Developing your Inner Authority
Once again a reminder that nobody knows what you need better than you (Part 2)
Hello + happy Tuesday!
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Two weeks ago, I set out to explore a possible answer to the question “What is the aim of all this ‘self-work?’” and ended up writing about The Doom Loop. The Doom Loop is what I call the human propensity toward black-and-white thinking. It’s the way you get caught up in perfectionism on your journey to healing and wholeness: you think that by pursuing perfection, you are moving toward self-improvement, when in reality perfectionism is an illusion. It takes time to see that what initially looks like the path is actually an obstacle to the path.
Today I’m going to attempt to describe how you might begin to inhabit the messiness between extremes (or to dig a little deeper, if your eyes are already open to how perfectionism gets in your way).
But first, an anecdote:
My line-in-the-sand moment arrived in mid-September 2017, when I quit drinking. Though I’d already been interested in “self-work” and “self-development” (in quotes because these are ambiguous terms that could be traded out for dozens of others) for many years—attending workshops, trainings, and programs in pursuit of some sense of meaning— leaving alcohol behind was the choice that really started to get things rolling for me, what had me start taking my life, and my experience of life, more seriously. I followed all the advice, I experimented with everything the “experts” were recommending (in quotes because these days I am my own expert as far as what does and doesn’t work for me, a process that took years to, well, develop), I devoted myself to solid routines and practices, and I felt a legit sense of discipline—something that I’d longed to feel—for the first time since childhood when I still thought that I might make it as a ballet dancer and before I started drinking and drugging.
About eighteen months in (and I know many longtime friends and readers have heard this story dozens of times before, so my apologies) I was scrubbing my face probably a little too hard in the shower when the moment came:
⚡️What was the point of all this “self-work” if I my EXPERIENCE OF LIFE still felt more or less the same as before?
Which is to say:
What was the point of all *this* if I still felt pretty shitty most of the time?
At the time, I wouldn’t have described that shower illumination (it’s always in the car or the shower when the best downloads come, isn’t it?) the way I’m about to, from the vantage point of retrospect. In that lightbulb moment, what I recognized was that my efforts, however well intended, were keeping me on the same hamster wheel I was desperately trying to escape. What I know now and what I caught a glimpse of then was that I was actually being lead astray by seeking answers externally.
And so began the (slow, painstaking, often boring, definitely devoid of all excitement or fanfare) excursion into my inner landscape.
And just to get this truth out of the way up front: turning inward and creating a new relationship with your inner world is an uncomfortable, tedious undertaking that takes years. I share this not to scare you off, but to normalize that your timeline is going to take longer than you want/or wish/or would like, and the sooner you can embrace that, the sooner you can begin to enjoy the journey instead of rushing to the next goalpost (there aren’t any goalposts but that’s another post).
Unbeknownst to me at the time, my response to the lightbulb moment was to accept an invitation into an experiment. I began learning to cease looking externally for answers to my Big Life Questions, so I could discover meaning from within instead. I began to build my inner authority, which started with creating a relationship with that often buried, or numbed out, voice within me that had finally gotten unignorable enough that I had no choice but to seek a new way.
Slowly, slowly over time, the results of this experiment has lead to a fundamental shift in how I experience and interact with and receive my life.
Today I extend an invitation to all of you: your journey out of The Doom Loop is a journey out of your head and into your heart and your body.
Here are some suggestions for first next steps. Choose one or two and experiment. Remember, the whole point of this is for you to build your own inner authority, not to listen to some lady telling you what to do. If something I suggest doesn’t feel right or work for you, leave it behind. I’ll be here throwing out suggestions, resources, and recommendations, but ultimately this journey is one of discovering what is right for you, which nobody can know but you.
One: Contemplation
Activities that fall into the contemplation bucket:
Meditation
Journaling
Time in nature with no tech (walks, forest bathing, anytime spent in nature)
Listening to beautiful music without multitasking
Simply sitting quietly: with a morning cup of tea or coffee, cooking without, say, listening to music/podcast (even if you start with 10 minutes), driving in quiet, showering or taking a bath in quiet with no distractions.
Reading fiction
And?
