“Is it possible to wake up some mornings and feel incapable of loving…when you feel nothing…nothing at all?”
– a text from a very happy, successful friend this morning.
I was there.
Caged in a gemstone mind.
A glass full of goal coins and yet desperately thirsty for joy. Unable to find peace no matter how hard I worked. My goals made me gasp for air. I could not answer “what should I aim for in life ?”
The last few years have been a quest to answer this question. I have found many gems in the course of my barefoot walks so far and I want to share some that are practical and stand out. Today’s wis gem is from the book by Carl Rogers `On Becoming a Person’ that tackles this question and his findings as a psychologist.
See if any of these help.
You have to strive “to be that self which one truly is.”
Soren Kierkegaard
This sentence is the essence of the answer to the question according to Carl Rogers. This sentence for me has been one of those gems that unlocks a profound truth about my double life that i had lived unknowingly for most of my life. I was not striving towards my true self. I did not even know what that self was. I had forgotten.
Prof. Rogers uses his 30 years of clinical practice with his clients to crystallize his `Moves’ method to achieve this freedom self. According to him you have to make 2 fundamental movements in this journey to be your true self.
A. You have to Move Away from some goals.
B. You have to Move Towards some goals.
1. Move away from your facades: The first movement away involves a distancing from a self who we are not. It’s the things we know we are not and yet we keep that facade on for the sake of the crowd or the clan. Even though we may not know yet what we are moving towards we first need to recognise what we are not. But in doing so we start to define , however negatively who we are right now. At first it may be just expressed as a fear of exposing what we are.
But the simple admission of this fear made me feel less fake and feel closer to who I really was — a frightened person behind a facade.
2. Move away from oughts and expectations: This is a move away from how we think we `should’ live our lives. We learn through life that there is a `prescription path’ if trodden will get us acceptance and reward from the crowd and the clan. Slowly, very slowly we get used to this path. The habit of this belief makes us accept to live a life we should vs as we would. For me, it was the conditional respect of getting a respectable job, wife, address, wealth by a certain age to qualify for the love I wanted. While on the surface this goal gave me a lot of drive and aggression, yet always made me feel I was not enough without my achievements.
3. Move away from pleasing others: Rogers observes that `many of his clients have formed themselves by trying to please others, but again, when they are free, they move away from being this person’.
The key here is to choose to move away from anything which feels artificial, imposed and forced by external pressure on ourselves. We have to begin to carefully separate the cupboard of our lives from the clothes we like to wear and the ones we have to wear.
4. Move towards Self- direction- This is a move towards autonomy. This is where we start to take responsibility for our actions and state of mind. We stop blaming the external circumstances for our life and start becoming accountable for how we live daily. I felt this move in my life when i started meditating with Sam Harris on his Waking Up app. I decided I was going to stop being lost in thought and be able to observe my thoughts and learn how to create a healthy distance between me and my racing rabid mind. It was not an easy move. I stopped and started. I missed sessions. I found no value in many sessions. But I persisted because I knew it made me feel free. I was one of the early subscribers to the app in August 2018 and today I have over 700 sessions in my mind and the difference is profound.
Prof. Rogers also confirms that the freedom to be oneself is a frighteningly responsible freedom and the individual moves towards it cautiously, fearfully and with almost no confidence at first.
I urge you to begin your silent, scared rebellions of self-affirmation…and keep adding to that freedom list in numbers and confidence.
5. Move towards being a fluid process vs. a finished self- Prof Rogers here calls out the behaviour of individuals enjoying the stumbling process of self-discovery. They start to see themselves as layers of fluid process rather than a fixed block entity that is different from day to day. They are not disturbed or disheartened to see that they are inconsistent in their growth. They recognise that they are in flux and are content to go with the flow. They start to appreciate themselves as a fluid unfolding process. “The striving for conclusions and end states seems to diminish.”
In my case I used to be self critical about my lack of discipline on managing my anxiety and self-doubt. I enjoy it now. I forgive myself and just start again. I used to scold myself for being emotionally inconsistent. Now i am enjoying accepting my `angry’ version ; my `sad’ version and my `chilled confident’ version as part of my layers of fluid process.
6. Move towards accepting our complexity- Prof. Rogers sees this as a sign of progress when his clients are able to accept the contradictions and paradoxes of emotions in any given moment without hiding any of them. I have a complex relationship with my brother. But I am now able to accept that I love him while accepting that I also resent his way of looking at life. I am getting comfortable with allowing both versions of me to coexist. If you find yourself struggling with paradoxes like this in your life…try to accept yourself in both states. It’s you in your fluid layers. We have to start using the metaphor of white light to describe our true self and all the shades of the rainbow are naturally flowing within.
7. Move towards openness to your own experience- Prof. Rogers calls this a move when individuals see their experience as a friendly resource and not a frightening enemy. And you start to accept that as something in yourself that need not be hidden or grudged.
So, this applies to my relationship with porn. I used to crave porn and then kick myself for using it and then i would reload and repeat. Until one day i noticed that every time I felt the urge it was always linked to feeling `low’ or anxious. And it struck me that porn was my way to boost my confidence. I was using the dopamine release from the masturbation to soothe myself from stress and anxiety. Just the act of stopping and asking myself `what am i feeling’ and `why am i feeling the need for porn’. The act of wanting to understand the feeling and learn from it made the aversion and fear of porn go away. Being open to experiencing my own emotions without any judgment or dread and accepting it as a part of childlike authentic self was my answer.
Now I don’t need to watch porn. I see it as a small step towards my higher flow self over my old fixed self.
8. Move Towards acceptance of others- Prof Rogers sees this a goal closely linked to the previous one where the individual opens up to and accepts others’ experiences. Here the people stop judging others. They start to see their experiences and what it is and not if it is right or wrong.
9. Move towards Trust of Self-
He uses the example of creative individuals like Hemingway, Einstein and El Greco who trusted their own self and remained original in their pursuit of their passion. Of Einstein he writes, “rather than drawing back because of his inadequate academic preparation in physics, he simply moved toward being Einstein, towards thinking his own thoughts, towards being as truly and deeply himself as he could”.
This is when a person makes it a goal to follow their own instinct, dare to feel their own feelings, live by their own unique values which they have discovered within and then express it out into the world.
“The person is increasingly a harmony of complex sensings and reactions, rather than being the clarity and simplicity of rigidity.”- Prof. Carl Rogers
We all sense this trust in self in moments when we feel absorbed and free and embodied within our unadorned self. My writing makes me feel like this. I am sure you have yours.
He concludes by clearing a key misapprehension. The one that thinks that all this openness and fluidity will mean permission to becoming wild and evil.
He states that in his experience he has found that his clients don’t break out into an emotional orgy. In fact, they are able to feel the emotion for what it is and not be swayed by it. He can be his fear and not be dissolved by it; she can feel self-pitying and not feel bad for feeling it. He can feel his lust and his laziness and yet not get swept away by it. In his own words,
In the end
I found these 9 moves as observed by Prof. Carl Rogers as a radical method to help become that self one truly is and gain freedom from our facades.
I am on this path. I might never get to the goal but for me the journey is the reward. I sincerely hope you find yours.
—
This post was previously published on Change Becomes You.
***
If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project and want a deeper connection with our community, please join us as a Premium Member today.
Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS. Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
—
Photo credit: Pixabay