Why is self-connection important? Part 2

Without a deep, authentic, whole-hearted connection to yourself, you cannot know yourself fully. When you do not know yourself fully, all of the decisions you make, relationships you build, work you pursue, and life you create is coming from a disconnected place. They are not in full integrity with who you are at your core. Coming from this space, they are likely to be superficial solutions to what you think you want, need, and believe, rather than the deepest and purest place of truth within you. This is a cue for anxiety, stress, burnout, and ultimately a sense of lack — a disillusionment or 'is this all there is?' in life.

And you deserve more. You can have more.

One journal notes that “being self-connected requires one to be aware of the self, accept that self, and act in alignment with it”. It notes that there is significant evidence that “self-connection is important to obtaining greater well-being” (Klussman et al., 2022).

Self connection can be broken down into three components: 1) awareness of oneself, 2) acceptance of oneself based on this awareness, and 3) alignment of one’s behaviours with this awareness. 

Awareness

Awareness and learning the art of it, permeates every pillar of my 4 pillar program Transformative Connections. Mindfulness is key, observing or noting sensations, thoughts, and emotions as they occur, bringing them into awareness and potentially greater clarity (Brown, Ryan, & Creswell, 2007; Mikulas, 2011). This helps you learn to discern what’s coming up (Pillar 1), and gently translate what’s true for you. A lot of my clients are very good at picking up on a sense of something going on for them, a hunch, a gut instinct, something – but struggle to make sense of whether it’s anxiety or fear fuelled, or intuition led. Understandably, they rarely know how to translate its messages and get clarity on what’s true for them. When we’re so up in our heads and logical, rational, smart, it can be tricky to get back into our body’s wisdom.

Acceptance

Being able to accept what’s coming up for us without judgement, criticism, dismissal, or any sort of potentially negative reaction is the second key to self-connection. It’s about accepting your internal states, preference, resources, and intuitions. It’s about being receptive and open to yourself, rather than avoidance and denial  (Klussman et al., 2022). This is also a part of mindfulness, where you learn present-moment awareness as an accepting stance towards your experiences (see Kabat-Zinn, 1990; Lindsay & Creswell, 2017). Acceptance permeates all of the Pillars in my work: how can you connect to yourself if you are not accepting what comes up? The first step to any change is awareness and the second, I would argue, is acceptance. Only once you have accepted your reality, what emotions and experiences are making themselves present for you, and made your peace with that, can you begin to embody your authentic and true self. And only once you’re fully embodied and aware of what’s going on for you, can you begin to make sense of what decisions might serve you best. Otherwise, you risk taking a half-baked version of yourself and tacking on action steps or forward movement that misses some very real core components of who you are. 

Imagine, for example, you are taking a job but you feel a bit off about it. Something is making you anxious but you can't tell what. You dismiss it as irrational or typical nerves when there’s change, and just get on with your day. Eventually, you start the job and realise you were ignoring a very real anxiety instinct informing you that perhaps you weren’t ready for certain aspects of it. Had you listened to yourself, accepted the anxiety coming up, and befriended it, you may have gleaned some useful insights on what you need to learn, do, or change, to get you to perform at your peak when you start that new job. Acceptance = allows empowered action.

Alignment 

The third, and final, component of self-connection, is alignment. Once you are aligned with your awareness of self, accept it, and act in alignment with that, you are in full self-connection mode. This is where Pillars 3 and 4 of my system play out. Pillar 3 is about helping you take aligned action, micro-steps that you can iterate and pivot upon as you gently move forward, feeling it out as you go. Pillar 4 is about protecting yourself from outside and inner saboteurs who can detract you from your alignment, take you off course, pull you away from your own best course of action forward. 

Why is this important? Well, it’s very easy to take action. It’s easy to ‘do things’ and ‘make changes’ in our lives. We can all quit our jobs, leave our spouses, move countries, do whatever we need to do to scratch that itch and make us feel like we’re making progress. The problem is - how do we know that we’re doing the right thing? How do we know it’s the right step for us? How can we avoid regrets? How can we avoid moving in the wrong direction, or at least a direction that we’ll later look back on and think - ah, this was short-sighted? We can do all of this when we are aligned. When we are clear on what is coming up for us, we understand its messages, we accept them, and we act in alignment with that. No denial, no dismissal, no avoidance. But acceptance of our emotions and instincts, and moving from there. 

This idea of self-connection, “is similar to conceptualizations of self-determined decisions in Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 1980, 1985) as well as authentic behavior (Kernis & Goldman, 2006; Wood, Linley, Maltby, Baliousis, & Joseph, 2008) That is, behavioral alignment involves deciding to act in ways that authentically reflect the perceived self.” 

Again, you can’t fix the problems in your life if you are ignoring them (no acceptance) or aren’t even aware of what the problems are (low awareness). If you are aware and accept them but don’t align with them, then there’s no potential for ‘aligned action’, or action that can really respond to what’s going on. It’s all pretty pointless. At least if you’re looking for long term happiness and authentic fulfilment.

So, self-connection is key for me.

Only when you are fully self-connected can you have true well-being. Only when you know yourself intimately, can you really feel your purpose in life and attain goals that will give you genuine, deep-rooted fulfilment. Only then can you build relationships that come from within, are authentic, heart-centred, and pure. 

Stay tuned for my next blog post to learn more about how self-connection fuels productivity, motivation, engagement, and all the good things we seek in our work!

P.S. How self-connected are you? Book a complimentary connection call.