by Dr. Heléna Kate | Jan 23, 2017 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Living your personal truth is the key to success in your personal development. Knowing what you want is only part of the process of living the life that you dream of. True life transformation begins when you can start to translate what you want into radical honesty in each moment – honesty with yourself and with everyone in your life. In order to harness this radical honesty, we must connect with our deeper self and uncover our personal truth.
When we live an “unconnected life” (that is, unconnected to our deeper self, our core, our personal truth), what we understand to be “our truth” is nothing more than our ego’s petulant desires. When we live a connected life, our deep truth guides us to live an aligned life by providing us with signs and signals along the way. Our job is just to listen to these signals and act accordingly. When we do, our life becomes infinitely more fulfilled.
Our emotional state is one of the best cues that we have about whether or not we are living our personal truth. However, our emotions only reflect a path for our true selves if they are tied to the present moment, independent of any other baggage we might be carrying. When we are aware of the feeling of liking something, we learn it is in alignment with our deeper truth. When we are aware of our feelings of discomfort, we learn that something is off, that we are somehow not in alignment with our deeper truth.
The most important part of connecting with your personal truth is listening – listening to yourself and then adjusting what you are doing to bring yourself into a place of alignment with your truth.
The challenge to trying to live your personal truth occurs when speaking your truth brings loss or pain. Our fearful ego interprets this loss or pain as punishment for a bad or unhealthy choice we have made, and pushes us to revert the change or avoid future ones. The truth is that pain and loss are a natural part of change.
At times, the transformation that comes when you start to live your personal truth includes letting go of the old to make room for things you desire in the here and now. For example, when you speak your needs in a relationship, you risk not having them met. When you are honest with yourself about your work not being satisfying, you may realize that it\’s time to look for new work. Your ego responds to the immediate pain of this sort of situation without taking into account the freedom and growth that come next. If you are able to challenge your ego’s fearful, knee-jerk response to transformation, you will be able to create real change for yourself.
Your truth can change everything around you. Learn how to speak and share your heart with the world, even when it is challenging, and tap into the profound strength that comes from this practice. If you need help learning your truth or practicing it, I can help you. My Personal Breakthrough Intensive is a great way to clear a path to living your truth. Click here to learn more.
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Dec 12, 2016 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
One of the things that I love about the Greek gods is that they are all incredibly flawed. Zeus was always jealous and (hypocritically) always a cheater. Hera was vengeful. Artemis was impulsive. Poseidon was easily pissed off. Athena lacked compassion. The gods fell far from perfection, but they were worshipped nonetheless. Their power existed because they unapologetically claimed the truth of who they were – flaws, shadowy parts, and all.
When the shadowy parts of who you are — those flawed parts that you try to pretend don’t exist — come flaring up, it’s a knee-jerk reaction to disown them or project them onto someone else. We all have parts of ourselves that we don’t like, that never seem to change at all, and that we can’t imagine learning to love. For example, I can’t spell and I am often late. These are not my favorite traits about myself, but they have proven to be a part of me that I just can’t seem to shake. Years of having them as my steadfast companion have tested me — Do I direct hate or love (or at least acceptance) at this part of myself?
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When we are confronted with parts of ourselves that we just do not like, it is helpful to remember that we are multi-faceted people and that our strengths may actually need our weaknesses to be what they are. Who ever came up with the idea we were supposed to be without flaws anyway? Everyone has them (even the gods) and somehow they are still viewed as something that needs to be fixed.
What would happen in your life if you decided it is ok to have your flaws, weaknesses, and shortcomings? Loving and accepting where you are when you start Personal Development work is usually the best way to move forward. After all, today’s starting point was a desired destination at one point in time, whether or not we were conscious of it. And, where you are headed will one day be a place you are eager to leave behind. Life is flux, and we’ve got to learn to ride it.
The best change we achieve comes from a loving unfolding of who we are in the world and a deep appreciation for the truth of who we are, every last bit of it. Those anthropomorphic gods (yes — made in the design of humans) achieved greatness through their strengths and their flaws (and often times their greatest accomplishments were a direct result of their biggest mistakes). Love your light and your shadows. Claim all of yourself. Be your own god or goddess.
