Time for true confessions: I used to be a woman who “settled”. Looking back, it’s hard to believe I was that woman once upon a time.
What exactly do I mean by “settling”? Settling is what we do when we don’t know who we are. Settling produces inauthentic choices because it’s produced from a state of being inauthentic. Settling begins in our relationship with Self and ends up permeating how we do life.
We begin by settling for an “imitation” or a “faux-self”. We settle for a self that is constructed by conditioning, by the messages received from our parents, teachers, friends, employers, the culture. It’s pretty much baked into the cake for human beings. We learn to become inauthentic in order to please others, gain recognition and attention, look good and fit in. I was no exception.
Sooner or later, the jig is up. We can only go so far down the path of inauthenticity before our life becomes so constrained and convoluted, it stops working. At the deeper level, the soul never settles. It will eventually have its way with us. The problem is, the ego-driven personality does. Therefore, most people keep right on going, forging their way through these constraints and end up wondering why life feels so hard and they feel so drained.
I’ve settled for inauthentic relationships because I didn’t know myself well enough to know they were never going to work. I bought into the age-old myth many women fall for, “Just hang in there, give it a chance, it’ll get better. Things will change or he will change”. Silly me! I thought it was about the other person. But here’s why relationships are so tricky: we always think when they don’t work, it’s because of the “other person”.
No offense to Barack Obama, I did sign up for the “Hope” campaign last fall, but seriously, can we talk? I know there must be some useful point to hope, but I’ve never found it. In my book, hoping doesn’t work as much as settling doesn’t work. They go hand in hand. There’s something more required of us than hoping or settling in order to create the life and the relationships we want. If only I knew this 40 years ago!
At the end of the day, do you want to live a life based on “settling”? Of course not!
Enter the HeartCore Boot Camp swat team of Shanda Sumpter and Allyson Spellman They’re on a mission to change 2000 women’s lives in the next month. They teach women to stop settling for simply surviving life and start stepping into a truly empowered life.
“Most of us are society robots. We do what we’ve been told to do, or what we think we should do. We want to empower women to follow their hearts and create the life they want”, says Sumpter.
“We need to be clear about the challenges that come into our lives,” Shanda says. “Instead of bemoaning what you don’t have or what you’re lacking or what you’re afraid of, look at what’s in your space now, and use it to launch the life you want.”
These women are speaking my language! This is a BIG subject, one with lots of learning involved.
Shanda and Allyson are offering a free call-in workshop on July 21 at 5pm PST (6pm MT, 8pm EST), as well as a 2-day HeartCore Bootcamp tele-seminar series on July 24-25.
For more information on HeartCore Bootcamp, visit www.heartcorebootcamp.com.
Ego is all about the inauthentic, since only that which has been objectified can be put on display as a trophy for other egos to envy. I was on that path until a period of clinical depression from age 17-22, it took an encounter with a water spirit who told me basically two things, surrender to reality even if it is suicidal depression, and the “worldly dharmas” are hopeless, FUBAR, unfixable, worthless, hopeless, untrustworthy, hopeless and hopeless. Authenticity does not rely on hope because reality is always available, there is no doubt or hope needed, it is all right there waiting for your acceptance and clear eyed vision cutting the fat from the bone so to speak, rejecting and accepting are not proccesses of hope, that is always a projection into the future, which will NEVER exist, so you are always brought back to NOW, all that is, and what is working or not working NOW. The skillful warrior never is worried if the killing stroke lands, it is always a follow through, it is always not now, but NOW, which includes the to be born manifeting out of the NOW, if you pay attention to the effects and affects, then you are stuck with the control of EGO over the dead present, instead of the hopless livly NOW present.
“We settle for a self that is constructed by conditioning…”
Such truth in that statement, but also such a conundrum. How does one break out into an authentic self, when several decades of conditioning – sometimes very subtle and stealthy influences – must be recognized and broken through?
This year I’ve landed in a position to be able to take time to reevaluate and prepare for a new era of my life, and I find even my best meditations and ideas are tempered by the sensation that this thought and change process is subject to deadlines and parameters set by others, and even by myself via some deep sense of obligation.
It’s a very difficult task, to try to separate out which convictions that are driving choices and actions are based on personal values, and which are based on conditioning. The process of transforming to an authentic self seems to require a full evaluation of “personal values,” to try to recognize what I really believe, vs. what I’ve been conditioned to believe. Some bridges are hard to cross without them catching fire.
Thanks for your insights. I’ll check out the HeartCore site.