First I have to say (because I am forthright if nothing else) that when we no longer hide, we are now in a position to heal. A door opens. We no longer try so hard to not feel, to not hurt, to not show our human weaknesses. We speak, or take action, or redirect our thoughts from a deep place of knowing who we are, or who we are attempting to become.

Trusting others is the way we build our confidence in ourselves. When others are allowed to see us as who we are and meet us in that open place, we see that we have a shared vulnerability and humanity. The struggles are not unique or signs of failure. Every soul born in a body has to face the same challenges.

It helps us to move from an adolescent place of posturing and the fearful wearing of a mask into a greater connection with our own personal power.

The feeling that we will die if others don’t accept us is normal. I believe it comes from our ancestral memory. Being shunned meant no one would allow you “in”. Being alone in the forest, without food, shelter and clothing meant you were condemned. There were predators in that unprotected place. The teen years are when these feelings are most intense.

Throughout my life, the people I trusted the least were people who are wearing a mask. It is probably why I failed to trust myself for so many years.

So how does an individual become real?

Somewhere in the mess of habits and emotions that we call the self, is the “sweet spot”. It isn’t about revictimizing ourselves (although we have been trained to do that brilliantly). It isn’t about self-loathing that leads us to punish ourselves because we are not good enough. It isn’t about killing off the core soul self to prevent others from rejecting us.

That is why I grew to be 178 pounds when I was alone in a tiny apartment one summer in university. Because I feared and was at war with my body, I put on weight. Because I put on weight, I only felt in control when I was eating. I had no distraction from the searing imprint of abandonment in my childhood other than punishing myself. By unconsciously deforming my physical presentation, I was showing I was in control.

And, finally, it isn’t by resigning to pain, to dysfunction, to the operating system of past habits that a person can end the struggle between the static and the dynamic self.

(That is my gold medal stuck place. I will tell myself I did well enough. This new resting place of reset is as good as it can get. Just settle in. I am not on the podium but at least I didn’t trip on my own feet and fall on my face.)

Finally, we are merely mortal. We can only take ONE thing and focus on that. It is up to each of us to figure out what keystone habit will change our entire construction of reality.

For me, I was driven into a corner to face myself by debilitating Rheumatoid Arthritis. I was deforming, unable to sleep, in constant pain. My war with my body could no longer be ignored.

When the specialist told me I would be in a wheelchair, I cried the entire hour-long car ride back to my house. And then I got angry.

I got angry at myself for not paying attention. I got angry at the medical system for not understanding more about mental pain and physical pain. And I sat and began to research for eight hours without taking a break every medical journal, world wide study, and methodology I could find.

Three doctors said I could never live without pain.

My attitude was, “Fuck you.”

I did research. I ordered DHEA on line myself. I followed the Norweigan study’s procedure and fasted for 12 days with only water. I went to a hormone doctor and got my hormones balanced. I became serious about meditation practice and watching my mind. I began to honour the entirety of myself. I paid attention to my masked rage, my limitations, my childishness, my yearnings, my gifts. I went on a path of soul retrieval whereby I accept all of my complexities. I was only human.

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We live in a society that had a good-until-date on our bodies. My yearly testing indicates that I “read” as 20 years younger than I did seven years ago. My body is dynamic. It shifted as my relationship with it shifted.

Traditionally the system gives up on us…. oh you are 50, or 60, or 70. Of course, you are hurting, growing increasingly weaker and the best you can hope for is to slow down your own disintegration.

It is simply not true. My reaction was, “Fuck you.”

I started reading about DNA about telomeres about stem cell experiments. I began to look at Ted Talks and YouTube videos of senior body builders.

It used to be believed that Tuberculosis could not be cured, that Polio would deform, that longevity was 50, then 60, then 70.

Everything changes.

I am a dynamic set of habits and thoughts. Society is a construct of ideas. Science no longer is a thick leather-bound bible of facts.

Finally, who we are is a field of energy, a collection of beliefs, a structure of habits. The place of magic is to be open and curious. Who am I? Who am I now?

And to get to this place of possibility, we first must not be encased in a sarcophagus of identity.

In addition, people around us create who we are. Thirty-five years of longitudinal studies prove that If others in our “social amoeba” are eating poorly, we will eat poorly. If they aren’t proactive and are in a “survivor’s mode” so will we be in a state of constant struggle.

We fall for old habits when the new habits are not hard-wired. We fit in with the social reflections around us.

Take for instance the habitual problem of losing my keys. I spent 30 years not knowing where I last put my keys. And then one day I stood in the doorway furious with myself. It was only then I set an intention. I got a key rack and taught myself to put my keys away.

The study of neurological pathways shows that 66 days of repeating a behaviour until it is hard-wired is a step to a new life.

This person that we stand within is NOT the best we can be. It is a leftover of past thoughts and habits. It is a leftover of the mother’s story and the grandmother’s story back for seven generations.

So somewhere between resignation, victimhood, inward-directed anger is the ability to calmly and carefully rebuild ourselves.

But in order to do that, we have to research the most effective manner to go about it. We don’t decide to rebuild our bathroom without watching youtube videos or hiring a plumber. It is not crowbar work. Self needs finessing.

When we give ourselves as we are too much credit and ourselves as we are becoming too little, we deny ourselves the opportunity to live a more peaceful, a healthier and more satisfying life. And it all starts with desire.

Sign up for change. Find articles and study them. Figure out who you want to be and do everything you can to lovingly guide yourself there. The self is a dynamic construct.

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