Drop the Defence – Simply Be

I had spent so much of my life trying to please other people, it was natural for me to want other people to get on board when I set off on the journey to authenticity, I wanted them to validate who I was becoming.

So I would defend and reason, maybe even my blog was a part of that. My self esteem, or self worth, couldn’t carry off a big moment of vulnerability without some sort of justification and approval.

As I started to write, I began to quickly understand why I felt like that. Over and over my blog would start from the standpoint of us coming into this world with talents, traits, and purpose even, and yet being treated as empty vessels by those who ‘knew better’. We have been brainwashed into a lack of self worth in various well-meaning guises.

This week I was talking to a young adult who is struggling with their academic results and having lots of arguments with his parents, it reminded me about how important this issue is. Getting a good education is a drum many well-intentioned parents beat; it’s ingrained culturally in most cases. There is a feeling education is a privilege.

The same could be said of voting, having doctors available to look after our health, having governments test and sanction the use of certain medical products, having scientists legitimize the understanding of our world and our very being, having politicians or religious leaders espouse certain dogmas as ‘the truth’. I could go on, but that isn’t the point of this particular article.

The point is, I – yes me – know what is best for me. You know what is best for you. Other people (whether a parent, scientist, priest, politician or anything else) are simply there with an opinion that will inspire you to your inner truth in the process of either accepting or rejecting part of what they say. The power of discerning what is or isn’t right for you is yours and yours alone; contrary to what we were told growing up.

As this person was relating more of his story, something my mentor said to me a while back came to mind. She had likened much of my life so far as navigating icy waters, defensively maneuvering around icebergs and the like, and said I needed to get used to the calm warmer waters of just being.

As life is a mirror, reflecting back to us our predominant state of being, as this young man talked about what was happening with his parents there was a clear reflection of defensive energy going on. And I think that is perhaps common to most of us - at least in the early stages of a journey to authenticity.

You see, it’s a fallacy that there is only defence or offense, eat or be eaten, flight or fight.

But when we have spent most of our lives either fighting against the status quo, or trying hard to fit within it, it is hard to simply accept your own position without a need for justification or validation.

He had been a straight-A student, but as his journey into adulthood is getting underway, and his perspective on life is now broadening, he is questioning the validity of the notion that a good education is what he needs to set himself up in life.

So we rebel, we defend.

That is exactly what I did when I bowed out of the idea that I needed to be out earning an income. I had to do quite a bit of work to change the relationship I had with money, as I wrote in this article, and was I ever defensive. That was clearly reflected in my partner’s attitude at home.

Then, as I refocused and accepted that I did not need to be out earning money, that slowly began to change. As I became at ease with the idea, so did my partner, and as my confidence grew, that too was reflected back in his confidence.

I still have situations arise where I can get defensive, here is another I wrote about back in January when I was advocating to do what fuels you and dump the rest. While the need to be accepted is still strong, I am happy to say these situations arise much less frequently nowadays as the need for authenticity is stronger still and becoming more practiced.

As I look back on my life I can see in the many changes I’ve made in direction, from the breakup of relationships, to the bowing out of competitive sport and a corporate career, I was initially defensive. Then, once I got good with the idea, once I was happier in myself, the world reflected that happiness back to me.

The realization that your life choices are just that, your life choices, can take some getting used to. In fact, that is perhaps the root paradigm we get defensive about most, after a lifetime of being told others know better.

Yet it is the one perspective that most universally resonates.

From the standpoint that your choices are yours to make, and knowing you will deal with the consequences whether good or bad, you can start to have confidence in your decisions. As we feel into the power within each of us to discern our own truth, we can start to drop the defence and learn to simply be.

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