on a Netflix documentary that's nominated for an Oscar.
Then there have been a few clients who think they need a copywriter but actually need time clarifying their vision. There's only been one client where we had to part ways halfway through a project. She came to me with one vision for her business but as we got to work she kept changing it multiple times. She also went to Facebook groups and friends for opinions so she flip-flopped back and forth daily.
It broke my heart to see her distrust herself so much. She also had been running the business for over ten years and hadn't gotten close to six figures yet. In an industry where you could easily make triple that amount.
We have to commit to taking the shaky, uncomfortable steps toward what our voices tell us. There's no way to outsource or delay the process. If you want to have a strong self-connection you have to do the work. I've had to throw out almost everything from other people's voices over the last couple of years.
Now I finally feel like I'm becoming myself again. Like this person who is me has just risen from the ashes and is like 'I'm here.’ It feels exhilarating. But at the same time, I'm like, dang it. Why didn’t I figure this out sooner?
Here's what you can do now to start down the road to self-connection:
1.Develop the Observing Self
This means becoming more conscious of your thoughts and emotions and separating your sense of self from them. Scott Jeffrey says, "The reason we are largely unconscious to our behavior is that our egos act autonomously. We have no one monitoring our thoughts, feelings, actions, and behavior from moment to moment." Without this observing self it's easy to fall prey to our ever-changing emotions and allow the voices of those outside of us to influence us.
Some ways to start developing this observing self: practice meditation using the Headspace app for beginners or the Chopra app for more intermediate. Gentle yoga. Yoga nidra. Read The Seat of The Soul* by Gary Zukav or The Untethered Soul* by Michael Singer. Journaling.
Jeffrey also defines self-leadership as taking away authority from people, groups, or institutions and placing that authority and responsibility back onto ourselves for our behavior. He says thats developmental psychologist Susanne Cook-Greuter says less than 3% of adults ever reach this point. Wow. I know you want to have this sense of self-leadership.
Otherwise, you wouldn't be a part of The Good Space community. This idea of taking full responsibility for your thoughts and actions puts you in that 3% and it starts with observing the self. Connecting within and having the emotional experience to understand what you're experiencing on a physical and emotional level. Then using that information to continue evolving higher and higher.
2. Notice and Name Your Feelings
Kristine Klussman PhD says, "self-connection is a state of being…one in which you regularly tune in to your own emotional, spiritual, and physical needs, and honor them in your daily actions." This is like a four step process. Tuning into your emotional, spiritual, and physical needs. Three important parts of the whole. Then honoring those needs through your daily actions. How can you start tuning in more?
For me, it's a morning routine that touches mainly on the emotional and spiritual. My morning routine personality type of emotional/practical means I like a routine that's the same every day so it's prayer, meditation, daily pages, then creative work. Some mornings when my body feels extra achy I'll do gentle yoga. Otherwise I have workouts scheduled throughout the week to support the physical. A morning routine is the easiest way to start. If you haven't downloaded my free morning routine guide do it now.
When it comes to tuning in how do you tell the difference between a fear-based answer from the ego and the voice of the Higher Self? This was something I struggled with for years in my early twenties. I would pray then instantly feel fear because what if God tells me to do something I don't want to do? Or I'd know the answer then doubt myself because how can it be that easy?
I'm a totally different person now. I know how to hear my inner wisdom and catch the ego. I know that every answer is already within. That if I don't get an immediate answer it means I'm not ready for it or things are happening in the world to conspire for me to receive it.
Irina Yugay explains knowing the difference between the fear-based ego and the Higher Self in her article on MindValley. She says:
"If you feel physical sensations of anxiety, tension, fear, or anger, you are talking to the ego.
The ego creates its identity around pain.
That’s what it knows. That’s what it’s comfortable with and that’s the language it understands. It wants to keep identifying with that negativity because then it has an identity.
If you feel physical sensations of lightness, love, energy, happiness, etc., you are talking to the Higher Self.
There is no identity in the Higher Self. It’s just energy, with no beginning and no end. The natural state of the Higher Self is free, loving and joyful.
One method is to ask yes/no questions and then listen for the immediate answer – sometimes even before you finish the question.
This immediate response is probably your Higher Self, bypassing the programming of the mind. If you were to give yourself time to analyze your question, believe me, the ego would start chiming in with its usual negative chatter!"
Start practicing this by noticing and naming your feelings. You can start small by noticing the emotion itself. "Ah I'm feeling anger in my body right now. In my heart and stomach." Then observe it and let it build and peak so you can release it. When we don't give time to ourselves to experience emotions that's when they get trapped.
As you get better at noticing and naming you can start doing so on the spiritual level. When you pray notice the energy behind it. Notice the energy behind the answers. Start observing if it's the ego or higher self. Then ask yourself the right questions to gravitate more towards the higher self. These practices won't take long to become automatic so commit for at least two weeks and see how you feel.
3. Feel Good
For those times you're feeling doubt your go-to move needs to be focusing on what feels good. When you feel good there's no resistance and then God/Universe can continue sending abundance your way. If you're feeling irritable because work feels like an endless slog what next inspired action can you take in this moment? What one thing would make you feel good again?
It may be taking a quick nap, a walk, or working on another aspect of the project that's more enjoyable. Or if you're watching a YouTube video from a thought leader and feel resistance then shut it off. Ask yourself what you'd rather do instead. Getting still is the first step in starting to trust yourself more. Creating enough moments to hear yourself.
Another way I like to feel good is by asking myself what narrative I'm telling myself. Especially when I feel sad or discouraged. On MindValley, Cheyenne Diaz says:
"Using the words “I am” sends a powerful message to the brain.
Whenever we recruit the use of these words, we’re affirming something fundamental about ourselves. An “I am” statement is a statement of identity.
To say, “I am tired,” or “I am depressed,” doesn’t indicate a passing, temporary state. At least not to our minds. Our minds interpret such statements as a validation of self, an integral component of our identity.
And this is problematic. When we express a passing mood, thought, or emotion as an “I am” statement, whether aloud or in self-talk, our minds interpret this as a proclamation of self.”
What statements are you making to yourself? What can you do to feel good right now?
Affirmation
I expand into greater abundance as I listen to my inner wisdom in each moment and release what brings resistance.
Writing Prompt
What can I do this week to start connecting to myself more? Is there anything I can press pause on to simplify and hear my voice better?
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