What is your Best Self?
Before considering strategies for connecting with your best self, your definition of your ‘best self’ is imperative to know. It takes a bit of critical thinking about your activity; the attention, intention and interaction you have with yourself, others and the world on a daily or moment-by-moment basis. Are you happy with the results? Could they be better? How?
How do you see yourself? How would you like to see yourself? What might be the simple changes you can make to reach from the former to the latter, if there is a difference? Being able to catch a glimpse in the mirror may not always work. Many, like myself, seek out reflections of who we are through investigating personal assessments of various kinds. Sometimes we made need some clarity on our ‘Why?’ in life.
Do We Know Ourselves?
A little research would provide a plethora of surveys that offer views based on your honest responses. The key is ‘honest’ and some choices of preferences are tough to make. Some of those surveys are paid, like BrainMap, DISC, Kolbe, and Clifton Strengths (formerly Strengthsfinder).Then there are some free alternatives like Myers-Briggs, Genius Report, High 5 Test, Keirsey Temperament Sorter, Big Five Personality Assessment and Holland Code to name a few. If you are curious, that will keep you busy and provide much for consideration and reflection.
In my own quest for strategies for connecting with my best self one, an example of a Genius Report survey, defined me as a ‘Dynamo Genius.’ Remember this isn’t about bolstering your ego, it’s about learning the keys to transcend your ego and engage a perspective of ‘wego’ in collaboration with others. The tendency, I suppose, is to want to pat yourself on the back for being such and such. That’s not the purpose. Hopefully, you seek to learn how you can work better with your natural aptitude, attitude, strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes we aren’t self-aware enough to understand how and why we approach life like we do.
When it comes to expressing your thoughts, feelings and emotion you tend to use lots of inflexion, more pitch variation, more variety in vocal intonation and vocal quality. High Yellows communicate readily – answer and comment quickly, and tend to speak more forcefully, at a higher volume and a faster, more forceful, pace. Your voice is the primary mechanism through which you influence the brain responses in others.
IQ, EIQ and the Esoteric/Spiritual
If you’ve ever taken an IQ test, you get a score that places you in certain percentiles of the population. Many of the above surveys or tests do the same. There is a plethora of personality types as well as communication and problem-solving preferences. At some point most of us thought that other people feel and think like us, which is a often a huge stumbling block for effective communication and working with others in any way. Sometimes seeing ourselves revealed in such ways gives us the opportunity to overcome the imposter syndrome, which is loosely defined as doubting your abilities and feeling like a fraud.
What we hope for in our search for strategies for connecting with your best self is a reflection of how we know ourselves to be, yet may not have defined or discovered our characteristics and strengths that allow us to be our Best Self. The above consider our preferences, mostly, in dealing with situations we encounter in life, relationships and work. By considering these perspectives in short order, such as the assessment, we can get a better overall picture of our nature. When we know ourselves better, we can better manage how we respond to situations beyond our control. There’s another aspect we haven’t considered yet, and that is Emotional Intelligence.
No matter what situation we encounter, how we respond emotionally is usually the core of how we negotiate through life’s moments. Daniel Goleman’s work resulted in another kind of survey; the Emotional Intelligence Quotient test which is based on research and study of many behavioral, cognitive and developmental scientists. Nearly all the above surveys are in some way associated with IQ. Much of how we handle situations does involve IQ; our academic performance indicators as well as person and professional success is highly influence by it, though IQ doesn’t answer all the possible reasons for how we behave.
What I’ve found to be true is that other types of assessments and charts also reveal the same or similar things. In considering strategies for connecting with your best self there is a decisive and distinct correlation with the astrological birth charts as well as numerology reports. If you doubt that, compare them yourself. The ‘predictive’ nature often associated with the ‘esoteric sciences’ is a very small aspect and, quite frankly, an easy distraction for not paying attention to life and making the best choices. The two forms mentioned offer the same, perhaps even more revealing, reflections of challenges and opportunities in life.
Opportunities in Creating Your New Normal
The recent events in the world have challenged our freedoms, our safety and our ability to rise above the challenges as resilient humans that we are now. Two things began this process of global self-assessment; the obsession on self-hygiene and sequestration. While we were concerned with the safety and security in the outer world, our inner world suffered greatly from the lack of human interactions. We simply aren’t designed to be alone, though being alone gives us time to think. How we think is the key to our survival and thrivability.
On the one hand we can think about the destruction and devastation of livelihoods. It includes the inability to perform normal rituals with family and friends, whether for births, marriages or deaths. We’ve never encountered that kind of limitation in our lifetimes, and certainly never globally. There’s a lot of reasons to belabor those points. However, rather than getting sequestered in the mayhem and projecting our anger toward some unknown enemy, let’s consider another opportunity that has been placed in front of us.
We’re faced with immense challenges in restoring or retrofitting our lives and work; designing strategies for connecting with your best self is imperative. Mandatory actions to remain employed are ripping people apart from the inside, faced with losing job security and support for their families. Many consider it their ‘only way out’ of a horrible situation and succumb to the process just to support their families. Our compassion and understanding is tantamount to our transition through this period.
It could be that with better knowledge of our skillset, personal and professional preferences, not to mention strengths, would give us the opportunity to shift into something more compatible with our conscience. None of us are alone, although it may feel like it at times. Did you know that knowing yourself better also allows you to know others better, too? Even though it may be tedious or seem inconsequential at first (rarely do we like tests), growing in your self-awareness only benefits you. That’s just the beginning in developing strategies for connecting with your best self.
Now you’ve at least considered trusting the reflections offered from answering questions about you honestly. Now what? What do you do next? Perhaps the way is clear now and your path forward is obvious. That’s amazing! Congratulations! It’s also rare. We usually need help. Help can come in a variety of forms. Exploring self-assessment tools certainly offers tremendous insight, though not much for direction toward your best path. That answer is within you.
The ‘what’ question about your best path is one for which I am particularly suited to help you answer. With a balanced EIQ, education and experience in both hard and soft skills as well as a highly intuitive nature, my best path and best self unite in serving your Best Self. Perhaps we can talk?
Individual Support for Conscious Co-Creation
For the future and perhaps your part in the evolution of our planetary society, we need to learn how to get along as a global village and in support of not just sustainability, thrivability. As we’ve found from the discoveries of quantum physics and the nature of reality being built on vibration, or vibrating strings, we have to learn to sense our way through life. Thinking about it is just not enough.
Of course being your Best Self is just the beginning. Aptitude and attitude for agility and innovation is a requirement in today’s business, educational, environmental, industrial, political and societal arenas. Systems thinking got a huge boost with Senge’s work, including personal mastery and the development of learning organizations. How do we take that forward in regard to our global needs now?
ZERO to ONE – Making Our Way Toward a Conscious Civilization takes a holistic view of systems, starting with a grander view of what’s inside of us naturally. It offers considerations and references for first conceiving an inner and outer relationship with our lives as a reality. It then takes the organizational development notions to a natural conclusion of the inclusion of our innate abilities, natural design and transformational qualities necessary for a brighter future.
Just consider this: What would it be like if you were able to live in quantum entanglement with the unified field? What would that mean for you?