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Oct 27, 2016 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
What is the mask?
The mask is the outer expression of who you are. It is also called the persona. Your mask makes up much of what you might think about when you think about “you.” How you choose to cut your hair, what you wear, and how you connect socially are all a part of the mask or persona that you choose to put out to the world. Sometimes the mask gets a bad reputation. New age rhetoric and self help books tell us to be authentic and to be our true selves. Some spiritual traditions emphasize dropping the illusion of the self for a deeper connection with the spirit. Let\’s also consider the benefits of the mask.
How is it useful?
The mask is a useful and important part of who we are. At its best, the mask is an outward expression of who we feel ourselves to be on the inside. It can be the creative material of our deeper expression. When our mask is in alignment with our deeper nature, it feels authentic and is fun to play with.
How does it get in the way?
On the other hand, when we overly identify with our mask, and think that it IS who we truly are, we live a life of subtle or not-so-subtle anxiety. We suffer from feelings of emptiness and feel a profound loss of meaning. Our defenses are grounded in our mask. When we live in these defenses, we can find ourselves caught in the drama of life, fighting often, or feeling the victim.
What is the true self?
Our deeper nature exists as the part of the self that is differentiated from the oneness of everything, but fundamentally expresses our essence. This is often called the true self or the core self. This is distinctly different than the no self that is discussed in Buddhism. The no self is when we are able to completely step outside of our personal identity. In this space we are able to connect with the infinite. There is a lot to learn from this experience of the no self. I find it is the true self that helps most people live fully and create a life of meaning.
How do we connect with it?
As I mentioned, we can live our lives believing our mask is our true self. Often times, this illusion only gets dismantled when we have significant crisis that pushes us to question how we have come to see ourselves. As our mask is challenged, we go searching for something else and this search can lead us in the direction of our deeper nature.
So what?
We do not need to wait for crisis to begin our journey. Some of us feel a call to look for something deeper and more significant. Some of us are fortunate to have maintained a strong connection with our deeper nature. Others of us might experience a generalized sense that there is more to our life than what we have previously lived. But regardless of how we start, the way that we get there is by challenging the hold of the mask, dismantling the beliefs and emotions that hold us to experiencing the world through this limited view, and learning how to express our deeper nature through the filter of our mask.
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Oct 20, 2016 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog, Self Awareness
In my LifeWork Community program I teach a number of ways that we can more productively work with our true self and bring its expression through our mask and into the world. The following are some of the areas that I address in my program and questions that you can use to support yourself in moving towards living your true self.
Self Love and Acceptance
People sometimes believe that you do personal development work if you are broken, but that is not really the case. Yes, it is true that hurt people work on themselves to feel better. However, it is also true that the best place to start your work from is a place of total acceptance. When we do our personal development work from a place of more and more appreciation, we gain so much more for our efforts.
What is one thing that you get on your case about that you can start to accept about yourself?
Personal Truth
Personal truth can sound like a lofty concept and like it is detached from everyday life, but this does not need to be the case. Our personal truth can be a felt and lived experience. In fact, it is. When we live our personal truth we feel happier, more loving, and more energized. When we step out of integrity we feel less happy, closed, and like we have lower energy.
When do you feel that you are connected to your personal truth? What does it feel like to you?
Harmony through Forgiveness
Forgiveness is a pathway to healing. Healing is a state of harmony and peace. When we hold onto grievances from the past the pain of these events is carried in us and is reflected in the world around us. We continually activate the pains so that they can be healed. The idea is not for us to suffer through life but to become aware that the pain is there so that it can be transformed.
What are you carrying from your past that needs to be let go of? What needs to happen for you to be ready to let it go?
Creativity and Expression
Our most highly attuned state is a creative state. Creativity and its expression are the result of being able to be in the present moment, spontaneous, and positively focused. Creativity is a form of healing and an aspiration of conscious growth. We cannot create without the willingness to see more than what has previously been.
How can you nurture creativity in your life?
