Become Who You Already Are

Each of us comes into this world as a whole, integrated human being. We’re born with innate personality traits, natural strengths and talents, and tremendous potential. Growing up, we respond to our life conditioning by adopting habitual roles, beliefs, and behaviors that often diminish our potential. These patterns follow us into adulthood, and they shape our feelings about ourselves, our personal lives, our relationships, and our careers.

A foundational element of my work is to help people uncover the patterns that keep a lid on their potential, identify the roots of these patterns, and take action to transform them. This involves identifying the innate personality traits, strengths, and potential of their Authentic Self (the person they were born to be) and the limiting role, beliefs, and behaviors of their Conditioned Self (the person they learned to be).

The next step is to develop strategies for change. This entails learning how to think and act by conscious deliberation versus by automatic default. Living by deliberation means intentionally aligning your thoughts, behaviors, and choices with the outcomes you’re trying to achieve. When you’re living by default, you’re reacting on autopilot from old, conditioned patterns. And while those patterns may have served you in your environment growing up, they’re usually not very effective in producing the results you want as an adult.

Letting your Conditioned Self run your life is like continuously swimming upstream. It depletes your energy, stifles your strengths, keeps you settling for less than what you’re capable of creating, and undermines your relationships with others. Over time, the chronic stress it produces can even weaken your immune system and compromise your physical health and well-being.

Shedding the shackles of your life conditioning and liberating who you really are is a life-changing process. Instead of your energy being consumed by trying to be perfect, berating yourself, living up to other’s expectations, avoiding failure, dealing with conflict, numbing your pain, or managing fear, it’s available to let you discover what you enjoy, take new risks, pursue your dreams, share positive relationships, and create the personal and professional life to which you aspire.

This type of inner work—delving into the roots of your limiting patterns and taking action to produce tangible, lasting change—can be challenging, uncomfortable, and even painful. But the years that I’ve been doing this work—and the transformative results I’ve seen over and over again—has taught me two very important things: the only way out is through and the rewards are well-worth the journey.

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© 2013 Lauren Mackler

Lauren Mackler is a world-renowned coach and author of the international bestseller, Solemate: Master the Art of Aloneness & Transform Your Life. www.laurenmackler.com

Liberating Your Authentic Self

Carl Jung, a colleague of Sigmund Freud and the founder of analytical psychology, first introduced the concept of psychological type in the 1920s with the idea that there are two basic attitude types—extroverts and introverts—and what he called the four functions of consciousness: thinking, feeling, sensing, and intuiting. Jung was the first to fully develop the idea that different people have different ways of perceiving and approaching the world, and that these differences are innate. For example, one person may use thought as a guide to making decisions, while another will follow their feelings. By identifying different psychological types, Jung laid the foundation for our modern-day understanding of personality.

Like Jung, I believe that we all have innate personality traits and temperaments. Most parents will tell you that they can identify traits in their own children from birth—distinct temperaments and predispositions. Some toddlers, for example, are quiet and still, hanging back, observing everything around them. Others jump into the fray feet first, full of energy and enthusiasm. However, research on twins reared apart, conducted over the past 30 years at the Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research (University of Minnesota) by professor Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr. and his team, provides perhaps the most powerful evidence of innate personalities. In research originally published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1988 and discussed at length in a New Yorker piece published in 1995, the Minnesota team assessed twin pairs for personality characteristics such as a “sense of well-being, social dominance, alienation, aggression, and achievement . . . They concluded that identical twins reared apart were as much alike as identicals reared together.” The Minnesota twin studies, combined with a slew of other studies conducted over the past two decades, provide ample evidence that we are born with certain personality characteristics.

Part of retrieving your authentic self involves identifying your innate personality traits, the characteristics you were born with that may have been suppressed through your life conditioning. For example, you may be more innately extroverted—more outwardly than inwardly directed. But say you grew up with a father who was an alcoholic and he’d fly into rages when he was drinking. Your coping mechanism may have involved staying below the radar screen and not making a peep. You withdrew from the world, a characteristic that’s in conflict with your true nature. In my coaching work, as part of the process of identifying clients’ innate personality characteristics, I use the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a popular personality test developed by Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers in the 1940s based on Carl Jung’s theories. Since its inception, millions of people have taken the MBTI assessment, and it’s been updated and refined through ongoing research. The results are remarkably comprehensive and illuminating. But while the MBTI tool is valuable for helping people understand their innate natures, it is only one piece of the puzzle.

Unearthing your authentic self also involves identifying your true passions and strengths, as well as your interests and life purpose. I believe that we all have an inborn purpose, and fulfilling that purpose is critical to the quality of our lives and our sense of well-being. To be able to live from your authentic self you have to first know who you really are. What do you feel strongly about? What captures your interest? What inspires and motivates you? What is the contribution you’d like to be making in the world?

The process of retrieving and liberating the authentic self involves a good bit of detective work. Each of us is unique, and the formula for finding that uniqueness can be as individual as we are. But achieving that understanding can be transformational. As D. H. Lawrence wrote, “You’ve got to know yourself so that you can at last be yourself.”

Are you ready to liberate who you were born to be? Join Lauren 3/15-17, 2013 at Kripalu in Lenox, MA for the LIVE BOLDLY & LIBERATE YOUR AUTHENTIC SELF weekend workshop! For info and registration, click here.

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© 2013 Lauren Mackler

Lauren Mackler is a world-renowned coach, psychotherapist, and author of the international bestseller Solemate: Master the Art of Aloneness & Transform Your Life. Sign up for her free Live Boldly e-newsletter at www.laurenmackler.com.

