Awakenings: Facing Ourselves – Maybe for the First Time

“The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.” —Thales 

Before the pandemic and quarantine, most of us could give a full account of our busy days with barely a moment to sit down and take a breath before bedtime. We go to work, meet with friends, have dinners out, rush back and forth to kids’ activities, make travel plans, hit the gym — go, go, go!

Until recently, we might have barely even allotted 20 minutes to sit with our own thoughts, even in an entire week. In listening to the narratives of recent times, this statement from a friend felt tender: “I’m spending time with someone I’ve never spent time with before, me.”

It feels so true for many of us. We say “yes” to invitations so we don’t let other people down.  We entertain ourselves with activities that are more distraction than enjoyment. Is it possible that “busy” is a way of distancing ourselves from certain aspects of our lives or of our inner experience  Are we numbing or ignoring parts of our lives, parts of ourselves, parts of our past that we don’t want to face or be with?

One of the gifts of this time is that it turns us to face ourselves. We can find value in reconnecting with Self, and with those parts that in normal times we might find almost any excuse to not acknowledge. Click To Tweet

Perhaps this time can be our opportunity to tie, sew, or weave together all the different parts of ourselves and accept them, embrace them. To give all the parts of ourselves grace so that we can come out of whatever this time we’re in and into the other side more integrated, with the motivation for more practices around continued connection with Self. 

What have you learned about yourself during this time? What value are you finding in more time with yourself? We’d love to hear from you.

P.S. If you’d like to take a step back with us, reflect and make meaning to begin to transform your experience, sign up to receive the Awakenings series along with a free guided journal page to your email every week. Sign up here.

Read More from the Awakenings Series:

Awakenings Amid a Quarantine: Reconnecting with Our True Selves

Awakenings: What does that mean that “I need help?”

Awakenings: From Monotony to Mindfulness

Awakenings: Same Scenery, Different Perspective

Awakenings: Still Ambitious, but with Boundaries

Posted in: Awakenings|Heal The Divide

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