When you are unclear about what your own values and beliefs are you tend to take on the beliefs and values that are projected and or imposed on you. Self-discovery and learning more about yourself is such an enlightening and empowering experience as part of one’s Soul Journey.
Though our beliefs and values are a core part of who we are, they’re not set in stone and they’re definitely prone to change like most things in life. Most of us are not taught how to do the introspection required to learn about who we are and how we want to be. Superficial comparisons may come easy as they’re influenced by our societies and cultures, giving us a direction of what to pursue, how to behave and who to become. But there is more to each of us than what is on the tip of the iceberg of our identities and way of being in the world. There is a whole self waiting to be discovered, unpacked and shared with the world that is uniquely ours and incredibly important to find. This is what some refer to as finding your song. We all have untapped talents, capabilities, desires and dreams that are somewhere within us. Some of us fortunate enough to have easy access to discovering them and others having to go through various evolutions and versions of themselves in order to find their authentic self. Finding that authentic self is so crucial to living a values aligned and joyful life. One that enriches you and fulfils you, one that energises you and fils your cup instead of constraining you and draining you.
This journey can be even more challenging in a collective culture, where so much of our identities and purpose is formed by the collective group we form a part of. The roles we play can dominate our narratives and as a result become the voice that we confuse with our song. In my own journey I’ve slowly become aware of all the beliefs and values I’ve absorbed as a result of being brought up in this environment and I recognised many that don’t sit well with my own way of wanting to be in the world. This is not a criticism of collective cultures as they have a lot of beautiful aspects to them, but like everything they’re not perfect and they don’t always result in the best outcome for the individual. So I’ve been on a journey of self-discovery, learning who I am without the collective narrative, without the external expectations, beliefs and values that I’ve been surrounded by and therefore felt like I need to adopt.
I am still on this path of learning more about myself and identifying what is a core value that is true to me vs what is a value that I’ve become so accustomed to that I don’t know how to let go of. The more I learn about who I am and how I want to be in the world, the more I come to appreciate there is a lot of myself that I would like to review and reshape. There are new beliefs that I want to put into practice and there are values that I want to reprioritise. Only when you get to know your own values and beliefs can you truly start living a life that is true to yourself and not the expectations of others.
In this process you will learn a lot about yourself that may be unpleasant but facing these realisations with kindness and acceptance will enable them to be freed instead of shamed into a box that you carry around. This journey is yours, so pack the things that don’t weigh you down but instead enable the process further for you. This is a journey and one that is unclear at best of times. Similar to playing with legos, you have access to multiple pieces and colours that you can use, there is a lot of creativity that can be applied but the process requires trial and error as well as patience and perseverance. Just like you can’t wish things into creation with lego pieces, you also can’t shift your way of being from what you’ve learned into how you’d like to be overnight.
One of the limiting beliefs that I’ve been trying to rewire and change for a decade now is the that of ‘I am not enough’. I have been working through this limiting belief and have unpacked the initial layers attached to it, but recently I recognised an even deeper belief that is underneath this for me, which is that I am not valuable. As I started to unpack this in a coaching exercise, I associated the belief of ‘I am valued’ to a diamond. I mentioned that in order to be valued you have to consistently, always and 100% of the time be seen as such, like a diamond. I went on to say that a diamond is only valuable because it is agreed and accepted as such by everyone around the world, nothing can question this truth and therefore it must be of value. As I said this out loud I realised how critical and harsh I am being with myself, this was metaphor for a belief that as humans we have to be like diamonds, flawless and always valued by others because that is the consensus. But this is unrealistic as there is the simple truth that we won’t be liked and or loved by everyone. This helped me reflect on the important question of who is determining the value of the diamond and therefore the value of the person?
It was in that moment that I uncovered the belief further by recognising that the diamond is only deemed valuable because there is an external source (e.g. humans), but if you compare a diamond to another natural stone like a Sapphire, they don’t differentiate between themselves (that is if they could have voices). They are both natural stones of beauty and purpose, they both have their own story. In unpacking this belief I recognised that I place all my sense of value on how others perceive me, how they measure me and how they determine my value and therefore worth.
As part of this exercise I started to recognise the extent to which I give the power of my experiences, way of being in the world and ultimately self-worth away to those around me. I recognised that I am not the prominent voice in my narrative and that I’m disempowering myself and devaluing my own self-worth. There is no rule book saying that our value is determined by others, it’s just what we come to believe as a result of misinterpreted social experiences that we have throughout our lives. If we never stop to question this belief, we will never be able to liberate ourselves from the shackles it creates. For me, it was a simple question of who ‘made’ me believe this? Then I realised that no one has ‘made’ this a truth except me. The moment you recognise that you have a choice around your beliefs and that you are in charge of what you choose to believe about yourself, that moment is when you get to discover more of the real Self that has been hidden behind the veils of untruths.
To me a diamond and a sapphire are both equally valuable, they’re both beautiful and symbolic of the power and perfection of nature. Their worth and value doesn’t change because humans say so, it’s just what the collective may believe in the world that has been constructed by humans. Now that I realise that I have given the measure of my self-worth away to others, I would like to get it back through empowering myself in choosing to focus on rewiring my limiting belief with a confident ‘I am valuable’ belief instead.
I will have to focus on learning how to challenge this conditioned belief and to rewire my brain so that this new belief becomes the core belief. Through this process, little by little I will be able to get my power back and truly arrive at a place where I rewrite the belief with an empowering one. There is no human nor living creature on this earth that is not valuable, I truly believe that; so why do I exclude myself from that belief? Time to be more inclusive of myself and others. Iam valuable, full stop.
Love Always,
M
Souloom™ 