Want your power back?
Before we go any further, think about the walk of your life and what's in your heart, and then ask yourself these questions:
Do I walk the talk?
Do I practise what I preach?
Do people know me for my words or for my deeds?
When I do things for others, what are my intentions?
Answering these questions honestly can get very uncomfortable. Self-reflections are very helpful and can help us discover and reconnect to our true-self. During self-reflections, we take a deep dive into our inner being, our core - the things that make us who we are. This can be very difficult and challenging because reflections on the self mean possibly facing up to who you really are, and not who you’ve presented yourself as to the world. As we go through the process of unmasking, self-reflections allow us the opportunity to come face-to-face with the real person behind the million masks we put up each day.
Like a pile of blocks, the questions always come tumbling: am I ready to come face-to-face with this person? What if I unmask and I don’t like myself? What if I don’t like who I am or what I’ve become? What if I go through this process and I actually find that I don’t know who I am? What if I was in the wrong and should apologise? What if I get exposed as being a fraud?
These questions and more, are what most people ask themselves when thinking of embarking on this journey. Self-reflections play a significant role in a person’s journey to self-discovery. Unfortunately, most people opt out of this journey because of fear. All the questions they ask themselves stem from fear. The fear of losing themselves along the way. The fear of realising that their actions have cost them dearly.
After reading Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly, I think all of the fears we have emanate from our lack of vulnerability. Widely, in our society, vulnerability is misconstrued as weakness. It is associated with not being strong enough to handle your affairs. This unfortunately leads to others thinking “aarg, there’s no point to this life thing, there’s no winning at it anyway”, and some sadly end up committing suicide or lambasting their family members and treating them harshly.
The thing is, if we allow ourselves to be vulnerable first with God and ourselves, the journey to self-discovery will be enjoyable, and fruitful. Being vulnerable first with God is coming to an understanding of who we are, whose we are and what we are about. Knowing who we are in Christ equates to full knowledge of the self. This way, we are able to acknowledge for example, where we’ve gone w