Why Develop a Healthy "Inner Life Approach?"
What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality."
—Plutarch
Many of us are taught from a very early age to look for distractions to help us feel better. The promise is that these distractions will compensate us for our loss of connection from healthy self-discovery and appreciation of who we are. Separation from inner guidance is the heavy cost of our search for approval and love from others. The process is rarely conscious, and is a terrible side effect of the (mostly) well-meaning messages of conformity we've received (and still receive) during our daily living, and since childbirth.
As a remedy to the above, and to ease the discomfort we feel from the loss of our most important connection (with inner guidance—Self), we quickly learn to seek compensation in the form of pleasure, consumption, ownership, status, etc. We look outside for the love, autonomy, and joy that would come from an open connection with our inner guidance. We are thus tempted (or worse, decide) to define ourselves by what we own, who we know, or what role we are playing, instead of who we are.
To muddle matters further, we may seek outside ourselves for “authorities” and “experts” to tell us what’s “wrong.” And while asking for help from a place of self-knowledge and connection could bring us a welcome boost for our own efforts towards wellbeing, abdicating our choices will not.
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How DesireEngine Coaching Concepts Tune Inner Life Approach (individuals & Groups)
Everyone has an existing inner life approach by default, yet we can best realize our desires by making conscious choices that align thoughts, beliefs and attitudes with where we want to go and how we want to feel in life.
There's no single map or plan that works for everyone in this regard. We must develop our own inner strategy that works best with who we are. The good news is there are lots of great ideas and resources from which we can choose what fits us, and will benefit us most at whatever stage of life we're in.
We can develop new habits of paying attention to our inner life, and work with changing on the inside what we want to see changed on the outside. By making this an ongoing process, we make sure our "inner strategies" keep pace our evolving personal preferences, desires and dreams.
To that end, coaching sometimes serves to help point out an inner window here, a door there, a new perspective over there. Clients choose which windows, doors and perspectives to explore.
Often, once we begin, it seems these choices were obvious... yet, perhaps we just weren't looking with enough interest... until now.