Becoming Yourself

Developing a Better You

Month: May 2024 (Page 1 of 2)

Recover from Hard Times with the 3 Hs

May 25, 2024 / / 0 Comments

I struggle to have life lessons stick.

Whenever I have a personal development insight, either taken from someone else’s wisdom or born of my own inner wrangling, I try to make it simple. Easy to remember. Sticky.

During a recent hard time, I came up with the 3 Hs. They are in no way new or novel. Many others have shared the same insights in different ways. This is just my own pneumonic attempt to remember these lessons and benefit from them in the future:

HEALING

I need healing for the wounds in my PAST. Acknowledge what happened. Embrace the pain. Have hard conversations. Forgive myself and others. Share the hurts with appropriate people. Learn from the scars. Let things go.

HELP

I need help with the issues in my PRESENT. These can be things like heath. A place to stay. Guidance. Money. Meaningful work. Managing important relationships. Do for myself what I can. Admit what I can’t. Seek help from family, friends, therapists, professionals, and agencies.

HOPE

I need hope for my FUTURE. Choosing a positive perspective. Believing something good is coming. Finding motivation to engage with life. Having someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to.

I’ve found these 3 Hs in myself, others, and God. I’ve done a lot of inner work “peeling my own onion.” I’ve opened up to family and close friends, asking for advice and help. I’ve been to therapy. I’ve prayed, trusted, and leaned on God. I regularly engage in physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual personal growth exercises. I am far from perfect and still struggle, but focusing on the 3 Hs has really helped me recover from hard times.

Where do you find the Healing, Help, and Hope? In yourself, in others, in your Higher Power? Try all three. Be honest. Do your inner work. Share appropriately. Be vulnerable. Ask for what your need. Be open to receive it. If you do, you’ll be on your way to recovery, and you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself. 

10 Ancient Values for Modern Joy

May 18, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Sometimes I’m not very smart.

In my search for meaning, joy, and a life well-lived, I often look for new insights, fresh ideas, and novel experiences. But usually the tools I need to achieve those goals have been proclaimed for ages. 

I was reminded of that truth when I read author Randy Woodley’s list of ten values essential to Indigenous wisdom:

  • Respect: Respect everyone. Everyone and everything is sacred.
  • Harmony: Seek harmony and cooperation with people and nature.
  • Friendship: Increase the number and depth of your close friends and family.
  • Humor: Laugh at yourself; we are merely human.
  • Equality: Everyone expresses their voice in decisions.
  • Authenticity: Speak from your heart.
  • History: Learn from the past. Live presently by looking back.
  • Balance work and rest: Work hard, but rest well.
  • Generosity: Share what you have with others.
  • Accountability: We are all interconnected. We are all related.

Values like respect, authenticity, and generosity come more naturally to me. Humor, history, and harmony are more of a struggle. But reviewing them all helps me realign my perspective and refocus my personal development efforts.

Which of those values are strengths for you? Which are a struggle? Be honest. Remember no one is perfect. Know that you are not alone. Share your reflections with people you trust. Ask them to share their own. Commit to helping each other grow. Celebrate your (and their) successes. If you do, you’ll find modern joy from these ancient values, and you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.

Randy Woodley, Becoming Rooted: One Hundred Days of Reconnecting with Sacred Earth (Minneapolis, MN: Broadleaf Books, 2022), 241–242. As shared in the Feb 10, 2024 Daily Meditation by the Center for Action and Contemplation (cac.org)

The Freedom of Finding Your True Self

May 11, 2024 / / 0 Comments

One of the main reasons I started this blog in 2017 was to map my own journey toward finding my true identity. The real me. My deep self. Who I am apart from the various fleeting hats I wear. Teacher and author Richard Rohr has been an important part of that journey. In his recent Daily Meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation, he spoke so compellingly on that topic that I wanted to share it with you. I hope it helps you on your own journey toward Becoming Yourself.

We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.

T. S. Eliot, four quartets

In the Everything Belongs podcast, Father Richard speaks about the spiritual path that winds both away from and toward one’s true home:  

The first going out from home we can say is the creation of the ego. While this is a necessary creating, it is also the creating of a separation. It’s taking myself as central. We probably need to do that, at least until we reach middle age. But then we need to allow what we’ve created to be uncreated. Maybe I was a great basketball player, but that’s gone now. Or maybe I was good-looking, but that’s gone now.  

When we can say “yes” to that uncreation and still be happy, we’ve done our work. My True Self is in God and not in what I’ve created. My self-created self gave me a nice trail to walk on, and something to do each day, but it isn’t really me. It might be my career or my vocation; yet as good as it is, it isn’t my True Self.  

In the metaphor of life as a journey, I think it’s finally about coming back home to where we started. As I approach death, I’m thinking about that a lot, because I think the best way to describe what’s coming next is not “I’m dying,” but “I’m finally going home.” I don’t know what it’s like yet, but in my older age I can really trust that it is home. I don’t know where that trust comes from or even what home is like, but I know I’m not going to someplace new. I’m going to all the places I’ve known deeply. They’re pointing me to the big deep, the Big Real. I do think homecoming is what it’s all about. [1] 

Father Richard continues to reflect upon finding his home in God in this season of his life:  

Well first, I have to say, I don’t fully know how to live there. I’m used to living for 80 years out of building an education, a persona, a reputation, a career. When we’ve worked at those things for so long, on a very real level we don’t know how to live without them. But thank God, they’re taken away from us. God slows us down, I think necessarily, or we won’t fall into the True Self.  

My understanding of the second half of life is mostly homesickness for the True Self. I want to learn to be who God really created me to be. And I think all God wants me to be is who I really am. [2]  

As shared in the May 6, 2024 Daily Meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation (cac.org) [1] Adapted from Mike Petrow, Paul Swanson, and Richard Rohr, “Tips for the Road,” Everything Belongs, season introduction, ep. 5 (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2023), podcast. Available as MP3 audio and PDF transcript.  [2] Adapted from Mike Petrow, Paul Swanson, and Richard Rohr, “The Two Halves of Life with Brené Brown,” Everything Belongs, season 1, ep. 1 (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2024), podcast. Available as MP3 audio and PDF transcript.

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