6 Steps to Develop Your Intuition

Are your emotions or intuition running your life? Your intuition is your instinctive knowing—or gut feeling—about whether or not something is right for you. Intuition and emotions are very different. Your emotions can fluctuate, often changing from one day to the next based on immediate circumstances. Your intuitive feeling about something, on the other hand, tends to remain pretty consistent.

If you’re making a major decision—especially one that takes you out of your comfort zone—it’s important to feel confident that it’s the right one. So you’ll want to check in with your intuition over a period of time—over days or weeks or even months—to see how that decision sits with you.

To develop your intuition, you have to start paying attention to it. As situations arise that require making a decision, ask yourself: How does this feel for me? Is this what I should be doing? How does this sit with me? Is this an emotional reaction? Or is this something that’s going to stick?

If you’re evaluating a relationship, ask your intuition: How does this person sit with me? What’s my gut feeling? Use it in the work you do. Use it in your everyday life. You can tap into your intuition in a variety of ways. People who believe in a higher power often turn to prayer for inner guidance. Others use meditation to invoke the intuitive part of themselves. The key is to begin trusting that your intuition is trustworthy and able to guide you.

Listening to and following your intuition is a practical tool for living in alignment with your authentic self. Below is an exercise to help you develop your intuition as a practical barometer for determining whether you’re on course or off course in your life.

1. Write down a real-life example of a time when you had a “gut feeling” about a person, situation, or action that you discounted or ignored, and, by ignoring your intuition, produced a negative outcome.

2. Describe the “gut feeling” you had at the time. For example, it may have been a physical sensation like butterflies in your stomach, breaking out in a sweat, or constriction in your chest; a feeling of dread, fear, or uncertainty; a sense of caution, reluctance, or resistance; or just a strong sense about something you should or shouldn’t do.

3. List the negative outcome(s) you experienced by not following your intuitive messages and signals.

4. Now, write down a real-life example of a time when you had a “gut feeling” about a person, situation, or action that you acted upon, and, by acting on your intuition, produced a positive outcome.

5. Describe the “gut feeling” that you had at the time. For example, it may have been a physical sensation like butterflies in your stomach, breaking out in a sweat, or constriction in your chest; a feeling of dread, fear, or uncertainty; a sense of caution, reluctance, or resistance; or just a strong sense about something you should or shouldn’t do.

6. Describe the positive outcome(s) you experienced by following your intuitive messages and signals.

Over time, you’ll find that the more you trust your intuition and allow it to set your direction, the more you build that trust. Develop a habit of continually checking in with your intuition by asking yourself: Does this feel right to me?

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE, BLOG, OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete statement at the end of the article:

© 2012 Lauren Mackler

Lauren Mackler is a world-renowned coach, psychotherapist, and author of the international bestseller Solemate: Master the Art of Aloneness & Transform Your Life. Sign up for her free Live Boldly e-newsletter at www.laurenmackler.com.

Death with Dignity

Watching a loved one die without dignity is devastating. Sadly, both of my parents experienced prolonged, painful, and what I considered to be, unnecessarily inhumane deaths. Twelve years ago I attempted to discuss end-of-life planning with my mother and father. Because I believe that death is simply a transition to another plane of existence, I tend to approach the topic in a rather direct and practical way, as was the case with my parents back in 2000. I suggested that they do end-of-life planning in advance, to ensure clarity about their wishes and to avoid any potential family conflict. But because neither of my parents were able to discuss or plan for death, at the end they were each kept alive by artificial means and suffered heart-wrenching deaths.

Following emergency surgery for a ruptured intestine, my 90 year-old father languished on a hospital respirator for more than a month. During this time, I happened upon a documentary on HBO called How to Die in Oregon. The film is about the Death with Dignity laws in Oregon and Washington, which allow mentally competent, terminally-ill adults to voluntarily request and receive a prescription medication to hasten their death. How to Die in Oregon doesn't tell people how they should die, but it shows how having more options for end-of-life care gives people more peace of mind in their final days.

I had always felt conflicted about physician-assisted suicide. But after watching the How to Die in Oregon documentary, I became convinced that Death with Dignity should be a legal option for any adult facing terminal illness. On November 6, 2012, the Death with Dignity Initiative (also known as Question 2) will appear on the general election ballot in my home state of Massachusetts. The proposed law would allow for a terminally ill adult with six or fewer months to live to be given lethal drugs. The patient requesting the medication must be mentally capable to make medical decisions while consulting their respective doctors. Patients would be required to submit their request orally twice and witnessed in writing, and the initial verbal request must be fifteen days prior to the written request and second oral request. The patient's terminal diagnosis and capability to make health care decisions must be confirmed by a second doctor.

Supporters of the proposed law argue that the measure would give terminally ill patients dignity and control over their deaths, and would alleviate suffering. Opponents argue that the measure is morally wrong, and that beneficiaries of terminally ill patients could abuse the provisions presented by the proposal. In early October, YouGov America interviewed 498 registered voters in Massachusetts for a poll released by the University of Massachusetts. The survey found 65% of the registered voters would vote yes on the Death with Dignity initiative.

Having witnessed the heartbreaking suffering of both of my parents, I feel strongly that I’d want the legal option to utilize the Death with Dignity Act should I ever be faced with a terminal illness. Rather than incur prolonged suffering or be a burden to my family, I would prefer to have a “good death”—have the time and ability to say goodbye to my loved ones, be able to leave when it’s time to go, and not have my life unnecessarily prolonged.

© 2012 Lauren Mackler

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE, BLOG, OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete statement at the end of the article:

© 2012 Lauren Mackler Lauren Mackler is a world-renowned coach, psychotherapist, and author of the international bestseller Solemate: Master the Art of Aloneness & Transform Your Life. Sign up for her free Live Boldly e-newsletter at www.laurenmackler.com.