The point of finding daily time to be in contemplation is for you to have space to explore your inner landscape. It is here you can catch yourself in autopilot tendencies, your knee-jerk responses, the looping thoughts, the constant to-do list humming in the background. It’s also a time you can begin to listen. The greatest aim of this is for you to spend time every day listening for the voice of your “higher self” (if this phrase skeeves you out you can trade it out for teacher within, intuition, gut feeling, inner compass, etc etc. What you call it is less important than the felt-sense experience).
Over time, this voice becomes stronger, and your relationship to this part of you that has your best, most aligned interests at heart becomes louder than the one that would constantly remind you of your “shortcomings” (in quotes because I don’t believe in “shortcomings” anymore).
And, most deliciously—I have chills just thinking about it—once you establish a relationship to this “higher self,” you can turn to it when faced with a question, or you have to make a decision, or when someone in your life is being an asshole and you want to respond in a new way that is not perpetuating old patterns, or when something just feels off and you need some clarity, and more and more of this so on into infinity (for real, infinity, the lessons and aha’s and illuminations don’t stop).
Two: Crafting a consistent practice
I shared this on Instagram a couple of weeks ago, but: the aim of consistent practice is not necessarily to feel better, though that might be an outcome. The aim is for you to have somewhere to go, something to do, in difficult moments. This is harm reduction. Every time you turn to your practice over an old behavior that you know isn’t helpful, you are showing yourself that you matter. You are creating new neural pathways. You are living, quite literally, into a new life.
Because, ayyyy. You probably already know this, but a MAJOR part of change is learning to be uncomfortable. To let the discomfort burn through, to sit and squirm until it passes. Practice can help it pass.
Three: Incorporate self-compassion
For this, I will share a resource: Our Lady of Self-Compassion herself, Dr. Kristin Neff.
She describes the three elements of self-compassion as follows:
Self-kindness vs. self-judgement
Common humanity vs. isolation (I consider this element the sweetest, most accessible entry point), and
Mindfulness vs. over-identification
Without even reading the explanations of these, you can imagine how helpful it would be to develop these capacities.
Four: Question your thoughts
This is where you begin consciously changing the way you talk to yourself about yourself—this is the way you fundamentally, and permanently! shift your inner dialogue.
A resource that really helped me with this was the work of Kara Lowentheil - specifically, her podcast, Unfuck Your Brain.
You can also read my post about Thoughtwork:
Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life
Five: Consider the Three Centers of Intelligence
In Integral Coaching, we develop the Three Centers of Intelligence: head, heart, body. By and large, we are all extraordinarily head dominant. As you bring these intelligences into balance, you can refer to different aspects of yourself for guidance and wisdom. The brain becomes a servant more than a master (incidentally! diving into the Three Centers is part of what we’ll be playing around with in my upcoming workshop: Close to the Bone: Stay fortified to stay engaged).
Back to the invitation: if you are curious about this, I encourage you to simply choose one or two to play around with, and just get started. I use the word “experiment” very intentionally. You are in a lab, experimenting, discovering your own “aha’s!” which will be different than mine. No scientist goes into a lab with a question knowing what the result will be, knowing what they will discover in the process. They experiment, stay curious, and then they land on something that works, at which point they can replicate results.
So have at it, beautiful friends. Let me know what you find.
Start Close In
by David Whyte
Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way to begin
the conversation.Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people’s questions,
don’t let them
smother something
simple.To hear
another’s voice,
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voicebecomes an
intimate
private ear
that can
really listen
to another.Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow
someone else’s
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don’t mistake
that other
for your own.Start close in,
don’t take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.
Once again, if you want explore this subject with other inner spelunkers, come to my workshop on 2/26. It’s $13 and I promise you’ll leave with practical tools that you can build and deepen and regenerate as you go. And also it will be fun and we will laugh at our own absurdity and have a little bit (just a little!) of fun.
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SELF MADE is a call to deeply connect with the self—self-knowledge, self-trust, self-development—and then to make, small step by step, a life that you savor. Posts are written by me, Dani Cirignano, writer, Certified Integral Coach, and Holistic Recovery Guide, based in San Francisco, CA.
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