Whenever I choose to explore an idea, I always like to start with its definition. The phrase “Personal Transformation” consists of two separate words. Personal and Transformation. Personal is defined as – of or concerning one’s private life, relationships, and emotions rather than matters connected with one’s public or professional career.
Transformation is defined as – a thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance, a metamorphosis, an induced or spontaneous change.
Putting these definitions together, a suitable definition for personal transformation in connection to this article would be – A metamorphosis induced from within a person that dramatically changes their life in a positive way – private, relationships and emotions.
Personal Transformation is an inside job. It is one that a person chooses to undertake when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of change (Rephrasing Tony’s Robbins famous quote).
Change is difficult, and it involves overcoming internal resistance. Internal resistance can be in the form of limiting beliefs, fears, prejudices, bad habits, unproductive thinking patterns, suppressed and repressed emotions, subconscious programming and so on.
When a person intentionally chooses between the pain of staying the same and the pain of changing they are more willing to face the demands of change with courage.
Personal responsibility, resilience, and determination are some of the traits that are necessary for effective personal transformation to happen.
With personal responsibility, a person is willing to acknowledge the sometimes hard truth that the person has chosen or agreed to all their life circumstances. This is a particularly difficult trait to accept and more so for people who have faced extremely traumatic and abusive life experiences. Instead, of fighting the statement and rejecting it as nonsense, it would help if such a person can take it for what it is and work from the place of possibility rather than rejection.
Even though they don’t understand how and why, and there is internal resistance to the idea, and they do not want to completely accept it, it would help them if they can simply acknowledge the possibility of it being true. This can be a wonderful starting place for positive change.
For starters, a person must accept themselves as the primary actor in their life story from a place of ownership.
Transformation also requires that you learn more about what is possible for you. This could be in the form of learning more about life, consciousness, and the inner world of humans.
Our education system provides knowledge in the form of facts, figures, and skills. The system applauds mastery of such knowledge as the mark of success. The truth is very soon it becomes apparent to many of us that the knowledge provided by our education system is not sufficient to meet the demands placed on us in leading conscious, meaningful and worthwhile lives.
We soon realize that in order to be able to navigate the craziness of our human experience we need more skills, we need more knowledge, understanding, and wisdom.
We need the wisdom to make the right choices. We need the courage to face our fears. We need strength and patience to overcome our limitations. We need hope in the face of uncertainty. We need forgiveness to let go of past pain. We need support to make it through our difficult times. We need the confidence to show up even when we do not feel like it. We need skills and guidance to parent our children. We need so much more…This is where continuous learning and study become so important.
We cannot stop at what we learn in school. We must learn why we are stuck and failing in our endeavors. We must learn how to do this without playing the victim or pushing out blame. We must learn about the power we each possess to shape our individual lives through our thoughts, emotions, free will, manifestation, and choices.
What do we do with all the learning? We apply that learning to ourselves individually. We use it to examine and analyze our inner selves. We seek to know and understand ourselves at a deep level and our inner landscape. We must do this without judgment, without lying and without giving up.
We can use the tools of prayer, meditation and contemplation to explore and discover ourselves from and within a safe and protected space. We can seek Divine Guidance to assist us to overcome the limitations we encounter within that keep us stuck and challenged.
We can get in touch with our spiritual side and ask that we grow in awareness. We can do this daily, diligently and intentionally. We can become observant and cognizant of synchronicities that occur in our lives and unexpected coincidences that are not merely coincidences.
We can set our hearts and minds on rebuilding, reclaiming and restoring all that is need of being rebuilt, reclaimed and restored. We can respond positively to feedback that we get in many different ways. And most importantly we acknowledge and express gratitude for each and every personal victory.
How does transformation happen? In my experience, transformation occurs when we are able to recognize our limitations and internal resistances and apply spiritual tools to eliminate or transform them.
Prayer can be a simple dialogue with your Divine Source or Guidance to help us overcome the root cause of our problems. The shifts will happen in time and they can be observed by our own change in behavior to life situations and circumstances.
This is the essence of Personal Transformation. It is an ongoing process of self-examination and growth so become the Highest expression of who it is you can be (which is our True Divine Self)