Purpose and Meaning
People crave a sense of meaning and purpose. Without it, we often feel lost at sea. The trials and tribulations of life are hard to weather because we face them with no sense of what to do with them. We may even end up feeling victimized by life and see ourselves transform into a perpetrator. When we have a sense of meaning we create a pathway through the challenges of life and create a sense of inner peace.
What is most important to you? Why is it most important?
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Sep 15, 2016 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
It is all too easy to go through large or small chunks of life not really knowing exactly what you want in life. From early on in our lives, many of us learn to prioritize the wants and needs of others. Years go by and we can wake up to discover that we have yet to truly step into our own lives. Facing this reality and finding our way to what is truly meaningful can feel like a daunting task.
Where do we look to find what we truly want? How do we learn this skill of connection to our core when we have only been taught to measure our happiness in terms of material success or the happiness of those around us?
If you have been asking yourself these types of questions , you are not alone and you can learn how to listen to your deeper nature and live it more fully and in a more fulfilling way each day.
There are three practices that, when included in your daily life, will help you open up to what you truly want in your life: Permission, Space, Desire.
- Permission: Honor yourself by giving yourself complete permission to embrace who you are.
- Space: Respect the process that you are inside of and give yourself the time that you need to do the self inquiry and personal development that will really make a difference.
- Desire: Pay attention to your true desires. What you are drawn to holds the key to who you are and how to live a deeply fulfilling life.
Let’s dig a little deeper into what is meant by each of these terms and how you can bring them into your everyday to achieve exactly what you want in life.
Permission is found in each and every moment that we say yes to ourselves and our process. Permission is the deep honoring of who we are and what we need.
Permission is not a one time affair. Permission is something that we need to give to ourselves each and every day, hour, and moment. Too often, we limit ourselves to living by the rules of what we perceive as possible –what we think we can and cannot do. These often arbitrary rules are major obstacles to our happiness.
When we do not give ourselves permission to feel what we feel, act as we see right, and pursue the things that truly make us happy we remain stuck in either large or small ways. The message that we send to our deeper self when we do this is that we do not value ourselves. It is like trying to have a conversation with someone who is distracted. Our deeper self will give up trying to communicate with us because we are not helping the dialogue along.
Conversely, when we step in fully, such as when we join a personal development program, start a hobby that makes us truly happy, or just give voice to our inner experience, we begin to hear the voice of our deeper nature. Permission makes it possible to create the space that we need in our life to do this most essential work.
Space means creating the time to do our work. Both the time to focus on it and the time it takes for it to unfold. We need the space to put ourselves in new situations, the space to not know, and the space to feel more deeply “into” ourselves.
Chances are you have been living without this space in your life. The pressures of work, family, and friends can leave us with too many obligations, too much input or too many rules. We become full with outside agendas and forget the quiet voice of our deeper longing, which requires space, quiet, and time to truly be heard.
Many people finally create space in their life after a crisis. They join a program, take a trip, or just spend some quiet time at home questing after what will make them deeply happy. It is in this space that we can truly hear the rumblings of our deep desires and where we have a chance to follow them in the direction of our bliss.
The truth is that who we are at our very core never leaves us. We cannot lose it or break it. However, the degree to which we respect and honor all that we are is the degree to which we derive a deep sense of fulfillment. And, we can show this respect and honor by acknowledging and following our desire. Knowing exactly what you want in life is just about listening to yourself.
Our desire shows us the way to our own heart. We naturally quest after and have an affinity for what supports our deeper nature, even if what we are seeking seems counter-intuitive or counterproductive. If what we are drawn to seems odd in this way, it is likely that our desire is showing us something that needs to be realized or released in order to be truly happy.
Our desire leads us in the direction that we need to go. It helps us connect with and unfold who we truly are. Feeling our desire and acting on it puts us in the flow of life. It brings energy, connectedness, and a dynamic feeling to each and every moment.
Permission, space, and desire work together to help us create happy, healthy, and more fulfilling lives. When we pay attention to how we are acting and interacting with each of these practices, we automatically begin to open up a deeper connection with who we truly are. We are able to feel the joy of connecting with our true self and we step into the beauty that is a part of each of our existences. The truth is, you always know exactly what you want in life, it is just a question of whether or not you go and get it.
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