5 Star review of The Way Forward:
“I have purchased this book for multiple people and carry it with me to look at when I just need some positive inspiration. I can’t recommend it enough!!” - Stacy
The Way Forward is 33% off on Amazon and available in local bookstores.
A common challenge is trying to measure your progress while you are in the midst of the process. You don’t want to judge yourself when you are feeling particularly stormy, as your perspective is clouded. Since so much of healing is dependent on the sharpness of our self-awareness, we do not always realize how we are training our mind to become like a microscope that magnifies the roots of all our mental patterns and movements. This focus on expanding what we are conscious of by turning our attention inward results in an influx of new information that helps us understand ourselves at a much deeper level.
Sometimes this new clarity is taken to an extreme when we see all our imperfections at once and try to measure our growth from a specific moment, instead of across the length of our journey. For example, we sometimes feel the need to compare how we are today with how we were yesterday, or how we are this month with how we were last month.
Taking these really small sample sizes does not fully account for the fact that healing is not linear. During short periods of time, there may be a lot of back-and-forth movement, highs and lows, or new discoveries about ourselves that require us to slow down so we can fully integrate this new knowledge. Or, we may simply have a lot of accumulated reactions from the past that have finally come up for release. Either way, our attachment to perfection will crave sharp upward progress, when the truth of the journey is much more complicated and unpredictable.
Granted, the purpose of even embarking on your healing journey and taking your evolution seriously is to come out as a better version of yourself. Still, it is critical to understand that, even though there is ultimately an upward trajectory, in the midst of that rise you encounter the messy reality of undoing the old and practicing the new, which is bound to come with the constant stream of changes that occur in life.
If you really want to take a good look at yourself, this is best done in comparison to how you were before you even began all this inner work. Intentionally relaxing that microscopic self-awareness by taking a big step back to look at a bigger chunk of your life will give you a much better idea of how far you have come. A noticeable difference between how you are managing your reactions now and how you managed them in the past is a major sign of progress. If you react with less intensity than before and are able to choose more productive options that support your well-being and authenticity, you are on the right track.
This higher level of self-awareness is useful, but if we are not careful about when we use it and where we direct it, it can give us a skewed idea of the depth of our progress. It is especially important to suspend self-analysis during your deepest down moments. When the mind is full of turbulence, it will not be easy to take a good look at yourself or to engage in a balanced form of self-analysis. Being able to recognize when you are in a serious down moment is itself a sign of progress. So is suspending any harsh judgments about where you are and quieting concerns about whether your progress is real. Having that clear ability to feel where you are as you travel through the spectrum of emotions will help you transition from doing serious inner work to taking it easy on yourself and treating yourself gently until the storm passes.
Recognizing the down moment and using it as a signal to embody patience toward yourself and others is a sign of your growing wisdom. It will also help you refrain from doing things you will later regret or getting into any illogical arguments because your inner tension was pushing you to fight. Focusing on moving about gently through your day while your mind goes through its storm is not a matter of being fake or suppressing your emotions.
It is a matter of honoring a greater range of your reality. Yes, you don’t feel great, but you also understand that fueling this fire by adding tension on top of your existing tension won’t make anything better. Your only beneficial option is to feel the heaviness of your truth and not add any more weight to what your mind is already working on releasing.
Similarly, you don’t want to expect that every day will be a triumph. Some days will be hard simply because healing is a matter of fundamentally saying goodbye to the old you and your old ways of being. This will be challenging because you will be moving against the current of your old human habit and repeatedly trying to activate your human nature.
In time, it will become easier to be the authentic you, but in the beginning it will feel as if you were constantly having to intentionally slow down to break an old pattern. It may feel tedious and tiring, and it will take a high level of commitment to unbind the knots that have been tying you down, but it will be tremendously worthwhile.
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