I am Whole, Complete, Valid and Perfect

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 'I am Whole, Complete, Valid and Perfect'

What happens to your mind when you read these words?

I am inviting you to notice the quality of your automatic thoughts at this moment.

Next, find something that is FREE and DISCONNECTED from your history. The point is to escape the quality of automaticity.

Did your mind jump to tell you 'No, you're not?', or you simply remembered one time that you actually felt like a whole, or perhaps incomplete. Again, notice these thoughts, and go back to this moment; You, reading this sentence, while sitting on a chair or maybe walking to your next session.

'I am Whole, Complete, Valid and Perfect'.

Notice what is NOT automatic after you hear this. Notice 'who is noticing'; You are not your thoughts, your memories and whatever happened to you. See yourself as someone in the train passing through different places. In fact, You are not your feelings; your feelings are IN you.

This sense of inclusion is very powerful. Human consciousness is this inner model of inherent connections to everyone and everything, all the time.

To understand these relationships between the 'I and you', 'here, there, and now', we need to take a point of view or perspective. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) calls this the 'observer self', or the Self-As-Context (SAC).

In simpler words, SAC is your ability to watch your thoughts and feelings from a distance without fusing with them. It is when you welcome these internal processes as guests, who can be annoying at times, without identifying with them. SAC allows us to observe and describe our experiences, thoughts, sensations, instead of evaluating them and merging with our conceptualized self; the story we tell ourselves of how bad we are as partners, employees, friends, mothers... or even how great we could be! 

It is very important for us to distance ourselves from our own thoughts, feelings and different life events. To remember that we are not what happened to us, as it is only automatic to relate and integrate these experiences into our own identity and belief systems.

Take home message:

An easy way to establish this sense of awareness could be by starting your day with a simple question that allows you to notice your experiences: 'Who is noticing this?'. 

You can also set reminders to check in with yourself, (just like how you check on your beloved ones) such as every time you are drinking your hot cup of tea, checking your emails, walking your dog, reading this blog, focus on your sensations and you ask 'and who is noticing this?'. 

This takes you to the observer self!

Yours truly,

Dana 

Kindness is not just a virtue, it's a way of life.




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