Becoming Yourself

Sooner or later we have to face the fact that we were born into a world that is, in many ways, imperfect and unjust. We will need to come to terms with this if we are to face life with emotional and mental stability.

We may begin our journey with the highest ideals, believing we really can change the world—and, indeed, every one of us can change the world, though only some of us will—but we will never change the way that life is.

Life will continue to be life, despite our desires and remonstrations. It does not have to be fair, it does not have to be just, and it does not have to always make sense. All it has to do is all that it can do: It has to be itself. In the sage words of Lao Tzu, founder of Taoism, what we have to do is 'let reality be reality'.

This is true, also, as it applies to each of us: We must allow ourselves to be ourselves. Finding out who that self is, or more accurately who those selves are – because each person is a composite of many different aspects – is a very big part of becoming authentic, of becoming real. When we understand and accept this, when we stop demanding that life be something other than it is and that we become something other than we are, then we stop swimming against the current, and our passage through life becomes so much easier.

There are times when we have to trim our sails and steer a course that leads to the shores of compromise. We may not like this, but then again there is no 'Great Law' that says we have to like everything in existence. The trick, of course, lies in knowing when to compromise and when not to. When something cannot be changed, it is senseless to keep on banging our head against it.

The fortunate ones among us find "the serenity to accept the things that we cannot change, the courage to change the things that we can, and the wisdom to know the difference", to quote from Reinhold Niebuhr's Serenity Prayer, so wisely adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous and other Twelve Step groups.

As long as we do our very best, then we will have done all we can—even if, at times, the best we can do is to hold our head above the water and keep right on breathing. Our feet will always find dry land as long as we do not give up hope.

Who knows how many people we might one day help because of our own difficult experiences? Although we may not see it at the time, nothing need ever really be wasted. Everything has its value.

Our true solutions, like so many of our problems, lie within. We need to work from the inside out, not from the outside in, to bring about real change and restore an inner balance that will endure.

As a working hypnotherapist, I believe that advanced hypnotherapy provides the most effective way to do this that there is.

Stay well!