I want to talk about one of the most fundamental things you need to understand if you want to live a successful life: How to make sure you are making the right decisions. Let’s start with how I define success. Success to me means that you are living a life where you can be yourself, which includes having relationships that fulfil you, a beautiful and safe home where you can unwind, and being financially secure as a result of doing what you love the most. Not a life where you are always happy, but a life where you experience the least amount of resistance. I think most of us would feel a sense of satisfaction and ease if we didn’t have to feel like life was an uphill battle. Living in a constant state of happiness though is what we are sold by society at large. The right diet for optimal health, or the right diet to gain a desirable body, a positive mindset to live a happy life, meditation, or medication to get rid of pain, expensive coaching courses to learn how to be your best self and the list goes on.
In a sea full of advice, how do you make decisions that are correct for YOU? What values and beliefs do you defer to when trying to choose whether to change jobs, end a relationship or try to mend what has been broken? Can you name the fundamental beliefs that affect your decision? Maybe more importantly, do you know you HAVE a set of beliefs that affect your decisions? For a long time, I didn’t know. I acted based on a set of beliefs I considered to be truths, like “life is not fair” and “no one is coming to save me”. I thought that was the way life worked and that if I followed the rules, the recipe so to speak, I would make sure I got the outcome I wanted. I was not aware that some people did not believe in the same rules. Some people followed a different set of rules that THEY believed would bring them the outcome they wanted.
I think most people will agree, on a mental level, that “of course we see the world in different ways”, but most of us don’t embody the understanding. You might believe on a subconscious level that “there is an ultimate truth”, or that “feelings are irrational”, but the belief hasn’t been brought to your awareness. You need to bring the belief into your awareness in order to feel into whether you agree or not. Until you have done that, you are not embodying the belief. I believe that we all have a foundation on which we stand, something that’s beneath our feet that we consciously or unconsciously rely on when faced with challenging situations. Maybe you believe that feelings are irrational, in which case, you will act accordingly. If you on the other hand believe that feelings are NOT irrational, but instead carry valuable information, your actions will look different. Imagine what happens if you don’t have awareness that you believe things you consider to be true. What happens when you meet someone whose fundamental beliefs opposes yours? You believe there is an ultimate truth, great… THEY believe we see the world differently and that an ultimate truth doesn’t exist. They would say “the truth is in the eye of the beholder”.
I was writing the theory chapter of my thesis when the following thought snook into my mind: “Wait, this theory… It is a theory! The guy came up with this theory – he made it up… I can also come up with a theory… Why is his theory more valid than mine?”. In that moment, I realized that his theory didn’t represent the truth and it wasn’t necessarily even more valid. After almost 10 years at university and taking everything I learned as truth, I felt in my body that theories were nothing more than ONE person’s perspective. Of course, some people have a more educated foundation to make up a theory. Their theories will be applicable to more people, and they will explain the phenomenon more accurately, but still… What if I had a way of seeing the world that could easily be as valid as the way the guru or the therapist saw the world?
Before, I would see theories as finite truth. If a theory said there were 5 developmental stages, I believed there were 5 developmental stages. In hindsight it’s kind of crazy. After all, I read about different models that year. Some models said there were 7 developmental stages, and some said 12. Somehow, I compartmentalized. I stacked one piece of information on top of the other, but I didn’t connect the pieces. When I was studying for the exam and sat with the notes on all three different models in front of me, I felt immensely frustrated. Seeing the models side by side challenged the belief that there was ONE truth. It made me upset because I believed that if I could find that ONE truth, I would be able get what I wanted. If there wasn’t ONE truth, I wouldn’t stand a chance – I would never be able to get it right. This belief stemmed from my childhood. My mom used to communicate in a way that made it sound like there was one truth and one truth only. She was not great at acknowledging the existence of different experiences, so I learned that only one perspective (truth) can exist at a time.
Realizing that every time someone explained how something worked, if I read about a theory or listened to an expert talk about a specific subject, I was listening to (1) a perspective, not an objective and unchangeable truth, and (2) it was one individual’s perspective, and it was colored by influences like their upbringing, their culture, the time they grew up in etc. Even if they sit on more knowledge than me, which increases the likelihood of the theory being well applicable for more people, it doesn’t mean it is correct for ME. I might have an experience that makes me disagree with their theory. Slowly, I started to believe that what FEELS true, accurate, or correct, that’s what I need to navigate by. If I feel what is true for me, everyone else must have their own truth as well.
Before I continue, I want to talk about the infinity symbol. Imagine yourself standing at the point of the infinity where the lines meet. Look to the left… That’s your internal world. Everything that is alive inside your body; your thoughts and feelings… Some you are aware of; some belong to your subconscious. Now, look to the right… That is the material world. Everything you encounter from the moment you open your eyes in the morning; your physical surroundings, your apartment, nature, people you interact with whether it is a one-time encounter or someone with whom you are in a committed relationship with.
You are standing where the lines meet, between the non-physical and the physical, between a world not visible to the naked eye and a world clearly visible to the naked eye. Imagine that every single person has their own infinity symbol. Your mom is standing in one, your professor in his, a renowned author is standing in his, Darwin was standing in his, the president in his etc. We are all standing at the point where our internal reality meets our external reality. We as individuals are the gatekeepers, the ones that, as we bridge worlds, we create. We have the power to affect both realities and create something. When we discover that, that is when we access or activate free will.
I believe our truth is born when the external meets the internal. You, standing where the internal (your felt experience) meets the external (input), in the sea of information… You are the only one with access to all the information, should you choose to become aware of your internal and external surroundings. Which is a choice. Becoming aware of the fact that you CAN become aware… If or when you make that choice, you get to be the one who stands where the lines cross, and you decide what makes sense to you. You decide the ground beneath your feet. I don’t know what you believe, but personally I think we are born with something that makes us uniquely US, and that we are meant to encounter the external world so as to run it by our internal world… I believe we create something new by doing so; by being an active and participating link between the two worlds. To be that link, we need to turn our attention inwards and listen just as much as we need to observe and engage in the external.
When I entered into spirituality, I was told “we are all one”. It was presented as the truth. This was before my thesis, so I blindly took their “truth” as my own. Not until years later did I run the “truth” by the left side of my infinity symbol, my internal world and when I did, I discovered that I’m not sure I agree.
Gunhild Archer, counselor 