When our strengths hold us back...
It’s not easy being a human. We have these inherent needs for love, connection, stability, safety and belonging –and yet the world is inherently unstable, inconsistent, messy, and impermanent.
At a very young age we start to develop coping mechanisms to get by. We notice what behavior gets us attention and brings connection and validation. We start to become who we need to be to survive and thrive in a chaotic world.
When I was 13 I started skateboarding. I was long fascinated with skateboards, like many young boys, and really committed to learning the art.
This in itself was a lot of fun, and a lot of lessons were inevitably learned about persistence. But this activity also brought a new group of friends who told me I needed to wear baggier clothes, dye my hair blonde, and listen to punk and rap music.
I didn’t take offense that there was something wrong with how I was, instead I was excited that these boys actually wanted me to be part of their crew. It was fun.
As I made these changes I didn’t just find a sense of belonging with my new skater friends, but I also noticed that girls started to like me.
The impact all of this had on me couldn't be overstated.
It was a radical shift in a short time and suddenly being “cool” and a part of this skateboard culture was the most important thing in the world for me.
Hanging out with the cool skater kids opened a lot of interesting doors. It gave me a wide reaching group of creative and outgoing friends that extended beyond skateboarding but to urban culture in general. I met interesting people from all walks of life and had countless novel experiences that revealed seemingly endless potential for my life.
But as I aged I started to notice the limitations of this self-image. I realized how much it meant to me that I was accepted and validated by this specific group of people. And how I would often assess the value of other people based on their status in this particular social scene.
In retrospect I can see that I was never fully “bought in” to this identity. I did plenty of things that were incongruent like my yoga teachers training, formally studying and practicing Tibetan Buddhism, and obsessively perusing used bookstores for esoteric literature.
Even though I sort of broke the mold, I still suffered from a very limited worldview, and thus a very limited self-view. And in this sense I am not unique.
Every social group has its own value system, the qualities and characteristics it champions and those it forsakes.
Now we need social groups. Shared social values give as a scaffolding for expression and connection. We bond over shared values and experiences. There’s nothing wrong with this.
But each value we internalize comes with a limitation. Sometimes this is supportive and helps us meet important needs, but sometimes a value system keeps us from exploring and even accepting who we really are.
Reflect on your social groups from your teen years or early adulthood, and you can probably see how supportive these were for you. The ways we dressed and talked, the music we listened to, the activities we did with friends… These were essential parts of finding our place in the world.
But is this who you really are? Is there maybe more to you that doesn’t fit into the value system you adopted in your teens?
It’s healthy and natural to outgrow our early life identity, but it’s also common for some aspects of our value system to remain stuck in a past that is no longer relevant to our present conditions.
It actually takes a tremendous amount of courage to discard our old values and really truly explore what is most meaningful to us, without concern for how others may judge us.
A lot of the work I do with clients is exactly this; untangling old outdated value systems that came from family, social groups, culture, and religion, and creating space for a non-judgmental exploration and expression.
Some of these values are unquestionably great, like being kind or nice, but held too rigidly we may find ourselves not enforcing healthy boundaries, not expressing our deepest truths, and even sacrificing our own wellbeing for the sake of being perceived as nice.
In these cases we may realize that it’s not that we really want to be a good person so much as we want others to perceive us as a good person in hopes of validation and acceptance.
When we can see the truth behind our value systems, we can start to get some space and freedom around them and we begin the journey of feeling who we really are. We discover what real maturity, integrity, and self-expression actually is.
We are not discarding some old value system to create a new one, the deconstructing of the old starts to actually reveal something more essential and whole.
This is one of the core themes and inspiration for my upcoming small group course called Whole: a meditative and contemplative journey to wholeness. We compassionately deconstruct our self-image and values to reveal a more essential and intimate aspect of ourselves.
I’m excited for this course, I really love the magic of the small group. With collective intention and group support we open to new depths of compassion and self-compassion.
There are still a few spots left if you’re interested, and I plan to run this course at some point again in the future so let me know if this timing doesn’t work but you’d like to join a future group.
If you’re interested, reply to this email and tell me a bit about yourself and we’ll go from there.
I’ll also inevitably be doing more content of this type on my YouTube channel, so stay tuned there too.
Lots of love,
Jude