If you’ve read any of my other posts categorized under “Constructive Wallowing,” you’ll know how happy and excited I was to read the following post by Tim McAuley.
(It was reblogged by Mary Rogers on her blog, Bipolar Lessons, which is how I came across it.)
In this post, Tim takes on two pieces of common self-help wisdom, “You just have to be positive” and “Just fake it till you make it.”
Tim writes, “Before you can cultivate a positive mindset you must first honor where you are and the journey that brought you here.” He’s so right!
As you may know, I think positive thinking may be harmful to your health for the very reasons Tim gets into; it can separate you from your own experience, cutting you off from your authentic self.
Click on the following link to read Tim’s wonderful post:
Reconnect with Your Authentic Self Instead of Denying Your Feelings | Tiny Buddha.
Thanks for the link, Tina!
You bet, Mary!
The idea of “reconnecting” with my authentic self confuses me. Is there such a thing as never knowing who you were, to begin with?
I think so, Sandy. If we’re lucky, we get help with figuring out who we are when we’re small. If we’re *not* lucky, we’ve got to do it later. Thanks for your insight.
So… I am creating an email course for a friend of mine and needed to look up a TinyBuddha article that described my color game/mindfulness bell and found this article.
Tina, thank you so much for your kind words about that article.
@sandy…. You know… these days I’m not sure there is a way to know who you were to begin with either…. But, I do know that I can slow my limbic response down enough to consciously connect with my the core values and ideals that I wish to cultivate.
I think, for me, the idea of “self” is too esoteric… it’s ever changing… our minds are too complex to point and say “That’s me”… but, I can self-select the best traits of humanity as my description of self, and do my best to live accordingly.
Don’t get me wrong… that part is tricky as hell, and could possibly turn into more suffering, as we all fall short in being the best versions of ourselves on a regular basis.
Life moves fast. We react sometimes in manners inconsistent with our own values. Being present in the fact that our limbic response controls a good portion of our thoughts and actions, helps us cut ourselves some slack and just be.