Life is full of failures and victories, but the most important thing is not to lose the course we have taken. Luck never leaves us, nor do we stray from the path. Everything that surrounds us is a necessary experience for our self-discovery. On the path of self-knowledge, we also learn how to take off the tendency to over-criticize and judge ourselves or others, to return to the original capacity of unconditional love of the little child we were born with.

Many of us carry within us an inner critic or censor that commands or prohibits specific things or reactions, which is often a consequence of given childhood conditioning. The system of “internal orders and prohibitions” is also the result of programming from the environment, tradition, and religion. All cults, as well as etiquettes, with their strongly outlined rules of savoir-vivre and code of beliefs, somehow freeze our ability to perceive impartially and freshly.

A child's mind is malleable, open, and free of judgment, but it quickly encodes images and emotions. Any judgments are therefore most often the result of what he or she brings from home and what is fed to his or her attention. The most important thing is not to get stuck in superficial judgments but to go out into the world with the most valuable values. This is how the butterfly effect begins, i.e., everything that is sown by the individual is transferred collectively to the wider world.

The strength of the individual as a family member

All the layers of what needs to be worked through enrich us by the same amount. They enrich not only us but also our whole family, which is always striving for self-regulation. So your integration of yourself is also a brick in the leveling of certain ancestral fears. If you, for example, give yourself more care and attention, you regulate those attitudes that in your lineage manifested themselves in the form of cutting yourself off, because perhaps it was impossible to do otherwise. You mend this; you convert it to the right track out of love for your ancestors and in memory of them. In this way, this aspect no longer has to call out to subsequent family members to restore order.

This is how the knowledge of life and compassion grows; this is how deep understanding and acceptance arise. ‘The highest form of love is forgiveness,’ and in this thought, it is worth encapsulating the power of forgiveness as an entity that transforms personal burdens. The effect of this transformation is to free oneself from blockages, to dissolve hidden grief, and to bring inner emotions, desires, and potentials to the fore. On the path of such forgiveness and release from family scripts, vulnerability emerges.

We often realize that we are highly sensitive because it is only at the level of high sensitivity that we can see the power of the uploaded programs, as well as being able to forgive unconditionally, despite the wrongs suffered. It is in the background of this unfulfillment that it is crucial to feel fulfillment. Each of us has tried and is trying the best we can for the moment. Most often, parents gave as much as they were able to give at the time, as much as their level of maturity and awareness allowed. Forgiveness is needed for you to move on.

The power of gratitude

The same is true of gratitude. It is a tool to transform grief into a level of understanding and love. We are given non-accidental teachers by fate, ones who teach us what we need to actually grasp in order to learn lessons. And it is worth honoring them for helping us to recognize what needed healing and to isolate what I want and what I don't want. The feeling of gratitude also helps us to connect with the vagus nerve and the abdominal system responsible for feelings of well-being and fulfillment.

It is thus worthwhile not to label our own lives but to draw only the best out of them. Every experience in our lives has a purpose to make us who we are. Madonna mentioned in one of her interviews that she cannot regret what she has done in the past; otherwise, she would have to regret who she has become. And this answer captures the sense of why regretting some stages is not constructive, as it undermines the importance of who we are today.

It's worth remembering that we hold ourselves responsible for our decisions, and instead of holding ourselves harshly accountable, we treat them with gratitude, bearing in mind that we did the best we could in that moment.

I am not a product of my circumstances; I am a product of my decisions.

(Stephen Covey)

The miracle of openness to insight into self and others

Your openness is valuable to the world. Stay open to the feelings leading up to recent events and the needs that accompany this. ‘Any new situation can trigger childhood needs,’ emphasizes John Bradshaw in his book “Returning to Your Inner Home.” What triggers a new event, conflict, or challenge in you—fear, longing, uncertainty, or resentment? Also, observe the reactions coming from your body.

When you regain your connection with yourself and restore your ability to get in touch with your emotions and needs, you are then reminded that life is very engaging, like a book you can't stop reading. It delights you when you learn to notice the series of signs you get each day. Just learning to make this connection with yourself should be one of the areas included in the canon of teaching children. Educating children in the proper interpretation of emotions, different sensitivities, gratitude, and forgiveness, as well as building a connection with oneself, are the most important psychosocial foundations.

In Tibetan culture, the ability to have a deep insight into oneself is regarded as hard work, and being really physically busy is regarded as laziness when it is only the mind that is “working” at top speed.

In European culture, we mostly perceive the opposite, treating excessive thinking as a side effect, a luxury, laziness, or daydreaming. Meanwhile, allowing ourselves to be inwardly with ourselves, to integrate the feelings and emotions of the day, and to catch in touch with ourselves are essential fields of our self-discovery. And we are not only talking about self-knowledge here. Reaching into one's resources is also about reaching into the field of one's potential and genius.

To quote John Taylor Gatto, 'I have come to the conclusion that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress genius because we do not yet know how to manage a population of educated men and women. Gatto's words also make one realize that suppressing one's emotions and needs is also suppressing one's talents, and that getting to the source of these talents opens up space for all these resources.

