Blazing Your Own Trail: the Techniques Part 2
March 13th, 2008 by John Wolfe
In the first Blazing Your Own Trail Techniques post, I discussed ways for breaking away from limiting, ingrained thoughts in the areas of: relationships, career, and health. In this second post I’m going to discuss ideas for altering the self limiting views we tend to acquire on our physical attributes and material possessions.
Even though our attitude towards our health, career and relationships can easily be influenced by other people; perhaps there are no two areas that cause us to consider the opinion of the majority more than that of how we look and the items we own (or don’t own).
It’s these two circumstances that seem to affect us fairly early in life. As children we don’t have any other external “merits” to be judged on, by our peers, outside our appearances and possessions. Kids will typically mirror the limiting concepts for determining value that they see and hear at home. They begin using these same criteria for judging their friends and classmates, as well as for judging themselves.
It’s easy to understand why many of us retain issues concerning self esteem and the ideas of lack our entire lives. After childhood we’re taught these same two areas are just as important in the adult world, only now the stakes are higher.
The antes are upped because we’re led to believe our looks and possessions are what truly matter when attracting a potential mate. There’s no doubt an extremely large portion of the population still buys into this limiting ridiculous notion, and that’s why it’s important for us to start blazing our own trail in these areas as well.
The purpose of this post isn’t to make someone that believes they have good looks and large amounts of material things feel bad. The purpose is to primarily help shift the awareness and the focus of attention away from those things for determining our value.
If you feel like you’re attractive and you have lots of nice things- that’s awesome. But my message is exactly the same to those that feel this way, as it is to those that don’t: in the entire scheme of things, looks and possessions don’t mean squat. They’re temporary. Even if we hold on to them for our entire physical lives they’re still only transient, since all of this is left behind when we make our transition into the nonphysical realms.
The only reason we believe our looks and possessions are so important is because we’ve been taught to make them the center of our existence. We’ve been influenced for years to incorporate those ideas into our reality and they continue to cause us to re-create the same version of that reality again and again. Your true measures of success, worth, and happiness reside elsewhere.
I’m not trying to have people squelch their wants and desires. Everyone has the right to pursue whatever they choose. But I am imparting the idea that running around in pursuit of them, while ignoring the understanding of where our true power resides is a frivolous game. We have to find our value and happiness within before we try and fill our without up with things. Most people have been doing just the opposite their entire lives.
Don’t continue to be fooled by the pack mentality on these issues, unless you truly enjoy the lifestyle these beliefs lead you to pursue. Unfortunately, pursuing that lifestyle is a lot like a dog chasing its own tail. It may seem fun for a while, but ultimately it takes you nowhere.
How we feel about the way we look, and what we do with that knowledge, can make or break us in life. Notice I didn’t say, “What others think about our looks can make or break us.” That’s because it means absolutely nothing regarding what others think about how we look. All that matters is our own interpretation. It’s important to love your body, but it’s even more important to keep proper perspective regarding it.
As we age, there’s no escaping the fact that our looks absolutely will change. Working on developing a healthy body image (including perspective) is something that most of us are never taught and sometimes never develop. We have every subject under the sun crammed down our throats during our school career, yet we’re never educated on the subject of emotionally caring about ourselves. It’s sort of left up to us to try and sort it all out. In a society that thrives on “attractive” faces and sex appeal, this isn’t always an easy task.
I have struggled for a good portion of my life with finding value in who I am, as opposed to associating it with what I look like. I spent a lot of that time trying to have my external attributes validated by others. For years I never understood where my true talents and gifts resided.
I went from person to person, hoping they could make me feel like something was special about me (on the outside). The entire time my experiences were superficial and empty. I never felt filled up because I was employing the wrong credentials for determining my value. I chose to engage in popularity contests instead of connecting with my abilities and what I could contribute.
I was constantly chasing after things that I felt would serve to enhance my looks, in turn enhancing the results of the superficial charade I was involved in. As a child and young adult, I never even came close to developing a positive image about my body, never mind a healthy perspective about looks. So, I spent years doing drastic and extreme things to enhance my body through pursuits like weight training.
While there’s nothing inherently wrong with weight training, I believe there was something completely amiss with the style I was practicing. Ask any extreme bodybuilder that’s not in denial about their endeavors, and they’ll tell you the reason they do what they do has nothing to do with health.
In fact, most risk their health every chance they get to ensure a few more gains of muscle. I’m not just talking about drugs here. The whole media hype about ‘roid rage is just that- hype. Steroids are probably one of the safer pursuits among most extreme bodybuilders. The crazy caloric intakes and risky workouts often times pose far more threat to their bodies than their drug regimens.
I used to believe if I could only achieve another inch or two on my arms, or chest, or legs, I’d finally reach true happiness. It seems ridiculous when I read that last sentence, but it was true. Of course, the actual measurements had little to do with it. The real goal was (I assumed) it would make more and more people (women) pay attention to me. My motto was: “I can’t do anything about my face, but I can sure do something about my body.”
The only thing that finally helped snap me out of that empty lifestyle was many of the spiritual awakenings I’ve related throughout my blog posts. They helped me to start putting things in proper perspective and realize a higher truth. And a portion of that truth, which I came to understand, was that my real value resides elsewhere, in a part of me that transcends the temporary physical self.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with loving how we look (I encourage it), or enjoying the fact that other people think of us as being attractive. We just can’t allow our primary source of happiness to be derived through these means because they are not permanent. If our physical attributes become our main source for fulfillment and joy, then we are setting ourselves up for an empty experience.
I’m not going to go too heavily into over attaching ourselves to material items because this subject shares much in common with the perceptions of our physical attributes and income (which I talked about in the last post in this series) levels.
We often identify our possessions as extensions of our physical self. This can actually be a good thing, since these extensions mirror what’s occurring within. Unfortunately, most of us aren’t willing to take a good long look in that mirror. If we feel there is something lacking about ourselves, we may try and make up for it with things we can possess and own. This is primarily a way to try and exert control over an area where we have emotionally lost our control. We like to use our possessions as a means of showing power and dominance externally, because internally we feel we’ve lost that power.
This doesn’t mean we should shun an abundant lifestyle. It means we once again must learn to keep proper perspective about the items we desire to possess. It’s all about our dominant intentions behind why we wish to have something.
I believe the biggest step we can take to help us move beyond an over dependency on obtaining our value from our looks and from material items, is to connect to our purpose. The subject of our true purpose comes up often in my posts, but that’s because I feel it’s at the heart of the spiritual experiences we are having in this physical plane. When we lack purpose and passion we drift. When we drift, we latch on to substitutes for real inner happiness.
These substitutes come in the form of the incessant need to acquire more things. They also can come in the form of pursuing empty activities, and meaningless relationships that only serve to temporarily shore up our self esteem.
Start breaking away from the limiting capacity for functioning that our society has set forth before you. Begin blazing your own trail. Find your path to loving yourself as you are. Keep proper perspective of what you own (and your looks) as well as anything else you may wish to acquire. Discover your purpose through your passion and begin living a life that aligns with it and you’ll amaze yourself.
This isn’t about hampering your potential for beauty, greatness, or wealth. It’s about reassessing your priorities and how they affect your thoughts and judgments, so you can move beyond the old ideas and concepts which have been holding you back. Let real happiness and real joy become your guides in life. Only then will you know true beauty, true greatness, and true wealth.
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Blazing Your Own Trail
Blazing Your Own Trail: the Techniques Part 1
Intentionally Reclaiming Our Power
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Realizing Your Purpose
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Shaking Off Social Pressure to Achieve Self Actualization
