Speaking with our inner-self

We often drown in the day to day activities and lose connection with our inner-self. Connecting with our inner-self is important and essential for maintaining harmony in our lives and leading a healthy and happy life. Self-actualization is under-rated and we do not make enough effort to connect with our soul.

In an effort to please the world, we sacrifice our wants and desires. I’m not talking about the materialistic desires such as buying our favorite car or electronic items or accumulating monetary wealth. I’m talking about the actual desires which soothes our soul such as pursuing our hobbies or doing something which makes us happy which often gets missed during our day.

In the past year, it has been really difficult for us to maintain a healthy lifestyle with the pandemic making our lives difficult. As humans, we are bound to lose control over our mental health in such situations and we tend to break down. No amount of external counselling may help, if we do not put in little amount of effort each day towards self-actualization. And believe me, it is not easy. It takes years of practice to actually understand our desires and pursue it.

Even for me, it has taken a lot of time to realize my passion. The funny part is, despite understanding my passion up to some extent, I often lack motivation to pursue it. Nevertheless, I keep pursuing it despite failing often. The path to following passion, desire, hobbies etc. entails failures, disappointments, demotivation, happiness, success and other ups and downs. What I have realized is that merely following our passion does not guarantee success or happiness. However, the step we take towards it helps us in many ways such as building confidence, becoming fearless, calming our minds, thinking objectively, getting a sense of satisfaction, and so on.

Since my mid 20s, I’ve been speaking with my inner-self to discover my passion. I spend couple of minutes a day in silence and try to think what I really want from my life. I validate it each day to ensure that I’m following the right path towards self-realization. Interestingly, I started this periodical validation because my passion changed at times and I wanted to accept it. I did not let the change in my passion downplay any of my temporary interests.

For example, I like to write. However, if at times I wanted to take a pause from writing and pursue painting (which I’m bad at ;)), I did not stop myself. I accepted the feeling and continued writing after a break. This in fact helped in rekindling my passion for writing. My thoughts refreshed and my writer’s block reduced with time as it gave me time for reflection…

While you spend silent time with your inner-self, you ask questions such as:

• What do I like to do?
• What will make my day better?
• Will I regret not doing something?
• Is there anything which is stopping me from doing what I like?
• If so, how can I find alternative ways?

Other two important factors which play a key role in self-actualization is forgiveness and perseverance. We must forgive ourselves in case we misinterpret our passion or our passion changes. We must forgive and accept our mistakes to move forward. The second is we must not give up. Perseverance is the key to self-discovery. There might be times when we would want to stop the journey and just focus on our daily work. That’s okay. Its’ good to give a break from this. But we must not forget what makes us actually happy. Thus we must try to speak to our inner self again by striking small conversations at times.

A word of caution here is that, we must not mistake getting lost in thoughts with speaking to ourselves. While speaking to ourself requires a lot of practice and diligence, getting lost in thoughts is easy. When we get lost in thoughts we start simulating unrealistic scenarios in our lives. This can lead to misunderstanding our desires and may give rise to false hopes. If you are unsure of how to deal with this, professional help is something which you can explore :)

While these are just few things which you can follow to realize the purpose of your life, speaking to yourself will definitely help in the long run in many ways. I hope each one of us can find the purpose of our life and make our lives worth remembering!

Cheers!!

Kind note: I have written this blog purely on my personal experience and capacity. For any help, request you to get in touch with any professional mental health expert.