Finding and Holding Onto Your Center

As regular readers of the blog will know, I think being in a state of balance leads to more good days than bad. That doesn’t mean that every aspect of life needs to be in perfect balance and of equal weight at all times. There are times in life when things will greatly be out of balance and sacrifices will need to be made that feel like they are costing you everything. Having a center will ensure that, at the times that things feel like they are costing you everything, you will know why you are willing to pay such a price for a specific outcome. It is those moments in time that we need our center or central truth most of all. Part of our central truth is what we are willing to sacrifice for and how much we are willing to sacrifice. Most people have things that they are willing to sacrifice everything for. It is important that we know how long we are willing to sacrifice everything for.

For example, improving your socioeconomic status may take education or a plan to climb the ladder at your current job, which may take everything while you endure. Knowing how long you will need to endure can make all the difference in your ability to endure. If having a lot of money is not part of your center, sacrificing everything to improve your socioeconomic standing is not worth it unless the next level gets you something other than money that you value. Understanding the complexities of our desires that our central truth creates allows us to break down what it takes to fulfill those desires and create a hierarchy to know which desires matter the most.

A central desire that most of my clients tend to understand the least is self-respect. It is something that I wish I could say did not involve a social feedback loop also known as the opinion of others, but it does. Knowing where and how your central truth intersects with the opinions of others can help you evaluate what you need to do to meet that desire. Like all the work we do to have more good days than bad, this work requires complete honesty. People like to say that they will do anything for family, and this is often not true. Get past who you are supposed to be and embrace who you are when doing this work. Our central truth creates our desires and our foundational truths that allow us to be authentic. When we are our most authentic selves and in pursuit of goals that are authentic, our lives become much more manageable.