Working hard on yourself. Become your own observer.
Cristina Zoica Dumitru
Consultant, Creativity Coach, Educator, Digital Artist
Forward Note: this article can also be found on my personal website here.
Working hard on yourself means harmonizing the multi-parts of the human nature: the mental frameworks, the emotional needs and the heart talk that whispers within. It’s all about the way we think and feel inside about ourselves. It’s a daily hard work of observing idle thoughts and emotional patterns.
Why is self work hard? Because working hard on something means going into detail, above the usual effort. It’s a focused, consistent and vigilant observation of ourselves. But it's even harder when the insignificant idle thoughts become significant, the unseen emotions which are supposed to be of no importance are seen to be really vital.
In this article I write with the purpose of steering up the heart perception by simply bringing attention to ourselves. I talk about the concept of working hard on yourself through the use of self awareness in daily life. And a good way to start is by simply questioning our own body-mind, to let the voice of heart speak louder than the intellect.
Are you willing to look inside?
How many people are willing to truly look inside their heart and work on themselves? Observing, understanding and transforming without judging or blaming anyone or anything?
Work on myself? What do you mean? I workout in the gym, I take a vacation per year, I afford a good restaurant meal and I spend as much time as I can with family and friends. All these will bring comfort but on a long term still means striving for things and situations and instead, one should look for harmony of self.
Jim Rohn, entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker was an advocate of working hard on oneself through continuous self education and self empowerment. His life philosophy was – work hard on yourself more than you’d work for Any Job. Jim Rohn simply wraps the low of the average life as in 3 aspects, he refers to it as the ultimate low point of life.
“Being broke is bad, being stupid is awful. What is really bad is being broke-and-stupid. Unless you’re sick. Being broke-stupid-and-sick is the ultimate low. There’s nothing worse than that. ” – Jim Rohn
Working hard on yourself to become your best coach
In the first place, it’s important to realize that in our daily life, overwhelmed with information and saturated with noise, we are always in search of something – getting the body fit, getting the money, getting recognition, getting the house, finding the doctor that can cure a disease, finding the partner that will loves us. It’s all about searching outside of ourselves.
Only if, there’s a place where you are your own motivator, your own personal coach, your own doctor, you give yourself an auto suggestion and then you’re ready – you get clarity and act with confidence.
Sounds like a Superhuman doesn’t it? Is it even possible to have such qualities and attributes, such methods of creating not making? Of being and not doing stuff? Of truly living and not striving. Is it possible to change my habits?
So then, Working Hard on Yourself means as the ancient Greeks and the Bible says “Know Thyself.”
When we truly know ourselves it is like having the divine compass in life, we can steer through the life storms without doubt and fear but instead with faith.
During the last few years I’ve been into studies of self development and self transformation and the deeper I go the more I realize that personal development truly means spiritual development. I ran into readings on self transformation by Joseph Murphy and many 20th century authors like Florence Scovel Shinn, Julia Setton, Orison Swett Marden, Conny Mendez and Charles? F. Haanel.
I discovered exactly the same secret for self transformation? – “know thyself” – meaning Study Yourself. The approach is that we as humans are made up of four parts: physical body, emotional nature, intellect, and the spiritual essence.
“You are here to discipline yourself, so that your intellectual, emotional, and physical nature are completely spiritualized.” – Dr Joseph Murphy
Working hard on yourself to overcome your self ignorance
As I have said, a human is divided into 4 planes of expressions or consciousnesses namely: body, mind, soul and spirit. And through these planes we all function through – instinct, reason, inspiration and intuition. Ordinary humans consciously develops one or two planes of expression but rarely all four.
Knowing thyself means the constant self work on all four levels of development: instinct, reason, inspiration and intuition
For instance, it’s so normal to hear people unsatisfied about their job and life situations. They may tell you that they wish for a better job, a new car, a new house. But how often do you hear someone saying – I wish to be broader in my character, in my spirit and in my heart? Or, I wish to be in perfect health? Hmm, doesn’t this make you wonder about ordinary human nature?
The ordinary human looks at the outside circumstances and has an instant opinion, reaction and interpretation. But the extra-ordinary human really looks and works inside, and this is tough work.
In my opinion, the opposite of self work is unconsciousness or self ignorance, which means:
The way to overcome this self ignorance is to have frequent and honest heart-to-heart talk with yourself.
Questions about your personal frame of reference:
Look into your own heart and take account of everything, learn to identify the strong and weak points. Analyze yourself as you would be your best friend willing to help out, without judging but just observing with curiosity!
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Sounds too easy, doesn’t it?
Question your body-mind with the wrong questions
So far you have been pretty successful in keeping yourself distracted day and night with the wrong questions. Remember, working hard on yourself? means being aware of the wrong questions that gain momentum in your own mind, and sooner or later they will begin to press against you until it makes you feel stuck and even sick.
Wrong questions:
You have a body and it’s the reflection of your mind. Take care of the mind and your body will follow too.? “You cannot buy a healthy body with all the money in the world, but you can have health through riches of the mind, such as thoughts of peace, harmony, and perfect health.” – Joseph Murphy
Then there’s also the emotional nature of us humans. And emotions are not good or bad, positive or negative. But rather, uncontrolled or undisciplined emotions are destructive. It’s like having a powerful vehicle and we can’t seem to control it up-hill or down-hill. We need to learn how to control our emotions (anger, resentment, frustration and so on) and not let emotions control us.
Question your body-mind with the honest questions
As a result of the wrong questions, sooner or later, our divine spirit will whisper to us and will try to pull us into our individuality, but unfortunately we start to hear its voice around sickness, loss and trauma. Only then we start to ask the different kinds of questions, the honest ones.
Working hard on ourselves starts with just being honest with us!
Honest questions to ourselves:
In like manner, take a moment, pause … and start cultivate a deep self-honesty by merely answering the questions. To give an honest answer you don’t need to pay for a coach, a therapist or a doctor. Just deep true honesty.
Above all, question all your planes of existence, question your body-mind because we all have an Internal Teacher, it’s called Self Reflection but it needs a hard work to respond back to us.
This time, ask these questions to help you in becoming your own observer.
These questions are about generating awareness within ourselves. Try to give an honest answer, go in and figure it out –? and you’ll see how answers begin to stir in the mind, body and heart. But they will not come all of the sudden, it takes some practice, in this and in everything we do.
Takeaways
In essence our world is full of lessons to be learned, of constant change, of beginnings and endings, of losses and gains, of constant adaptation. We apparently function though external needs, external approval, external possessions, external love. We seek something and it becomes a struggle in getting it. “Most people consider life a battle – but it is not a battle, it is a game. It is a game, however, which cannot be played successfully without the knowledge of spiritual law.” – Florence Scovel Shinn
As has been noted, working hard on yourself is not a few minutes job, neither a day or so per month. It’s a continuous mental and spiritual work that we have to do with the mind, body and experiences. Only this way we can enjoy our life, health and relationships. Only this way the heart can speak louder than our perceptions.
Working hard on yourself means learning to blend the intellect and emotions. The intellect is alright but it’s trained to see outside of us, therefor it should be illuminated with inside divine wisdom of the heart.
In summary … “We were not thrown off as independent, unrelated units of the universe. There is still just as vital a connection between ourselves and our Maker as there is between the branch and the vine. We are a projection of His mind, a definite part of His plan, and our ambitions, our longings, are in a way a reflection of the universal plan. Those who have faith in themselves feel that their ambitions are evidences of ability to back them by accomplishment, to make their dreams realities. – Orison Swett Marden
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