The power of language to create the environment

Our mind has enormous creative power. R. Bolstad believed that our way of speaking influences reality, which he based on the assumptions of transformative communication. This is all thanks to the neuroplasticity of the human mind, which can encode a given message as well as develop a new one to replace the previous one. The human capacity to transform experiences is very high, and this can be done not only in a state of hypnosis. Daily use of affirmations, for example, allows one to “encode” a new value system.

Visualisations, e.g., of new values, which can be planted in the mind like a flower by naming them, are equally effective. There are also methods of imagining a different behavior in response to a given situation, a so-called free will exercise on the past, i.e., reprogramming old habits. This method also appears as Neuro-Linguistic Programming, where we move from a safe place of power to the scene we want to work on. To quote Albert Einstein, ‘Visualization is more important than knowledge, because knowledge is limited.’

Each of us receives lessons tailored to our own experiences. The human task is to integrate these senses into a coherent whole. The language we use is also important here. If, for example, we say ‘it will work out somehow,’ ‘we will see how it works out,’ or ‘time will tell,’ we are thereby taking the responsibility and liability off our shoulders and placing it in the hands of chance.

However, when we are not ready with any intention and do not know what we want, let us at least express our trust in the wisdom of the universe with the words, ‘I believe in the best solutions for myself.’ Such an affirmation can strengthen your inner conviction to correctly recognize your path. Otherwise, you are depriving yourself of responsibility.

Self-compassion and self-care

The world needs to learn what self-care and self-compassion are. Self-compassion instead of self-criticism is another possible tool on the way to reprogramming a mind entangled in dialogues with the inner critic. Depriving yourself of the need to control yourself and others, and therefore ceasing to save the world, ceasing all “musism,” being for others, and fitting in with their expectations, removes the worries you place on yourself. Inner self-love, and therefore the path to self-compassion, is simpler than you think.

It is first and foremost a path of “dropping off” individual layers, and so forgetting what has been imposed on you from the outside, and reminding yourself of who you are. And you are a sentient being, created out of love and for love. It is you who should be your greatest friend to yourself, and this is what you can transform in the first place. Self-love is always the starting point.

It is also worth learning a few more skills along the way, such as self-motivation, self-care, and congratulating yourself. Self-motivation is very important for taking on new challenges; no one has to encourage you or prove to you that it is worth the effort. It is up to you to give yourself the belief and enthusiasm towards everything you do and care about. The same goes for self-care: if you don't have someone next to you to give you wings and care when you need it, you can give it to yourself. Giving yourself a break in the park, an evening with a much-anticipated film, or eating your favorite meal are all examples of the most perfect care, to which you hold the key of knowing what will bring you the most joy!

Finally, the ability to congratulate yourself—a very important and often overlooked ritual—celebrating every achievement is a necessary practice in which you give the space a clear signal: ‘I see your work, I appreciate you, and I am happy with you!’. With that said, it's not only the successes that are worth celebrating, but also the problems that fall away—I finally broke free from a toxic relationship, I got good test results, and my contract at work was extended. Equally, you can also celebrate the little things, like the first sunny day in a week, a summer concert in town, or a long weekend.

When you return to yourself, after the experiences you have been through, you return in the caring fullness of self-love. Your relationship with yourself changes because you stop being invisible to yourself. And when you cease to be invisible to yourself, other people cease to be invisible to you, as you are seen by them. You want good for others as much as you want good for yourself. Suddenly, you notice not only your needs but also the needs of others. Then you notice the struggles of the people around you, and then the urge to judge or criticize falls away. In being a friend to yourself, you encounter the essence of loving the whole collective. Suddenly, you begin to understand that everyone has a story—their own reasons, struggles, limitations, conditions, unfulfillments, needs, and longings.

In this package, no one is perfect; everyone is equal. Everyone is equally deserving of love. It is always possible to rise above genealogical and cellular memory. Experiences that are recorded in our body and memory can take the form of blockages that hinder our communication with the world and with ourselves, but with a strong will to seek the meaning of these events, you always have the chance to transform the resources of your memory into the fuel of a higher consciousness and a deeper understanding of the world. Experiences that bring us pain and suffering are thus the most powerful link to personal transformation, which, if supported by emotion, can activate your personal potential with double the force. However, the key step is to discern these disjointed fragments into a whole in order to make changes not from a position of lack but from a new challenge.

Life is neutral; it is our mind that gives meaning. The soul's task is to experience, not to be stuck at one point. As difficult as these experiences may seem, in the end, they lead to your higher good and therefore feed your growth as an individual, and then you can influence the growth of those around you.

References

Bolstad. R. 2016. orig. Komunikacja transformująca (‘Transformative communication’).Wrocław: Metamorfoza.
Bradshaw, J. 1990. orig. Powrót do swojego wewnętrznego domu (‘Returning to your inner home’). Konstancin-Jeziorna: Medium, p. 104.
Hunter, B. 2018. John Taylor Gatto (1935-2018): Remembering America’s most courageous teacher.
Kwieciński, K. 2018. orig. H’oponopono. Oczyszczająca modlitwa (‘H'oponopono. A purifying prayer’). Brzeg: Magia uzdrawiania.